The 2024 election

In a pair of Truth Social posts on Sunday, Donald Trump announced a set of picks for his administration’s tech policy team that will report to David Sacks, Trump’s “AI and crypto czar.” The picks include Michael Kratsios, who will lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) if confirmed by the Senate.

Kratsios, who served in Trump’s first term as the White House chief technology officer, also briefly held an acting undersecretary role at the Department of Defense near the end of the term. He later became a managing director at Scale AI and has been helping lead Trump’s tech policy transition team.

President-elect Donald Trump says that VC and All-In podcast co-host David Sacks will be the “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar.”

The appointment of Sacks, who hosted a $300,000-a-person dinner at his San Francisco mansion to fundraise for Trump’s campaign, follows the appointment of fellow PayPal mafia member Elon Musk to co-lead the “Department of Government Efficiency.” According to Bloomberg, like Musk, Sacks will be “a special government employee” who can serve up to 130 days a year without divesting or publicly disclosing his assets.

Jeff Bezos and President-elect Donald Trump famously didn’t get along the last time Trump was in the White House. This time, Bezos says he’s “very optimistic” and even wants to help out.

“I’m actually very optimistic this time around,” Bezos said of Trump during a rare public appearance at The New York Times DealBook Summit on Wednesday. “He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. If I can help him do that, I’m going to help him.”

Meta is mistakenly removing too much content across its apps, according to a top executive.

Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, told reporters on Monday that the company’s moderation “error rates are still too high” and pledged to “improve the precision and accuracy with which we act on our rules.”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met President-elect Donald Trump for dinner at Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday.

“It’s an important time for the future of American Innovation,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement shared with The Verge. “Mark was grateful for the invitation to join President Trump for dinner and the opportunity to meet with members of his team about the incoming Administration.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook managed to forge a personal relationship with Donald Trump during his first Presidential term that other tech firms struggled to replicate. Now, others are trying to follow his template, says a Wall Street Journal report today.

Cook used direct appeals to influence Trump’s 2017 tax policy and to get him to dial back his 2019 tariffs in ways that benefitted Apple. In exchange, Trump got to look good; as the Journal points out, Cook didn’t correct Trump when claimed responsibility for Apple opening an Austin manufacturing plant that had already been around for years and wasn’t even owned by Apple.

Elon Musk’s X may have tweaked its algorithm to boost his account, along with those of other conservative-leaning users, starting around the time he announced his support of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. That’s according to a new study published by the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), which found that Musk’s posts in particular were suddenly much more popular.

The study’s authors — QUT associate professor in digital media Timothy Graham and Monash University communications and media studies professor Mark Andrejevic — first looked at Musk’s engagement before and after his July endorsement of Trump. They report that starting around July 13th, Musks’ posts received 138 percent more views and 238 percent more retweets than before that date.

This week’s presidential election introduced a lot of people to prediction markets.

Kalshi was the number one app in the App Store on Election Day. The CEO of Polymarket claims the Trump campaign first realized they were winning from his startup’s stats, which showed them winning by a landslide hours before news networks called the race. There’s a sense in some tech and finance circles that these betting markets are now a better “wisdom of the crowd” indicator than polls.

Big Tech leaders from across the industry are lining up to congratulate Donald Trump on his victory in the US presidential election. Trump has butted heads with many of the executives now cozying up to the soon-to-be president, who recently threatened to throw Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in prison and said Google could be broken up because its search results are “rigged.”

Despite these comments (and the conflicts during Trump’s previous presidency), many of the tech CEOs targeted by Trump in the past are now coming forward with statements about his win. Here’s what some of the biggest names in tech are saying:

Donald Trump clinched a presidential victory, ushering in another term of environmental rollbacks that’ll make it more difficult to safeguard our air, water, and climate.

“Environmental [regulation] is the biggest tool for stopping growth ... it costs much more to do things environmentally clean,” Trump said in a rambling three-hour interview with Joe Rogan on October 25th, when he falsely claimed the US had “the cleanest air and cleanest water” under his watch.

Donald Trump has been declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election. Trump is the second president in US history to be elected to two nonconsecutive terms and the first convicted felon to be elected president. Trump declared victory early on Wednesday, followed by The Associated Press, The New York Times, and other outlets.

Trump secured narrow victories in battleground states, including Wisconsin, the home of this year’s Republican National Convention. He made gains nearly everywhere in the country, from rural outposts to deep blue cities where fewer voters turned out for Democrats than in previous election cycles.

Arizona resident Jacqueline McAferty is suing Elon Musk and his pro-Trump America PAC in a Texas federal court, alleging that the PAC’s $1 million-a-day lottery to registered voters in swing states was fraud. The proposed class-action lawsuit was filed a day after a Philadelphia judge denied the city’s request to order Musk to end the lottery — and seems to have been spurred by Musk’s legal defense in the Philadelphia case.

The complaint, filed in a federal court in Austin, alleges that Musk falsely claimed the PAC would choose sweepstakes winners randomly when the selections were, in fact, predetermined. The complaint cites comments made yesterday by Chris Gober, a Republican lawyer CNBC identified as America PAC’s former treasurer.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees ahead of Election Day to make sure “the products we build” are “a trusted source of information to people of every background and belief.”

“As with other elections, the outcome will be a major topic of conversation in living rooms and other places around the world,” Pichai said in an internal memo on November 4th obtained by The Verge and first reported on by The Washington Post. “And of course, the outcome will have important consequences.”

It takes me a minute to figure out what’s going on in this TikTok livestream happening on the morning of the US presidential election.

The screen is split in two. On the top, a man is streaming himself from the chest up, shouting at viewers. On the bottom is an electoral map of the US, with each state colored red (Republican), blue (Democrat), yellow (third-party), or tan (unclaimed). The man appears to be auctioning off the Electoral College.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has issued a warning that fake bomb threats are being emailed to US polling locations in multiple states that “appear to originate from Russian email domains.”

“None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far,” the FBI says. The agency says it is working closely with state and local law enforcement to respond to any election threats and urges the public to “remain vigilant” and report suspicious activity to state and local authorities.

Swing state voters are being inundated with text messages seemingly designed to look like they’re coming from supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris or even from her campaign itself. Some of the messages imply that Harris is misleading the public about her efforts to secure a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, while others say she has “pledged to support Israel as they wage their war in Gaza.” Although the texts are written to sound like standard campaign mass messaging, they contain no call to action or URL to a campaign site. But most bizarrely, the sender will reiterate and emphasize that Harris “will always stand with Israel” if the recipient replies identifying themselves as pro-Palestinian.

“I want to make sure we set the record straight,” reads one message that voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania shared with The Verge. “The Kamala Harris campaign has been running conflicting ads about where she stands on Israel. It is just what she has to do to be able to win. I am reaching out to make sure you know Kamala will always stand with Israel.”

For anyone obsessively watching election results in the US, Apple News will bring live updates to iPhone and iPad users’ lockscreens. And if you’ve got a recent iPhone, you can keep tabs on the electoral count right in the Dynamic Island while doing other things on your phone.

To get the updates on your lockscreen, you’ll have to register first. Open up Apple News and tap on the “Follow the 2024 election live” banner. If you don’t see the option right away, look for “Election 2024” under the “Special Coverage” section of the menu. You should get a notification that the Live Activity has been enabled.

Elon Musk’s America PAC can move forward with its $1 million giveaways to voters after a Philadelphia judge declined an emergency petition from District Attorney Larry Krasner to block them.

During a hearing earlier on Monday, a representative for the political action committee said prize winners are not randomly selected and are actually chosen to be paid spokespeople for the PAC, which supports former President Donald Trump, The Associated Press reported. Musk previously advertised the selection as random, but the fine print of the petition that applicants need to sign to enter the giveaway doesn’t mention it.