Big tech companies tend to make a lot of enemies — but there are none more powerful than the US government. Apple, Google, Amazon, and Meta are regularly called in front of Congress to fend off monopoly accusations — and lawmakers bring up bills to rein in the companies just as often. The Federal Trade Commission has taken a particularly central role, leading a lawsuit to sever Facebook and Instagram while blocking new acquisitions for Oculus and the company’s virtual reality wing. Like it or not, these regulatory fights will play a huge role in deciding the future of tech — and neither side is playing nice.
The FTC called Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass price hike “exactly the sort of consumer harm” it had predicted ahead of the company’s Activision-Blizzard buy.
Microsoft’s response (PDF) claims that with included multiplayer and the upcoming day-and-date release of Call of Duty, the offering isn’t degraded at all.
Patrick Orlando, who once led Digital World Acquisition Corp, lied to the public when he said his SPAC didn’t have a target in its S-1 form. It definitely did: Trump Media, parent company of Donald Trump’s Truth Social. The SEC complaint is chock-full of his texts and emails. DWAC, incidentally, already settled a similar suit.
Apparently J. D. Vance didn’t read my PSA about Venmo. Among his contacts? The elites he claims to loathe, execs from Anthropic and AOL, lobbyists, Tucker Carlson, and the people pushing Project 2025.
Earlier this month, the country’s data protection authority (ANPD) issued a temporary measure banning Meta from training its AI models on Brazilian personal data over privacy and transparency concerns.
Like it did following similar constraints with the EU, Meta has now decided to suspend its generative AI tools in the region while it works to find a resolution with ANPD, according to Reuters.
Last night, the campaign sent an email about Musk’s planned donations in support of Trump. It urged supporters to prevent Musk from ruining democracy like he “already ruined Twitter.”
The EU’s General Court has ruled that TikTok parent company ByteDance meets the required user threshold to be a “gatekeeper” under the Digital Markets Act.
TikTok has claimed it wasn’t valuable enough, and failed to obtain interim measures to avoid having to comply with DMA rules while it appealed the designation. The decision can still be appealed to the European Court of Justice.
The agency wants more information about Amazon’s maneuver to hire most of the Adept team and license its technology. Adept said its plans to build “useful general intelligence and an enterprise agent product” would have required “significant attention on fundraising.” The informal inquiry might not lead to an investigation or enforcement, but enforcers are keeping close watch of tech giants and AI.
Musk, who has been a resident of Texas since 2019, says he decided to move the companies because Gavin Newsom didn’t do what Musk told him to. Previously, Musk moved Tesla’s headquarters to Austin after local health officials closed the Fremont plant during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic; Musk has a history of political donations in Texas.
J.D. Vance is anti-Big Tech, pro-crypto
The former tech investor likes the FTC’s Lina Khan and wants to break up Google, citing its liberal bias.
The Wall Street Journal put a number on Musk’s reported donation to a political action committee backing Donald Trump’s campaign and on the formation of America PAC. He’s not on the most recent list of contributors, but both Winklevoss twins, current SpaceX / former Tesla board director Antonio Gracias, and early PayPal exec Ken Howery are.
Trump’s new running mate went from saying “we have a climate problem” in 2020 to being “skeptical of the idea that climate change is caused purely by man,” The New York Times reports. (Research shows greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are to blame.) Vance suddenly threw his support behind Trump, pushed to repeal EV tax credits and rollback pollution regulations.
[The New York Times]
Biden’s top tech adviser says AI is a ‘today problem’
Arati Prabhakar, a former DARPA chief and now director of the White House’s OSTP, says the time to regulate AI is now.
While Trump was speaking onstage at an event, gunshots were heard, and Trump ducked to the ground before being eventually taken offstage by Secret Service agents.
According to The Associated Press, “A local prosecutor says the suspected gunman and at least one attendee are dead,” and in a post on Truth Social, Trump said, “I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear.”
ABC News has live coverage, along with CNN, The New York Times, and Reuters.
A group of international enforcers including the US’s Federal Trade Commission evaluated 642 websites and apps offering subscriptions. They found that almost 76% used at least one potential dark pattern — design tricks meant to steer consumers to a desired outcome — and nearly 67% used more than one possible dark pattern. The most common dark pattern they found were “sneaking practices,” where sites hide or delay information that could sway a consumer’s decision.
The European Commission says it’s made commitments offered by Apple in January legally binding, allowing third-party developers to use the NFC functionality on iOS devices without being tied to Apple Pay or Apple Wallet.
The acceptance officially settles a four-year EU investigation and spares Apple from facing fines of up to $40 billion. EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager said:
“It opens up competition in this crucial sector, by preventing Apple from excluding other mobile wallets from the iPhone’s ecosystem.”
[European Commission - European Commission]