FCC chairman says Twitter, Facebook, Google may need transparency law

The leader of the Federal Communications Commission says that major web companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google have offered little transparency into how they work — and it's time to seriously consider forcing them to tell us.

In a blog post today, FCC chairman Ajit Pai calls out a long list of algorithmic and moderation decisions by web companies (including Twitter choosing not to ban New York Times columnist Sarah Jeong, a former Verge writer) and says that "consumers have virtually no insight" into how or why they happen. The same goes for privacy issues around how and where our data is used, Pai says.

"The public deserves to know more about how these companies operate," he writes. "And we need to seriously think about whether...

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