Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook should be broken up

[China]

Gmail users “hard pass” on plan to let political emails bypass spam filters

 

Earlier this month, Google sent a request to the Federal Election Commission seeking an advisory opinion on the potential launch of a pilot program that would allow political committees to bypass spam filters and instead deliver political emails to the primary inboxes of Gmail users. During a public commenting period that's still ongoing, most people commenting have expressed staunch opposition for various reasons that they're hoping the FEC will consider.

 

"Hard pass," wrote a commenter called Katie H. "Please do not allow Google to open up Pandora's Box on the people by allowing campaign/political emails to bypass spam filters."

Out of 48 comments submitted as of July 11, only two commenters voiced support for Google's pilot program, which seeks to deliver more unsolicited political emails to Gmail users instead of marking them as spam. The rest of the commenters opposed the program, raising a range of concerns, including the potential for the policy to degrade user experience, introduce security risks, and even possibly unfairly influence future elections.

 

Business Insider reported that the period for public commenting ends on Saturday, July 16, which is longer than what was shared in conflicting reports that said the initial deadline to comment was July 11. That means there's still time for more Gmail users and interested parties to chime in.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Congress' push to regulate Big Tech is fizzling out

 

Hopes for a congressional vote this summer on a major tech antitrust bill have all but fizzled out as the August recess quickly approaches.

 

The big picture: It's more likely than ever that this Congress will push efforts to pass Big Tech competition rules into the fall, where they will face slim chances with lawmakers distracted by midterm elections.

 

If an autumn push fails, competition regulation will have to wait for the new Congress — and if the GOP takes back congressional control, it's unlikely to be a top priority.

Catch up quick: The American Innovation and Competition Online Act, co-sponsored by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), would ban Big Tech companies from favoring their own services in an anticompetitive way.

 

For example, Apple would have to allow third party payment systems and Google could not surface its reviews over others in search results.

The Senate bill is a companion to a similar House bill approved by the House Judiciary Committee last summer.

Driving the news: The American Innovation and Competition Online Act has bipartisan support. But floor time is dwindling as a list of Democratic priorities, including budget reconciliation and protecting same-sex marriage, take precedence.

 

The Senate is only in session until Aug. 5 and Congress' main tech priority is to pass a narrow version of a chips bill meant to bolster American tech manufacturing.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he was aiming for a summer antitrust vote if the bill had 60 backers, Axios previously reported. A count from the Washington Post found that fewer than 60 senators publicly back the bill.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Amazon hires key Senate Judiciary staffer working on tech antitrust bills

 

Judd Smith, a senior Republican staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee who was instrumental in drafting legislation to rein in tech giants, is leaving to take a job as a lobbyist for Amazon Web Services, according to two people briefed on the matter.

 

Smith’s move is particularly notable because the legislation he was working on — the American Innovation and Choice Online Act — is losing steam. Its sponsors are pushing for a floor vote, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has so far resisted their pleas.

 

Smith was one of the main Republican staffers working to draft the bipartisan legislation led by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to curtail the power of Amazon, Google, Apple, Meta and Microsoft.

 

The legislation — the most serious attempt at tightening oversight of the tech industry in years — would bar those companies from prioritizing their products over their competitors who rely on those companies to reach customers. Amazon, for example, would be barred from promoting its own private-label products over rival items on its e-commerce platform.

 

Amazon’s concerns about the bill have focused on how it would impact the company’s retail business. However, the cloud computing business AWS — the most profitable part of the company — could potentially be affected as well.

 

Friday was Smith’s last day in the Senate according to a farewell email obtained by POLITICO and one of the people with knowledge of his jump to Amazon. All of the individuals were granted anonymity to discuss a confidential matter.

 

Smith declined to comment. A spokesperson for Grassley declined to comment. Spokespeople for AWS and Klobuchar did not immediately respond for comment.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Spoiler

 

 

[Renegade7]

Didn't see that one coming...😒

 

 

[China]

OnlyFans Bribed Meta to Put Thousands of Adult Entertainers on Terrorist Watch List, Lawsuits Allege

 

Major tech companies have faced no shortage of criticism in recent months, as chat logs and metadata become ever-more relevant tools in prosecutors’ cases against people who have abortions. Now, Meta (formerly Facebook) is facing multiple lawsuits for allegedly accepting bribes to put adult entertainers on a terrorist watch list. Yes, you read that right.

 

OnlyFans, the subscriber content platform that is most well known for adult content, allegedly took drastic measures in 2018 to stop models and entertainers who use its service promoting from rival platforms that also feature their content. Three lawsuits—two from rival platforms and one class-action suit from OnlyFans content creators—say that the website bribed Meta to put over 20,000 names and social media accounts on a watch list managed by the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), a non-profit intended to “stop the spread of mass shooting videos and other terrorist content across social media sites” that was co-founded by Meta, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

US approves Google plan to let political emails bypass Gmail spam filter

 

Plan came after GOP complaints, but FEC says it doesn't violate ban on contributions.
 

The US Federal Election Commission approved a Google plan on Thursday to let campaign emails bypass Gmail spam filters. The FEC's advisory opinion adopted in a 4-1 vote said Gmail's pilot program is permissible under the Federal Election Campaign Act and FEC regulations "and would not result in the making of a prohibited in-kind contribution."

 

The FEC said Google's approved plan is for "a pilot program to test new Gmail design features at no cost on a nonpartisan basis to authorized candidate committees, political party committees, and leadership PACs." On July 1, Google asked the FEC for the green light to implement the pilot after Republicans accused the company of giving Democrats an advantage in its algorithms.

 

Republicans reportedly could have avoided some of their Gmail spam problems by using the proper email configuration. At a May 2022 meeting between Senate Republicans and Google's chief legal officer, "the most forceful rebuke" was said to come "from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who claimed that not a single email from one of his addresses was reaching inboxes," The Washington Post reported in late July. "The reason, it was later determined, was that a vendor had not enabled an authentication tool that keeps messages from being marked as spam, according to people briefed on the discussions."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

[China]

 

[China]

White House unveils principles for Big Tech reform

 

The White House on Thursday outlined six principles to reform Big Tech platforms and said it was encouraged to see bipartisan interest in Congress to rein in major U.S. tech companies.

 

The six principles, entitled "Enhancing Competition and Tech Platform Accountability," were released after Biden administration officials earlier in the day met with experts to discuss "the harms that tech platforms cause and the need for greater accountability."

 

The White House said the United States needs "clear rules of the road to ensure small and mid-size businesses and entrepreneurs can compete on a level playing field."

 

"These principles are the culmination of months of work by the administration and engagement with numerous stakeholders," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. "We're looking forward to hearing any feedback from the tech companies."

 

A group of bipartisan lawmakers has introduced antitrust legislation aimed at reining in the four tech giants -- Meta Platform's Facebook, Apple, Alphabet's Google and Amazon.com -- that would bar the companies from favoring their own businesses in search results and other ways. The lawmakers have said they believe they have the 60 Senate votes needed to move forward, but no vote has yet been scheduled.

 

Among issues discussed at Thursday's meeting, which included numerous senior White House officials, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine and technology experts, were antitrust, privacy, algorithmic discrimination and other tech policy areas, the White House said.

 

The six principles include promoting technology sector competition; adopting robust federal privacy protections, and tougher privacy and online protections for children; rescinding special legal protections for large tech platforms; increasing transparency about platforms' algorithms and content moderation decisions; and ending discriminatory algorithmic decision-making.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[PokerPacker]

6 hours ago, China said:

White House unveils principles for Big Tech reform

 

The White House on Thursday outlined six principles to reform Big Tech platforms and said it was encouraged to see bipartisan interest in Congress to rein in major U.S. tech companies.

 

The six principles, entitled "Enhancing Competition and Tech Platform Accountability," were released after Biden administration officials earlier in the day met with experts to discuss "the harms that tech platforms cause and the need for greater accountability."

 

The White House said the United States needs "clear rules of the road to ensure small and mid-size businesses and entrepreneurs can compete on a level playing field."

 

"These principles are the culmination of months of work by the administration and engagement with numerous stakeholders," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. "We're looking forward to hearing any feedback from the tech companies."

 

A group of bipartisan lawmakers has introduced antitrust legislation aimed at reining in the four tech giants -- Meta Platform's Facebook, Apple, Alphabet's Google and Amazon.com -- that would bar the companies from favoring their own businesses in search results and other ways. The lawmakers have said they believe they have the 60 Senate votes needed to move forward, but no vote has yet been scheduled.

 

Among issues discussed at Thursday's meeting, which included numerous senior White House officials, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine and technology experts, were antitrust, privacy, algorithmic discrimination and other tech policy areas, the White House said.

 

The six principles include promoting technology sector competition; adopting robust federal privacy protections, and tougher privacy and online protections for children; rescinding special legal protections for large tech platforms; increasing transparency about platforms' algorithms and content moderation decisions; and ending discriminatory algorithmic decision-making.

 

Click on the link for the full article

I feel a bit of irony in the link for this article being to MSN, which has lately been shooting up to the top of my news search results when it is only a re-packager of news rather than the original source.  Why is that ironic?  I use DuckDuckGo for my internet searches, and they hook into the Bing search engine.  Bing and MSN are both Microsoft products.  Seems like a "company favoring their own businesses in search results".

[China]

So this is what people in the future will look like?

 

 

Bizarre Muzzle Microphone Keeps Your Mouth in the Metaverse

 

Headphones with active noise cancelling are a useful way to tune out unwanted noises, but what if you instead wanted to silence unwanted sounds at the source? Say you’re on a sensitive phone call, or you’re unleashing a tirade of expletives while gaming? There’s a device for that too, although it doesn’t look quite as comfortable to wear as headphones.

 

Depending on how you spend your free time, the mutalk, from a company called Shiftall (which belongs to Panasonic), either looks like a miniature virtual reality headset or a sadomasochism accessory—but it’s neither.

 

Unlike VR headsets, which strap to the head and cover a user’s eyes, the mutalk straps to the head and sits over the user’s mouth. Inside the mutalk is a microphone and Bluetooth hardware which picks up the user’s voice and transmits it wirelessly to other devices like a smartphone or a gaming console. What differentiates it from other wireless microphones is that the mutalk traps and contains all of the sounds coming out of the user’s mouth, or at least most of them, as it’s promised to reduce the intensity of high-frequency sounds (voices) by about 30-decibels.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

How the polarizing effect of social media is speeding up

 

For many, checking social media has become a routine of logging on, seeing something that makes them angry or upset, and repeating that cycle ad infinitum.

If that feels true to you, it's not your imagination.

 

Max Fisher is a journalist who focuses on the impact of social media on global conflicts and our daily lives, and has covered it extensively for The New York Times.

 

In his new book, The Chaos Machine, Fisher details how the polarizing effect of social media is speeding up. He joined All Things Considered to talk about why tech companies benefit from this outrage, and the danger it could pose to society.

 

"Remember that the number of seconds in your day never changes. The amount of social media content competing for those seconds, however, doubles every year or so, depending on how you measure it. Imagine, for instance, that your network produces 200 posts a day of which you have time to read about 100. Because of the platform's tilt, you will see the most outraged half of your feed. Next year, when 200 doubles to 400, you will see the most outraged quarter, the year after that the most outraged eighth. Over time, your impression of your own community becomes radically more moralizing, aggrandizing, and outraged, and so do you, at the same time, less innately engaging forms of content. Truth appeals to the greater good, appeals to tolerance, become more and more outmatched, like stars over Times Square."

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Renegade7]

 

[PleaseBlitz]

Not sure where else to put this.  It's about how companies are increasingly using sophisticated design practices known as “dark patterns” that can trick or manipulate consumers into buying products or services or giving up their privacy.

 

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/09/ftc-report-shows-rise-sophisticated-dark-patterns-designed-trick-trap-consumers?utm_source=govdelivery

 

Quote

The Federal Trade Commission released a report today showing how companies are increasingly using sophisticated design practices known as “dark patterns” that can trick or manipulate consumers into buying products or services or giving up their privacy. The dark pattern tactics detailed in the report include disguising ads to look like independent content, making it difficult for consumers to cancel subscriptions or charges, burying key terms or junk fees, and tricking consumers into sharing their data. The report highlighted the FTC’s efforts to combat the use of dark patterns in the marketplace and reiterated the agency’s commitment to taking action against tactics designed to trick and trap consumers.

“Our report shows how more and more companies are using digital dark patterns to trick people into buying products and giving away their personal information,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “This report—and our cases—send a clear message that these traps will not be tolerated.”

For years, unscrupulous direct-mail and brick-and-mortar retailers have used design tricks and psychological tactics such as pre-checked boxes, hard-to-find-and read disclosures, and confusing cancellation policies, to get consumers to give up their money or data. As more commerce has moved online, dark patterns have grown in scale and sophistication, allowing companies to develop complex analytical techniques, collect more personal data, and experiment with dark patterns to exploit the most effective ones. The staff report, which stems from a workshop the FTC held in April 2021, examined how dark patterns can obscure, subvert, or impair consumer choice and decision-making and may violate the law.

The report, Bringing Dark Patterns to Light, found dark patterns used in a variety of industries and contexts, including e-commerce, cookie consent banners, children’s apps, and subscription sales. The report focuses on four common dark pattern tactics:

Misleading Consumers and Disguising Ads: These tactics include advertisements designed to look like independent, editorial content; comparison shopping sites that claim to be neutral but really rank companies based on compensation; and countdown timers designed to make consumers believe they only have a limited time to purchase a product or service when the offer is not actually time-limited. For example, the FTC took action against the operators of a work-from-home scheme for allegedly sending unsolicited emails to consumers that included “from” lines that falsely claimed they were coming from news organizations like CNN or Fox News. The body of these emails included links that sent consumers to additional fake online news stories, and then eventually routed consumers to sales websites that pitched the company’s work-from-home schemes.

 

Making it difficult to cancel subscriptions or charges: Another common dark pattern involves tricking someone into paying for goods or services without consent. For example, deceptive subscription sellers may saddle consumers with recurring payments for products and services they never intended to purchase or that they do not wish to continue purchasing. For example, in its case against ABCmouse, the FTC alleged the online learning site made it extremely difficult to cancel free trials and subscription plans despite promising “Easy Cancellation.” Consumers who wanted to cancel their subscriptions were often forced to navigate a difficult-to-find, lengthy, and confusing cancellation path on the company’s website and click through several pages of promotions and links that, when clicked, directed consumers away from the cancellation path. 

Burying key terms and junk fees: Some dark patterns operate by hiding or obscuring material information from consumers, such as burying key limitations of the product or service in dense terms of service documents that consumers don’t see before purchase. This tactic also includes burying junk fees. Companies advertise only part of a product’s total price to lure consumers in, and do not mention other mandatory charges until late in the buying process. In its case against LendingClub, the FTC alleged that the online lender used prominent visuals to falsely promise loan applicants that they would receive a specific loan amount and pay “no hidden fees” but hid mention of fees behind tooltip buttons and in between more prominent text.

 

Tricking consumers into sharing data: These dark patterns are often presented as giving consumers choices about privacy settings or sharing data but are designed to intentionally steer consumers toward the option that gives away the most personal information. The FTC alleged that smart-TV maker Vizio enabled default settings allowing the company to collect and share consumers’ viewing activity with third parties, only providing a brief notice to some consumers that could easily be missed.

 

[PokerPacker]

From what I'm reading, Facebook has been censoring content related to Iran's rising up against the "Morality Police".  They are actively supporting a murderous dictatorial regime.

[China]

Meta warns 1 million Facebook users who installed password-stealing apps

 

Meta is warning 1 million Facebook users that their account information may have been compromised by third-party apps from Apple or Google’s stores. In a new report, the company’s security researchers say that in the last year they’ve identified more than 400 scammy apps designed to hijack users’ Facebook account credentials.

 

According to the company, the apps are disguised as “fun or useful” services, like photo editors, camera apps, VPN services, horoscope apps, and fitness tracking tools. The apps often require users to “Log In with Facebook” before they can access the promised features. But these login features are merely a means of stealing Facebook users’ account info. And Meta’s Director of Threat Disruption, David Agranovich, noted that many of the apps Meta identified were barely functional.

 

“Many of the apps provided little to no functionality before you logged in, and most provided no functionality even after a person agreed to login,” Agranovich said during a briefing with reporters.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

 

[China]

Judge orders Meta to pay $10.5M in legal fees to Washington

 

Facebook parent company Meta has been ordered to pay $10.5 million in legal fees to Washington state atop a nearly $25 million fine for repeated and intentional violations of campaign finance disclosure laws.

 

King County Superior Court Judge Douglass North issued the legal-fee order Friday, two days after he hit the social media giant with what is believed to be the largest campaign finance fine in U.S. history, The Seattle Times reported.

 

North ordered the company to pay by wire transfer, check or money order within 30 days. The money is to go to the state Public Disclosure Commission, which enforces campaign finance laws.

 

North imposed the maximum fine allowed for more than 800 violations of Washington’s Fair Campaign Practices Act, passed by voters in 1972 and later strengthened by the Legislature. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson argued that the maximum was appropriate considering his office previously sued Facebook in 2018 for violating the same law.

 

Meta, based in Menlo Park, California, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment, the newspaper reported.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

 

[China]

Meta Lays Off More Than 11,000 Employees

 

Since Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004, the Silicon Valley company has steadily hired more employees. At the end of September, it had amassed its largest-ever number of workers, totaling 87,314 people.

 

But on Wednesday, the company — now renamed Meta — began cutting jobs, and deeply.

 

Meta said it was laying off more than 11,000 people, or about 13 percent of its work force, in what amounted to the company’s most significant job cuts. The layoffs were made across departments and regions, with areas like recruiting and business teams affected more than others. The divisions that were not cut as steeply included engineers working on projects related to the metaverse, the immersive online world that Mr. Zuckerberg has bet big on, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

 

“I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” Mr. Zuckerberg, 38, wrote in a letter to employees. “I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”

 

The cuts — nearly triple the number that Twitter slashed last week, though not as deep a percentage — represent a stunning reversal of fortune for a once high-flying company whose ambition and room for growth had seemed limitless.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Renegade7]

Glad to see Meta breaking itself up, keep that same energy, Mark!!!

[China]

Amazon reportedly plans to lay off about 10,000 employees starting this week

 

Amazon is planning to lay off approximately 10,000 employees in corporate and technology roles beginning this week, according to a report from The New York Times. Separately, The Wall Street Journal also cited a source saying the company plans to lay off thousands of employees.

 

Shares of Amazon closed down about 2% on Monday.

 

The cuts would be the largest in the company’s history and would primarily impact Amazon’s devices organization, retail division and human resources, according to the report. The reported layoffs would represent less than 1% of Amazon’s global workforce and 3% of its corporate employees.

 

The report follows headcount reductions at other tech firms. Meta announced last week that it’s laying off more than 13% of its staff, or more than 11,000 employees, and Twitter laid off approximately half its workforce in the days following Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of the company.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

More tech layoffs to come?

 

Alphabet must cut headcount and trim costs, activist investor TCI says

 

Alphabet must take “aggressive action” to trim headcount and salary expense, and deliver a clear action plan to investors, TCI Fund Management wrote in a letter to CEO Sundar Pichai.

 

TCI holds a $6 billion stake in the Google parent company, which places it just outside of the top 20 largest Alphabet shareholders, CNBC’s David Faber reported. TCI’s stake represents 0.27% of outstanding Alphabet shares, according to Factset data, a position that the hedge fund has steadily accumulated since 2017.

 

However, the company has three classes of shares, and co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin still have solid voting control thanks to their nearly exclusive ownership of Class B shares, according to the firm’s 2022 proxy report. That makes an activist takeover effectively impossible.

 

“Our conversations with former executives suggest that the business could be operated more effectively with significantly fewer employees,” read the letter. TCI’s letter pointed to Altimeter Capital’s Meta letter, which argued that overstaffing at tech companies is “a poorly kept secret” in Silicon Valley.

 

2022 has been a bruising year for tech employees. Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that Amazon was preparing to lay off 10,000 corporate workers. Meta trimmed headcount by 11,000 the week prior.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

Edited November 16, 2022 by China

[Cooked Crack]

👍 LFG

[PokerPacker]

32 minutes ago, Cooked Crack said:

👍 LFG