Yesterday, Public Knowledge sent a letter to Congress providing insight into the flow of misinformation and disinformation over social media platforms to prepare for the joint hearing on “A Country in Crisis: How Disinformation Online is Dividing the Nation.” The hearing will discuss the impact of disinformation on the American public.

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 […]

Today, we’re happy to announce the latest addition to our tracking report logging digital platform responses to misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic: a “superfund for the internet” proposal. Such a fund would compel digital platforms like Google and Facebook to invest in tools our society needs to fight misinformation online — tools that have been proven during the pandemic.

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. “When the next pandemic strikes, we’ll be fighting it on two fronts. The first is the one you immediately think about: understanding the disease, researching […]

Today, we’re happy to announce the launch of our newest tracking report to log digital platform responses to misinformation during this pandemic. The report monitors how major digital platforms like Twitter and Google respond to the crisis and analyzes their various approaches, helping policymakers, media, and the public to better explore what platforms are doing to combat the rising “infodemic” — a dangerous onslaught of misunderstandings, inaccurate data, and lies about the coronavirus spread rapidly online. Public Knowledge will update the tracking report weekly as the pandemic unfolds.

Today, the United States Senate voted to pass a stimulus bill, “Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act,” to address the coronavirus pandemic by providing economic support for individual Americans and businesses. Unfortunately, the bill disregards broadband subsidies for low-income Americans, largely neglects broadband deployment, and rejects any requirements for broadband providers to drop data caps, overage fees, or throttling practices to keep people connected. The bill also overlooks support for local journalism, and privacy protections for geolocation and health data. Public Knowledge is very concerned that this bill misses an opportunity to help Americans on the wrong side of the digital divide during this time of crisis, as well as the local journalists they depend on.

Today, reports indicate that even as more people turn to local journalism for information on the growing coronavirus threat in their communities, local media operations are being shuttered across the nation. Public Knowledge contends that unless Congress steps in immediately to help fund local journalism, communities across the country risk losing one of their key sources of accurate information about what citizens need to know and do in response to the pandemic.