Policy

This time from the Department of Justice, after the Federal Trade Commission said it was referring a complaint to the agency based on an investigation involving a children’s privacy law. The FTC said it doesn’t usually make this kind of referral public, but believed it in the public interest. TikTok said it “strongly disagree[s]” with the allegations and said many of them are outdated.

In a statement published yesterday, Stanford University denied it was shuttering the prominent research center studying abuse and disinformation online. In recent months, key staff have departed and others have been told to look for new jobs.

The Internet Observatory is, however, looking for money: Stanford says “founding grants will soon be exhausted” as the center moves under new leadership.

Regulators accepted measures Apple proposed earlier this year, including letting third-party developers access Apple’s NFC technology without using Apple Pay or Apple Wallet, three people familiar with the agreement told the Financial Times.

The final details are still being negotiated, but a settlement is expected in the next few weeks. The settlement will be in place for a decade.

A deep dive by Rolling Stone tracked the deaths of children who died after taking fake drugs they bought on the app. Parents and law enforcement officials blame, in part, the disappearing messages feature that made Snapchat popular in the first place.

The media group, which owns wide swath of TV networks around the country, has leveraged that reach to syndicate stories about Biden’s fitness for office, Popular Information reports. The stories, which sometimes included misleadingly-edited clips, published at the same times on dozens of local news sites Sinclair owns. Sinclair called claims it’s deceived its audience “outrageous and offensive.”

Days after the Financial Times said that Apple would be found guilty of not complying with obligations under the DMA to allow app developers to “steer” users to offers outside its App Store, the bloc’s competition chief Margrethe Vestager had this to say:

We have a number of Apple issues, I find them very serious. I was very surprised that we would have such suspicions of Apple being non-compliant.

I’m pretty skeptical that the “crypto voter” exists — there are plenty of other issues that weigh higher in people’s minds — but there’s a lot of spending happening. That said, Sam Bankman-Fried spent a great deal and got nothing, so...

Following on the reporting earlier this year from The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal profiles a teen influencer — whose mom is aware the account’s biggest fans are adult men.

Illinois has passed a law to protect child influencers, and more legislation is almost certainly forthcoming.

EU regulators are preparing to charge Apple over claims it’s stifling competition by charging developers to link users to outside purchases, according to The Financial Times. The decision is expected in the coming weeks and would mark the first time the EU has charged a company under the newly-imposed Digital Markets Act.

The settlement will resolve the SEC’s lawsuit that accused the bankrupt crypto firm and its former CEO Do Kwon of securities fraud. In addition to the hefty penalty, the settlement bans Terraform Labs and Kwon from buying or selling crypto assets. Kwon is still awaiting extradition in Montenegro.

Reuters reports that executives are concerned shipments of their new AI-powered laptops could be halted if Arm wins the two-year legal battle against Qualcomm. The trial is scheduled to begin in December, but only if they can’t agree to licensing terms first.

As D2D Advisory CEO Jay Goldberg noted to the publication:

“There is a degree of absurdity of Arm suing its second-biggest customer, and Qualcomm being sued by its largest supplier.”

Shein, the Chinese fast fashion company popular in the US, recorded $32.2 billion in sales. To give you a sense of scale, Zara’s sales came in at $28 billion, and H&M’s at $22 billion.

Under EU regulations, Shein will face more scrutiny alongside companies like Amazon. Shein is expected to go public in the US this year.

In a new interview with The Financial Times, Jonathan Kanter says regulators may need to act urgently to keep AI from being controlled by already-dominant tech companies. Kanter has been leading the antitrust charge against tech intermediaries that are “more powerful than the products and services or the entities they intermediate.”

Dorsey donated 14 Bitcoins to Nostr’s anonymous founder in 2022. That founder is Giovanni Torres Parra, according to Business Insider. Parra is a devotee of “far-right conspiracy theorist Olavo de Carvalho,” who “claimed that Pepsi-Cola was flavored with stem cells of aborted fetuses.” 

The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) came into force in March, resulting in the launch of the following new third-party iOS app marketplaces:

• AltStore Pal (hands-on)

• SetApp Mobile (hands-on)

• Aptoide game store (hands-on)

• Mobivention (hands-on)

Each has its own pros and cons but none has been able to upset the balance of power in Europe.