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.
After settling with other social media companies, the plaintiff dropped his case.
Words are cheap and the pledge lacks enforcement mechanisms.
While Paramount’s $110 billion WBD merger is suddenly on hold in the US, in Europe, the European Commission is ready to allow it after Paramount agreed to concessions including giving up its stake in United International Pictures within 13 months of the deal closing.
[European Commission]
The push to solve issues, including the soaring energy demands of AI data centers, using AI, revealed “more than $5 billion in Federal commitments” across 278 awards and 342 institutions in its list of awards.
Big tech companies like Microsoft and Google have announced millions in compute and AI credits for the effort, but this WSJ report says the administration could give political appointees more power over grants, while prioritizing fellowships and awards for individuals could hurt large universities reliant on federal research funding.
[Nextgov.com]
The former Federal Trade Commission chair under Biden will help lead the city’s Economic Development Corporation, alongside newly announced president Anthony Shorris, who recently worked as a partner at McKinsey.
Khan was known at the FTC for pursuing antitrust action against Big Tech, which often riled up the business community.
Michael Kratsios, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy director, writes on X that Moonshot accessed Nvidia’s high-end GB300 processors in Thailand, which are subject to strict export controls. Kratsios also accuses Moonshot of distilling Anthropic’s Fable AI model to build Kimi K3, an open-source AI system claimed to rival flagship models from US companies.
A federal judge dismissed Google’s lawsuit against the web-scraping service SerpApi after finding that the tech giant’s allegations were “insufficient” to prove a copyright violation.
Google accused SerpApi of using “deceptive means” to scrape its search results, to which SerpApi argued that it’s just doing “what Google does to everyone else.“ The judge is giving Google 21 days to amend its complaint.
[Search Engine Roundtable]
Executive agencies including the Department of Labor and Department of Transportation are joining the app once declared a national security threat. Following the close of the deal to bring TikTok US under a US entity, the Justice Department said government employees are free to download it.
Both houses of France’s Parliament voted to approve a new law that could restrict under-15s from social media as soon as September 1st, while also banning cellphone use in high schools. Australia began restricting kids under 16 from social media last year, though a recent study found that many underage users can still access the platforms.
6,600 noncitizens were registered to vote between 2023 and 2024, due to a DMV error. Fewer than 400 voted, and were registered across both parties or unaffiliated (for context, 154 million voted in the 2024 election). Governor Mikie Sherrill (D) ordered their removal from voter rolls and launched an investigation.
[The New York Times]
In what is thought to be the largest copyright recovery case in history, a federal US judge granted final approval of Anthropic’s landmark $1.5 billion class-action settlement. In 2024, authors sued Anthropic over the training of its Claude AI chatbot using copyrighted works. Authors will be paid “as promptly as possible,” just as soon as lawyers take their $101 million cut.
A state court has granted a preliminary injunction against Kalshi, ruling its sports-related “event contracts” likely violate state online gambling bans. The judge rejected Kalshi’s defense that federal CFTC regulation shields it from state enforcement. Kalshi will likely have to geoblock Washington residents, marking yet another legal setback for prediction markets.
Chris Fall was picked to be the Trump administration’s leader of the US Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI, previously called the AI Safety Institute until it was renamed last year) in April, but now CNBC and Reuters report he is out. The reasons for his departure are unclear, as is the role of CAISI in the administration’s constantly shifting priorities around AI.
[Reuters]
Since the beginning of the AI revolution, a few companies have claimed to be building the best and most powerful AI models. All of them were American. More recently, a few Chinese companies seem to have caught up, shipping models that are much cheaper and maybe also just as good. The Verge’s Hayden Field and Lauren Feiner join the show to explain how China made so much progress, the threat that progress represents to US companies and the US government, and what might happen next.
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The Artificial State author explains how counting everything breaks society — and how college grads booing AI might save us all.
Andy Burnham has now officially replaced Keir Starmer, and is reportedly planning to drop his predecessor’s plans to introduce a government-issued digital ID for all British adults by 2029. Burnham’s spokesperson told BBC News that resources allocated for the scheme will instead go towards “helping with the cost of living.”
The country’s gambling regulator ordered local internet service providers to block access to the Polymarket website on Friday, citing noncompliance concerns with rules for gambling and gaming services. The regulator also said that some bets on the platform “appeared to be rigged.”
According to Reuters, the DOJ has issued a memo stating that “employees of Executive Branch agencies may download TikTok onto their official devices, subject to the agency’s discretion,” now that the deal limiting ByteDance’s ownership is in place and US user data is secured in American data centers.
San Francisco city attorney David Chiu demanded that Apple and Google remove 13 apps that could generate non-consensual nude images. Adam Dema, a spokesperson for Apple confirmed their removal in a statement to The Verge:
“We have always strictly prohibited apps designed to generate, distribute, or consume pornography. ‘Nudification’ apps are against our App Review Guidelines and we have proactively rejected many of these apps and removed many others, including when users have flagged them via our reporting tools. We have removed three of the apps in question and are in the process of terminating their developer accounts from our program.”
Joel Feder at The Drive reported a frightening story about how Flock cameras, recently suspended by the LAPD, tracked him in Minnesota and sent police after him over “stolen plates.” (They were not.) Flock says its cameras worked “correctly” in the lead-up to a potentially deadly incident. But here we are in our new era of computer policing.
The Pentagon may make a deal where it would pay for billions of dollars of compute from SpaceX, according to The Wall Street Journal.
SpaceX already provides compute to Google and Anthropic, and the company wants to do more in cloud computing, the WSJ says.
[The Wall Street Journal]
The DOJ sued Apple in 2024, but the two sides are in “early” and “active” discussions about a settlement, Bloomberg reports.
Around 40 employees received the letters, which ask for meetings with Apple’s lawyers and tell them to “preserve documents and communications,” according to a report from the Financial Times. Apple filed a lawsuit against OpenAI last week and accused two of its former employees of helping the AI giant steal its trade secrets.
[Financial Times]
A new report from Meta’s Oversight Board that tested popular AI models from Anthropic, DeepSeek, Google, Meta, and OpenAI found that each LLM is significantly less likely to criticize governments and leaders known for restricting free speech. The reasons for the refusals are varied and often confusing.
Citing two unnamed sources familiar with the investigation, the Washington Post reported Thursday night that, based on reports from many of the people who fell ill, investigators “have identified shredded iceberg lettuce supplied to Taco Bell restaurants by Taylor Farms as a potential source of contamination.”
Otherwise, CDC officials have only said they have found a likely link among the more than 4,300 cases caused by the “explosive diarrhea parasite.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a spate of new housing policies, including a provision requiring landlords to disclose when rental listings have been altered by AI or with other tools.
The new regulations may not stop brokers from using AI to gussy up mediocre listings, but disclosures may at least prevent prospective tenants from wasting their time touring apartments that look much better online than they do in person.
[The official website of the City of New York]
Bart Butler on encryption, child safety, and why there’s no such thing as a backdoor for only the good guys.
