The states, not Washington, are where tech regulation happens for now, thanks to a deadlocked Congress, Axios' Ashley Gold reports.

What's happening: Statehouses are drawing money and attention from tech firms and advocates hoping to influence laws on everything from privacy to digital taxes to driverless cars — and now online speech.

Driving the news: A former Facebook policy executive offers state lawmakers detailed guidance for crafting tech regulations that could effectively reduce harms and withstand legal challenge in a new report shared first with Axios.

• Matt Perault, former head of global policy development at Facebook's parent Meta, now director of the University of North Carolina's Center on Science & Technology, launched the new guide Thursday.
• Co-authored by J. Scott Babwah Brennen, head of online expression at the center, the report is meant to be a menu of options for state legislators and state attorneys general to consider if they hope to improve online discourse, Perault said.
• The authors said they were inspired to write it after talking to Democratic Virginia state Delegate Wendy Gooditis, who asked them for feedback on crafting better social media and content moderation bills.

What they're saying: "The federal government talks a lot about reform, but states are actually doing it," Perault told Axios. "States have been successful in areas of tech reform like privacy. They have been significantly less successful in content regulation."

• He added that the report tries to take both Republican and Democratic concerns about online content into consideration seriously: "Both sides of the aisle have concerns that are worth trying to deliver on to some extent."

What's happening: Bills introduced in states including Ohio, Alabama and Tennessee have attempted to prohibit companies from removing users' legal speech. Other states' bills seek to prohibit algorithmic curation or create transparency requirements.

• There's been an exponential increase in the scope of state legislative activity on such issues, Mark Brennan, a partner at Hogan Lovells who counsels clients on tech regulation, told Axios.
• But no one is getting it right, Brennan said: "Frankly, states have a pretty bad track record in putting together regulation in this space."

Context: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which largely protects online platforms from being liable for what people post, pre-empts state laws. And some attempts to regulate content have run afoul of the First Amendment.

The big picture: Tech companies recognize the states are going to be more active than Congress and have increasingly lobbied state houses to pass bills that critics have called weak, recently around privacy.

The bottom line: "So much of all content moderation discourse and proposed regulation is rhetoric and grandstanding," Evelyn Douek, senior research fellow at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told Axios.

• "But that doesn't have to be true ... there's meaningful, good-faith steps that could come from state lawmakers that could help advance the ball in our understanding of tech platforms."

Retail workers at an Apple Store in Atlanta filed to hold a union election Wednesday, making them the first Apple Store workers in the U.S. to do so, Axios' Ivana Saric reports.

Driving the news: The COVID-19 pandemic has seen an unprecedented surge in unionization efforts across industries, reversing a decades-long decline in labor union participation.

Details: The new union would be comprised of 107 workers at Apple Cumberland Mall store in northwest Atlanta, according to Bloomberg Law.

• The group includes Apple salespeople, technicians, creatives, operations specialists and more than 70% of the group have signed union authorization cards, according to a press release from the workers seeking to unionize.

The big picture: Tech companies like Apple and Amazon have large numbers of retail and warehouse workers. Those roles are seen as friendlier to unionizing efforts than the engineers and salespeople at corporate HQ, and present an opening for labor organizers to breach the tech industry's aversion to unionization.

• Workers at Apple's Grand Central Station store in New York have also taken some early steps toward unionization.

Go deeper: Labor starts to find a path into Big Tech

A group of Democratic lawmakers urged Facebook parent company Meta Wednesday to weed out more Spanish-language disinformation on Russia's war in Ukraine, Axios' Astrid Galván reports.

Driving the news: The lawmakers sent a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying Russian state-controlled outlets are targeting Spanish speakers with false narratives about the invasion.

• "The viral spread of these narratives stands in stark contrast to assurances that Meta made to the public and Members of Congress that it is prioritizing the pressing needs of Hispanic communities in the United States," reads the letter, signed by 21 lawmakers.

The big picture: Disinformation and misinformation are a huge problem among Spanish-speaking communities.

• Researchers say disinformation played a significant role in some Latinos voting for former President Trump in the 2020 elections after being bombarded with false information about President Biden.
• A Nielsen report last year found that 28% of the content Latinos see on news websites they visit most often was flagged as biased, conspiracy-based or pseudoscientific.

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in an email to Axios that the company is removing content related to the war in Ukraine that violates policies and working with third-party fact checkers to debunk false claims.

Netflix tried to soften the blow of its first-ever quarterly drop in subscribers yesterday by hyping the release of a video game, Axios' Stephen Totilo reports.

Details: On Monday, Netflix announced a mobile game and animated series based on the card game Exploding Kittens, which chief operating officer Gregory Peters touted on this week's earnings call as "an early glimmer" of its gaming strategy.

• The mobile game is set to launch via Netflix's phone app next month, with the animated series to follow next year.
• Future versions of the game will have elements from the series, and "all art and design will be inspired by the show," a Netflix rep told Axios.

The big picture: Netflix currently offers 17 games, with four more announced for May.

• Gaming is not yet based on the splashy originals model, as Netflix initially builds its mobile gaming library with titles that mostly have or will appear on other platforms too.
• The company has acquired three game studios since September, setting up potential for homegrown exclusives.
• Execs are also floating offering cheaper ad-supported tiers and cracking down on password sharing.

Between the lines: Netflix's gaming plans currently look like a subscriber retention effort and marketing play rather than a plunge into direct competition with gaming's biggest companies.

On Tap

• Snapchat parent Snap is set to release quarterly earnings after the markets close.
• Former President Obama will be the keynote speaker at a daylong event focused on the impact of disinformation at Stanford.

ICYMI

• Instagram is tweaking its algorithm to favor original content in what it hopes will take the focus off reposted TikTok content. (The Verge)

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