Social media platforms must act quickly to counter fake news or face possible regulation, the European Commission said Wednesday. It announced a plan against disinformation aimed at protecting democratic systems and public debate before 2019 national and local elections, including a "rapid alert system" among EU institutions and countries to make it easier to share data and assess disinformation campaigns, and close monitoring of a self-regulatory code of practice signed in October by Facebook, Google, Twitter and Mozilla. Signatories "should swiftly and effectively implement" commitments, focusing on actions urgent for elections, the EC said. That includes ensuring transparency of political advertising, ramping up efforts to shutter fake accounts, labeling non-human interactions, and cooperating with fact-checkers to detect disinformation campaigns and make fact-checked content more visible. The plan seeks better detection via more specialized staff and data analysis tools, backed by a funding increase from 1.9 million euros ($2.2 million) to 5 million euros ($5.8 million); and for promoting media literacy among Europeans. Platforms have until the end of 2018 to update the EC on compliance, and must report monthly January-May. Without satisfactory progress, the EC may propose further measures, including regulation, it said. Asked at a news briefing whether 5 million euros was enough to counter the massively financed activities of Russia Today, Sputnick and Russian trolls, EC Digital Single Market Vice-President Andrus Ansip said the goal isn't to recreate the kind of propaganda machine Russia has but to detect disinformation, find out who's behind it and use facts to debunk lies. Asked whether the EC has faith that Facebook will tackle disinformation given that the platform allowed Russian bots to access its services -- discovered in a U.K. parliamentary inquiry -- Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said everything the EC does concerning self-regulatory measures affecting information and technology companies is based on "trust and check." Google and Facebook didn't comment. Twitter's "No. 1 priority is improving the health of the public conversation," a spokesperson said. "Tackling coordinated disinformation campaigns is a key component." He said Twitter is working on a partnership with UNESCO on online media and information literacy.

Communications regulators ought to follow prudence ascribed to President George H.W. Bush and show skepticism about pre-emptive regulation of new technologies, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said at an International Institute of Communications event Tuesday, according to prepared remarks. "Not gonna do it. Wouldn't be prudent." That's a catchphrase of Saturday Night Live cast member Dana Carvey in his Bush parody. Pai said an example of that prudent approach is the rulemaking launched in October about dealing with orbital debris (see 1811150028), plus work in the Americas to advance regional proposals for the 2019 World Radiocommunication Conference.

January CES will feature a "whole new” exhibit area “focused on resilience,” CTA President Gary Shapiro told the American Legislative Exchange Council Thursday (see 1811290015). “Say what you want about whether you believe in climate change or not, but the fact is people are facing more challenges in terms of their environment,” he said. “More things are happening.” The two-hour Las Vegas Convention Center blackout last CES (see 1801110030) “incentivized” CTA's decision on resilience, as did an executive board meeting in Napa Valley held “in the dark,” he said. “Cold coffee, no telephone service and no electricity,” he said. “That’s when I decided we had to focus on resilience and redundancy a little bit.”

As the tech-telecom-e-commerce industry outpaces the rest of the U.S. economy, it faces sufficient competition, the Progressive Policy Institute reported Thursday. Productivity in the sector grew almost 60 percent 2007-17, compared with 5 percent in the rest of the non-health private sector, PPI said. “Companies in the tech/telecom/ecommerce sector are subject to sufficient competitive pressures that they are distributing their rapid productivity gains to customers in the form of falling prices -- and to workers in the form of higher pay and more jobs.” The group advises antitrust regulators to weigh potential global competition when considering market concentration and to examine industries sector by sector. “There’s no evidence that today’s tech leaders make up a significantly higher share of the U.S. and global economies compared with past industry leaders,” it said.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is "disappointed" Dish Network and Univision haven't resolved a retransmission consent fight that has gone on for close to five months (see 1807020030), he wrote Nov. 13 to Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., posted last week. Pai said the FCC is monitoring the clash and it "encourages the parties to reach agreement quickly." Pai responded to Menendez's June 29 letter that encouraged CEOs of Dish and Univision to engage in good-faith negotiations and asked the agency to monitor those negotiations. In a letter dated Nov. 12 to Pai and FTC Chairman Joe Simons, Dish General Counsel Timothy Messner said Univision is demanding "a substantial rate increase" despite the programmer no longer having rights to World Cup matches and "a material decline" in ratings. In Univision's Q3 earnings call earlier this month, CEO Vincent Sadusky said the programmer is planning a marketing campaign that should see Dish continue to shed subscribers, which could benefit other MVPDs with which the programmer has a relationship.

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, as the father of three young children, hears “daily from parents and teachers worried about the epidemic use of electronic cigarettes and nicotine addiction among kids,” he said Thursday, announcing measures to curb the use of e-cigarettes among young people. “Any policy accommodations” to promote e-cigarettes as an alternative to “combustible” smoking “cannot, and will not, come at the expense of addicting a generation of children to nicotine through these same delivery vehicles,” said Gottlieb, a physician. “Hard” data shows “kids using e-cigarettes are going to be more likely to try combustible cigarettes later,” he said. “This is a large pool of future risk.” CTA made a “conscious decision” to exclude e-cigarettes as an exhibit category on the CES show floor, said CTA President Gary Shapiro at CES Unveiled New York last week (see 1811090029).

Google efforts to fight online piracy include building an advertising blocker into the Chrome browser that filters ads from web pages that don't comply with industry quality standards, and recent launch of its Copyright Match Tool for finding near-identical re-uploads of creator videos on YouTube, the company said Wednesday. It said it has launched multiple initiatives to provide legitimate alternatives as part of search results. The five principles in its anti-piracy efforts are creating "convenient, legitimate" piracy alternatives; "rooting out and ejecting" pirate sites from its advertising and payment services; using scalable copyright removal processes; guarding against false infringement allegations; and providing transparency. It said search isn't a major driver of traffic to pirate sites, and search can't eradicate pirate sites, while whole-site removals "are ineffective and over-censor content." The company reported YouTube paid $3 billion to rights holders for video content, and October 2017-September 2018 it paid $1.8 billion in advertising revenue for the music industry. It removed 3 billion URLs from search for infringing copyright.

The portion of U.S. households subscribing to some form of pay TV is sliding, Leichtman Research Group said Wednesday. Seventy-eight percent subscribe, down from 86 percent in 2013, 87 percent in 2008 and 81 percent in 2004. A big part of the decline is driven by younger people, with 70 percent of adults age 18-44 subscribing now, compared with 83 percent in 2013, LRG said. Among people ages 45 and up, 84 percent subscribe today vs. 88 percent in 2013. It said penetration of pay TV among renters, singles and movers has declined at a faster pace in recent years, expanding the demographic divides in the area. The mean reported monthly spending on subscription video among subscribers is about $107, up about 1 percent from a year ago. The data comes from a phone survey of 1,152 households.

Final briefs by DOJ and AT&T with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit are the same as previously filed, adding only page numbers (see 1810190006).

We incorrectly reported the name of Facebook Vice President-Product Management Guy Rosen (see 1810030034).