In this week’s roundup of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike is joined by guest host Hank Green, popular YouTube creator and educator. After spending some time talking about being a creator at the whims of platforms, they cover:
I really used to love our series of posts on how companies and content creators can build more revenue and loyalty with their customers through what we called the “Connect with Fans and a Reason to Buy” philosophy. Shortened to “Cwf+RtB,” the idea is that by treating fans in an awesome and human way, concerns about things like piracy and positive fan feedback could be melted away by building a loyal fanbase through a human connection such that people simply wanted to hand over their hard-earned money to support content creators. By dropping the corporate sheen just a bit and connecting with people on their level, so many creators and companies have built a rabid fanbase that has no interest in taking actions that would prevent these creators from making money at their craft.
But the opposite also applies in reverse. Treat your fans poorly, or fail to connect with them on a human level, and you’re bound to get yourself into trouble. In a world of rising prices within the various entertainment mediums, this becomes all the more dangerous. Randy Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox, is learning this lesson right now after responding to concerns about the new Borderlands game being priced at $80 by essentially employing the “no true Scotsman” fallacy.
Believe it or not, there’s a lot to unpack here. The most important aspect of this is that this is the sort of response that indicates both a severe lack of judgment in communicating with customers combined with a disconnect with the reality of how most people live. We’ll get into the latter part of that further down. The judgment miss is this: even if everything Pitchford wrote above were true, and it very much is not, you don’t say this sort of thing out loud. Put another way, the message above accomplishes absolutely nothing productive for either fans of the Borderlands series nor Gearbox. Anyone who was going to pay $80 for the new game last week likely still will after this comment was made, save those pissed enough about the messaging to change their mind. Those who were hesitant to spend that much on the new game certainly aren’t going to be swayed by a “you will if you’re a true fan” message. And those who have never played the series will be put off by this message. Again, nothing positive accomplished.
It’s the “no true Scotsman” fallacy at work, but with the Scotsman being a gamer, apparently. “$80 is too much for the game,” goes some of the gaming public, with the response being “Not if you’re a real fan.” So those who bought the previous games for less and loved them aren’t truly fans in the eyes of Gearbox? Cool.
And the game of implications Pitchford is attempting to play here probably isn’t valid either.
Randy Pitchford grew up in Fairfax, Virginia, then California. His father worked in U.S. intelligence in the 1970s, and his house was filled with all manner of technology throughout his childhood. While I cannot say for sure (although I have emailed to find out), it seems vanishingly unlikely that Pitchford was living off of his minimum wage ice cream job after he’d graduated high school, as his tweet seems to want to heavily imply. Pitchford soon after went to UCLA, so we can quite safely guess that this was a short-term job, one for earning a bit of extra spending money while still living at home with his parents.
I would suggest that to use this anecdote to explain to all living humans that if they really want a copy of Borderlands 4, they can easily find eighty bucks to spare is grotesque. It kind of makes me sick.
I’m very much a fan of Maseratis. They’re slick, awesome cars. I have, on occasion, gone to dealerships just to look at them. I also am not in a position to buy one, for any number of reasons. But Maserati doesn’t look me in the eye and tell me if I were really a fan of their products then I would find some magical way to afford them. That would be stupid, as it is when Pritchard says it about his video game. And, as Kotaku helpfully details out through income statistics among Americans, some of this seems to stem from the disconnect Pitchford has with how the average person lives.
Hopefully, this context suggests why it’s just so revolting for a man who sold his company for a potential $1.3 billion in 2021 to tell someone on X that “if you’re a real fan, you’ll find a way to make it happen.” Because, you know, when he was doing a summer job at the beach in California, he somehow pulled enough cash together for that game he wanted.
There are some who think it’s a crime to be wealthy. I am very much not one of those people. I begrudge not at all Pitchford having amassed millions of dollars. I do take issue with someone with that kind of generational wealth attempting to gatekeep fandom while condescendingly telling fans if they were only true enough fans, they would find a way to give him more money.
As do those responding to his message, it seems. Here is but a sampling.
I imagine many people are now “out” as well. And if Pitchford’s company sales decline as a result and he makes less money than he would have otherwise, well, I suppose I’ll let him eat cake.
“In more than 40 other federal agency matters, regulators have taken no public action on their investigations for several months or more — raising questions about whether those cases may have become dormant, according to an NBC News review of regulatory matters involving Musk’s companies.”
“In recent months, senior State Department officials in both Washington and Gambia have coordinated with Starlink executives to coax, lobby and browbeat at least seven Gambian government ministers to help Musk, records and interviews show. One of those Cabinet officials told ProPublica his government is under “maximum pressure” to yield.”
This comes on the heels of Musk’s DOGE attacks on organizations like USAID, which are estimated to have a fairly massive body count under the pretense of “progress” and “reform.” Even Bush administration officials, certainly no strangers to corruption, express alarm to ProPublica at the level of corruption:
“If this was done by another country, we absolutely would call this corruption,” said Kristofer Harrison, who served as a high-level State Department official in the George W. Bush administration. “Because it is corruption.”
Or may not even exist five years from now if the company can’t make continued launches viable.
Starlink is sometimes a useful niche option if you can afford it and live in a remote area without access. Or want to spend thousands of dollars a month to get broadband on your yacht. Or are fighting a war in territories where traditional telecom infrastructure has been decimated and have no choice but to rely on the whims of a zealot. But, contrary to the Trump cult’s beliefs, the technology is not fucking magic.
Republicans are also rewriting big swaths of the infrastructure bill to redirect billions in taxpayer broadband subsidies away from better, cheaper, fiber options and toward Elon Musk’s Starlink platform. That means less money for future-proof, more reliable, locally-owned options (including cheap community owned fiber and less congested wireless), and more money for one of the nation’s most erratic and unhinged racist billionaires.
It’s grotesque new levels of American corruption and cronyism dressed up as fake populist reform, and if you’re still one of these people who think these two billionaires care about anything beyond their own wealth and power, we have some sawdust and duck shit-filled supplements to sell you.
One of Elon Musk’s employees is earning between $100,001 and $1 million annually as a political adviser to his billionaire boss while simultaneously helping to dismantle the federal agency that regulates two of Musk’s biggest companies, according to court records and a financial disclosure report obtained by ProPublica.
Ethics experts said Christopher Young’s dual role — working for a Musk company as well as the Department of Government Efficiency — likely violates federal conflict-of-interest regulations. Musk has publicly called for the elimination of the agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, arguing that it is “duplicative.’’
Court records show Young, who works for a Musk company called Europa 100 LLC, was involved in the Trump administration’s efforts to unwind the consumer agency’s operations and fire most of its staff in early February.
Young’s arrangement raises questions of where his loyalty lies, experts said. The dynamic is especially concerning, they said, given that the CFPB — which regulates companies that provide financial services — has jurisdiction over Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, which makes auto loans, and his social media site, X, which announced in January that it was partnering with Visa on mobile payments.
“Musk clearly has a conflict of interest and should recuse,” said Claire Finkelstein, who directs the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania. “And therefore an employee of his, who is answerable to him on the personal side, outside of government, and who stands to keep his job only if he supports Musk’s personal interests, should not be working for DOGE.”
Young, a 36-year-old Republican consultant, has been active in political circles for years, most recently serving as the campaign treasurer of Musk’s political action committee, helping the tech titan spend more than a quarter billion dollars to help elect Trump.
Before joining Musk’s payroll, he worked as a vice president for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the trade association representing the pharmaceutical industry’s interests, his disclosure shows. He also worked as a field organizer for the Republican National Committee and for former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, the New York Times reported.
Young was appointed a special governmental employee in the U.S. Office of Personnel Management on Jan. 30 and dispatched to work in the CFPB in early February, according to court records and his disclosure form. Someone with his position could be making as much as $190,000 a year in government salary, documents obtained by Bloomberg show. At the same time, Young collects a salary as an employee of Musk’s Texas-based Europa 100 LLC, where, according to his disclosure report, his duties are to “advise political and public policy.”
Beyond that description, it’s not clear what, exactly, Young does at Europa 100 or what the company’s activities are.
It was created in July 2020 by Jared Birchall, a former banker who runs Musk’s family office, Excession LLC, according to state records. The company has been used to pay nannies to at least some of Musk’s children, according to a 2023 tabloid report, and, along with two other Musk entities, to facilitate tens of millions of dollars in campaign transactions, campaign finance reports show.
As a special government employee, Young can maintain outside employment while serving for a limited amount of time. But such government workers are still required to abide by laws and rules governing conflicts of interest and personal and business relationships.
Cynthia Brown, the senior ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which has sued the administration to produce a range of public records documenting DOGE’s activities, said that Young’s government work appears to benefit his private sector employer.
“Which hat are you wearing while you’re serving the American people? Are you doing it for the interests of your outside job?” she asked.
In addition to his role at Europa 100, Young reported other ties to Musk’s private businesses. He affirmed in his disclosure form that he will “continue to participate” in a “defined contribution plan” sponsored by Excession, the Musk home office, and that he has served since February as a “vice president” of United States of America Inc., another Musk entity organized by Birchall, where he also advises on “political and public policy,” the records show. While he lists the latter among “sources of compensation exceeding $5,000 in a year,” the exact figure is not disclosed.
Young did not return a call and emails seeking comment. The CFPB, DOGE and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Musk didn’t respond to an email seeking comment, and Birchall didn’t return a call left at a number he lists in public formation records. A lawyer who helped form United States of America Inc. hung up when reached for comment and hasn’t responded to a subsequent message. Asked about how his business interests and government work may intersect, Musk said in a February interview that, “I’ll recuse myself if it is a conflict.”
The revelation of Young’s apparent violation of federal standards of conduct follows a series of ProPublica stories documenting how another DOGE aide helped carry out the administration’s attempts to implement mass layoffs at the CFPB while holding as much as $715,000 in stock that bureau employees are prohibited from owning — actions one expert called a “pretty clear-cut violation” of the federal criminal conflict-of-interest statute. The White House has defended the aide, saying he “did not even manage” the layoffs, “making this entire narrative an outright lie.” A spokesperson also said the aide had until May 8 to divest, though it isn’t clear whether he did and the White House hasn’t answered questions about that. “These allegations are another attempt to diminish DOGE’s critical mission,” the White House said. Following ProPublica’s reporting, the aide’s work at the CFPB ended.
Last Monday, a group of 10 good government and consumer advocacy groups, citing ProPublica’s coverage, sent a letter to the acting inspector general of the CFPB, asking him to “swiftly investigate these clear conflicts of interest violations of Trump Administration officials acting in their own personal financial interest.”
ProPublica has identified nearly 90 officials assigned to DOGE, though it’s unclear how many, if any, have potential conflicts. Government agencies have been slow to release financial disclosure forms. But Finkelstein said the cases reported by ProPublica call into question the motivation behind DOGE’s efforts to undo the consumer watchdog agency.
“It matters because it means that the officials who work for the government, who are supposed to be dedicated to the interests of the American people, are not necessarily focused on the good of the country but instead may be focused on the good of themselves, self enrichment, or trying to please their boss by focusing on enriching their bosses and growing their portfolios,” she said.
Unionized CFPB workers have sued the CFPB’s acting director, Russell Vought, to stop his attempts to drastically scale down the bureau’s staff and its operations. Since taking office, the Trump administration has twice attempted to fire nearly all of the agency’s employees, tried canceling nearly all of its contracts and instituted stop-work mandates that have stifled virtually all agency work, including investigations into companies, ProPublica previously reported.
The parties will appear before an appeals court this Friday for oral arguments in a case that will determine just how deeply Vought can cut the agency while still ensuring that it carries out dozens of mandates Congress tasked it with when lawmakers established the bureau in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
The court records produced in the litigation offer a window into the role Young played in gutting the CFPB during the administration’s first attempt to unwind the bureau beginning in early February.
He was dispatched to the CFPB’s headquarters on Feb. 6, just two days after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, then the agency’s acting director, told the staff and contractors to stop working. The following day, Young and other DOGE aides were given access to nonclassified CFPB systems, court records show. That same day, Musk posted “CFPB RIP” with a gravestone emoji.
In his financial disclosure form, which he signed on Feb. 15, Young listed his employment by Musk’s Europa 100 as active, beginning in August 2024 through the “present.”
Then, in early March, as the legal fight over the administration’s cuts played out before a federal judge, Young sent the CFPB’s chief operating officer a message about forthcoming firings, known as a “reduction in force,” or RIF, in government parlance. In the email, he asked whether officials were “prepared to implement the RIF” if the judge lifted a temporary stay, according to a March district court opinion that has for the moment stopped most of the administration’s proposed cuts.
In addition to his employment, Young’s disclosure presents another potential conflict.
He also lists owning as much as $15,000 in Amazon stock, a company that is on the bureau’s “Prohibited Holdings” list. Agency employees are forbidden from having such investments, and ethics experts have said that participating in an agency action that could boost the stock’s value — such as stripping the CFPB of its staff — constitutes a violation of the criminal conflict-of-interest statute.
Young hasn’t responded to questions about that either.
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FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson begged Donald Trump for his job by promising he would “end Lina Khan’s politically motivated investigations.” And, yet, one of his first orders of business upon getting the job was to… kick off a politically motivated investigation regarding “big tech censorship,” which he (falsely) claimed was potentially illegally targeting conservative speech and violating the policies and promises of these platforms.
It was an odd decision for many reasons, not the least of which is that it seemed to be discussing not just a fantasy world scenario that never existed, but even if it had ever existed, it certainly no longer did. The biggest social media platforms of the day are now all controlled by the ultra-rich who lined up (literally) behind Donald Trump and have agreed to do his bidding. ExTwitter is owned by Elon Musk, Donald Trump’s largest donor and his right-hand man in destroying the government. Mark Zuckerberg is now running content policy changes by Trump’s top advisor Stephen Miller.
If there is any “bias” in content moderation, it is very much in favor of MAGA Trump views. Which, to be clear, is their right to do under the First Amendment.
But the entire premise of the inquiry seemed to simply misunderstand nearly everything about content moderation. So, yesterday, the Copia Institute filed our comment with the FTC highlighting the myriad problems and misunderstandings that the FTC seemed to embrace with this inquiry.
The crux of our argument:
The FTC’s inquiry into “platform censorship” fundamentally misunderstands three critical realities about online expression:
First, as the Supreme Court recently affirmed in Moody v. NetChoice, government scrutiny of platform moderation decisions directly violates First Amendment protections of private editorial discretion. It would violate it even if any platform were a legitimate chokepoint for information, but such is far from the case. We live in an era of unprecedented speech abundance, where anyone can reach global audiences through countless online channels, and anyone can consume information through countless online channels. The premise of investigating “censorship” ignores this surfeit of options in how we communicate, where we’ve moved away from a world of gatekeepers who limit speech to one of intermediaries who enable it, and indeed threatens to reverse that important, speech-fostering progress.
Second, content moderation ultimately enables, rather than constrains, more speech. For all the talk of certain websites being “the modern public square,” it is the wider open internet itself that should be seen as that public square. The metaphor only works in so much as the internet can facilitate such a wide variety of online expression through differentiated and competing offerings and communities. The multitude of platforms built upon that open internet make all that possible, so long as they are free to serve as private venues that cultivate distinct communities through their editorial choices. These choices are constitutionally protected editorial judgments that allow different platforms to serve different needs and communities.
Which is why, third, government interference with platform moderation would paradoxically reduce speech opportunities by threatening the entire ecosystem of services that make online expression possible. From content hosts to payment processors to infrastructure providers, countless specialized intermediaries enable platforms like ours to serve an ever growing and changing set of communities. Regulatory scrutiny of editorial decisions would force many of these services to refuse to facilitate all sorts of lawful speech, if not shut down or stop supporting user content entirely.
As both a content creator and platform operator who relies on this complex web of intermediary services to advance our own speech interests, we see this inquiry as a threat to our own expressive freedom as well as that of countless others. It is fundamentally misguided and we urge the FTC to terminate it immediately before damaging the very same speech interests it ostensibly claims to protect.
We then go into much greater detail on all three points. You can read the whole thing if you want, but I wanted to call out a few key things. Lots of comments address — as we did — the obvious First Amendment problems, but there were a few points we thought were unique.
For example, the entire premise that there’s a “censorship” problem is bizarre, given just how much the internet — through its variety of private platforms — now enables and encourages speech. We’re in a golden age of speech, not some censorial hellhole:
Historically, if you wanted to express yourself beyond those in the narrow geographical vicinity around you, you were dependent on gatekeepers and had to hope that some publisher, printer, editor, record label, studio, or other media middleman would be willing to distribute your expression, promote it, and help you monetize it. Those gatekeepers ultimately allowed only a minuscule percentage of expression to reach public audiences, and an even smaller percentage of that content was successfully promoted and monetized.
The rise of the internet changed the role of intermediaries from being mostly about gatekeeping expression to being mostly about enabling it, and as a result expression has on the whole proliferated, even though the intermediaries still have the right and ability to filter what messages they facilitate. As the Supreme Court noted in the Moody majority, the fact that the new platforms “convey the lion’s share of posts” does not change their rights under the First Amendment.
It remains bizarre to me that, in this much more expansive speech universe, so many people act as though their speech is restricted. To highlight this absurdity, we point to how ridiculous it would be if this same inquiry were directed at traditional media:
This notion misunderstands the nature of content moderation and how it is no different than editorial discretion, which is constitutionally incapable of being policed, no matter how it is marketed. For instance, when Fox News used to claim that its coverage is “Fair & Balanced” everyone recognized that it would be an absurd abuse of the First Amendment for the FTC to investigate whether or not that coverage is either “fair” or “balanced” as a potential “unfair practice” because of how inherently subjective such editorial discretion is.
Consider a more direct parallel: if the New York Times decides to reject an op-ed submission, it would be constitutionally farcical for the FTC to investigate whether their editorial decisions properly align with their stated mission of “all the news that’s fit to print.” These decisions are inherently subjective editorial judgments protected by the First Amendment and not for the government to interfere with.
Also, we highlight that content moderation rules are inherently subjective and can’t be any other way. Ask multiple people how to deal with specific content moderation decisions and they will all give you different answers. So much of the misunderstandings around content moderation are based on the myth that there is a single right answer to questions regarding moderation.
The same is true of content moderation. It is no different than the practices of any news media organization, in which editorial policies may be put in place, but where subjective editorial judgment calls are made every day. Online platforms must make these decisions on a scale far beyond what any traditional media outlet experiences. We have coined the eponymous “Masnick’s Impossibility Theorem” in recognition that there is never going to be an objectively “correct” way to moderate content. No matter how moderation may be intended, it simply cannot translate to perfect practice, let alone one all would agree is “perfect,” which is why the freedom to decide needs to be out of the government’s hands entirely.
We have empirically demonstrated the inherent subjectivity that inevitably informs moderation decisions through our “You Make the Call” event, where we challenged policy experts, regulators, and industry professionals to apply the same content moderation policy to multiple examples. The results of the exercise were telling: even with clearly articulated policies, experienced professionals consistently reached different conclusions about appropriate moderation actions. In every single case we presented, participants split their votes across all available options, highlighting the impossibility of “objective” content moderation.
Every person may also evaluate content against a policy differently. We have further demonstrated this tendency with two interactive online games the Copia Institute has created, allowing people to test their own abilities to do content moderation, bothat the moderator leveland at the level ofrunning a trust & safety team.
We probably should have pointed out that even the FTC inherently recognizes this. After all, it was moderating and restricting access to many of the comments that came in, claiming they were “inappropriate.”
And finally, as a service that regularly relies on a large number of third-party intermediaries to host, distribute, promote, and monetize our speech, we wanted to make clear that these efforts would inevitably limit ours (and others’) ability to speak, by destroying the intermediary services we rely on.
As both a content creator and platform operator, we rely on dozens of specialized intermediary services to reach our audience: social media for community engagement, podcast and video hosts for content distribution, chat services for communication, crowdfunding for monetization, and cloud services for infrastructure. Each of these services maintains their own editorial policies that align with their unique communities and business goals.
If government agencies could second-guess these editorial decisions, the impact would be severe and immediate:
Service differentiation would become impossible. Communities focused on specific interests — from knitting to weightlifting — could no longer maintain their distinct character through specialized content policies.
Compliance costs would force smaller platforms to shut down. Even basic content hosting would require extensive legal review and documentation of every moderation decision. Not only would the direct compliance costs be ruinous for many smaller services, the uncertainty and risk of liability would lead many to decide it would not be worth the hassle to facilitate anyone’s online speech at all.
Innovation would stagnate. Entrepreneurs who might launch new specialized platforms would be deterred by the inability to shape their services around their communities’, and customers’, needs.
The result? A dramatic reduction in online speech options. Content creators like us would face fewer channels for distribution and engagement. Communities would lose their specialized spaces. And the vibrant ecosystem of online expression would collapse into a handful of generic, risk-averse platforms.
In short, it would be a disaster for speech, and lead to an information environment significantly more censorial than the world we currently live in where a private company can freely choose to enforce its own rules as makes the most sense for it.
Thousands of comments were submitted to the FTC (though, admittedly, many of them are angry screeds from people about how their conspiracy theories and threats of violence were moderated and just how unfair it all is). I have little faith that anyone at the FTC will take our comment seriously.
But they should. What they are looking to do would be an outright disaster for free speech. And, yes, that might be Ferguson’s real goal. Just like FCC Chair Brendan Carr, he may wish to use the language and trappings of “free speech advocacy” to make himself a government censor. But, we should use the tools at our disposal today to call that out, and try to prevent that kind of actual censorship from being allowed.
Last week we noted how Trump illegally declared he was killing the $2.75 billion Digital Equity Act. The law, passed as part of the infrastructure bill, was slated to bring millions in new broadband grants and digital literacy tools to Americans of all kinds long stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide.
The bill helped everybody (including Trump-supporting rural veterans), but because Trump’s team assumed that the word equity meant “exclusively help minorities,” the program has become the latest victim of our mad, incoherent, con man king and his army of mindless earlobe nibblers.
It hasn’t taken long for the decision to have ripple effects in the real world. South Dakota, for example, says it’s cancelling $5 million in broadband investment because of the uncertain future of the grants that were going to be funding the plan:
“In South Dakota, the funds would have helped bring accessible and affordable internet access and technology to rural, aging and low-income South Dakotans, as well as tribal communities. Infrastructure like 5G towers and fiber-optic lines needs to be added to neighborhoods.”
Uniformly helping people access the internet: how utterly, diabolically woke! And how “populist” of King Trump to illegally end a beneficial law passed by Congress.
South Dakota Rep. Erik Muckey doesn’t mince words in explaining how the Trump administration has no idea what they’re destroying:
“This crusade to eliminate any funding that has anything to do with even the word equity, even if the word equity has nothing to do with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, that it’s purely about actually helping basic infrastructure get to rural communities and native nations, it’s just a farce.”
This will be repeated across numerous states like Vermont, which is also cancelling planned broadband investment. Thanks to Trump’s incoherent zealotry, dozens of states are having to cancel plans to expand fiber access to rural communities, or kill off digital literacy programs designed to help rural locals get online in order to access employment, education, and health care opportunities.
This isn’t about “saving money,” especially coming from a country whose new king is throwing $45 million ego parades. It’s not about serving any constituents (these programs were broadly popular). It’s about a pathological need to be cruel.
It’s quite a policy coup from Republicans and Libertarian “free market” think tank guys, who repeatedly threw a hissy fit for years, falsely claiming that some modest net neutrality rules would “stifle broadband investment” (but are now quiet as little church mice for some reason).
If you read the actual Digital Equity Act, race is barely mentioned. It’s basically just a bare bones effort to try and ensure that everybody has access to decent broadband. That’s important in a country where congressional corruption has resulted in telecom market failure at the hands of shitty regional monopolies, whose lack of competition and oversight results in expensive, spotty, slow, and low-quality access.
When people complain about substandard access, the follow up Republican policy is to shovel them toward Elon Musk’s Starlink, ignoring that the increasingly congested satellite service lacks the capacity to scale to handle U.S. coverage gaps, is too expensive for the rural Americans who need it most, harms scientific research and the ozone layer, and is run by an erratic, conspiratorial bigot.
Democrats certainly have their failures on telecom policy (see: their corrupt inability to support the Gigi Sohn FCC nomination), but a lot of the legislation passed in 2021 (specifically ARPA) was primarily the result of Democratic initiatives, and is genuinely helping to drive affordable, super fast fiber into areas that have never seen access before.
But when the corporate U.S. press writes about broadband policy and market failures, the fact that unpopular Republican policies are specifically and cruelly designed to stall progress and make our digital divide worse (especially for their own constituents) is either downplayed or not mentioned at all.
