• Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita filed the first state lawsuits against TikTok, accusing the Chinese-owned app of deceiving users about China’s access to user data and exposing children to mature content. (The New York Times) Texas became the latest state to ban government employees from using TikTok on government-issued devices due to national security concerns. (The Hill)
• Apple Inc. said it plans to roll out a feature called Advanced Data Protection that will allow users to encrypt additional kinds of iCloud data, including full backups, photos and notes, on its servers. Apple said the opt-in feature will be available in the United States before the end of 2022. (CNBC)
• Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine filed a consumer protection lawsuit against Amazon.com Inc. over allegations that the company stole tips from its delivery drivers and misled customers about its tipping model, which the lawsuit claims uses tips to subsidize wages rather than going to the drivers directly. An Amazon spokesperson said that the lawsuit is without merit, that the company changed the tipping model in 2019 and that Amazon’s compensation framework guarantees that D.C.-based drivers earn more than minimum wage. (The Washington Post)
• The Pentagon awarded a $9 billion contract split between Google, Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Amazon to build its cloud computing network known as Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability. The newest contract comes a year after the Pentagon scrapped its previous deal known as JEDI following allegations of politicization in the bidding process. (The Associated Press)

Worth watching today:

• The Open Source Security Summit, featuring cybersecurity expert and “the world’s most famous hacker” Kevin Mitnick.

While Tech Fawns Over AI, Consumers Need More Convincing

Morning Consult

No. 2 Theranos Executive Is Sentenced to Nearly 13 Years for Fraud

Kalley Huang, The New York Times

Ramesh Balwani, the former chief operating officer of the failed blood testing start-up Theranos, was sentenced on Wednesday to nearly 13 years in prison for defrauding investors and patients about the company’s business and technology.

Meta faces showdown in court over VR acquisition

Ashley Gold, Axios

Federal regulators will press their case for stopping Meta from acquiring a VR studio beginning Thursday in a San Jose courtroom.

Tech leaders laud consumer AI benefits

Benjamin Johansen, The Hill

Leaders in tech on Wednesday touted advances in artificial intelligence that they say can assist with smoother customer service experiences while sounding a hopeful tone that such technology won’t come at a human cost.

OpenAI Chatbot So Good It Can Fool Humans, Even When It’s Wrong

Dina Bass, Bloomberg

ChatGPT is astonishingly skilled at mimicking authentic writing, raising questions about how readers will tell the difference.

N. America clings to cable as PON spending jumps 27% in Q3: Dell’Oro

Diana Goovaerts, Fierce Telecom

Global PON equipment revenue shot up 27% year on year in Q3 2022, driving overall spending in the broadband equipment market up 17% to $4.7 billion, new data from Dell’Oro Group showed. But in North America, at least, optical technology still wasn’t the primary revenue generator, though you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

Morgan Stanley cuts iPhone shipment estimate by another 3 million units

Ashley Capoot, CNBC

Morgan Stanley reduced its Apple iPhone shipment forecast for the December quarter by an additional 3 million units on Wednesday to account for slower production in China. The firm had already cut shipment expectations by 6 million units in November.

Letter From Top Apple Supplier Foxconn Prodded China to Ease Zero-Covid Rules

Keith Zhai and Yang Jie, The Wall Street Journal

A letter from the founder of the world’s largest iPhone assembler played a major role in persuading China’s Communist Party leadership to accelerate plans to dismantle the country’s zero-tolerance Covid-19 policies, according to people familiar with the matter.

EU court rejects WhatsApp challenge against EU Data Protection Board

Reuters

The Court of Justice of the European Union has dismissed as inadmissible an action brought by WhatsApp against a decision of the European Data Protection Board, it said in a statement on Wednesday.

Google must remove ‘manifestly inaccurate’ data, EU top court says

Foo Yun Chee, Reuters

Alphabet unit Google must remove data from online search results if users can prove it is inaccurate, Europe’s top court said on Thursday.

$858 billion defense bill focuses heavily on cyber. These are some highlights.

Suzanne Smalley, CyberScoop

Congress is poised to vote in coming days on an $858 billion annual defense policy bill that contains significant spending increases for U.S. Cyber Command and other efforts to bolster national cybersecurity defenses.

Scammers Are Scamming Other Scammers Out of Millions of Dollars

Matt Burgess, Wired

Nobody is immune to being scammed online—not even the people running the scams. Cybercriminals using hacking forums to buy software exploits and stolen login details keep falling for cons and are getting ripped off thousands of dollars at a time, a new analysis has revealed.

Biden admin tells Supreme Court law protecting social media companies has limits

Dan Whitcomb, Reuters

The Biden administration argued to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday that social media giants like Google could in some instances have responsibility for user content, adopting a stance that could potentially undermine a federal law shielding companies from liability.

Facebook, Twitter Poised to Beat Suit Over Covid Misinformation

Robert Burnson, Bloomberg

Meta Platforms Inc. and Twitter Inc. can’t be held liable for misinformation posted by users about Covid-19 vaccines even if the posts violate company policies, a judge said.

Democrats express ‘deep concern’ about reported Twitter suppression of protests in China

Jared Gans, The Hill

Three House Democrats sent a letter to Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday to express “deep concern” following reports of video evidence of protests in China being suppressed on the platform. 

Twitter to Change Blue Pricing After Apple Spat

Erin Woo, The Information

Twitter has informed some employees that it plans to change the pricing of its Twitter Blue subscription product to $7 if users pay for it through the web and $11 if they do so through its app for iPhones, according to a person briefed on the plans. Twitter had previously said it plans to charge $7.99 for Twitter Blue, which was then only available for purchase through Apple’s App Store.

Jack Dorsey calls for Elon Musk to release the Twitter Files ‘without filter and let people judge for themselves’

Grace Kay, Insider

Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey called for current Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk to “Make everything public now” in his release of the so-called “Twitter Files.”

TikTok Pushes Social Features as Growth Cools

Kaya Yurieff and Sylvia Varnham O’Regan, The Information

For the past year or so, Meta Platforms has been fiddling with its Instagram app to make it look more like TikTok, the short-video juggernaut that has been siphoning away its audience. Lately, though, TikTok has started borrowing a few social media tricks from the likes of Meta’s Instagram and upstart photo-sharing app BeReal.

Google Combines Maps and Waze Teams Amid Pressure to Cut Costs

Miles Kruppa, The Wall Street Journal

Alphabet Inc.’s Google plans to combine the team working on the mapping service Waze with the group overseeing the company’s Maps product, as the search giant faces pressure to streamline operations and cut costs.

Tesla Denied Retrial Over Black Worker’s Racism Verdict

Malathi Nayak, Bloomberg

Tesla Inc. was denied a new trial in a suit by a Black former contract worker who was awarded $137 million by a jury that found he faced racist abuse at the electric vehicle maker’s northern California factory.

Hundreds of people are applying for a chance to work at Elon Musk’s ‘hardcore’ Twitter 2.0 — even after the billionaire laid off half the company’s workforce

Grace Kay, Insider

Hundreds of people are applying to job openings on Twitter, according to postings on LinkedIn. Just last month, Elon Musk laid off thousands — about half of the company’s workforce — and over 2,000 more employees quit.

Elon Musk told Twitter employees they have to start working exclusively at the company’s San Francisco headquarters

Lakshmi Varanasi and Sam Tabahriti, Insider

In an email sent to staff on Wednesday, Elon Musk mandated that employees start coming into the company’s headquarters in San Francisco, advising employees that other Bay Area offices won’t be used “for now.”

Tensions Grew at Salesforce Between Co-CEOs Benioff and Taylor Ahead of Leadership Change

Emily Glazer et al., The Wall Street Journal

Tensions had been growing between Salesforce Inc.’s co-Chief Executives Marc Benioff and Bret Taylor over their responsibilities and how the business was run for months before the business-software provider said last week that Mr. Taylor would exit the role, people familiar with the executives said.

‘If you’re in tech, buckle up—it’s gonna be a tough ride’: The analyst who says Big Tech’s layoffs show ‘a new reality’ sees ‘more cuts’ ahead

Alena Botros, Fortune

Silicon Valley’s wave of layoffs and hiring freezes amid a faltering economy reflect Big Tech “acknowledging a new reality,” investment bank Jefferies said in a Wednesday research note. That’s frightening, but what does that mean?

In Defense of Killer Robots

Rich Lowry, Politico Magazine

Trying to ward off potentially transformative changes in technology is a huge mistake.

The new AI writing tool might teach us the value of truth

Megan McArdle, The Washington Post

Tools like this threaten to disrupt everything from academia (undetectable cheating!) to Google (the AI agent is already more useful than a search engine for some queries). For journalists, it’s potentially an existential threat, because OpenAI’s technology can generate serviceable content with very little input. 

Google Faces a Serious Threat From ChatGPT

Parmy Olson, Bloomberg

Answers from the AI-powered chatbot are often more useful than those from the world’s biggest search engine. Alphabet should be worried.