The White House “terminated” the three Democrats on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the board confirmed in a statement Monday (see 2501220062 and 2501240009).
Legislators in states like Texas, Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts can set the tone for privacy-related AI laws in 2025, stakeholders told the Multistate AI Policymaker Working Group during a public feedback session Monday.
The Senate Commerce Committee plans to hold votes on at least three different kids privacy bills this year, Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told us Thursday.
The EU is “concerned” about the Bureau of Industry and Security's new export controls on advanced AI chips (see 2501130026), which will impose new restrictions on certain EU member states and their companies, the bloc’s top two technology and trade officials said in a joint statement this week.
Meta’s announcement Tuesday that it will scrap fact-checking on Facebook is a “good step in the right direction,” said FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr in a post on X. “I look forward to monitoring these developments and their implementation. The work continues until the censorship cartel is completely dismantled and destroyed.” Carr, President-elect Donald Trump's choice to head the FCC, wrote to Facebook questioning its use of fact-checkers (see 2412160052), and has previously named fact-checkers and social media companies as components of the "censorship cartel," a term that he has frequently used in interviews and social media posts. Other components of the cartel include President Joe Biden’s administration, advertising agencies and European governments, Carr has said. In a Facebook video Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would shift to using crowdsourced fact-checking, similar to X. Carr credited Trump with causing the change at Meta. “President Trump’s resolute and strong support for the free speech rights of everyday Americans is already paying dividends,” he said. During a news conference Tuesday, Trump responded “probably” when asked if Meta’s shift was a response to his threats, which included calling for Zuckerberg to be imprisoned for life. “Meta is a private company that can decide how it manages its platform,” responded FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez in an X post Tuesday. “However, under the First Amendment, government threats to private companies over speech can have a chilling effect and are dangerous.” "As our database of false narratives continues to demonstrate, Meta has perennially been a home for Russian, Chinese, and Iranian disinformation," said Gordon Crovitz, co-CEO of fact-checking service NewsGuard, in an emailed statement. "Now, Meta apparently has decided to open the floodgates completely."Public interest groups condemned Meta’s changes. “Everyone should be concerned when major technology firms and their billionaire owners kowtow to a leader like Trump who is intent on undermining the checks and balances that are fundamental to a healthy democracy,” Free Press Senior Counsel Nora Benavidez said in a news release. Said Common Sense Media CEO James Steyer, “With this announcement, Mark Zuckerberg's playbook is as clear as day: Protect Meta's bottom line and cozy up to political leaders while leaving users to fend for themselves.” Ishan Mehta, Common Cause Media and Democracy program director, said, “Americans deserve to know the truth, and Meta’s move to end its third-party fact checking opens the door to endless political lies and disinformation.” Meta’s recent decision to move away from third-party fact-checking is a stark reminder of the growing challenges posed by misinformation online," NAB said in a blog post Tuesday touting the reliability of broadcast news. "While Big Tech platforms operate without any constraints, local stations are bound by regulations that haven’t kept pace with the marketplace," it added. "Policymakers must act to modernize these rules, leveling the playing field so local stations can continue providing the high-quality journalism communities depend on."
The FCC received 2,734 applications from schools, libraries and consortia seeking $3.7 billion from its $200 million cybersecurity pilot program, the FCC said Friday. It is reviewing the applications, but the program may not survive the start of the second Trump administration, industry officials warned.
Don’t expect major daylight between a Kamala Harris administration and the Joe Biden White House on major communications policy issues, industry and policy experts predicted. Much focus and effort would center on defending the FCC's net neutrality and digital discrimination orders in the current federal circuit court challenges, as well as pursuing net neutrality rules, they said. Less clear would be the nature of the relationship between Harris' White House and Big Tech. The Harris campaign didn't comment. Deregulation and undoing net neutrality are considered high on the to-do list for the administration of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump if he's elected (see 2407110034).
The U.S. is considering “consequences,” including possibly sanctions actions, against Venezuela after the country’s Nicolas Maduro-led regime appeared to alter the results of the country’s presidential elections, senior administration officials said this week.
The Senate should pass kids’ privacy legislation without amendments, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told us Wednesday.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- A California rulemaking on modernizing carrier of last resort rules could inspire similar proceedings elsewhere, state and industry officials signaled at the NARUC conference Monday. The California Public Utilities Commission last month opened a rulemaking that took a fresh look at COLR rules after rejecting regulatory relief for AT&T (see 2406200065).