An anonymous reader shares the results of a new poll (PDF) from CNN, adding: "Facebook should be treated like cigarettes." From the report: Roughly three-quarters of adults believe Facebook is making American society worse, a new CNN poll (PDF) conducted by SSRS finds [...]. Americans say, 76% to 11%, that Facebook makes society worse, not better, according to the survey. Another 13% say it has no effect either way. That broadly negative appraisal holds across gender, age and racial lines. Even frequent Facebook users -- those who report using the site at least several times a week -- say 70% to 14% that the social network harms, rather than helps, US society. Although majorities across parties say Facebook is doing more harm than good, that feeling spikes among Republicans (82%).

Among the majority overall who think Facebook is worsening society, however, there's less of an overwhelming consensus on whether or not the platform itself is primarily to blame: 55% say that the way some people use Facebook is more at fault, with 45% saying it's more due to the way Facebook itself is run. Overall, about one-third of the public -- including 44% of Republicans and 27% of Democrats -- say both that Facebook is making American society worse and that Facebook itself is more at fault than its users.

President Joe Biden wants to show the U.N. climate conference in Scotland that the United States is back in the fight against global warming. But continued haggling in Congress over legislation to advance his climate goals threatens to undermine that message on the world stage. From a report: Biden leaves for Europe on Thursday for a G20 meeting in Rome followed by a gathering of world leaders in Glasgow aimed at saving the planet from the devastation wreaked by rising temperatures. Biden had hoped to showcase legislation designed to fulfill a U.S. pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions 50-52% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels, seeking to provide an example that would encourage other nations to take bold, quick action to protect the Earth. The plan includes hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in clean energy, but some aspects such as a program that would reward electricity companies for investing in renewables and penalize those that did not, have been cut from a bill to fund his social and climate change agenda. As of Wednesday evening, Biden's fellow Democrats had still not reached an agreement, forcing him to leave Washington without a deal in hand.

President Joe Biden named acting Federal Communications Commissioner Chair Jessica Rosenworcel to officially head the agency on Tuesday, propping her up as the administration's leader to tackle broadband expansion and net neutrality. Biden also nominated progressive advocate Gigi Sohn as the third Democrat for the bench. From a report: The decision comes late into Biden's term, beating out both former presidents Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon who nominated their FCC chairs well into September of their first years. If confirmed by the Senate before December, the FCC's 2-2 deadlock would end and provide Democrats with a majority to push forward Biden's telecom agenda. But it's unclear if senators plan to move on Rosenworcel and Sohn's confirmations before the end of the year. Without a majority, current Democratic commissioners Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks have their hands tied when it comes to implementing Biden's agenda. In July, Biden signed an executive order urging the FCC to restore Obama-era net neutrality rules and to take up other measures to promote broadband competition, including requiring companies to provide transparency into pricing.

mspohr writes: Some of America's most prominent companies, including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Disney, are backing business groups that are fighting landmark climate legislation, despite their own promises to combat the climate crisis, a new analysis has found. A clutch of corporate lobby groups and organizations have mobilized to oppose the proposed $3.5tn budget bill put forward by Democrats, which contains unprecedented measures to drive down planet-heating gases. The reconciliation bill has been called the "the most significant climate action in our country's history" by Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the US Senate.

Most large US corporations have expressed concern over the climate crisis or announced their own goals to cut greenhouse gases. Jeff Bezos, one of the world's richest people, has said that the climate crisis is the "biggest threat to our planet" and the company he founded, Amazon, has created a pledge for businesses to cut their emissions to net zero by 2040. Microsoft has promised to be "carbon negative" within a decade from now and Disney is aiming to use only renewable-sourced electricity within the same timeframe. But these leading companies, and others, either support or actively steer the very lobby groups that are attempting to sink the bill that carries the weight of Joe Biden's ambitions to tackle the climate crisis, threatening one of the last major legislative efforts that will help decide whether parts of the world plunge into a new, barely livable climatic state.

Senate Democrats are calling on the Federal Trade Commission to write new rules to protect consumer data privacy in a new letter to the agency authored on Monday. From a report: The letter, led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and signed by eight other Democratic senators, was sent to FTC Chair Lina Khan Monday, calling on the agency to "begin a rulemaking process" on privacy. Specifically, the senators are requesting that the FTC pen new rules addressing privacy, civil rights, and the collection of consumer data. "Consumer privacy has become a consumer crisis," the lawmakers wrote. "Tech companies have routinely broken their promises to consumers and neglected their legal obligations, only to receive wrist-slap punishments after long delay, providing little relief to consumers, and with minimal deterrent effect."

Two top lawmakers on the Senate Commerce Committee's panel over consumer protection said they were launching a probe into Facebook after The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the company was aware of the harm Instagram can cause to teenage girls. The Verge reports: Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) announced their investigation into Facebook in a statement released Tuesday. The senators said that they were in touch with "a Facebook whistleblower" and would seek new documents and witness testimony from the company related to the reporting. "It is clear that Facebook is incapable of holding itself accountable. The Wall Street Journal's reporting reveals Facebook's leadership to be focused on a growth-at-all-costs mindset that valued profits over the health and lives of children and teens," the lawmakers said. "When given the opportunity to come clean to us about their knowledge of Instagram's impact on young users, Facebook provided evasive answers that were misleading and covered up clear evidence of significant harm."

House lawmakers also criticized Facebook over the Journal's new reporting, and Republicans even issued a new amendment to the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation seeking to address tech's effects on teens. Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) introduced the measure that would direct the Federal Trade Commission to go after "unfair and deceptive acts or practices targeting our children's mental health and privacy by social media." The amendment failed. Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee's antitrust subcommittee, said in a tweet, "Big Tech has become the new Big Tobacco. Facebook is lying about how their product harms teens." A group of Democrats, including Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA), Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL), and Lori Trahan (D-MA), penned a letter to Facebook Wednesday calling on the company to abandon its plans to launch an Instagram app for kids in light of the report.

ABC News reports: Inspired by the New Deal-era Civilian Conservation Corps, President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats are pushing for a modern counterpart: a Civilian Climate Corps that would create hundreds of thousands of jobs building trails, restoring streams and helping prevent catastrophic wildfires. Building on Biden's oft-repeated comment that when he thinks of climate change, he thinks of jobs, the White House says the multibillion-dollar program would address both priorities as young adults find work installing solar panels, planting trees, digging irrigation ditches and boosting outdoor recreation...
Colorado Public Radio reports that there's already a new Colorado Climate Corps, funded by a $1.7 million federal grant, that will place 240 members of America's federally-funded national service program "AmeriCorps" into 55 counties across Colorado "to protect public lands and help low-income communities brace for the climate crisis."

And now supporters of the larger federal program "envision climate corps workers installing solar panels, weatherizing buildings and providing water and other supplies during heat waves and storms," reports the New York Times: A new climate corps would help address the growing threat of wildfires in Idaho, according to Jay Satz, senior director for partnerships and innovation at the Northwest Youth Corps and Idaho Conservation Corps. Mr. Satz said his group doesn't have the funding or the staff to meet that need, which includes thinning out dead trees, replanting new trees and rehabilitating land hit by fires.

Tens of millions of older Americans who cannot afford dental care -- with severe consequences for their overall health, what they eat and even when they smile -- may soon get help as Democrats maneuver to add dental benefits to Medicare for the first time in its history. From a report: The proposal, part of the large budget bill moving through Congress, would be among the largest changes to Medicare since its creation in 1965 but would require overcoming resistance from dentists themselves, who are worried that it would pay them too little.

Facebook has approached academics and policy experts about forming a commission to advise it on global election-related matters, said five people with knowledge of the discussions, a move that would allow the social network to shift some of its political decision-making to an advisory body. The New York Times reports: The proposed commission could decide on matters such as the viability of political ads and what to do about election-related misinformation, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions were confidential. Facebook is expected to announce the commission this fall in preparation for the 2022 midterm elections, they said, though the effort is preliminary and could still fall apart. Outsourcing election matters to a panel of experts could help Facebook sidestep criticism of bias by political groups, two of the people said. The company has been blasted in recent years by conservatives, who have accused Facebook of suppressing their voices, as well as by civil rights groups and Democrats for allowing political misinformation to fester and spread online. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, does not want to be seen as the sole decision maker on political content, two of the people said.

If an election commission is formed, it would emulate the step Facebook took in 2018 when it created what it calls the Oversight Board, a collection of journalism, legal and policy experts who adjudicate whether the company was correct to remove certain posts from its platforms. Facebook has pushed some content decisions to the Oversight Board for review, allowing it to show that it does not make determinations on its own. Facebook, which has positioned the Oversight Board as independent, appointed the people on the panel and pays them through a trust.

Internal conversations around an election commission date back to at least a few months ago, said three people with knowledge of the matter. An election commission would differ from the Oversight Board in one key way, the people said. While the Oversight Board waits for Facebook to remove a post or an account and then reviews that action, the election commission would proactively provide guidance without the company having made an earlier call, they said.

ytene writes: CNN is claiming an exclusive scoop, with an article reporting that U.S. intelligence agencies have scored a massive trove of Covid-19 genetic data, which, CNN suggests, comes from the Wuhan research lab. More than the complex challenge of absorbing and understanding the "mountain" of raw data, U.S. researchers are going to have to translate the material from native Mandarin before the real work can begin. Whilst there has obviously been a lot of interest in a clear identification of the source, it isn't clear how such a revelation could have a material impact on the efficacy of vaccines or the take-up of the treatment. It might, however, give useful clues to help understand where or how the next deadly outbreak could develop. "It's unclear exactly how or when U.S. intelligence agencies gained access to the information, but the machines involved in creating and processing this kind of genetic data from viruses are typically connected to external cloud-based servers -- leaving open the possibility they were hacked," notes CNN, citing multiple people familiar with the matter.

The report also notes that senior intelligence officials are "genuinely split between the two prevailing theories on the pandemic's origins." The World Health Organization says wildlife farms in southern China are the most likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the theory that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan is still being investigated. According to a CNN report last month, "[S]enior Biden administration officials overseeing the 90-day review now believe the theory that the virus accidentally escaped from a lab in Wuhan is at least as credible as the possibility that it emerged naturally in the wild -- a dramatic shift from a year ago, when Democrats publicly downplayed the so-called lab leak theory."

Zack Budryk writes via The Hill: The Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act, sponsored by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), would require between 25 to 30 of the U.S. corporations responsible for the most greenhouse gas pollution to pay $300 billion into a fund over 10 years. The legislation would require companies to pay into the fund if they were responsible for at least .05 percent of global carbon dioxide and methane emissions between 2000 and 2019 based on data from the Treasury Department and Environmental Protection Agency. In a document shared with The Hill, Van Hollen's office estimated major companies such as Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron would be taxed $5 billion to $6 billion annually under the bill. The Democratic senator pointed to other policies that could accompany the measure, such as carbon pricing and a clean-energy standard.

The exact uses of the money in the fund have not yet been determined, Van Hollen said, adding there would be a public comment period. Possible uses include building more climate-resilient infrastructure, particularly in disadvantaged communities and communities of color. [...] After years of opposition, major institutions and trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have come out in favor of a tax on carbon emissions in recent months. However, Van Hollen's proposal would go further than that, specifically targeting major players like Exxon Mobil and Chevron. Further reading: Democrats Seek $500 Billion in Climate Damages From Big Polluting Companies (The New York Times)

More than 90 chief executive officers, including those at Apple, Amazon and Facebook on Thursday urged Congress to pass a law offering a citizenship path to young immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children. From a report: In a letter to President Joe Biden and congressional leaders, the executives said thousands of the immigrants -- known as Dreamers -- are "valued employees at our companies," but a federal judge's recent ruling against a program protecting them "throws into chaos" their ability to live and work legally in the U.S. "Securing a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers not only is the right thing to do, but is a huge economic benefit to the United States," the CEOs wrote in the letter. "The latest court ruling makes it all the more urgent that Congress take up and pass a legislative solution right away." The letter seeks to increase pressure on Republicans in Congress who are likely to oppose Democrats' efforts to pass the measure allowing for legal status for as many as 8 million undocumented immigrants.

Two Democratic senators introduced a bill Thursday that would strip away the liability shield that social media platforms hold dear when those companies are found to have boosted anti-vaccine conspiracies and other kinds of health misinformation. From a report: The Health Misinformation Act, introduced by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM), would create a new carve-out in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to hold platforms liable for algorithmically-promoted health misinformation and conspiracies. Platforms rely on Section 230 to protect them from legal liability for the vast amount of user-created content they host.

"For far too long, online platforms have not done enough to protect the health of Americans," Klobuchar said. "These are some of the biggest, richest companies in the world and they must do more to prevent the spread of deadly vaccine misinformation." The bill would specifically alter Section 230's language to revoke liability protections in the case of "health misinformation that is created or developed through the interactive computer service" if that misinformation is amplified through an algorithm. The proposed exception would only kick in during a declared national public health crisis, like the advent of Covid-19, and wouldn't apply in normal times.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The White House escalated its fight against vaccine misinformation on Friday, with President Biden directly criticizing Facebook and other platforms for allowing vaccine misinformation to spread -- and consequently raising the ongoing death toll from the deadly pandemic. Asked for a message to platforms like Facebook, Biden replied, "They're killing people ... the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and they're killing people." The White House did not immediately respond to a request for clarification of the president's comments. The full exchange is embedded [here]. "We will not be distracted by accusations which aren't supported by the facts," said a Facebook spokesperson. "The fact is that more than 2 billion people have viewed authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines on Facebook, which is more than any other place on the internet. More than 3.3 million Americans have also used our vaccine finder tool to find out where and how to get a vaccine."

"The facts show that Facebook is helping save lives," the spokesperson continued. "Period."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After coming close to imposing a near-total ban on municipal broadband networks, Ohio's Republican-controlled legislature has reportedly dropped the proposed law in final negotiations over the state budget. The final budget agreement "axed a proposal to limit local governments from offering broadband services," The Columbus Dispatch wrote. With a June 30 deadline looming, Ohio's House and Senate approved the budget and sent it to Gov. Mike DeWine for final approval on Monday night, the Dispatch wrote.

As we wrote earlier this month, the Ohio Senate approved a version of the budget containing an amendment (PDF) that would have forced existing municipal broadband services to shut down and prevented the formation of new public networks. The proposed law was reportedly "inserted without prior public discussion," and no state senator publicly sponsored the amendment. It was approved in a party-line vote as Democrats opposed the restrictions in municipal broadband. The House version did not contain the amendment, and it was dropped during negotiations between the House and Senate.

Lawmakers apparently relented to public pressure from supporters of municipal broadband and cities and towns that operate the networks. People and businesses from Fairlawn, where the city-run FairlawnGig network offers fiber Internet, played a significant role in the protests. FairlawnGig itself asked users to put pressure on lawmakers, and the subscribers did so in great numbers. "We had a real grassroots movement here in Fairlawn. We are thrilled our residents, subscribers, and businesses came together and helped us defeat this amendment," Fairlawn Service Director Ernie Staten said yesterday, according to an article by the Community Networks team at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). "We appreciate that the State of Ohio recognizes that municipal broadband has a place in this state and we hope to continue this great endeavor." Fairlawn subscribers sent more than 700 emails telling lawmakers, "Don't take this (municipal broadband) away!" Staten said. The report notes that while Ohio's legislature isn't banning public networks, at least for now, it "is apparently not letting municipal networks apply for a new round of funding."

"While Staten celebrated the removal of the budget amendment, he called the victory 'bittersweet,' as municipalities and electric cooperatives in the state do not have access to the proposed $250 million broadband expansion grant program that will be established when, and if, Gov. Dewine signs the budget into law," the ILSR wrote. The outcome of that isn't certain yet. "We have been asking for a small definition change to add municipalities and electric coops, but unless they changed the language, I believe the House version stands," Staten told the ILSR.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Four days after the Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, a member of the "Not My President" Facebook group wrote in a post, "remember, our founding fathers were seen as terrorist [sic] and traitors." A fellow group member commented, "I'll fight for what's right, this corruption has to be stopped immediately." Three months later, Facebook recommended the group to at least three people, despite Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's repeated promise to permanently end political group recommendations on the social network specifically to stop amplifying divisive content.

The group was one of hundreds of political groups the company recommended to its users in The Markup's Citizen Browser project over the past five months, several of which promoted unfounded election fraud claims in their descriptions or through posts on their pages. Citizen Browser consists of a paid nationwide panel of Facebook users who automatically send us data from their Facebook feeds. In a four month period, from Feb. 1 to June 1, the 2,315 members of the Citizen Browser panel received hundreds of recommendations for groups that promoted political organizations (e.g., "Progressive Democrats of Nevada," "Michigan Republicans") or supported individual political figures (e.g., "Bernie Sanders for President 2020," "Liberty lovers for Ted Cruz," "Philly for Elizabeth Warren"). In total, just under one-third of all panelists received a recommendation to join at least one group in this category.

The House Judiciary Committee advanced a bill to prevent companies like Amazon.com, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet's Google from favoring their own products, a measure that critics warned could complicate the use of Apple's own apps on its iPhone or shopping on Amazon. From a report: The legislation was the fifth bill out of six being taken up by the committee in a session that ran for nearly 20 hours into early Thursday morning, before breaking until later in the day. The measure, sponsored by antitrust subcommittee Chair David Cicilline, advanced on a narrowly bipartisan 24-20 vote. The marathon session featured recurring clashes over whether software giant Microsoft would be subject to the committee's four bills focused on the biggest tech companies. The criteria for a "covered platform" in those proposals are based on market capitalization, monthly users and whether other businesses depend on the company's services. The extensive back and forth featured debate about antitrust principles, content moderation, freedom of speech and even how legislation should define a foreign adversary. These discussions didn't fall along party lines, and in some cases showed disagreement among Democrats and found Republicans pitted against each other.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is calling on Microsoft to face the same antitrust scrutiny as other large tech platforms in a letter to the company Monday. From a report: In the letter, Jordan asks Microsoft president Brad Smith if he believes the company would be affected by the swath of antitrust bills introduced in the House earlier this month. There are five bills in total, spanning from offering up more money for antitrust enforcers to banning large tech platforms from buying up small competitors. The antitrust package came out of a yearslong investigation into Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. The measures focus on the anticompetitive behaviors of these four companies, and it's not as clear how they would affect other large companies like Microsoft. While Microsoft meets the standard laid out under these bills to be considered a "covered platform," like meeting the over $600 billion market cap and 50 million monthly active users, the bills don't target the company's specific lines of business.

"Big Tech, including Microsoft, Inc., is out to get conservatives," Jordan said in his Monday letter. "It is unclear why Microsoft has avoided significant attention from House Democrats." Assumably, Microsoft would face the same proposed standards in acquiring companies, like taking on the burden of proof, and making the data it takes from users more portable and usable on other platforms. But whereas Amazon and Apple would face more structural changes, like selling off separate lines of business, Microsoft would likely not be subject to the rules.

Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith criticized secret data subpoenas sent by the government to cloud providers like his company and Apple, saying gag orders on requests for personal information undermine freedoms and are hurting U.S. technology companies in Europe. From a report: Last week the New York Times reported that during the administration of former President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Justice demanded records from Apple relating to two Democrats on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee. CNBC reported Microsoft received a confidential request for the personal emails of a Congressional staffer. Both companies were under nondisclosure orders that prevented them from talking about or alerting the subjects of the data seizures.

The U.S. government should change the rules so that people whose data is being demanded can be informed and choose whether to file a legal challenge to the subpoenas, Smith said Monday in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Microsoft in 2016 filed a case against the DOJ related to the gag orders, and a year later the department issued new guidelines it said would scale back the practice of these kinds of confidential requests. "If we fail to do so, we undermine longstanding fundamental freedoms in the country and, frankly, for those of us in the tech sector, we're put in the middle," Smith said. "This should be an issue where the government has to go most of the time to the individuals whose information they are seeking."

Prosecutors in the Trump administration Justice Department subpoenaed Apple for data from the accounts of House Intelligence Committee Democrats -- including Chairman Adam Schiff -- along with their staff and family members as part of a leak investigation, an Intelligence Committee official and a source familiar with the matter confirmed to CNN. From a report: Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, another Democrat on the committee, told CNN's Don Lemon on Thursday evening that he was notified that his data had been seized as part of the probe as well. The prosecutors, the New York Times first reported, were looking for the sources behind news stories about contacts between Russia and Trump associates. The leak hunt began with the FBI sending a subpoena to Apple in February 2018, which included a gag order, seeking metadata on more than 100 accounts as part of an investigation into the disclosure of classified information, the person familiar with the matter said.

The gag order was renewed three times before it expired this year and Apple notified the customers. The House Intelligence Committee determined that along with members of the panel and staff, the dragnet collected the records of family members, including at least one minor, the person said. Records seized included those from staff members who had nothing to do with issues related to Russia or former FBI Director James Comey, including Schiff's personal office staff, a House Intelligence Committee source told CNN. Democratic committee leadership is relying on self-reporting to know who has been impacted at this point -- both members and staff, the source said. Swalwell confirmed to CNN that records of family members and a minor had been obtained.