Public Knowledge

Last year, Public Knowledge and Roosevelt Institute published my book, The Case for the Digital Platform Act, I argued there that we could define digital platforms as a distinct sector of the economy, and that the structure of these businesses and the nature of the sector combined to encourage behaviors that create challenges for existing […]

Bashing social media for supposed liberal bias has become pretty standard fare for some conservative pundits and politicians. This remains true despite zero evidence of any kind of bias by social media companies against conservative content or Republican politicians. In fairness, Democratic political leaders have made similar accusations. For example, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has […]

We sent a joint letter to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees on this topic today, which you can read here. Perhaps the most impressive thing about 5G – the next generation of wireless technology — is that it manages to bridge the hyper-partisan divide in Washington, D.C. Democrats and Republicans — including President […]

This is an edited version of a blog post originally published on Harold Feld’s personal blog, Tales from the Sausage Factory, on WetMachine.com. If you follow spectrum policy at all, you will have heard about the C-Band Auction and the 5.9 GHz fight. You would be forgiven if you hadn’t heard much about the fight over opening […]

This blog post is part of a series on communications policies Public Knowledge recommends in response to the pandemic. You can read more of our proposals here and view the full series here. As social distancing becomes the new normal across the globe, demands on broadband networks have grown larger, and those demands have begun to strain the […]

This blog post is part of a series on communications policies Public Knowledge recommends in response to the pandemic. You can read more of our proposals here and view the full series here. Medical experts agree that the most important thing we can do to support the efforts against the COVID-19 outbreak is a medical […]

This week was the T-Mobile/Sprint merger trial’s second week, and it focused on the Department of Justice’s proposed remedy: having the combined TMO/Sprint spin off a number of assets to DISH and provide DISH with a bunch of other spectrum and network access rights to enable DISH to enter the market as a competing fourth […]

The last few days have highlighted the complete inadequacy of our political advertising rules in an era when even the President of the United States has no hesitation in blasting the world with unproven conspiracy theories about political rivals using both traditional broadcast media and social media. We cannot ignore the urgency of this for […]

You can watch Harold Feld and Lindsay Stern present oral arguments for the case discussed below tomorrow at 9 a.m. PDT here. Across the nation, surprised Americans are waking to discover that their copper line — this landmark technology once used to connect America to the telephone system — doesn’t work. These unfortunate Americans are no longer […]

Last week, Politico reported that the White House was considering a potential “Executive Order” (EO) to address the ongoing-yet-unproven allegations of pro-liberal, anti-conservative bias by giant Silicon Valley companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google. (To the extent that there is rigorous research by AI experts, it shows that social media sites are more likely to flag posts by self-identified African Americans as “hate speech” than identical wording used by whites.) Subsequent reports by CNN and The Verge have provided more detail. Putting the two together, it appears that the Executive Order would require the Federal Communications Commission to create regulations designed to create rules limiting the ability of digital platforms to “remove or suppress content” as well as prohibit “anticompetitive, unfair or deceptive” practices around content moderation. The EO would also require the Federal Trade Commission to somehow open a docket and take complaints (something it does not, at present, do, or have capacity to do – but I will save that hobby horse for another time) about supposed political bias claims.