Elections and Media

It’s been nearly a year since President Joe Biden named Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] as his pick to become the fifth member of the Federal Communications Commission, but the nominee’s prospects of actually being installed are as unclear as ever. A fresh report from The Deal tipped Sohn to squeak through the Senate confirmation process during a lame duck session in the coming months. But New Street Research analyst Blair Levin warned it’s extremely difficult to predict what will happen.

An impending vote by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) could drastically change access to state and federal communications subsidies, the kind often relied upon by low-income households for Internet and telephone services. Proposed Decision 20-02-008 addresses whether recipients of federal subsidies through the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) and similar federal subsidy programs would also be able to receive maximum subsidies through the California LifeLine program.

According to publicly available information on state and local ballot initiatives up for a vote in 2022 elections, broadband is on the ballot statewide for voters in Alabama and New Mexico, as well as for some voters in Colorado. Voters in Alabama will weigh in on the "Broadband Internet Infrastructure Funding Amendment," which, if approved, will amend the state's constitution "to allow local governments to use funding provided for broadband internet infrastructure under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and award such funds to public or private entities." Voters in New Mexico have a simi

Facebook corporate parent Meta has reached a tentative settlement in a lawsuit alleging the world’s largest social network service allowed millions of its users’ personal information to be fed to Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s victorious presidential campaign in 2016. Terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed in court documents filed Aug 26. The filing in San Francisco federal court requested a 60-day stay of the action while lawyers finalize the settlement. That timeline suggested further details could be disclosed by late October.

Since 2020, misinformation and disinformation related to election and voter suppression have continued to spread at a growing rate across online platforms. While internet platforms ramped up attempts to combat such information during the 2020 elections, many of these efforts appear to have been temporary measures. In anticipation of the 2022 US midterm elections, this report evaluates how online platforms are combating misleading election information against a selection of recommendations made by the Open Technology Institute in 2020.

The US is "far worse off than you think" when it comes to social media undermining its democracy, according to Nobel Peace Prize laureate and journalist Maria Ressa. Ressa, a Filipino American co-founder of news organization Rappler, says the next wave of elections around the world, including the US midterms in November 2022, provides another opportunity for social media to spread disinformation, divide people against one another and incite violence. She argues nations need to require accountability for tech firms like Meta, which owns Facebook, and Twitter.

Midterm politics are endangering a key Biden nominee who would give Democrats a majority at the Federal Communications Commission — jeopardizing the administration’s push to restore net neutrality and other tech regulations rolled back in the Trump era. A coalition of Republicans, moderate Democrats and telecom industry allies are ratcheting up pressure on potential swing Democrats to oppose FCC nominee Gigi Sohn, including by calling the progressive consumer advocate an “anti-police radical” and accusing her of being biased against rural America.

House Republicans’ “Big Tech Censorship and Data Task Force” presented its preliminary proposals to rein in major tech companies on March 16 — and a significant antitrust overhaul is not particularly high on the agenda. The task force, established in 2021 by Rep Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and led by Rep Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), is developing proposals on Section 230 reform and privacy for the GOP to mobilize around if the party takes back the lower chamber in November 2022.

Change is coming to the House Energy and Commerce Committee in the next Congress, a pattern of turnover that has become a staple of the powerful panel over the past 15 years. The list of those leaving is already significant. Five Democrats on the committee won’t be back for the 118th Congress. Among Republicans, Rep Billy Long (R-MO) is making his own Senate run. Other committee members are in real danger of losing their seats, including Reps David McKinley (R-WV) and Tom O’Halleran (D-AZ), both of whom are locked in tough reelection fights after redistricting.

Twitter has admitted it amplifies more tweets from rightwing politicians and news outlets than content from leftwing sources. The company examined tweets from elected officials in seven countries – the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and Japan. It also studied whether political content from news organisations was amplified on Twitter, focusing primarily on US news sources such as Fox News, the New York Times and BuzzFeed.