President Joe Biden’s ambitious goals for broadband, including expanding access throughout the country, may remain unmet until he nominates a fifth commissioner to the FCC. That’s according to the ACLU, Center for Democracy and Technology, Free Press, Mozilla and dozens of other advocacy organizations.
Tech companies led by Mozilla are urging the FCC to swiftly reinstate net neutrality rules stripped away under the Trump administration. In a letter to FCC Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel on Friday, ADT, Dropbox, Eventbrite, Reddit, Vimeo and Wikimedia joined Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox web browser, in calling net neutrality “critical for preserving the internet as a free and open medium that promotes innovation and spurs economic growth.”
Mozilla, the creators of the popular Firefox web browser, are launching a new program to counter fake news stories. The Mozilla Information Trust Initiative (MITI) will increase funding for research on misinformation, the first findings to be released later this year. The company hopes to leverage Firefox’s size and reach to get data about news browsing habits.
The nonprofit, called the News Integrity Initiative, will be based at the City University of New York. It will run as an independent project of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Contributors to the fund include Facebook, Mozilla, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and the Ford Foundation.
