Ownership

 Facebook was hit with the maximum possible fine in Britain for allowing the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica to harvest the information of millions of people without their consent, in what amounts to the social network’s first financial penalty since the data leak was revealed. The fine of 500,000 pounds, or about $660,000, represents a tiny sum for Facebook, which brings in billions of dollars in revenue every year.

[Press release] Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD), Communications Subcommittee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS), and Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman Jerry Moran (R-KS), in a letter to Alphabet CEO Larry Page, requested information about the privacy policy and practices of Gmail email services offered through subsidiary company Google.

A growing number of groups are urging the Federal Communications Commission to delay its review of Sinclair Broadcast Group’s merger with Tribune Media, while a court weighs a recent agency move that would ease the deal's approval. The organizations joining the effort include the National Hispanic Media Coalition, the conservative outlet Newsmax and the telecom trade group NTCA—The Rural Broadband Association. The groups joined a petition first filed in June by Public Knowledge and Common Cause to the FCC.

President Donald Trump may go far in living up to his much-ridiculed pledge to open up libel laws to make it easier to sue media outlets. How? Turn no further than Abbas v. Foreign Policy Group, a 2014 decision at the US Appeals Court for the DC Circuit authored by recent Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh. At first blush, the decision looks like a win for libel defendants. In fact, when it came out, many reporters highlighted how Kavanaugh poured cold water on the notion that asking a question could be actionable as defamation by implication.

The next time a big company, and especially a telecom company, tells lawmakers and regulators that a multibillion-dollar merger will result in lower prices for consumers, I hope everyone in the room breaks out in laughter. At this point, it’s patently obvious that such pledges of price reductions are almost always hogwash. Prices rarely if ever go down after a big merger.

YouTube has announced a slew of new features it hopes will help makes news on the platform more reliable and less susceptible to manipulation. The company is also investing $25 million in grants to news organizations looking to expand their video operations as part of a larger $300 million program sponsored by YouTube's sister company, Google.

Lina Khan, a prominent critic of Amazon’s business practices, is joining the office of Federal Trade Commissioner Rohit Chopra as the agency prepares to increase antitrust scrutiny of technology firms. Khan, the director of legal policy at Washington think tank Open Markets Institute, will work as a legal fellow for the next few months for Chopra, one of two Democratic commissioners at the agency, he said. "Lina is sharp as a tack and works her fingers to the bone," Chopra said.

When AT&T officially closed its $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, it spun up advertising as one of four core pillars of its newly expanded business. Over the next few years, that business could grow into a beast tough enough to fight off the digital ad giants of the world. Though linear television is experiencing some secular decline, it’s still a massive advertising magnet. Before the merger, AT&T had access to a modest amount of ad inventory through its DirecTV platform.

The House Commerce Committee sent letters to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alphabet CEO Larry Page to probe the companies’ representation of third-party access to consumer data, and the collection and use of audio recording data as well as location information via iPhone and Android devices. The letters were signed by full committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR), Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Gregg Harper (R-MS), and Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman Bob Latta (R-OH). 

When Facebook rolled out facial recognition tools in the European Union in 2018, it promoted the technology as a way to help people safeguard their online identities. It was a risky move by the social network. Six years earlier, it had deactivated the technology in Europe after regulators there raised questions about its facial recognition consent system. Now, Facebook was reintroducing the service as part of an update of its user permission process in Europe.