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.
Viral posts about insider trading don’t have to be true to be valuable.
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.
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.’”
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.
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.
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.
[Thereallo]
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.
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]
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.”
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]
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.
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.
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]
The former FBI head and special counsel passed away on Friday at the age of 81. Mueller had been a persistent thorn in the side of President Trump, who quickly took to Truth Social to declare, “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.” The New York Times has a lengthy obituary recapping his life and storied and, at times, controversial career:
Robert S. Mueller III, who led the Federal Bureau of Investigation for 12 tumultuous years, brought politically explosive indictments as a special counsel examining Russia’s attack on the 2016 presidential election, and then concluded that he could neither absolve nor accuse President Trump of a crime, died on Friday. He was 81.
The convicted crypto exec has been heaping praise on the president from behind bars. Most recently, posting on X through intermediaries that “Operation Epic Fury is working,” and backing Donald Trump’s war on Iran. According to CoinDesk:
The tone has drawn attention, given Bankman-Fried’s legal position. Presidential pardons have historically extended to financial crimes, and Trump has shown a willingness to grant clemency in high-profile cases. Ross Ulbricht, who operated a digital black market platform called Silk Road, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2015 before Trump freed him shortly after being sworn in in 2025.
Everyone was a bit caught off guard when the DOJ settled its antitrust suit against Live Nation. There was speculation that Donald Trump intervened to push for a settlement. Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that was indeed the case:
After the trial began in March, Trump began calling around to ask why it hadn’t been settled. What’s the holdup? he wanted to know, according to people familiar with the matter. It was an extraordinary role for a president to play in a routine antitrust investigation.
On March 5, both sides met at the White House to hash things out, according to people familiar with the meeting.
The New York Times sued over the Pentagon’s more stringent policies late last year, and following today’s ruling, the Pentagon has been ordered to restore press passes for seven NYT journalists.
[The New York Times]
A Nevada judge has issued a temporary restraining order, saying the company can’t operate without first getting a gaming license. This is an escalation of a turf war between the states and the CFTC over who regulates prediction markets.
And the headline of the essay in which this happens asks if he should be burned at the stake. Father Paolo Benanti, the Papal AI advisor, doesn’t seem too pleased about Thiel’s Antichrist lectures, which Thiel has brazenly brought to Rome. “La Silicon Valley s’était lancée dans un coup d’État permanent.” I don’t think you need to know French to get the gist of that. one, but linked below is a summary of the essay. Make auto-da-fe great again??
[Universal Life Church Monastery]
