It’s encouraging that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg endorsed the concept of “more specific rules” in Communications Decency Act Section 230, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., told us after Wednesday’s hearing. “We may be getting somewhere,” he said, though he noted it wasn’t an endorsement of the Republican bill pushing the concept (see 2009220064).
Karl Herchenroeder
Karl Herchenroeder, Associate Editor, is a technology policy journalist for publications including Communications Daily. Born in Rockville, Maryland, he joined the Warren Communications News staff in 2018. He began his journalism career in 2012 at the Aspen Times in Aspen, Colorado, where he covered city government. After that, he covered the nuclear industry for ExchangeMonitor in Washington. You can follow Herchenroeder on Twitter: @karlherk
Congress shouldn’t let local news “die” because Big Tech companies unfairly leverage the ad market, Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said Tuesday, releasing a report showing newspaper revenue declining about 70% by the end of 2020 vs. two decades ago. The report said broadcasters lost more than 40% of ad revenue 2000-2018, and since 2005, papers lost about 60% of their overall workforce. “The biggest online platforms unfairly use content, take local news consumer data and divert customers away from local news websites, while providing little in return,” she said. NAB, Public Knowledge and the News Media Alliance welcomed the report. NAB supports “findings that the competitive power of a handful of digital platforms has dominated the marketplace for advertising and audiences,” said CEO Gordon Smith. “Targeted federal funding and new regulatory tools can help transition local journalism to succeed in the digital marketplace,” said PK Senior Policy Fellow Lisa Macpherson. Google and Facebook “effectively regulate news publishers by determining how (and whether) journalism is distributed and monetized,” said News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern. The "accusation" that Facebook scrapes news articles is "simply not true," a company spokesperson emailed: "We give news organizations the ability to post news on Facebook free of charge, and they have full control over how that content is accessed and monetized." The platform cited $400 million in contributions to "programs and partnerships with a focus on local news." News publishers are facing “enormous” challenges, but the report is a misrepresentation, a Google spokesperson emailed: “We provide value to the news industry by sending people to news sites 24 billion times a month, help publishers make money with our advertising products and provide support via the Google News Initiative.” The company cited a $1 billion investment in partnerships with news publishers for Google News Showcase.
It’s inequitable for regions with similar privacy values, like the U.S. and EU, to “point fingers” about upholding privacy rights, FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips said Tuesday on effects of the Schrems II decision (see 2009250071). Policymakers should recognize shared privacy values while drawing the line against countries that don’t respect privacy, he told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event. “We have so much more in common with Europe than that which separates us, and I think that needs to be a critical part of the conversation.” Countries with data localization standards ought to be the “barriers to trade” that allies focus on, he said.
The FTC’s cases against Facebook and Google show a paradigm shift in privacy enforcement, Consumer Protection Bureau Director Andrew Smith told an FCBA event Monday. The Facebook case (see 1907240042) provided a new model for relief, while the Google case, which involved Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) allegations (see 1909040066), established a new approach for liability, said Smith. The broader message in the Google case is that if users are violating the law, the platform can’t necessarily escape enforcement when there’s knowledge of the violations, he said.
President Donald Trump’s recent actions against TikTok “certainly” gave the company “profile and visibility,” but it would have been better had that not happened, ex-CEO Kevin Mayer told the Technology Policy Institute in an interview shared Friday (see 2009280028). Profile and visibility are “usually not bad things,” he said. It's a “good enough product with a good enough team behind it and good enough technology behind it, that it would have succeeded just fine, and it was succeeding just fine without any of that.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee will seek voluntary testimony from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey “probably after the election,” Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told reporters Thursday. The comment came after the committee majority voted unanimously to subpoena testimony from the CEOs. Democrats boycotted the hearing over Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Facebook and Twitter declined comment.
Congress authorized the FCC to interpret “all provisions” of the Communications Act, including amendments, so the agency can issue a rulemaking clarifying the immunity shield’s scope, General Counsel Tom Johnson blogged Wednesday (see 2010210022). Authority originates from the “plain meaning of” Communications Act Section 201(b), “which confers on the FCC the power to issue rules necessary to carry out the provisions of the Act,” Johnson wrote. Congress inserted Section 230 into the CDA, making clear “rulemaking authority extended to the provisions of that section,” he wrote. Johnson cited Supreme Court decisions by the late Justice Antonin Scalia in AT&T v. Iowa Utilities Board in 1999 and 2013's City of Arlington v. FCC.
Congress authorized the FCC to interpret “all provisions” of the Communications Act, including amendments like Section 230, so the agency has the authority to issue a rulemaking clarifying the immunity shield’s scope, General Counsel Tom Johnson blogged Wednesday.
DOJ and 11 Republican state attorneys general sued Google Tuesday for its alleged monopoly in general search services and search advertising. Senior Vice President Kent Walker called the lawsuit “deeply flawed,” saying consumers choose to use Google, “not because they're forced to or because they can't find alternatives.” New York Attorney General Letitia James and six other Democratic state AGs announced they’re continuing a parallel investigation and could potentially consolidate the case with DOJ in coming weeks. Industry groups condemned the suit; reaction from consumer advocates varied.
The European Commission will “very soon” issue a draft for modernized standard contractual clauses, said International Data Flows and Protection Head Bruno Gencarelli during a Technology Policy Institute panel Monday. There’s a vital need to maintain international data flows after the Schrems II decision (see 2009250071), but it must be balanced with privacy protections, he said. The EC didn’t comment about an exact timeline.