The Great Social Media Freakout
Senator Al Franken got Silicon Valley’s attention by proposing to apply net neutrality regulations to mega-gatekeepers Google, Facebook, Twitter, et al. Writing in The Guardian, the senator correctly observed that…
Internet Monopoly Platform Crisis
How the tables have turned. At the dawn of the net neutrality debate, the good guys in the Internet marketplace were the scrappy platform startups created in dorm rooms and…
Dave Farber on Title II ISP Regulation
The FCC was designed as an independent agency because the public is always biased in favor of the status quo. As Henry Ford may have said about his Model T, the public just wanted faster horses because they were scared of cars.
Congress Gives the FCC a Privacy Mulligan
“Don’t collect what you can’t protect” seems like a reasonable approach. Given that the current discourse is all about collection, we probably won’t have the conversation we need to have for a long time. And in the meantime we’re going to hear nothing but nonsense about gatekeepers, “sensitive” browsing histories, and how hard it may be to switch ISPs (as if we don’t do that several times more often than we switch social networks and search providers.
Five Myths About Internet Privacy
Our web activity is tracked by “edge services” such as Google and Facebook even if we don’t go to their web sites. This is because they both operate tracking networks with the cooperation of web sites that carry their tracking code.
Congress is Watching You: What to Look For in the House Internet Privacy Debate
Yes. Does Google track you outside of google.com? Yes. Does Google share sensitive data about you with third parties it collects from sites like edmarkey.com and standtallforamerica.com? I don’t know that it does, but it’s entitled to by its privacy disclosures. And the same goes for a dozen other trackers unleashed on web users who visit these two sites.
Saving the Web from Humanity
28 years ago today, Sir Tim Berners-Lee designed the web in a memo to his bosses at CERN, the European Union’s research center for nuclear energy. While nuclear energy is…
FCC Course Correction
The FCC has made a number of expected decisions on pending issues and signalled a willingness to alter the course of network regulation in a more permissive, innovation-friendly direction. Here are some highlights of recent actions.
The FCC’s Privacy Nudge
Privacy defaults determine choices. Advertisers should compete on a level playing field where outcomes aren’t pre-determined.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Privacy
I had the pleasure of taking part in a panel discussion about privacy in general and the FCC’s privacy NPRM in particular today. The event was sponsored by Cal Innovates at…