Regulation

Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn cite a story on an Instagram whistleblower to push protective legislation.

Amazon founder-owner Jeff Bezos instructed executives to flood the giant ecommerce company’s search results with irrelevant ads to pump up its profits, The Federal Trade Commission charges in newly unredacted documents from its antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. During a key meeting, Bezos directed executives to “accept ‘more defects’ as a way to increase the total number of advertisements shown and drive up Amazon’s advertising profits,” the FTC document charges.

Press-freedom advocates are raising the alarm that the arrests of the Atmore News’s publisher and reporter are unconstitutional.

In early October, RTDNA and 18 other press freedom groups and national news organizations filed two key documents seeking live audiovisual coverage of the trial in United States v. Trump, the D.C. election interference criminal case currently docketed to begin in March.

The leader of America’s Public Television Stations will stay on through the selection of his successor but no later than the end of next year.

Fox is telling the FCC that documents its critics want the regulator to compel it to produce aren’t relevant to a challenge to the company’s license for WTXF Philadelphia — a challenge Fox says the commission should reject.

The FCC this week released its second EEO audit notice for 2023. The FCC’s Public Notice, audit letter, and the list of stations selected for audit is available here. Those stations, and the station employment units (commonly owned or controlled stations serving the same area sharing at least one employee) with which they are associated, must provide to the FCC (by uploading the information to their online public inspection file) their last two years of EEO Annual Public File reports, as well as backing data to show that the station in fact did everything that was required under the FCC rules. The response to this audit is due to be uploaded to the public file of affected stations by Dec. 14.

On Monday, the White House announced its own attempt to govern the fast-moving world of A.I. with a sweeping executive order that imposes new rules on companies and directs a host of federal agencies to begin putting guardrails around the technology.

The Supreme Court will hear an array of legal arguments involving social media’s free speech wars this term with a series of dicey cases that could reshape how public officials and U.S. government agencies operate online. On Tuesday, the court will hear oral arguments in the first two of those cases, which both ask whether public officials can constitutionally block their constituents on social media  — one of those cases at its core centers on a lakeside city manager in Michigan who decided he would block someone posting what he called “creepy” smiley emoji’s on his Facebook page amid criticism of the manager’s COVID-19 response.

Longtime media attorney Jonathan Allen will succeed him at the end of the year.

Apple has asked a U.S. judge to reject a subpoena that could require the company to reveal corporate secrets tied to its failed effort to carry the National Football League’s “Sunday Ticket” programming, now on Google’s YouTube TV. In a filing in California federal court, Apple’s attorneys on Monday opposed a subpoena from residential and commercial Sunday Ticket subscribers who accused the NFL and its teams in a multibillion-dollar lawsuit of violating U.S. antitrust law in the distribution of Sunday Ticket.

Meta was sued by more than three dozen states on Tuesday for knowingly using features on Instagram and Facebook to hook children to its platforms, even as the company said its social media sites were safe for young people. Colorado and Tennessee led a joint lawsuit filed by 33 states in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District Court of California.

Emily Barr: Access to local media on streaming platforms is getting more difficult and localism is getting squeezed out of media’s new world order. The FCC and Congress need to act before the damage becomes irreversible.

Former Republican FCC Chairman Al Sikes and other representatives of the group demanding that the FCC revoke the license of Fox-owned WTXF Philadelphia visited FCC officials in Washington yesterday to press their case. The Media and Democracy Project (MAD) argues that the Murdoch family that controls the station and Fox News is unfit to hold broadcast licenses because of the news network’s role in promoting Trump’s false claim that he lost the presidency in 2020 because of a rigged election. The contingent (l-r): David Goodfriend, adviser to MAD; Bill Kristol, former editor of conservative, Murdoch-owned The Weekly Standard; Art Belendiuk; counsel to MAD; Milo Vassallo, executive director, MAD; Preston Padden, former Fox executive and Murdoch lobbyist; Bill Reyner, former counsel to Murdoch/Fox; and Sikes.

Eight separate companies have been on the receiving end of patent lawsuits filed in federal court by pay TV provider Dish. The lawsuits were all filed within the past two months and share a common allegation: Dish believes the services are violating its patents that are connected to adaptive bitrate technology, which improves or decreases the video quality of an online stream based on a user’s connection speed and other factors.

The FCC has voted 3-2 to begin the process of giving utility-style authority to regulate broadband access by reclassifying broadband as a Title II telecommunications service subject to some common-carrier regulations and then restoring bright-line rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization. Broadband access is currently classified as a Title I information service under the Communications Act of 1934, and thus not subject to mandatory access or other common-carrier regulations.

Comcast, Charter, AT&T and other telecom giants are expected to wage a legal fight with the Democratic-controlled agency over this regulatory push.

In the letter, 20 senators express concern regarding their constituents’ continued ability to access programming from local broadcast television stations on digital streaming platforms. The senators urge the Commission to reexamine its proceeding, first opened in 2014, that solicited comments about whether federal regulations governing pay TV providers such as cable and satellite providers should extend to streaming platforms that offer linear programming.

NBCUniversal filed its own request to televise Donald Trump’s election conspiracy trial, citing the extraordinary circumstances of a former president facing criminal charges. In an application filed today in U.S. District Court in Washington, NBCU’s legal team, led by Theodore Boutrous Jr., wrote that “Civil and criminal proceedings have been televised routinely for decades pursuant to rules in many state courts, with no prejudice to any party or to the administration of justice. If ever a trial were to be televised, this one should be, for the benefit of American democracy,” they wrote.

Disney attorneys want to question a previous administrator of the governing district that provides municipal services to Walt Disney World as part of its defense against a state lawsuit brought by a board made up of appointees of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

In a memo to donors, Trust in the Mission PAC said, “we aren’t going to waste our money when the electorate isn’t focused or ready for a Trump alternative.”

Google on Monday urged lawmakers to require companies to take minors’ “best interests” into account when designing services, and to prohibit companies from serving personalized ads to teens — including ads targeted based on a minor’s age, gender or interests