The Senate on Tuesday voted 68-29 to confirm Big Tech foe Jonathan Kanter to lead the antitrust division of the Justice Department.
Why it matters: Kanter, a favorite among progressives, joins Biden administration antitrust gurus Tim Wu and FTC chair Lina Khan who want to see more aggressive action against monopoly power.
Microsoft and Uber are leaving the Internet Association (IA), a trade group that lobbies on behalf of internet companies and the tech industry, Axios has confirmed.
Why it matters: Losing Microsoft and Uber, two major members, is a blow for the group. The association has seen steadily waning influence in D.C. in recent years, partly because it does not work on the competition and antitrust issues that beset the industry right now.
What they're saying: “It is always unfortunate to lose a member, but business decisions related to time and resources are to be respected," said Christina Martin, senior vice president of global communications and public affairs at The Internet Association.
"Microsoft and Uber have been great supporters of IA for nearly a decade. We have every hope they may return in the future," Martin said. “IA remains nearly 40 strong with new members having been added such as Discord, Notarize and NewsBreak.”
"We advocate for public policies that support our business goals," a Microsoft spokesperson said. "As our business needs evolve, we periodically review trade association memberships to ensure alignment with our policy agenda."
Flashback: IA, which was founded in 2012 and includes members such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, thrived when it could fight for all of its member companies with a unified voice on policy goals, an easier mission in the earlier days of the internet, when tech still had a halo in Washington.
Now, tech companies often have different legislative priorities based on size or other factors. That has made IA's job more difficult and sometimes has set members at odds with one another.
Longtime former IA president Michael Beckerman is now at TikTok. Dane Snowden, a former cable lobbying group executive, is current president and CEO.
Google has filed new breach of contract claims against Sonos in the latest chapter of a long-running dispute over a smart speaker partnership gone bad.
Why it matters: The ongoing dispute between Sonos and Google has caught the attention of Congress and other regulators. How it plays out will be of interest to those investigating claims of anti-competitive behavior by Big Tech firms.
Microsoft’s head of gaming, Phil Spencer, is being cautious about the prospects of NFT gaming, saying some current efforts feel “exploitive.”
Why it matters: As the operator of one of the biggest online gaming marketplaces in the world, Xbox has the power to let NFT gaming companies and their projects into its ecosystem or keep them out.
Activision Blizzard employees are calling for CEO Bobby Kotick's resignation and some are planning to hold a walkout Tuesday, following a bombshell Wall Street Journal report about how the company has handled sexual harassment complaints.
Driving the news: The Journal, citing interviews and internal documents, found that Kotick not only knew about several instances of sexual harassment, but also has a history of personally shielding abusers and reports of harassment. Activision Blizzard has called the report "misleading."
The promise of a "metaverse" is being used by companies across entertainment, tech and gaming to lure developers and excite investors.
Why it matters: While each company defines metaverse differently, the broad concept of bringing people together in a virtual interactive world seems to have taken over the chatter inHollywood and Silicon Valley.
Forbes defined house hacking as "a strategy that involves renting out portions of your primary residence to generate income that is used to offset the cost of your mortgage and other expenses associated with owning a home."
While it sometimes involves a single-family home, it's "typically done with small, multi-family properties like duplexes, triplexes, or any properties with divisible living spaces," per Good Housekeeping.
"That way the owners can live in one unit while renting the other units to tenants."
Why it matters: House hacking represents "the natural culmination of the way in which housing has been transformed into an investment vehicle over the last 50 years,"according to a New York Times article on how cutthroat bidding wars in hot markets like Austin have priced people out.
The back story: The term was coined in 2018 by a blogger named Brandon Turner who described it in a manifesto: "An Intro to House Hacking: Here’s How I Get Paid to Live for Free."
The other side: There are lots of potential pitfalls in renting out your living space to others. Risks include possible lawsuits, falling afoul of tax laws, and winding up with toxic tenants who won't leave.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Monday that the state has ordered Amazon to pay $500,000 for "concealing COVID-19 case numbers" from workers.
Why it matters: The court judgment is the first of its kind under California's new "right to know" law, which aims to bolster worker safety by requiring employers to disclose coronavirus cases to employees and local health agencies, among other provisions.
Ohio attorney general Dave Yost filed suit against Facebook parent company Meta, alleging it misled the public about the potential harm its products can cause.
What's happening: Yost filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) and Facebook investors, citing the Wall Street Journal's reporting and internal documents leaked by former employee Frances Haugen, according to a release from Yost's office on Monday.
Why it matters: It's the latest legal salvo against Meta, which is facing multiple federal, state and international investigations. This one comes on the heels of Haugen testifying to a U.S. Senate subcommittee and the European Parliament about Facebook's internal research and decision-making.
Facebook knowingly made false statements about the safety, security and privacy of its platforms, the suit, filed Friday, argues. It says those revelations caused Facebook's stock to lose value, costing the investors and OPERS more than $100 billion.
What they're saying: "Facebook said it was looking out for our children and weeding out online trolls, but in reality was creating misery and divisiveness for profit," Yost said in the release. "We are not people to Mark Zuckerberg, we are the product and we are being used against each other out of greed."
The suit seeks to recover the lost stock value and demands Facebook make changes to guarantee it does not mislead the public.
A spokesman for Meta said the suit is "without merit" and that the company will defend itself "vigorously," per CNBC.
A majority of Twitter users get news from the social network, despite more than half seeing misleading information on the social network as a major problem, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center.
The big picture: With almost a quarter of Americans using Twitter, it's increasingly become a source for the latest information. Among those who use the platform for news, the study found a large increase in those who use it to follow breaking news events.
Two decades in, the unexpected consequences of some of Xbox’s boldest innovations nudged Microsoft to break away from its initial “gamer” marketing push toward an inclusive approach to gaming, Xbox boss Phil Spencer tells Axios.
Why it matters: Xbox turns 20 today, offering a moment to reflect on what Microsoft has achieved within console gaming and where it may go in the next 20 years.
In a trend that worries sexual abuse experts, teens and even younger children are sharing more nude pictures of themselves, often with adults, a new study has found.
Why it matters: Once shared with even one person, such images can easily be distributed further and become part of the corpus of child sexual abuse material in the dark corners of the web.
Substack on Monday said there are more than1 million paid subscriptions to publications on its platform, up from about 250,000 last December.
Why it matters: Substack's growth underscores the willingness of audiences to pay for content from their favorite writers directly — a trend that's been expedited by the pandemic.
It's not quite a time machine, but the TWA Hotel, adjacent to Terminal 5 at New York's JFK Airport, does let travelers transport themselves back to a time when air travel was fun and glamorous.
Why it matters: Most airport hotels only have their prime location as a selling point, but the TWA Hotel, where I recently stayed, has a lot more to offer.
