Tony Romm

President-elect Joe Biden and top congressional Democrats are laying the groundwork to seek a massive increase in federal broadband spending next year, hoping they can secure billions of dollars in new government aid to improve internet access and affordability -- and help people stay online during the pandemic.

State and federal investigators are preparing to bring antitrust charges against Facebook that will challenge the tech giant’s acquisition of two rivals, Instagram and WhatsApp, alleging that the deals helped create an anti-competitive social networking juggernaut that has left users with few quality alternatives.

Apple will pay $113 million to settle an investigation by nearly three dozen states into the tech giant’s past practice of slowing customers’ old iPhones in an attempt to preserve their batteries.

Even as the coronavirus ravages the United States, a wide array of tourism, hospitality, restaurant and retail groups have fought to preserve their ability to operate anyway, seeking to stave off shutdowns and other restrictions.

Trump's all-caps attacked the integrity of the vote, alleging "BAD THINGS" had occurred despite having failed to present any evidence of electoral fraud. Within minutes, Twitter appended a label to the president's tweet, claiming it is "disputed," but it did not take any action to prevent tens of thousands of users from re-sharing it widely.

“ALERT: Radical Liberals & Dems are trying to steal this election from Trump!” began the short text, concluding: “We need YOU! Show your support at the corner of 12th St. & Arch St. in Philadelphia.”

The campaign and its aides have tapped a network of new and existing Facebook pages, groups and events — some of which have hundreds of thousands of members — to rally people in public this week around the unfounded belief that Democratic candidate Joe Biden is attempting to "steal" the election

The false and misleading claims, which drew rebukes from Twitter and Facebook, were also echoed in approximately 9 million text messages sent by the campaign over the past 24 hours, according to an anti-robocall firm.

As mainstream news organizations urged caution and patience, social media swelled with confusion, conflict and, in some cases, outright fury in response to the president’s statement from the White House, a scenario that law enforcement officials and digital-threat analysts had warned about for months.

An unidentified robocaller has placed an estimated 10 million calls in the past several weeks warning people to "stay safe and stay home," spooking some Americans who said they saw it as an attempt to scare them away from the polls on Election Day.