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Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said in an interview that she cannot support bipartisan federal data privacy legislation, over which her committee has jurisdiction, as written because it has “major enforcement holes” and is weaker than existing state privacy laws. Ahead of a House subcommittee’s markup of the American Data Privacy and Protection Act today, Cantwell said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has pledged not to bring the bill to a floor vote. (The Washington Post)
Meta Platforms Inc. has withdrawn its sponsorship of the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission and the America250 Foundation, the two organizations planning the government’s celebration of the United States’ 250th anniversary. The project is the subject of a discrimination lawsuit by former female executives, and while a person familiar with the matter said Meta was under the impression it would be one of many corporate sponsors, it was the only company to pledge its support. (The Wall Street Journal)
Microsoft Corp. warned that Russia’s intelligence agencies have stepped up their hacking efforts against the United States and its allies since the start of the war in Ukraine in a bid to gather intelligence. The Microsoft report said Russia has targeted U.S. organizations the most along with networks in 41 other countries, with the hackers trying to infiltrate any organizations that Russia thinks could have information related to the war, including governments, think tanks and humanitarian groups. (CNN)
The Facebook Oversight Board called on Meta to be more transparent about its process for decisions to take down posts and accounts, including its strikes system against those who violate its terms of service. The board said of the 20 cases referred to it by Meta and its users — primarily around content moderation — it overturned the company’s decision 14 times, though it supported the company’s ban of former President Donald Trump. (The Washington Post)
Jeanne Whalen and Marianna Sotomayor, The Washington Post
When the Senate passed a rare bipartisan measure last summer to spend $52 billion subsidizing computer chip manufacturing and research in the United States, it seemed like an easy legislative priority for both parties.
Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Wednesday that the metaverse could be a considerable part of the social network operator’s business in the second half of the decade.
Google is paying the Wikimedia Foundation to help serve up the most accurate and up-to-date information on its search engine. The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit group behind Wikipedia, says Google is one of the first companies to buy into its commercial Enterprise service.
His top-to-bottom overhaul included a ramp-up of Google’s salesforce and focused on core infrastructure, data analytics, cybersecurity and industry-tailored products and services.
For months, groups representing the tech giants and advocates pushing to rein them in have relied on a flurry of old-school lobbying tactics as they clash over antitrust proposals on Capitol Hill. The campaigns have spanned from newspaper op-eds to billboards to TV ads.
Antitrust action is desperately needed to reel in the practices of Big Tech companies, especially around privacy, Google’s former head of advertising said Tuesday.
Meta Platforms Inc. won a judge’s backing to obtain information from ByteDance Ltd’s TikTok, Tencent Holdings Ltd’s WeChat and Telegram Group Inc. to bolster its defense against an antitrust lawsuit by the US Federal Trade Commission.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks signed the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Strategy and Implementation Pathway (RAI S&I pathway) on Tuesday marking a highly anticipated next step in the Defense Department’s carrying out of its AI Ethical Principles adopted more than two years ago.
Chip startup Cerebras has developed a foot-wide piece of silicon, compared to average chips measured in millimeters, that makes training AI cheap and easy.
Last week everybody who is anybody in the fiber ecosystem in the U.S. gathered in Nashville for the Fiber Broadband Association’s Fiber Connect 2022 conference.
Shopify Inc has launched new tools to help its merchants sell to other businesses and on Twitter, as the Canadian tech giant attempts to shore up sales to counter a post-pandemic slowdown in online shopping.
Twitter Inc said on Wednesday it was testing a new feature called “Notes” that would allow users to share essay-like write-ups as a link both on and off the social media platform.
When Duana Malcolm had her blue Hyundai Sonata sedan ‘wrapped’ as a mobile advertising board, the part-time delivery driver did not expect to make an extra $200 per month.
The European Union and NATO are not fully grappling with the potential consequences of Ukraine’s IT Army, a volunteer group that executes cyberattacks on Russian targets, a Center for Security Studies researcher argued Wednesday.
Testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee Wednesday, a key industry witness pressed lawmakers to rely on companies voluntarily including appropriate cybersecurity measures in their proliferation of emerging technologies while highlighting a need for global-policy synergy as allied jurisdictions have taken a more proactive approach.
A panel advising the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on everything from combatting disinformation to reducing critical infrastructure risks approved its inaugural set of recommendations for the Department of Homeland Security cyber agency on Wednesday.
Instagram is the latest platform to launch new tools aimed at enforcing its age policies, as kids’ screen time rises and regulators threaten greater scrutiny of social media’s affects on children.
Alphabet’s Google faces a second fine of 5-10% of its turnover in Russia for what the state communications regulator said on Wednesday was a repeated failure to delete banned content, including “misleading information” on YouTube about events in Ukraine.
VidCon, the annual gathering of social media creators, fans and industry representatives, will descend on Anaheim, Calif., Wednesday for the first time since 2019. While the pandemic hijacked the conference’s plans to meet in person for two years running (it took place virtually in 2020), it made the YouTube- and TikTok-famous stars that throng this convention an even more powerful force in online entertainment.
Calls for violence against members of the January 6 committee are circulating on some of the same online platforms that helped fuel the lies that led to the insurrection, a new analysis has found.
Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang, The New York Times
Mark Zuckerberg, who once said securing elections was “the most important thing,” has shifted Meta’s focus to the metaverse. That may have real-world implications.
One by one, over the last week of May, Twitter Inc rang up some members of its incoming class of new hires who had recently graduated from college and revoked the job offers in 15-minute calls, according to some of the recipients.
Tech giants have won over two more states in their ongoing battle with worker advocates over the classification of gig workers. Georgia and Alabama are the latest states to pass laws ensuring that gig workers for companies like Uber, Lyft, Instacart, and DoorDash are not considered employees.
Tech workers around the country are ready to embrace the labor movement after years of being “left behind,” said a top executive at the union that just won a first-of-its-kind election at an Apple Inc. store.
The Biden administration has announced the formation of the Advanced Research Project Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an organization that will be housed within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with the mission of bringing to medicine the kind of breakthrough research ideas and methods that led to the advent of the internet and GPS.
The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically accelerated the pace of digital transformation across organizations globally. Moving to the cloud could no longer be phased luxuriously for years in the future.
