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.
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What Google rivals want after DOJ’s antitrust trial win
The judge found that Google violated US antimonopoly law, but the rivals say imposing effective remedies is just as critical.
The FCC proposes requiring robocallers to disclose when they’re using AI
Robocallers would have to reveal they’re using the tech on every AI-generated call.
A day after the UK’s content regulator warned social media platforms against inciting violence, Musk posted a screenshot of a fake headline claiming rioters would be sent to detention camps on the Falklands.
Musk — who recently sued an ad group for “illegally boycotting” X over its lack of safety standards — deleted the post after 30 minutes. The ad group has since disbanded.
The Wall Street Journal delves into a loose network of TikTok accounts churning out videos with AI-generated voiceovers making ridiculous claims — both positive and negative — about Donald Trump. A political motive is possible, but it sounds likely they’re less a coordinated operation than a bunch of people ripping each other’s content off for views, and Trump is simply the best engagement-bait around.
The incredibly online Harris-Walz campaign cited Dril’s “im not mad. please dont that I got mad” tweet (which is somehow not among the dozens of their posts saved in our preservation effort) in a campaign press release sent to reporters.
That definitely says... something about this year’s presidential election, as does Dril’s immediate response.
DOJ antitrust chief is ‘overjoyed’ after Google monopoly verdict
AAG Jonathan Kanter says the Google monopoly verdict belongs on the ‘Mount Rushmore of antitrust.’
Medialab, started by Whisper co-founders Michael Heyward and Brad Brooks, has left a trail of lawsuits following its acquisitions. Apparently it loaded up on cheap debt — and the Genius lawsuit alleges that it’s slow-rolling its acquisition payments to service that debt.
The Competition and Markets Authority says it has “sufficient information” to launch a merger inquiry into Amazon’s partnership with Anthropic. The regulator has until October 4th to launch a more in-depth probe.
Amazon told the Financial Times that its Anthropic deal “does not raise any competition concerns or meet the CMA’s own threshold for review.”
NPR spoke to the guy who owned HarrisWalz.com until yesterday. He’s made a habit of buying up political domains and sitting on them for years, waiting for a payoff:
In August 2020, anticipating Harris might run again in the future, he snapped up 15 Harris-related domain names, combined with “every sort of folksy white man I could think of who was big at the time.” Those include Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and, of course, Walz.
The newspaper will file an amended complaint by August 12. If the Times wins its suit, adding those works means those two companies are on the hook for a minimum of $7.5 billion in statutory damages alone.
The former president continues down the young male conservative influencer circuit, lining up a conversation with the reported megadonor and CEO of Tesla. No details yet beyond it happening “Monday night,” but the bar for a Musk political interview is low.
[Truth Social]
‘There’s no price’ Microsoft could pay Apple to use Bing: all the spiciest parts of the Google antitrust ruling
Finally, a legal ruling on whether TikTok is a real search engine. (It’s not.)
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign page quickly shared a video of her newly-selected running mate Tim Walz on TikTok, showcasing his ability to produce viral soundbites. The Harris campaign’s use of TikTok underscores why it’s so hard for politicians to quit, even as both parties overwhelmingly passed a bill that could end up banning it.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign announced its running mate pick Tim Walz mostly in a typical press flurry — except on TikTok, where the Kamala HQ account shared a purposely glitchy montage of Walz’s public appearances. It’s another example of the Harris campaign very deliberately tapping into trends, memes, and formats on the platform.
US v. Google: all the news from the search antitrust showdown
One of the biggest tech antitrust trials since the US took on Microsoft is underway.
The program, which paid users around 38 cents a day to engage with videos, was already suspended in the region after the bloc opened an investigation in April.
A separate EU Commission probe into TikTok’s allegedly addictive design, and its content moderation rules for minors remains open.
Responding to the RIAA’s copyright lawsuit, AI songmaker sites defended their models as being like kids learning rock and roll or tools enabling creativity. Country artist Tift Merritt had a different take after being shown a song AI music generator Udio spat out when prompted to mimic her style:
... the “imitation” Udio created “doesn’t make the cut for any album of mine.”
“This is a great demonstration of the extent to which this technology is not transformative at all ... It’s stealing.”
I had similar thoughts back in March.
It’s one of a few updates the company shared in a post how it will support Reddit communities during elections. Reddit also plans to release an “after-election report” in Q1 2025 about how things went on the platform and is experimenting with a dedicated tip line for moderators to escalate election-related concerns.