Legislation to secure children’s safety online is all the rage right now, not only on Capitol Hill, but in state legislatures across the country. One of the favored approaches is to impose on platforms a duty of care to protect teen users.

For example, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) have reintroduced the Kid’s Online Safety Act (KOSA), which would require that social-media platforms “prevent or mitigate” a variety of potential harms, including mental-health harms; addiction; online bullying and harassment; sexual exploitation and abuse; promotion of narcotics, tobacco, gambling, or alcohol; and predatory, unfair, or deceptive business practices.

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According to an old English proverb, children are meant to be seen and not heard. But if we aren’t careful with new online-safety legislation, kids will be neither seen nor heard in online spaces.

There has been no shortage of stories in recent months focusing on the real harms associated with teens on social media, which the platforms have already invested in mitigating in response to market demand from parents, advertisers and teens themselves. Far less attention has been paid to the benefits that teens today enjoy in terms of increased connections and access to information that was previously unimaginable in an offline world.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week held its first informal hearing in 20 years on Section 18 rulemaking. The hearing itself had a technical delay, which to us participants felt like another 20 years, but was a mere two hours or so.

At issue is a proposed rule intended to target impersonation fraud. Impersonation fraudsters hold themselves out as government officials or company representatives in order to defraud unsuspecting consumers.

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In the age of the internet, unfounded claims can achieve widespread adoption at remarkable speed. Antitrust regulators have apparently fallen prey to this malady.

In the U.S., Europe, the U.K. and other jurisdictions, regulators have adopted the view that acquisitions of startups by large tech platforms are being used systematically to “kill” competitive threats. Other regulators assert that acquisitions by large tech platforms create “kill zones” into which startups are reluctant to enter.

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The federal government is set to award more than $42 billion in new grants to state governments this summer, with the goal of expanding high-speed internet access in areas that currently lack it.

But as this new Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program ramps up, it is crucial that states spend the money wisely.

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Abstract

The notion of “junk” fees is a fine piece of rhetoric, but useless as an analytical tool. Many fees identified as junk impose costs on consumers who generate those costs – rather than forcing others to subsidize their behavior. For example, credit card late fees deter late payments and their associated costs while only world travelers pay foreign currency transaction fees. There is no reason for ordinary consumers to subsidize either group. Because information is costly, consumers rationally focus on the elements of price that are most important in their own circumstances. Requirements to disclose everything everywhere will only interfere with this process. Both the structure of pricing, and the level of prices, should be determined by competition in the marketplace. As we observe, the result is detailed fee structures for some products and services, and bundled pricing for others. Attempts to regulate pricing structures by requiring itemized prices increased the costs of real estate settlements. Regulating components of credit card pricing structures led to increases in other fees and reductions in credit availability. Competition over pricing structures is far more likely to satisfy consumer preferences than an inevitably overbroad set of regulatory requirements

As the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations convenes this morning for a hearing on overseeing federal funds for broadband deployment, it bears mention that one of the largest U.S. broadband-subsidy programs is actually likely run out of money within the next year. Writing in Forbes, Roslyn Layton observes of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) that it has enrolled more than 14 million households, concluding that it “may be the most effective broadband benefit program to date with its direct to consumer model.”

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ICLE Academic Affiliate M. Todd Henderson testified to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, & Consumer Rights at their May 3, 2023 hearing on “Competition in the Digital Advertising Ecosystem.” Video of his opening statement is embedded below.

A relatively minor bureaucratic change proposed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency stirred up a viral storm in right-leaning news media recently, with outlets like the Washington Times, New York Post, National Review and Fox News all reporting some variant of the sentiment expressed in the Times headline: “Biden to hike payments for good-credit homebuyers to subsidize high-risk mortgages.”

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