Advertisers aren’t buying what X is selling. Is that a crime?
Since Musk’s takeover in late 2022, X’s ad revenue has plunged. Fellas, is it illegal for brands to refuse to advertise on my social media site? If you’re Elon Musk, the answer is yes. This week, Musk’s social media company X (formerly Twitter) filed an eyebrow-raising lawsuit against an advertising industry group and several major brands, including Unilever (maker of Dove soap), Mars Inc. (maker of lots of candy), and CVS. It argues that the companies coordinated an advertising boycott against X that not only led to “massive economic harm,” but even violated antitrust law because they colluded to specifically target X, making it less competitive in selling digital ads.…
A historic ruling against Google could change the internet as we know it
An attendee walks past a Google logo during the Viva Technology conference at Parc des Expositions Porte de Versailles on June 14, 2023 in Paris, France. | Chesnot/Getty Images A federal judge found Monday that Google’s search business constitutes an illegal monopoly, a landmark ruling and major victory for the Biden administration as it seeks to clamp down on Big Tech. The decision has the potential to bring major changes to the internet — and sends a signal that no company is too big to regulate. US District Judge Amit Mehta found that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” That involved protecting…
The perfect escape from our online world
Miscellaneous second hand vinyl LPs of rock and pop music from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s in record shop, London, UK. | Alex Segre/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Earlier this year, Justin Murphy, the founder of the media and education company Other Life, wanted to offer a premium product to his newsletter subscribers. But for months, he’d been grappling with a problem familiar to anyone who writes online: an attention deficit. “Words on the internet are undervalued,” he said. “There are too many of them, and it’s too easy to generate them.” Aware that many people who subscribe to his online newsletter don’t actually get around to reading it,…
It’s practically impossible to run a big AI company ethically
Anthropic was supposed to be the good AI company. The ethical one. The safe one. It was supposed to be different from OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. In fact, all of Anthropic’s founders once worked at OpenAI but quit in part because of differences over safety culture there, and moved to spin up their own company that would build AI more responsibly. Yet lately, Anthropic has been in the headlines for less noble reasons: It’s pushing back on a landmark California bill to regulate AI. It’s taking money from Google and Amazon in a way that’s drawing antitrust scrutiny. And it’s being accused of aggressively scraping data from websites without…
Intel was once a Silicon Valley leader. How did it fall so far?
Visitors visit the booth of Intel at the 2023 Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang province, November 1, 2023. | CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images<br> Intel stock is tumbling amid news that the company will lay off 15 percent of its staff after a steep decline in revenue and billions in losses in its chip foundry business. It’s the largest drop for the company in half a century; at Friday’s closing bell, shares were trading at $21.48 — a price not seen since 2013. The company is scrambling to shore up reserves by introducing layoffs and suspending stock dividends. But even those moves may not be enough to return the veteran…
Our phones don’t have to make us feel miserable
Features like endless scrolling and nonstop notifications keep us hooked to our phones. You can turn them off. Technology is on its way to getting a little bit safer. The US Senate on Tuesday passed a pair of bills — the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) — designed to protect kids online. It’s shockingly bipartisan: The vote to approve the package of bills was 91 to 3. That broad support is a big deal, but it’s far from a done deal. The legislation, which still has to clear the House of Representatives, would create a sweeping set of rules…
The worst internet outage still hasn’t happened yet
Billboards in Times Square went dark on July 19, after a bad Crowdstrike update crashed millions of computers worldwide. | Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images The world is still dealing with the fallout from the CrowdStrike screwup that took millions of computers offline last week. Some IT workers have had to fix each computer manually, walking from machine to machine with a USB stick, and some remote workers say they’re locked out of their computers with no fix in sight. All because of a few lines of bad code. It started in the early morning hours of Friday, July 19, when the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike pushed an update to its…
TikTok Shop’s pushy ad strategy, explained
Since TikTok Shop’s US launch last fall, users have been complaining that they’re seeing too many product ads. | Ezra Acayan/Getty Images If you’ve opened TikTok recently, you’ve probably seen an ad for a product sold in the new, in-app TikTok Shop, which made its official US launch last September. In fact, you’ve probably seen the same TikTok Shop ad multiple times. With a sigh, you swipe away, but a few swipes later, there it is again. Judging by the complaints strewn over the internet about the ads, people are not fans of so much advertising disrupting the flow of endless scrolling. In a series of unscientific tests using my…
The Supreme Court also handed down a hugely important First Amendment case today
BATH, UNITED KINGDOM – APRIL 20: In this photo illustration a smartphone screen displays a image of Donald Trump's page on the Truth Social app on April 20 2024 in Bath, England. Former US President and Republican candidate Donald Trump’s social media business became publicly listed recently however the value of the stock has fallen dramatically in recent weeks. (Photo by Anna Barclay/Getty Images) If you spent Monday morning following each of the cases handed down by the Supreme Court, you’re probably experiencing a bit of whiplash. The biggest news out of the Court on Monday, of course, is a sweeping decision holding that former President Donald Trump was effectively…
The Supreme Court hands an embarrassing defeat to America’s Trumpiest court
WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 07: U.S. President Joe Biden greets Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson before delivering the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on February 7, 2023 in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. The speech marks Biden's first address to the new Republican-controlled House. (Photo by Jacquelyn Martin-Pool/Getty Images) The Supreme Court handed down a stern rebuke to some of the most right-wing judges in the country on Wednesday, holding that no, judges do not get to micromanage how the Biden administration speaks to social media companies. The vote in Murthy v. Missouri was…