Wheeler Urges Edge, Network Providers to Help Craft US Digital 'Accountability' Rules
U.S. internet platforms, network providers and policymakers should collaborate on rules for "public accountability in the digital marketplace" to ensure privacy, competition and operational openness, or else "business practices" will be "dissected by others," warned ex-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, now…
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a Shorenstein Center fellow. "Internet capitalism has replaced industrial capitalism," he wrote Thursday. "The challenge ... is to assure the workings of a digital economy while mitigating excess and providing stability and security for both companies and consumers. ... Ignoring the gathering policy storm is not an option." Digital platforms offer many benefits but "have aided Russian interference in the electoral process, impacted child development, and propagated disinformation, bigotry, and hateful speech," he said: They "devastated the economic underpinnings of quality journalism and established a level of marketplace dominance not seen since the early Industrial Revolution." If the U.S. doesn't act, foreign governments will write the rules, he said. While network providers recently won an FCC fight "to discriminate amongst the traffic that arrives" (see 1808160073), he said, the battle continues, and dozens of states are beginning to investigate or take actions affecting both networks and platforms.