Report from the Wall Street Journal In Brief – In the latest in a string of major antitrust setbacks, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema largely sided with the Department of Justice (DoJ) and ruled that Google violated federal monopoly law in the operation of their...
Minnesota Democrats Explore a State Tax on Social Media Companies
Report from CBS News In Brief – Leading Democrats in the Minnesota state legislature are proposing to tax large social media platforms as part of an effort to close a state budget deficit estimated to reach $6 billion. Legislation approved by the Minnesota House and...
EU Commission Continues Ramping Up Staffing for DSA Enforcement
Report from EuroNews In Brief – The European Commission is hoping to hire 60 additional staff members for its Digital Services Act (DSA) enforcement unit, including legal and policy officers, data scientists, and researchers. In its latest report on DSA enforcement...
EU Commission Announces DMA Penalties for Apple and Meta
Report from Politico In Brief – After more than a year of investigations, the European Commission has announced that it has fined Apple €500 million and Meta €200 million for failing to comply with EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Apple, Google, and Meta were the first...
TikTok Announces Its Own Version of X-Style Community Notes
Report from TechCrunch In Brief – TikTok has announced that it is testing a new feature dubbed “Footnotes” to allow users to add additional context and relevant information to videos to help others better understand certain content. It is clearly modeled on X’s...
Another Call for the EU to Regulate Google Search – Spam Filter Edition
Report from Reuters In Brief – ActMeraki, a German media company, has complained to EU antitrust regulators that a Google anti-spam policy that penalizes websites that sell part of their websites to other companies to improve the search results for the third-party...
Ninth Circuit Drastically Expands State Jurisdiction Over Online Companies
Report from Reuters In Brief – The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that online commerce platform Shopify, based in Canada, could face a class action lawsuit in California for allegedly violating state privacy laws. An en banc panel overturned an earlier...
UK CMA Targeting Apple and Google Mobile Systems with DMCC Probes
Report from TechCrunch In Brief – The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has opened investigations of the mobile ecosystems run by Apple and Google under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer’s Act (DMCC) to determine if the two digital giants have...
German Court Appears Likely to Reject Apple’s Challenge to Special Antitrust Standard
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – Apple’s legal challenge to the German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) designation that they are a digital company “of paramount significance on competition across markets” appears to face skeptical judges on the Federal Court of Justice in...
Mobile Device Location Data Broker Kochava Settles Privacy Class Action
Report from MediaPost In Brief – Kochava has reached a settlement in a private class action lawsuit that will require the data broker to make several major privacy changes. The agreement filed with US District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill requires the company to...
Trade Threat to US Big Tech Again Emerges as Greenland Conflict Heats Up
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – Facing rapid escalation of President’s Trumps demand that Denmark hand over control of Greenland to the United States, including the threat that the US would impose a new 10% tariff on exports from countries that “oppose” his plan as...
Kentucky AG Sues Character.AI for Violating Consumer Protection Law
Report from Mountain Top Media In Brief – Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman has sued the maker of AI companion chatbot Character.AI alleging that its platform harms children and misleads consumers about its safety. Coleman’s office argues the company marketed...
Federal Trade Commission Will Appeal Loss in Meta Antitrust Suit
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – The US Federal Trade Commission announced that it notified the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that it will appeal a federal judge’s ruling that Meta does not hold an illegal monopoly in social networking. In the...
Instacart Ends Retailer Access to Single-Store Product Price Testing Tool
Report from CNBC In Brief – Instacart will stop allowing retailers to use its Eversight AI-enabled price testing technology on its grocery delivery platform. The move followed public criticism, a consumer advocacy group study, and scrutiny from lawmakers and...
Google Sues to Stop Massive Scraping of Its Search Results
Report from Reuters In Brief – Google has filed a federal lawsuit accusing SerpApi of illegally and massively circumventing its technical safeguards intended to block automated scraping of search results with the intent of accessing and reselling copyrighted and...
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