A proposed privacy bill in Washington state is drawing praise from advocates for clarifying that consumers can opt out of ad targeting and profiling. But the ANA says the bill will increase fragmentation.

Facebook's decision to continue allowing lies in political ads, but let users limit how many of these ads appear in their newsfeeds, isn't going over well with critics.

"Congress can no longer sit idly by in this data privacy debate," Senator Mark Warner said Thursday.

The Commission must make more robust changes to accurately understand the state of broadband access and adoption across the country," Access Now, New America's Open Technology Institute, Public Knowledge and others say in a filing with the FCC.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo plans to introduce legislation that would ban carriers from blocking or throttling traffic, and from charging higher fees for prioritized delivery. The potential bill would also prohibit broadband providers from engaging in "zero-rating," which involves exempting some material from consumers' data caps.

California's new privacy law is slated to take effect in just a few weeks, but there is still significant disagreement between businesses and privacy advocates about how the measure will affect online behavioral advertising.

A mandate to honor do-not-track signals "will harm consumers, as it could be interpreted to remove their ability to set granular preferences," the ANA says.

"I'm increasingly concerned about the use of privacy as a shield for anti-competitive conduct," Rep. David Cicilline reportedly said.

"Policy affecting the entire consumer economy and consumers nationwide is being shaped by Europe and a single state," the coalition Privacy for America said in a letter sent to lawmakers Thursday.

In a move Google is framing as protective of privacy, the company says it will stop including information about the type of material on a publisher's page in the bid requests it sends to buyers participating in Google auctions.