Thomas Ricker
Peak deepfake America.
After assailing Pope Leo XIV and calling him “WEAK on crime,” Donald Trump, a real US President, posted this AI-generated image of himself as some kind of Jesus, healing… Ethan Hawke?
Politics
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.
Dominic Preston
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is choking off the world’s supply of fertilizer feedstock, triggering concerns about rising food prices and shortages.
Abigail Bassett
Terrence O'Brien
DHS is trying to force Reddit to expose a user who said mean things about ICE.
After failing to get details about a user who said “TSA sucks and we all know it,” via a traditional court order, DHS is now dragging Reddit in front of a grand jury. The government has grown increasingly aggressive in its attempts to deal with online critics. Reddit has not said whether it plans to fight the subpoena, but according to The Intercept:
“Privacy is central to how Reddit operates, and we take our commitment to protecting that seriously,” the company said in a statement to The Intercept. “We do not voluntarily share information with any government, especially not on users exercising their rights to criticize the government or plan a protest.”
Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Arizona’s criminal charges against Kalshi are put on hold.
Federal Judge Michael Liburdi issued a temporary restraining order halting the state’s case against the prediction market. The CFTC has stepped in to stop Arizona and other states from attempting to supersede federal efforts to regulate prediction markets, but the Trump Administration has largely avoided actually regulating them. Perhaps unsurprisingly, according to Business Insider:
Since Donald Trump returned to office, Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., has become a paid advisor to Kalshi, and an investment firm he works for invested in Polymarket.
The truth favored the Iranian regime. AI slop carried its message better.
Sarah Jeong
Dominic Preston
Lauren Feiner
Top antitrust litigators against Google and Live Nation leave the Justice Department.
Attorneys who led trial teams against Live Nation, Google, and Apple are among the recent departures, following the DOJ’s Live Nation settlement, Bloomberg and Mlex report. David Dahlquist, who led the DOJ teams against Live Nation and for Google search remedies, announced he’d given notice at a Google hearing Wednesday.
Stevie Bonifield
US appeals court rules New Jersey can’t regulate Kalshi.
According to the ruling, New Jersey regulators can’t ban Kalshi from allowing users in the state to bet on sporting events, as Reuters reports:
“A lower-court judge had sided with New York-based Kalshi and issued a preliminary injunction, prompting New Jersey to appeal. But a majority of the judges on the 3rd Circuit panel concluded the Commodity Exchange Act likely preempted state law.”
Terrence O'Brien
Polymarket pulls Iran rescue bets following political backlash.
There are few things that Polymarket seems to think are too controversial to allow betting on. But apparently, the potential capture or death of an American service member is one of them. The prediction market is already facing pressure from several states and Democrats in Congress. According to CoinDesk:
A Polymarket spokesperson said the listing did not meet its integrity standards [and it was] removed shortly after it appeared. The company added that it is reviewing how the market passed internal safeguards.
Elizabeth Lopatto
“They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
The abrupt closure of a tuition-free private school founded by Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg’s wife, will dump extra students into a local school district, increasing expected enrollment by 20 percent.
Now there’s a $70 million bond measure up for votes to help deal with the influx. The text of the measure says the closure created “an immediate crisis” for the school district.
Zuckerberg-funded school to close, creating ‘crisis’ for Bay Area district
[San Francisco Chronicle]
Emma Roth
The CFTC is suing three states for trying to regulate prediction markets.
Lawsuits against Arizona, Connecticut, and Illinois accuse the states of violating the CFTC’s “exclusive regulatory authority” over prediction betting markets operated by companies like Kalshi and Polymarket. The CFTC claims the three states have attempted to “outlaw, regulate, or otherwise restrain” prediction betting as concerns grow over potential insider trading.
Richard Lawler
Gaby Del Valle
Viral posts about insider trading don’t have to be true to be valuable.
Mia Sato
Elizabeth Lopatto
Mark Zuckerberg: constitutionally bitchmade.
Twenty-four days after lying his face off to Joe Rogan and whining about government censorship, Zuckerberg “proactively reached out to a senior government official to let him know Meta was already taking action to remove content on behalf of that official’s government operation — including truthful information like the names of public servants working for the federal government.“ Siri, play my leitmotif.
Gaby Del Valle
Judge rules Trump illegally shut down CBP’s border-processing app.
Shortly upon returning to office, Trump terminated CBP One, an app the Biden administration used to streamline border processing, and revoked the status of 900,000 migrants who had used it to apply for temporary parole, sending them a mass email reading, “It is time for you to leave the United States.”
In terminating parole “without observing the process mandated by statute and by their own regulations,” US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs ruled, the administration “took action that was ‘not in accordance with law.’”
Jay Peters
AI companies that want to work with the state of California will have to meet new privacy and security standards.
Despite the Trump administration’s efforts to try to limit states from regulating AI, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order on Monday with the new guardrails.
The right wing used to have a stranglehold on traditionally American iconography. Now the flag and the Constitution are symbols for the left.
Sarah Jeong
Thomas Ricker
Japan gets an alternative iOS game store.
Aptoide’s AppArena is now available in Japan as an Apple Store alternative. It comes after regulators required Apple and Google to support third-party app marketplaces and payment systems. AppArena features AI-assisted discovery of apps and games, cashback rewards, and 15-minute game trials.
Richard Lawler
What’s inside the White House app?
According to “I Decompiled the White House’s New App,” the Android version has some odd choices for a government app that mostly shows content from the White House website.
That includes enabling location tracking and other monitoring via OneSignal’s analytics (which the company says are opt-in at the OS level), JavaScript loaded from some guy’s GitHub, an injected script to hide things like consent dialogs on pages users open in the app, and other hooks to non-government third-party services.
I Decompiled the White House's New App
[Thereallo]
Terrence O'Brien
The No Kings protests just keep getting bigger.
Organizers say over eight million took to the streets on Saturday, taking part in over 3,300 protests across the country. The October day of protest attracted over seven million people to 2,700-plus events. Instead of losing momentum, the No Kings movement showed that anger with President Trump continues to grow.
Terrence O'Brien
Look up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s… a demon?
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.”
Terrence O'Brien
YouTube CEO refuses to talk about content moderation.
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.
What Is YouTube’s Dominance Doing to Us? We Asked Its C.E.O.
[New York Times]
Tina Nguyen
Quiet part being said out loud, part infinity.
This edition is brought to you by FCC chairman Brendan Carr’s remarks at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference:
Dominic Preston
Lauren Feiner
Google’s AI search tool accused of disclosing Epstein survivors’ personal information.
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.
Emma Roth
FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email was hacked.
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.”