Adi Robertson

The FCC has issued a formal notice that ACP funding, which subsidizes broadband access for 23 million households, runs out at the end of April. As Karl Bode at Techdirt notes, Congress (particularly congressional Republicans) didn’t find the Biden administration’s request for $6 billion to fund it worth granting. Those households will lose out on a $30 monthly broadband discount — which FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel warns will cause some to lose access altogether.

Google noted the change as part of an update on its compliance with the Digital Markets Act. The update highlights more options it’s already announced or rolled out, including new choice screens and data sharing options, plus changes to how Play Store developers can collect payments — all preparing for the deadline of March 6th.

The parties held a conference call to argue about whether the nonprofit’s anti-hate speech researchers illegally scraped data from Elon Musk’s social network, and a judge seems dubious.

As mentioned yesterday, Tumblr now has info about opting out of AI data scraping on its help page — it’s available via the “prevent third-party sharing” toggle. For visual artists who are still worried about the prospect of AI tools training on their work, there are less official ways to stop that, too.

The advertising for “Willy’s Chocolate Experience” looks like peak AI-generated spectacle, promising “cartchy tuns,” “encherining entertainment,” and “a heart-pounding experience you’ve never experienced before” for £35 a ticket. The reality is... well, take a look. At least the kids are getting refunds.

Corbin Barthold at The Daily Beast has a good piece on Brett Kavanaugh’s role at yesterday’s Supreme Court arguments: the only one in the room (besides NetChoice’s own lawyer) treating government censorship as a unique and serious concern.

Amy Coney Barrett is bringing up the Hotel California clause yet again, and I’m actually grateful — she points out the plain language of the law seems to specifically say you can’t ban Texan users. Nielson says it’s a conditional rule. “If you choose to do business in Texas, then this provision kicks in,” but “if you don’t want to do business in Texas at all” you’re okay to geofence the state. “You can’t darn well discriminate” against Texas users if you operate in there, he says.

Or in his words, “intensely competitive” — which he says doesn’t change the fact they could be considered common carriers, so the existence of multiple social networks shouldn’t save those from regulation either. But there are basically three mobile networks in the country! It’s not an outright national monopoly, but it’s a pretty consolidated space.