https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xgq4xn/white-house-report-is-pure-propaganda-for-atandt-verizon-and-comcast > In 2017, big telecom lobbyists convinced Congress to eliminate broadband privacy protections that could have reined in the wireless industry’s abuse of consumer location data. Later that same year, telecom lobbyists convinced the Trump administration to not only eliminate popular net neutrality rules—but much of the FCC’s consumer protection authority. Three years later and a new White House report claims that both actions generated up to $50 billion in consumer benefits. There’s just one problem: none of the claims are actually true. The central thrust of the White House’s Latest "Economic Report of the President" is that taking an axe to industry oversight created untold benefits for consumers. When it comes to eliminating oversight of the telecom sector (pages 120-123), the report is particularly creative. The FCC’s broadband privacy rules, killed in 2017 by a 50-48 vote in the GOP-controlled Senate, would have forced ISPs to clearly disclose what consumer data is being collected and who it’s being sold to. The rules also required that consumers opt in to the collection and sale of repeatedly abused location and financial data. “We estimate the effect of overturning the opt-in rule to be a net savings of about $11 billion per year,” the report claims, adding that added “competition in online advertising” would generate up to $22 billion in additional consumer benefits. The study also promised that killing net neutrality rules (like restrictions that prohibited ISPs from throttling or price gouging streaming competitors like Netflix) would deliver tens of billions in additional ambiguous benefits to the American consumer. > “We find that, by removing vertical pricing regulations, the Trump Administration’s ‘Restoring Internet Freedom’ order will increase real incomes by more than $50 billion per year and consumer welfare by almost $40 billion per year,” the report said. But consumer groups, telecom lawyers, and antitrust experts consulted by Motherboard say the White House claims are largely nonsense. Several were quick to note that the study is one of the most misleading government tech policy reports they’d ever seen.