Press Release

The real information problem—which we at the Hewlett Foundation are actively exploring with potential philanthropic interventions as part of our democracy reform work with the Madison Initiative—is biased news, including misinformation, disinformation and propaganda. Research shows that many citizens are psychologically predisposed to want to read biased news that reaffirms their pre-existing beliefs and tribal identities. This creates obvious pernicious incentives for commercial technology platforms that want to keep people on their sites. So, compared with fake news, biased news will be harder to address.

Polarization and hyper-partisanship remain the key concerns at Madison. However, some recent evidence calls into question the correlation between growing ideological polarization and social media, given that the most rapidly polarizing—older—demographics are the least likely users of social media. So while some actors are motivated by ideological partisanship, some are profit motivated, some seek to amplify prejudices via hate speech, and still others appear not particularly ideological, but instead most interested in shifting the balance of power domestically (or in the case of Russia globally, towards a more illiberal democracy).

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced the creation of the Global Indigenous Ambassador Program. The program establishes two Indigenous Ambassadors, to be selected from underrepresented indigenous communities. Through the inclusion of a broader and more diverse base of knowledgeable constituents, ICANN will be better equipped to support the next generation of the global Internet community.

"This is an exciting opportunity for two Indigenous Ambassadors to learn about ICANN and the At-Large community, representing the best interests of Internet end users," states Loris Taylor, President & CEO, Native Public Media. ICANN is now accepting applications for two Global Indigenous Ambassadors. Applicants must be members of unserved or underserved tribal or native communities and meet the ICANN Fellowship Program criteria. Selected participants will receive travel, hotel, and per diem for the ICANN60 Conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, to be held 28 October – 3 November 2017. The deadline for submitting applications is 6 July 2017.

We are excited to announce that we have committed $1 million to a new cohort of progressive startups working at the intersection of tech, media, and politics. After receiving more than 500 applications during our “Resist and Rebuild” open call for funding (up from 100 last year!), we narrowed down the field to 14 and are delighted to be investing in the following startups:
Amplify: helping grassroots groups take action
Flippable: turning America blue by building a movement to flip states
Indivisible: building a model for how local activism can affect real change in Congress
Mijente: combining digital & offline organizing w. creative media to inspire activists
Notifica: connecting immigrants at risk of deportation with their support networks when they need them most
Online SOS: serving and supporting people experiencing online harassment
Pantsuit Nation: using storytelling to drive social and political change with a modern ability to reach a large, digitally savvy audience eager to participate in collective action
Ragtag: assembling a volunteer team of technologists, tech enthusiasts, political and community organizers, and activists to build progressive change from the ground up
Sister District: harnessing the energy of volunteers and donors in deeply blue (or red) places and channeling it to critical state races where it can make a big impact
Swing Left: helping you find and commit to supporting progressives in your closest Swing District so that you can help ensure we take back the House in 2018
Townhall Project: empowering constituents across the country to have face-to-face conversations with their elected representatives
Vigilant: building a database so you can search and monitor all of the public records data sources you need — at once
VoterCircle: building a friend-to-friend voter outreach platform that dramatically reduces the time and cost of outreach
We the Protesters / Stay Woke: establishing a community of learners, builders, and activists to create solutions to advance equity and justice in America

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that the agency has chosen Tom Sullivan to serve as chief of the FCC’s International Bureau, continuing the work he has been doing as acting chief.

Prior to his appointment to acting chief, Sullivan was an associate bureau chief and the chief of staff for the bureau he now leads. He has served in a variety of positions within the International Bureau and the FCC’s Office of Managing Director. He joined the Commission in 1991 after receiving his Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the University of Michigan. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Political Science from the University of Michigan in 1990.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai opposing the FCC’s proposal to reclassify broadband as a service under Title I of the Communications Act. Minority Leader Pelosi also requested a public hearing in San Francisco (CA) on the FCC’s harmful plan to dismantle consumer protections on the internet.

“Consumers should be able to use the internet on the device they want, using the apps and services they want without their internet provider standing in the way. I support the current rules because they are in place to protect consumers, and I oppose your efforts to eliminate them,” she wrote. "I was...dismayed to learn you are likely to disregard the millions of public comments filed in the record. The Administrative Procedures Act prohibits the FCC from disregarding comments. You have made confusing statements that you will both give less weight to comments that are not of sufficient quality, and that you will err on the side of including suspicious comments in the agency’s deliberation, even when dozens among a particular batch of comments have sworn that their name and address were used fraudulently. I therefore ask that you clarify your policy on how the agency will consider comments in the record. Finally, if you believe that online public comments are coming from 'astroturf' sources and are of questionable integrity, then you must hear directly from the public in official hearings outside of Washington, DC. "

Today, two-thirds of the world’s internet users live in countries where content that challenges political regimes, social conventions, or national security is subject to censorship. Over time, internet censorship has expanded from restricting access to IP addresses and domain names for websites, to blocking applications and persecuting users for their online activities.

A broad-based coalition of nonprofit groups [including the Benton Foundation] filed a letter calling on the Federal Communications Commission to reject a proposal from the cellular industry, filed by CTIA on June 16, to re-open and revise the rules finalized more than a year ago for a new Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) that opens a large frequency band of unused Navy spectrum for small area, high-capacity broadband innovation. The coalition represents consumers, public institutions and small business users of broadband, and includes the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition, Next Century Cities, Engine, the R Street Institute, the American Library Association and the National Hispanic Media Coalition. The coalition asks the FCC to instead move rapidly to complete implementation of this historic innovation in spectrum policy, which opens unused military spectrum for sharing with Priority Access Licenses that are available for small areas (census tracts) and short terms, thereby making them more useful and affordable to smaller operators and to venues for indoor use.

Venable LLP announced that Philip L. Verveer has joined the firm's Regulatory practice as senior counsel in Washington (DC) where he will focus on antitrust and domestic and international communications law and policy. Most recently, Verveer served in two separate capacities during the Obama Administration, as Senior Counselor to the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 2013 to 2017 and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and US Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy, with ambassadorial rank, from 2009 to 2013. Verveer earned his JD from the University of Chicago Law School and his BSFS from Georgetown University. He also served in the US Army as a captain in military intelligence.

[Commentary] My cousin Charlie is serving time in an upstate New York prison. On June 13, a federal appeals court struck down several provisions in the Federal Communications Commission’s recent decisions to cap the cost of prison- and jail-phone calls. This ruling is a real blow to my family and many others like mine across the country. It’s also a huge step backward.

In late 2015, the FCC voted to reduce the steep cost of prison-phone calls charged to incarcerated people and their families. Many inmates and their families had spent years fighting to cap these calls, which can run to more than a dollar per minute. When the FCC voted to implement the caps I felt a sense of relief knowing that Charlie would be able to afford to call my grandmother on a more regular basis without worrying that he’d deplete his commissary on just phone calls. But soon after these rules were adopted the prison-phone industry sued the agency. In February 2017, Donald Trump’s newly appointed FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, said the agency’s lawyers wouldn’t defend key aspects of these rules in court — paving the way for Tuesday’s decision.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced that he intends to appoint Donald Stockdale to serve as chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.

Stockdale is an economist and attorney with extensive FCC and private-sector experience. Stockdale will be working closely with Nese Guendelsberger who, having served as acting bureau chief, will continue to help lead the Bureau as senior deputy bureau chief. Meanwhile, Chairman Pai intends to appoint James Schlichting, who currently serves as senior deputy bureau chief in the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, to the same position in the International Bureau. Stockdale rejoins the Commission from Bates White Economic Consulting where he has been a partner. Prior to that, he worked on telecom regulatory and antitrust issues as a partner at Mayer Brown LLP. Mr. Stockdale first joined the FCC’s then-Common Carrier Bureau (now the Wireline Competition Bureau) in 1994 as an attorney advisor and later as deputy division chief and associate bureau chief for economics. He later served as director of research in the Office of Policy and Planning and finally as deputy bureau chief and chief economist for the Wireline Competition Bureau until he left the agency in 2011. He earned his doctorate in economics and
law degree from Yale University and bachelors degrees from Cambridge University and Yale.