Tech is reshaping the world — and not always for the better. Whether it’s the rules for Apple’s App Store or Facebook’s plan for fighting misinformation, tech platform policies can have enormous ripple effects on the rest of society. They’re so powerful that, increasingly, companies aren’t setting them alone but sharing the fight with government regulators, civil society groups, and internal standards bodies like Meta’s Oversight Board. The result is an ongoing political struggle over harassment, free speech, copyright, and dozens of other issues, all mediated through some of the largest and most chaotic electronic spaces the world has ever seen.
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Oral arguments in its case against the federal divest-or-ban bill will be scheduled for this September, according to an order from the DC Circuit Court. That’s just months before the initial January 19th deadline its Chinese owner ByteDance has to sell the app or face a ban. The clock keeps running unless the court says otherwise.
[DocumentCloud]
Ryan Salame, a top lieutenant at FTX, got over seven years in prison. He’s the second FTX official sentenced, after SBF himself, and did not cooperate with the government — unlike several other members of the inner circle.
It’s been five years since “threadnought,” a giant Twitter thread in which lawyers battled trolls who were trying to silence critics of an anime voice actor accused of sexual misconduct.
Now, with a law firm drafted from the thread’s funniest people, lawyer Akiva Cohen represents many former Twitter employees who are suing Elon Musk over how he fired them after buying the company.
Last June, I wrote how the government was helping Big Telecom squeeze out city-run internet, in no small part because many states have laws that ensure telecom dollars wind up in private hands! Thankfully, one fewer state is doing that now:
The keffiyeh has become a symbol of the movement for Palestine, and model Bella Hadid wearing a keffiyeh-inspired dress at Cannes was a political statement. The head scarf has been banned by some government bodies.
Clothing has always been a core part of culture — a way to communicate ideas and identities. Last summer I wrote about Palestinian embroidery (tatreez) and ongoing efforts to digitize and protect it.
The Federal Trade Commission says Best Buy and its Geek Squad topped the list of most frequently impersonated companies by scammers in 2023. With 52,000 reports of fraud, consumers lost $15 million to those scams.
But scammers made the most money from impersonating Microsoft, according to the report, which found 7,000 reports of fraud and $60 million total losses.
Google waves around a cashier’s check in an attempt to avoid a jury trial
Weirdly, experts say the DOJ’s demand for a jury trial in the Google ad antitrust lawsuit is just as strange.
Wait, you’re telling me that consumer tech can be foiled by a determined and well-funded military?
The new outages appeared to be the first time the Russians have caused widespread disruptions of Starlink. If they continue to succeed, it could mark a tactical shift in the conflict, highlighting Ukraine’s vulnerability and dependence on the service provided by Mr. Musk’s company.
Time for Musk to deploy the Starshield! Or, did he?
The State Assembly has passed a bipartisan bill with zero votes against it. It has to pass the senate and governor next.
Louisiana passed its law in January, forcing Pornhub to scan government IDs. Pornhub told Gizmodo that traffic fell 80 percent in the state — claiming that seekers “migrated to darker corners of the internet that don’t ask users to verify age.”
Sure, OpenAI may be facing legal troubles for its ChatGPT voice. But it kind of looks like the company has already lost in the court of public opinion...
The railway company reached a settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency that includes $235 million for cleanup, $30 million to monitor water quality, $25 million for a community health program, and a $15 million civil penalty. Norfolk Southern has also agreed to a $600 million settlement with residents after the disaster released hazardous chemicals including carcinogen vinyl chloride.
How the FBI built its own smartphone company to hack the criminal underworld
Cybersecurity journalist Joseph Cox, author of the new book Dark Wire, tells us the wild, true story behind secure phone startup Anom.
“It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster,” said US Attorney General Merrick Garland, in a statement announcing the DOJ antitrust lawsuit.
The feds have filed an antitrust lawsuit seeking to break up Live Nation, the parent company of event ticketing giant Ticketmaster, and we’re about to hear more details from the government’s side in this press conference.
Update, May 27th: Replaced live stream link with archive copy from YouTube.
The announcement could come as soon as Thursday. Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, calls itself “the largest producer of live music concerts in the world.” It’s one of many agents of consolidation that drastically reshaped music.
[The Washington Post]
Wired found thousands of event listings that violated the platform’s policies, including pages claiming to sell drugs, escort services, and social media engagement.
Sometimes, the recommended events were offensive or potentially harmful: pages promoting illegal drug sales were displayed next to addiction recovery events, for example.
The iPhone maker has filed a suit at the EU’s General Court, according to Bloomberg, after arguing that the investigation into the App Store’s music-streaming app distribution had failed “to uncover any credible evidence of consumer harm.”
The probe, sparked by an antitrust complaint Spotify raised in 2019, also ordered Apple to stop preventing music-streaming apps from advertising cheaper deals available outside the App Store.