The U.S. Supreme Court will take up whether the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, the federal law banning TikTok unless its Chinese government-controlled owners divest, violates TikTok's First Amendment rights. SCOTUS scheduled a two-hour oral argument for Jan. 10, it said Wednesday as it granted and combined cert petitions by the company (docket 24-656) and TikTok personality Brian "The Cattle Guy" Firebaugh (24-657). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the ban earlier this month (see 2412060055).

Broadband is moving toward an "adaptive era" of networks that self-configure and predictive algorithms that anticipate events and ensure uninterrupted service, CableLabs wrote Tuesday. The necessary adaptive era infrastructure is in its early stages, but there are innovations that already incorporate adaptive elements, it said. For example, automated profile management changes detect problems in networks and shift traffic to different frequency ranges, minimizing disruptions. In addition, networks are equipped with sensors and algorithms, which detect environmental events, such as seismic activity or nearby construction, and then alert first responders or act to avoid outages, it said.

T-Mobile has started soliciting beta test users for its supplemental coverage from space service, offered in partnership with SpaceX. "T-Mobile Starlink beta is coming soon," the wireless carrier said on its website. "Register now for a limited number of openings to beta-test satellite-powered messaging." The FCC Space Bureau gave a nod in November to T-Mobile and SpaceX commencing commercial operations (see 2411260043).

The FCC broadband data task force’s sixth data collection filing window for facilities-based providers will open Jan. 2, said a public notice in docket 11-10 Monday. Providers will have until March 3 to submit their availability data as of Dec 31. “Providers who are already licensees of the Fabric and all other Fabric licensees (including state, local, and Tribal government and other third-party entities) will receive an email from CostQuest, the FCC’s Fabric contractor, providing them with links to access to the December 2024 Fabric data,” the PN said. Changes from previous versions of the broadband serviceable location fabric include “additional Broadband Serviceable Locations and corrections to addresses, unit counts, building types, land use, and geographic coordinates,” the PN said. “We encourage filers to submit their availability data as of December 31, 2024, as early as possible in the filing window,” the PN said. “Failure to timely file required data in the new BDC system may lead to enforcement action and/or penalties.”

Almost half of all U.S. teens are online "nearly constantly," with YouTube their most used and visited platform, according to Pew Research. It said that, in its survey of 1,391 sets of teens and parents conducted in September and October, roughly 90% of teens reported daily use of YouTube, 60% of TikTok plus Instagram, and 55% of Snapchat. Daily use of Facebook among teens has dropped to 32% from 71% in 2014-2015, and of X to 17% from 23% in 2022. Pew said that 73% of teens report visiting YouTube daily. A full third of teens say they're "almost constant" users YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook. It said that nearly half of teens report they're online in one way or another "almost constantly," up from 24% a decade ago, with 96% online daily.

Noting the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index data, NCTA CEO Michael Powell wrote Friday that broadband prices "continue to buck inflationary trends." Internet prices were down 1.6% in November, the fifth drop in six months, he said. Year-over-year broadband prices are down 0.7%, the biggest decrease since 2018, he said.

Europe's Digital Markets Act (DMA) approach to regulating Big Tech isn't likely to be replicable in the U.S., Giovanna Massarotto, academic fellow at University of Pennsylvania's Center for Technology, Innovation & Competition, wrote Monday. Under the DMA, she noted, companies in core digital services, such as internet search and that hit specific thresholds based on size, are called gatekeepers and must face certain prohibitions and obligations. She said U.S. common law tradition favors a flexible, case-by-case approach to legal decision-making, contrary to Europe. The neoclassical economics taught at Harvard and Chicago, which sets the tone for competition enforcement, rejects the idea that competition should have an ethical component and focuses on economic analytical tools. The U.S. approach is that large companies leverage economies of scale and reduce the price of goods and services for consumers. As such, they aren't necessarily bad and don't need regulation by default, while DMA is concerned with the scope of businesses.

Government officials shouldn't secretly pressure private social media companies to silence speech, and greater transparency would help prevent such activity, Cato Institute Fellow David Inserra wrote Friday. He said Congress or the White House should require all government officials to record any oral or written request or suggestion to private actors to remove speech or deny services due to speech. OMB could collect those reports and make them publicly available, he said. That approach wouldn't punish government actors for communicating with or advising companies about potentially dangerous or false information, but it would limit unconstitutional censorship attempts, Inserra wrote.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Friday that a federal law banning TikTok unless its Chinese government-controlled owners divest from it is constitutional. TikTok, parent company ByteDance and a group of TikTok users had challenged the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. The ban “does not suppress content or require a certain mix of content” but “narrowly addresses foreign adversary control of an important medium of communication in the United States,” Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion. Because the law doesn’t target content of speech on TikTok but instead the ability of China to covertly manipulate that content, it “is wholly consonant with the First Amendment,” Ginsburg wrote. The evidence and judgment of Congress and the White House that TikTok is a national security threat “is entitled to significant weight,” Ginsburg added. “In this case, a foreign government threatens to distort free speech on an important medium of communication,” and the law would end China’s control over that medium, Ginsburg said. “Understood in that way, the Act actually vindicates the values that undergird the First Amendment.” A ban of the social media platform is set to take effect Jan. 19. Unless TikTok executes a qualified divestiture by then or the White House grants it a 90-day extension before then, “its platform will effectively be unavailable in the United States, at least for a time,” said the order. President-elect Donald Trump, who opposes the TikTok ban after kicking off the effort during his first term, takes office Jan. 20. House Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., and Communications Subcommittee Chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio, praised the D.C. Circuit ruling as “a major win for the rule of law.” House Commerce unanimously advanced the TikTok divestiture measure in March (see 2403070063). “From the beginning, Congress gave TikTok a very clear choice: Divest from your parent company -- which is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party -- and remain operational in the U.S. or side with the CCP and face the consequence,” Rodgers and Latta said. “The United States will always stand up for our values and freedom, which is why the days of TikTok targeting, surveilling, and manipulating Americans are numbered.” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, an early vocal proponent of the ban effort, didn’t comment.

Snap accused the New Mexico attorney general of making false allegations against the social media platform and misrepresenting its undercover investigation into the Snapchat app in a case about children’s safety and privacy. The platform said Thursday that it filed a motion to dismiss the AG’s lawsuit on Nov. 18. “Instead of working with Snap and New Mexico’s law enforcement officials on these efforts to combat bad actors,” AG Raul Torrez (D) "has chosen to work against them,” the motion said. “The result is a highly charged, headline-grabbing lawsuit founded upon gross misrepresentations of the State’s ‘investigation,’ dubious ‘evidence’ mined from the dark web, screenshots from platforms other than Snapchat, and cherry-picked references to old features that no longer exist.” Torrez filed a suit against Snap on Sept. 4 alleging that the social media app’s design features foster sextortion, sharing of child sexual abuse materials and child sexual exploitation. The New Mexico Department of Justice conducted an undercover investigation into the social media platform, including creating a decoy account of a 14-year-old. The decoy exchanged messages with dangerous accounts, several of which attempted to coerce it into sharing child sexual abuse materials. The investigation found the app’s recommendation algorithm connected Snapchat accounts that capture, circulate and sell child sexual abuse materials, as well as a network of dark websites dedicated to sharing these materials, among other allegations. In the motion to dismiss, Snap asserts that the decoy account searched for and instigated connections with the dangerous accounts, contrary to claims that they came up as algorithmic recommendations. On these and other grounds, including violations of the First Amendment and the legal liability shield Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, Snap seeks to dismiss the lawsuit.