There is increasing evidence that this skepticism, exacerbated by the president’s relentless attacks, is trickling down to the next generation of voters. A 2017 report on a series of focus groups with 52 people between the ages of 14 and 24, conducted by Data & Society and the Knight Foundation, found that many young Americans believe the news is biased and are skeptical of its accuracy. “There was no assumption that the news would convey the truth or would be worthy of their trust,” the study reported. Teenagers, in particular, appear to be increasingly questioning the credibility and value of traditional media organizations. In interviews with The Atlantic, teens expressed great skepticism about the accuracy of the mainstream media, reiterated Trump’s biased characterization of many news sources, and said the president’s outrageous tweets have become so much a part of everyday life that they’ve morphed into catchphrases.

Sen Orrin Hatch (R-UT) sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joseph Simons, expressing concerns about the competitive effects of Google’s conduct in search and digital advertising. This letter cites a number of antitrust complaints and reports, and urges the Chairman to consider potential anti-competitive developments since the last investigation in 2013. “I write to urge the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to reconsider the competitive effects of Google’s conduct in search and digital advertising. As I explained in a speech last year, the procompetitive aspects of conduct should be weighed against its anticompetitive potential. I have no doubt that the career staff, you, and the other new FTC commissioners can and will do that here. In the past, Google has offered arguments that its conduct is procompetitive. And Google does have a long track record of providing valuable services and making important, innovative contributions. But much has changed since the FTC last looked at Google’s conduct regarding search and digital advertising.”  

Former White House Chief Strategist Steven Bannon recently discussed President Donald Trump's rhetoric toward Big Tech. 

Asked about President Trump pushing misleading info to advance a war on Big Tech, Steve Bannon said, "The president often times sees information and thinks it ought to be in the public dialogue." Bannon said the "direction" of Trump's rhetoric is "correct" and that his tweets on issues often help get things "into the conversation." Bannon said Big Tech's data should be seized and put in a "public trust." Specifically, Bannon said, "I think you take [the data] away from the companies. All that data they have is put in a public trust. They can use it. And people can opt in and opt out. That trust is run by an independent board of directors. It just can't be that [Big Tech is] the sole proprietors of this data...I think this is a public good." Bannon added that Big Tech companies "have to be broken up" just like Teddy Roosevelt broke up the trusts."

Bannon attacked the executives of Facebook, Twitter, and Google. "These are run by sociopaths," he said. "These people are complete narcissists. These people ought to be controlled, they ought to be regulated." At one point during the phone call, Bannon said, "These people are evil. There is no doubt about that." Bannon said he thinks "this is going to be a massive issue" in future elections. He said he thinks it will probably take until 2020 to fully blossom as a campaign issue, explaining, "I think by the time 2020 comes along, this will be a burning issue. I think this will be one of the biggest domestic issues." Bannon said the "#MeToo movement has brought the issue of consent front and center" and argued that "this is going to bring the issue of digital consent front and center."

One of the key ingredients in Ron DeSantis’ victory in the Florida GOP governor’s race turned out to be makeup. The once little-known congressman spent so much time broadcasting Fox News TV hits from Washington in 2018 that he learned to apply his own powder so he could look as polished as he sounded. In his primary election campaign against Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, DeSantis’ cultivation of his Fox relationship made all the difference. It powered him to a double-digit win over a once better-known and better-funded candidate whose nomination appeared inevitable months ago. Just as important, the cable network introduced the Harvard-educated lawyer to his most useful patron — President Donald Trump, who endorsed him on Dec. 22. Since then, DeSantis made 121 appearances on Fox and Fox Business — his campaign estimates it would have cost his campaign $9.3 million to purchase all that airtime. It’s impossible to overstate the value of a steady stream of Fox appearances among Florida Republicans: Seventy percent of likely Florida GOP voters regularly watch Fox News and Fox Business channels, according to the DeSantis campaign’s polling. DeSantis’ campaign research made one thing clear: a Fox first campaign was superior to a Florida first effort. For Republicans, all politics isn’t local — it’s on Fox News.

California moved to reinstate Obama-era open-internet rules, challenging Trump administration rollback efforts and setting the state on a path to have the strongest net-neutrality rules in the nation. The California bill would forbid internet service providers from blocking websites, intentionally slowing down a website or app, or accepting payments to make online services go faster. The California bill also says interconnection agreements—in which an online service pays a cable or wireless provider to carry its traffic—can’t be used by companies like streaming video services to circumvent the open internet rules and improperly receive faster speeds. Such regulations resemble those adopted by the Obama-era Federal Communications Commission. The bill passed the California assembly by a preliminary count of 59-18, according to the clerk’s office, and now returns to the state senate, which previously passed a similar version. If it passes again there and is then signed by Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA), California would have the nation’s strongest net-neutrality rules. Gov Brown hasn’t publicly indicated his position on the bill.

It's not every day that big telco lobbyists email me their internal documents about how they're going to try to shift all the negative press about themselves and try to flip it onto internet companies. But it did happen. A USTelecom executive emailed a 12-page document of talking points, asking the recipients to "review the document for accuracy and other thoughts" in order to help USTelecom President Jonathan Spalter for when he goes on C-SPAN. The big telcos really want to play up the recent attacks on social media companies ("edge providers," as they like to say), and throughout the document there are statements about taking advantage of the current political attacks on those companies. 

It's common knowledge that city curbs are fiercely contested places, what with Ubers and Lyfts hovering inconveniently and blocking traffic; piles of shared bikes and scooters being dropped off and picked up; rapidly climbing numbers of deliveries being made by double-parked trucks; and buses and taxis pulling up—not to mention all the private-car parking going on. These daily dramas will only get more boisterous and difficult in the years to come, when fleets of city-licensed driverless cars join the fray. Like any complex policy regime aimed at changing the status quo, these plans require very detailed data to support them.

For a precedent that has caused a lot of policy misery for this country, consider high speed internet. Private companies selling us internet services have relied heavily on access to public rights-of-way for places to string their wires and install equipment, and for years have claimed that granular data about the locations they actually serve—households and businesses—is too confidential to provide to regulators. And price data—forget it. Without this information, the Federal Communications Commission makes policy in the dark, routinely overestimating the availability and speed of competitive connections, and having little insight into how much Americans are actually paying. Result: blindness on the government side, and a stagnant, oligopolistic marketplace on the consumer side. The risk of relying on third parties for data about shared mobility companies’ use of curbs is that policymakers will be stuck with whatever that third party chooses to make available, at whatever level of generality is deemed suitable by a group of private companies. Cities should demand granular location and pricing data (as well as data logging payments to drivers) as a condition of allowing access by shared mobility services—human-driven or driverless, tiny or huge—to their rights-of-way, including streets, curbs, and sidewalks. 

[Susan Crawford is a professor at Harvard Law School]

This paper explains how Mobile Network Operators (“MNOs”) are transforming their networks to meet the 5G challenge and the implications this transformation has for the structure of the cellular industry and broadband competition more generally. Among the many changes both large and small, the transition to 5G is driving MNOs to embrace: (a) agile management of diverse spectrum assets; (b) small cells; and (c) softwarization and virtualization. I explain how the 5G Future will be a converged market in which promoting the survival of fewer but stronger MNOs will promote the healthy evolution toward 5G, which will contribute to promoting innovation and sustaining energized competition across the broadband ecosystem. Accelerating the race to 5G will help intensify competition within the larger ecosystem from four important directions.

1. Economies of scale for nationwide wireless operators are increasing with advances in network technology and architecture, which makes sustaining the pace of investment required to remain competitive with Verizon and AT&T more challenging for smaller operators.
2. The move toward 5G will further drive the convergence of fixed and mobile broadband, which will increase the potential for intermodal competition between fixed and mobile providers and among wireless networking technologies (e.g., Wi-Fi and 4G-LTE-derived networks). The long-awaited convergence of fixed and mobile networking and the enhanced capabilities and localization of advanced wireless networking are creating new avenues for competition that increase the competitive pressure on the existing MNOs. 
3. The transition to smaller cells and more dynamic/flexible and heterogeneous local networking requirements, coupled with advances in networking equipment and software solutions, will open opportunities for new types of local facilities-based wireless infrastructure providers. These opportunities will include venue networks and neutral host deployments.
4. The increased capabilities to virtualize every type of information communication technology (“ICT”) resource (including network resources) and grow demand for customized networking services will lead to more vigorous Mobile Virtual Network Operator (“MVNO”) competition.

On Twitter, David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, sometimes tweets more than 30 times a day to nearly 50,000 followers, recently calling for the “chasing down” of specific black Americans and claiming the LGBTQ community is in need of “intensive psychiatric treatment.” On Facebook, James Allsup, a right-wing advocate, posted a photo comparing migrant children at the border to Jewish people behind a fence during the Holocaust with the caption, “They present it like it’s a bad thing #BuildTheWall.” On Gab, a censorship-free alternative to Twitter, former 2018 candidate for US Senate Patrick Little, claims ovens are a means of preserving the Aryan race. And Billy Roper, a well-known voice of neo-Nazism, posts “Let God Burn Them” as an acronym for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender.

Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies offer billions of people unparalleled access to the world. Users are able to tweet at the president of the United States, foster support for such social movements as Black Lives Matter or inspire thousands to march with a simple hashtag. "Social media companies have succeeded in sort of negotiating a place for themselves in the world where they are not the publishers,” said Benjamin Lee, senior research associate for the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats, who researches digital media and the far-right. “And somehow we all sort of sat down and accepted it up until the point we didn’t, and now they’re running to catch up.” “There is this kind of lingering question, which is, what obligation are they under to provide services to people?” Lee said. “Freedom of speech is freedom to express yourself, but it’s not freedom to force other people to publish what it is you have to say.”