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.
JD Vance is no stranger to, let’s say, unique takes on things. On a recent episode of noted plagiarist Benny Johnson’s podcast, Vance said he wants to get to the bottom of the whole UFO thing, adding, unprompted, “I don’t think they’re aliens, I think they’re demons.”
In an interview with the New York Times, Neal Mohan was asked about the platform’s responsibility for policing lies, conspiracy theories, and hate speech, but avoided addressing the questions in any substantive way. He wouldn’t even say whether it was wrong to suspend Trump following the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
Each one of the channels on our platform, the New York Times channel, the Interview channel, you have the editorial standards that you live by and they are certainly different across the various channels. And our job is to have a set of rules and guidelines. Every channel will draw a different line in terms of what they think is appropriate.
[New York Times]
Attorney General Nick Brown filed a lawsuit against the prediction market on Friday, alleging that it constitutes illegal gambling. This comes shortly after Kalshi was temporarily shut down in Nevada, and Arizona’s AG filed criminal charges against it. AG Nick Brown drew attention to a particularly daming ad:
In one Kalshi advertisement, one person texts another that they “found a way to bet on the NFL even though we live in Washington,” which seems to acknowledge that Kalshi knows that they are attempting to skirt state law. In fact, Kalshi did find a way to bet on the NFL in Washington; all they had to do was break the law.
This edition is brought to you by FCC chairman Brendan Carr’s remarks at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference:
In a class action lawsuit, an unnamed plaintiff who says she’s a survivor of sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein says the Trump administration and Google have wrongfully disclosed survivors’ personal data. “Google has failed and refuses to remove, de-index, or block access to the offending materials,“ the complaint says.
An Iran-linked group claimed responsibility for the breach and posted documents stolen from Patel’s inbox online, according to Reuters.
The DOJ has reportedly confirmed the breach, with a preliminary review by CNN finding emails from around 2011 to 2022 that “appear to include personal, business and travel correspondence that Patel had with various contacts.”
CBP agents at Miami International Airport briefly detained 20 activists, 18 of whom had their phones taken.
The formal investigation opened by the European Commission will focus on five areas: age assurance, default account settings, reporting of illegal content, dissemination of prohibited products, and the grooming and recruitment of children for criminal activities. These DSA probes can take a while, and no timeline has been provided.
[European Commission - European Commission]
Duh. The quasi-independent board says that expanding Community Notes outside the US — where it launched in lieu of fact checkers in early 2025 — could “pose significant human rights risks and contribute to tangible harms that Meta has a responsibility to avoid or remedy,” according to Niemen Lab.
Elon Musk said it was “war” in 2024, as X filed its antitrust lawsuit against World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) members over their Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative.
Now a judge has dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning it can’t be brought again:
…if facts existed that GARM operated at an X competitor’s behest to put X out of business or that GARM advertisers sought to unfairly exclude competing advertisers from doing business, X would have pleaded those facts. The very nature of the alleged conspiracy does not state an antitrust claim, and the Court
therefore has no qualm dismissing with prejudice.
The statement doesn’t begin to address whether Asus will stop selling future routers in the US, sue, or apply for the FCC’s “conditional approval.” The FCC isn’t asking about security or integrity; it asks for a detailed plan to manufacture routers in the US.
ASUS has proudly served U.S. customers since 1991, with a long-standing commitment to trusted innovation and strong product security. We are confident in the integrity of our supply chain and the security of our networking products. This FCC action has no impact on existing ASUS router users, software updates, and customer support.
The Justice Department’s surprise Live Nation settlement raises big questions about the future of federal antitrust.
But it is expanding its modest American Manufacturing Program. TDK will make camera stabilization sensors, while Bosch will build chips for crash detection and activity tracking. Cirrus Logic and Qnity Electronics are also on board. The $400 million planned for these new partnerships won’t make a major dent in Apple’s reliance on China, though.
The WSJ reports that Means needs the support of every Republican senator to become surgeon general — and she doesn’t have it. The reasons are plentiful, but if you want a rundown, I detailed how Means expertly uses the wellness grifter playbook to spread hokey ideas and sow distrust in health institutions.
The European Commission has preliminarily ruled that Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX, and XVideos have insufficient measures in place to prevent minors from accessing their platforms. The porn sites are being advised to remedy the DSA breaches or risk facing fines:
“At this stage, the Commission considers that Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos need to implement privacy preserving age verification measures to protect children from harmful content.”
The Cupertino company sued former Vision Pro engineer Di Liu last year for allegedly stealing trade secrets before starting a new role at Snap. The case was dismissed this week after Liu agreed to return Apple’s confidential information and pay the company an undisclosed sum for monetary damages.
Musk’s lawyers are trying to overturn the recent verdict that found his self-described “stupid tweets” were liable for losses incurred by Twitter investors, pointing to an emoji reaction to a post on LinkedIn from the account of Judge Kathaleen McCormick. In a filing of her own, Reuters reports McCormick said she hadn’t read the post, and that “I either did not click the ‘support’ icon at all, or I did so accidentally.”
Privatization is no magic bullet. But the status quo is untenable as well.
A former employee of an online sportsbook writes about their experience. It’s not gambling that has been legalized — “what has been legalized is extraction, and the new methods of extraction that are possible using the internet and mobile devices. ” Read the whole thing to find out what got them to quit.
[Defector]
There could be a sticky situation if jurors don’t reach a verdict today on day nine of deliberations, independent journalist Meghann Cuniff reports. One juror is set to leave on a prepaid vacation tomorrow, and the judge hasn’t yet said what would happen if they go before a verdict.
An order that required nonprofit groups to take down online videos of two former DOGE staffers being questioned under oath has been lifted, with US District Judge Colleen McMahon ruling that the risk of “embarrassment and reputational harm” isn’t enough to overcome public interest in the conduct of public officials.
Anthropic is seeking a preliminary injunction to block its designation as a military supply-chain risk, and it just faced off with the Trump administration before Judge Rita Lin, who’ll be making the call. A decision is anticipated in the next few days — for a sense of how the hearing went, you can check out Lawfare’s Molly Roberts Bluesky live-post.
ICE is supposed to be helping TSA at American airports. I didn’t see that at JFK.
Hey, remember that weird trade The Financial Times highlighted? The one about oil? Paul Krugman doesn’t like it — nor does he like the weird Venezuela trade or the one about death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. I’ve written here about how ill-prepared the CFTC is for insider trading cases. Krugman has a solution: call some of it treason and let the FBI — well, the post-Kash Patel FBI — sort it out.
[Paul Krugman]
