News Links

The attorney general of the District of Columbia sued Amazon on Wednesday, accusing it of violating consumer protection laws by making slower deliveries to Prime members in historically lower-income neighborhoods.

In one of the first complaints of its kind, which was filed with the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb said Amazon had deliberately and secretly stopped its fastest delivery service to the nearly 50,000 Prime subscribers in certain ZIP codes that were lower-income neighborhoods.

According to the lawsuit, Amazon has used third parties like United Parcel Service and the Postal Service to make Prime deliveries in those areas for the past two years. That resulted in slower deliveries than those made by Amazon’s own delivery drivers, who serve other Washington residents.

Amid an unprecedented cyberattack on telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Verizon, U.S. officials have recommended that Americans use encrypted messaging apps to ensure their communications stay hidden from foreign hackers.

The hacking campaign, nicknamed Salt Typhoon by Microsoft, is one of the largest intelligence compromises in U.S. history, and it has not yet been fully remediated. Officials on a news call Tuesday refused to set a timetable for declaring the country’s telecommunications systems free of interlopers. Officials had told NBC News that China hacked AT&T, Verizon and Lumen Technologies to spy on customers.

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour.
https://www.ft.com/content/69f86be5-ecdd-4222-92aa-3df0a8db213c

Meta has conceded it was too heavy-handed with certain content moderation in the past, in an overture to Donald Trump as its chief executive Mark Zuckerberg seeks an “active role” in shaping tech policy debates with the incoming US administration. 

Sir Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said the social media platform previously “overdid it a bit” when moderating pandemic-related content, a concession that appears designed to placate the president-elect, who has repeatedly accused the company of censorship and silencing conservative speech.

Clegg’s comments come as Silicon Valley leaders are jockeying to curry favour with Trump, who in the past has repeatedly clashed with what he considers a left-leaning constituency that has funded his opponents and censored him.

In a briefing with journalists, Clegg said Zuckerberg was keen to play “an active role in the debates that any administration needs to have about maintaining America’s leadership in the technological sphere”.

In the wake of high-profile hacks affecting hundreds of millions of Americans, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is proposing a rule limiting data brokers’ ability to sell Americans’ sensitive personal and financial information.

Under the proposed rule, data brokers that sell information about consumers’ income, credit history, credit score, or debt payments would be considered consumer reporting agencies. As such, they’d be required to comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), a law limiting how these agencies can obtain and use the information provided in consumer reports. In other words, they’d be treated like credit bureaus and background check companies, which already have to comply with the FCRA.

Antitrust enforcers with the Federal Trade Commission have opened a wide-ranging investigation into Microsoft’s business practices, starting a big legal project that an incoming Trump administration must take up or abandon.

The FTC is investigating Microsoft’s cloud computing business and related product lines such as artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, according to a person who was not authorized to discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

It’s the latest action of more than three years of aggressive antitrust enforcement shepherded by FTC Chair Lina Khan, who was elevated to lead the agency by President Joe Biden after he came into office pledging tougher scrutiny of monopolistic behavior by Big Tech companies.

Intel (INTC) stock rallied early Monday on news that CEO Pat Gelsinger has stepped down. But the stock later retreated underlining the market's uncertainty about the chip giant's future in what Gelsinger himself called a "challenging year."

"Today is, of course, bittersweet as this company has been my life for the bulk of my working career," Gelsinger said in a statement. "It has been a challenging year for all of us as we have made tough but necessary decisions to position Intel for the current market dynamics.

The momentum of Thanksgiving — which saw consumers spend a record $33.6 billion spent globally online on the day — looks like it continued into Black Friday, with a bang. Adobe said that in the U.S., consumers made a record-breaking $10.8 billion of purchases, up 10.2% on last year. Meanwhile, Salesforce is giving a much higher overall spent estimate: $17.5 billion spent in the U.S., up 7% YoY. Globally, Salesforce said spending also reached a new high: $74.4 billion was spent in the 24-hour period, up 5% on a year ago.

For a point of comparison, in 2023, Adobe said Black Friday online spend in the U.S. was $9.8 billion, and Salesforce said global spend was $70.9 billion.

Attorneys for tech billionaire Elon Musk have filed for a preliminary injunction against OpenAI, several of its co-founders, and its investor and close collaborator, Microsoft, to prevent OpenAI and other named defendants from engaging in what Musk’s counsel claims is anticompetitive behavior.

The motion for an injunction, which was filed late on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, accuses OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman, Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder and former OpenAI board member Reid Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member and Microsoft VP Dee Templeton of various illicit activities — and seeks to halt them. The allegations include:

It is also not clear exactly which platforms will be covered by the ban. The prime minister has said that Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram and X will be included, but YouTube and messaging apps including WhatsApp are expected to be exempt.

France last year passed a law requiring parental consent for social media users under 15, and it has been pushing for similar measures across the European Union. Florida this year imposed a ban for users under 14 and required parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds, but that law could face constitutional challenges.

Editors’ Picks

The Triumph of the Gobbler Sandwich

Moths Were Destroying My Clothes. Tiny Parasitic Wasps Saved Them.

For These TikTok Dramas, It Is All About the Storytelling Leo Puglisi, a 17-year-old Australian teenager who runs a news site, 6 News, that is staffed mostly by teens, said he had full confidence that his 14-year-old brother would easily find a way to circumvent any restriction.

TechCrunch has confirmed with sources close to the company that Meta plans to build a new, major, fibre-optic subsea cable extending around the world — a 40,000+ kilometer project that could total more than $10 billion of investment. Critically, Meta will be the sole owner and user of this subsea cable — a first for the company and thus representing a milestone for its infrastructure efforts.

Sunil Tagare, a subsea cable expert (and pioneer in the space, as founder of Flag Telecom), who was the first to report Meta’s plans back in October, told TechCrunch that the plan is to start with a budget of $2 billion but as the project builds out that figure is likely to go up to more than $10 billion as the project extends into years of work.

Sources close to Meta confirmed the project but said it is still in its early stages. Plans have been laid out, but physical assets have not, and they declined to discuss budget. The expectation is that Meta will talk more publicly about it in early 2025, when it will confirm plans for the cable, including intended route, capacity, and some of the reasoning behind building it.

Under the new laws, which are scheduled to come into effect in about one year, children in Australian under the age of 16 will be banned from setting up accounts on popular social media sites including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.

Multiple opinion polls have shown the vast majority of Australian voters are supportive of the new laws in principle, with a YouGov survey released on Tuesday finding 77% were in favor of the ban.

Tech companies themselves will be responsible for enforcing the ban, with the threat of fines of up to A$50 million ($32.4 million) if they fail to take action. The legislation does not specify how the sites will verify the age of users.

The US Federal Trade Commission has opened an antitrust investigation of Microsoft Corp., drilling into everything from the company’s cloud computing and software licensing businesses to cybersecurity offerings and artificial intelligence products.

After more than a year of conducting informal interviews with competitors and business partners, antitrust enforcers have crafted a detailed request to force Microsoft to turn over information, according to people familiar with the matter. The demand, which is hundreds of pages long, has been sent to the company after FTC Chair Lina Khan signed off, said one of the people.

FTC antitrust lawyers are set to meet with Microsoft competitors next week to gather more information about the Redmond, Washington-based company’s business practices, according to two other people familiar with the plans who like the others asked not to be named discussing a confidential matter.

Microsoft and the FTC declined to comment.

On Monday, X filed an objection in The Onion’s bid to buy InfoWars out of bankruptcy. In the objection, Elon Musk’s lawyers argued that X has “superior ownership” of all accounts on X, that it objects to the inclusion of InfoWars and related Twitter accounts in the bankruptcy auction, and that the court should therefore prevent the transfer of them to The Onion.

The legal basis that X asserts in the filing is not terribly interesting. But what is interesting is that X has decided to involve itself at all, and it highlights that you do not own your followers or your account or anything at all on corporate social media, and it also highlights the fact that Elon Musk’s X is primarily a political project he is using to boost, or stifle, specific viewpoints and help his friends. In the filing, X’s lawyers essentially say—like many other software companies, and, increasingly, device manufacturers as well—that the company’s terms of service grant X’s users a “license” to use the platform but that, ultimately, X owns all accounts on the social network and can do anything that it wants with them.

A Chinese commercial vessel that has been surrounded by European warships in international waters for a week is central to an investigation of suspected sabotage that threatens to test the limits of maritime law—and heighten tensions between Beijing and European capitals.

Investigators suspect that the crew of the Yi Peng 3 bulk carrier—225 meters long, 32 meters wide and loaded with Russian fertilizer—deliberately severed two critical data cables last week as its anchor was dragged along the Baltic seabed for over 100 miles.

Their probe now centers on whether the captain of the Chinese-owned ship, which departed the Russian Baltic port of Ust-Luga on Nov. 15, was induced by Russian intelligence to carry out the sabotage. It would be the latest in a series of attacks on Europe’s critical infrastructure that law-enforcement and intelligence officials say have been orchestrated by Russia.

The Supreme Court signaled it may take up a case that could determine whether Internet service providers must terminate users who are accused of copyright infringement. In an order issued today, the court invited the Department of Justice's solicitor general to file a brief "expressing the views of the United States."

In Sony Music Entertainment v. Cox Communications, the major record labels argue that cable provider Cox should be held liable for failing to terminate users who were repeatedly flagged for infringement based on their IP addresses being connected to torrent downloads. There was a mixed ruling at the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit as the appeals court affirmed a jury's finding that Cox was guilty of willful contributory infringement but reversed a verdict on vicarious infringement "because Cox did not profit from its subscribers' acts of infringement."

That ruling vacated a $1 billion damages award and ordered a new damages trial. Cox and Sony are both seeking a Supreme Court review. Cox wants to overturn the finding of willful contributory infringement, while Sony wants to reinstate the $1 billion verdict.

The Supreme Court asking for US input on Sony v. Cox could be a precursor to the high court taking up the case. For example, the court last year asked the solicitor general to weigh in on Texas and Florida laws that restricted how social media companies can moderate their platforms. The court subsequently took up the case and vacated lower-court rulings, making it clear that content moderation is protected by the First Amendment.

Elon Musk confirmed that posts containing links in their main text are deprioritized on X in a revelation that renews criticism that the platform is restricting the visibility of and access to external sources of information.

User Paul Graham, who has nearly two million followers, blasted “Twitter’s biggest flaw” was the “deprioritization of tweets with links in them” in a complaint posted on Sunday.

In reply, Musk suggested a workaround: “Just write a description in the main post and put the link in the reply. This just stops lazy linking.”

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, is set to rule on the ad tech dispute without a jury. She expressed some skepticism Monday toward both the Justice Department’s and Google’s lines of argument.

She asked Teitelbaum why prosecutors did not call a small business or other advertiser as a witness if they were one of the main groups harmed by Google’s conduct. Teitelbaum said small advertisers interact with Google through the intermediary of advertising agencies, so they relied on the testimony of such firms.

As for Google, Brinkema admonished Dunn when she tried to use internal Google emails to establish Google executives’ frame of mind, reminding her that Google’s flouting of court orders to retain all relevant documents as evidence in the case meant that these record-based arguments from Google might be discounted in the eyes of the court.

“You’re a little bit in dangerous territory,” Brinkema said. “We don’t know all of what they were thinking or saying.”