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Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, illegally required users to agree to personalized and targeted ads and was fined $414 million for violating European Union rules, Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) said Wednesday.

The big picture: Meta will pay about $223 million for violating privacy rules on Facebook and about $191 million for its practices on Instagram, the regulator said.

Driving the news: The ruling came after a pair of 2018 complaints alleged Meta, formerly called Facebook, did not properly comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules.

Facebook and Instagram had users accept terms of service that effectively forced users to agree to new terms and conditions that allowed their data to be used for personalized ads if they wanted to continue using their accounts, the regulator said.

The DPC said that the language made it so "users had insufficient clarity as to what processing operations were being carried out on their personal data." 

The GDPR bans businesses from keeping personal information without permission from an EU citizen.

What they're saying: Meta said in a blog post published Wednesday that it plans to appeal the decision, suggesting that Facebook and Instagram are "inherently personalized."

"It would be highly unusual for a social media service not to be tailored to the individual user," Meta said.

"We strongly believe our approach respects GDPR, and we're therefore disappointed by these decisions and intend to appeal both the substance of the rulings and the fines," Meta said.

The company said it can continue to provide personalized advertising across the EU.

Thought bubble via Axios' Ashley Gold: The fines may be large and hint at a future where targeted advertising is banned, but the fact that they stem from 2018 complaints shows how slow the process will be for any real shifts to how Meta operates.

What's next: The ruling could force Meta to make changes to its advertising business in the European Union, the New York Times reports. No specifics of how Meta must comply moving forward were given.

Slow fade for Google and Meta's ad dominance

Meta expected to decide soon on fate of Trump accounts

Meta fined over $400 million for its targeted ad practices

The ruling came after a pair of 2018 complaints alleged Meta did not properly comply with EU law.

The Meta (formerly Facebook) logo marks the entrance of their corporate headquarters in Menlo Park, California on November 09, 2022

The Meta logo at the entrance of their corporate headquarters. Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images

Meta (company)

Big Tech

From the Valley to D.C., Big Tech players like Facebook, Google and Amazon are under more scrutiny than ever as new technology develops and privacy and antitrust concerns grow in lockstep with companies’ ambitions.

Technology

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is personally taking control of Google's A.I. strategy, the New York Times reports. 

The big picture: The release of ChatGPT three weeks ago led Google management to declare a "code red," per the Times.

Why it matters: The chatbot answers queries in simple text, rather than with a list of links. That could disrupt search as surely as smartphones displaced landlines. 

What's happening: Pichai has "upended the work of numerous groups inside the company to respond to the threat that ChatGPT poses," the Times writes.

Employees are racing to build "A.I. products that can create artwork and other images, like OpenAI’s DALL-E technology."

Google CEO taking charge of company's A.I. strategy

The release three weeks ago of ChatGPT led Google management to declare a "code red."

Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Google

Automation and AI

Media Trends

Axios Media Trends

The suspension of several journalists on Twitter Thursday immediately set off a  firestorm, with mainstream press crying foul over what they perceived as an attempt by Elon Musk to silence his critics and right-wing voices arguing that the liberal media finally got a taste of its own medicine.

Why it matters: Musk has said repeatedly that he stands for free speech, but the inconsistency of his content moderation decisions has begun to alienate traditional media outlets.

What they're saying: "The suspension of (Washington Post reporter) Drew Harwell's Twitter account directly undermines Elon Musk's claim that he intends to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech," said Sally Buzbee, executive editor of The Washington Post.

CNN said in a statement it will "reevaluate" its relationship with Twitter based on Musk's response to questions from CNN about why one of its reporters' accounts was suspended.

The other side: "TABLES HAVE TURNED: Elon Musk suspends CNN, NYT, WaPo journalists, reminding them the rules also apply to them," Fox News tweeted.

"Oh so now you care about censorship and having your Twitter accounts banned?" tweeted conservative activist Charlie Kirk, founder and president of Turning Point USA.

Between the lines: Musk later confirmed that reporters were suspended for linking to a Mastodon account that actively tracked Musk's private jet. Musk suspended a similar Twitter account on Wednesday.

He alleged that by posting links to the account, those journalists had "doxxed" him, and doxxing is a violation of Twitter's policies.

Doxxing is typically defined as publishing private or personally identifying information about someone online, often for the purpose of inviting scrutiny or harm to the subject.

Musk later joined a Twitter Spaces audio discussion among journalists, including some of those who were banned, where he doubled down on his decision.

In that discussion, the Post's Harwell disputed the notion that linking to the jet account — which aggregates publicly available location information — constituted "doxxing," and reiterated that he never posted Musk's address.

In response, Musk repeated that doxxing is against Twitter's rules and violators of those rules would be suspended. He then abruptly exited the audio event, which had roughly 31,000 listeners.

Be smart: Regardless of how they were perceived, the suspensions on Thursday were unprecedented.

There's never been an attempt by a major social media platform to suspend so many journalists all at once.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said that if the reporters' suspensions are confirmed as retaliation for their work, "this would be a serious violation of journalists' right to report the news without fear of reprisal."

The big picture: Musk's long-held frustration with the mainstream media has put him at odds with one of Twitter's most active user groups.

When asked about the role that the traditional press should play on Twitter, Musk has said that he believes in "citizen journalism" as a way to counter the mainstream media's power.

"I'm not saying we should somehow downplay the major publications or prominent journalists. I'm simply saying we should elevate people and give voice to the people. Much more, " he said on a Twitter Spaces chat last month.

Twitter press suspensions become media flashpoint

Musk's content moderation decisions have begun to alienate traditional outlets.

Illustration of a bird cage with the Twitter logo inside being held up by a cage carrier in the shape of Elon Musk's face.

Twitter

Elon Musk's Twitter suspends several journalists' accounts without notice

Musk previously vowed to make Twitter a haven for "healthy, functioning free speech."

Elon Musk talks to the press at the construction site of a new Tesla Gigafactory on Sept. 3, 2020 near Gruenheide, Germany. Photo: Maja Hitij via Getty Images

Elon Musk

Media

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

Twitter disbanded its "Trust and Safety Council," according to an email sent Monday night to the members of the panel that was obtained by news outlets including Axios.

Why it matters: It's another example of owner Elon Musk rolling back years of efforts designed to make the social media site a more civil and safer place, per the Washington Post.

Context: The council comprised dozens of expert advisory groups volunteering since 2016 to address what the since-deleted page described as "issues critical to the health of the public conversation."

Their key focus areas were online safety and harassment, human and digital rights, suicide prevention and mental health, child sexual exploitation and dehumanization.

Members of the group included GLAAD, the Human Rights Foundation, the Samaritans, the International Network Against Cyberhate and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Council member Alex Holmes noted in a tweet Monday night that the group of volunteers was at no point responsible for decision-making on the platform.

Driving the news: "As Twitter moves into a new phase, we are reevaluating how best to bring external insights into our product and policy development work," the company said in the email thanking the volunteers for their work.

"As part of this process, we have decided that the Trust and Safety Council is not the best structure to do this," added the email, signed only "Twitter."

"Our work to make Twitter a safe, informative place will be moving faster and more aggressively than ever before and we will continue to welcome your ideas going forward about how to achieve this goal," it read.

Of note: Twitter canceled a meeting with the volunteers before sending the email, per a tweet from Holmes, deputy CEO of nonprofit The Diana Award.

Holmes said that over the past week "several members of council have had their personal safety and well-being impacted by the actions of Twitter staff."

What they're saying: "Twitter has made it abundantly clear that trust and safety are no longer priorities for the company, given this abrupt dismissal of the Trust & Safety Council as well as its dangerous policy choices over the last month and invitations for suspended accounts to rejoin," a GLAAD spokesperson told Axios. 

"Until the company returns to following basic industry-wide best practices on hateful content, the platform clearly remains unsafe not only for LGBTQ users but for brands and advertisers."

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit that promotes press freedom worldwide, and another council member said the action was a cause for "grave concern, particularly as it is coupled with increasingly hostile statements by Twitter owner Elon Musk about journalists and the media."

The big picture: Musk has committed to making Twitter a haven for free speech, but he has also said the removal of child sexual abuse material is his "number one priority." 

The company has lost roughly two thirds of its staff since Musk took over, including many employees who worked on trust and safety and related areas.

Flashback: Three members of the council resigned last week in protest at the Twitter changes, citing in a statement evidence they said showed that "contrary to claims by Elon Musk, the safety and wellbeing of Twitter's users are on the decline."

Musk responded by tweeting "It is a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!" — prompting Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey to call Musk's claim "false."

Go deeper: Elon Musk's Twitter sees rise in racial slurs, hate speech -

Editor's note: This article has been updated with additional details throughout.

Twitter disbands Trust and Safety Council

Three council members resigned last week, citing safety concerns since Elon Musk took over Twitter.

Elon Musk and a Twitter logo are seen in this illustration photo in Warsaw, Poland on 30 November, 2022. 

An illustration of Elon Musk and a Twitter logo. Photo:STR/NurPhoto via Getty Images

2022 saw an unprecedented rise in labor organizing in U.S. tech firms, with some workers pushing for collective rights just as a tanking economy changed the industry's dynamics.

Yes, but: So far, tech's labor activism has largely moved on the margins of the industry, with Amazon warehouse workers, Apple Store employees and video game QA testers leading organizing efforts, while engineers, product teams and other headquarters staff mostly shied away.

The staff at a Staten Island Amazon warehouse in April voted to form the retail giant’s first union in the U.S. after workers voted against unionization last year in Alabama.

In May, a second Staten Island warehouse voted to reject a union, and an upstate New York warehouse did the same in October. But new efforts continue to pop up, most recently in North Carolina and Kentucky.

Workers at several Apple Stores voted to unionize this year, including at Apple’s flagship store in New York City's Grand Central Terminal in April, a store in Maryland in June and a store in Oklahoma City in October. 

A retail store in Atlanta canceled a vote to unionize with workers there reportedly saying they felt intimidated, and last week the National Labor Relations Board accused Apple of using union-busting tactics at the location.

Collective action pressure within the video game industry has been building for years, with workers citing punishing schedules and hostile work environments. 2022 saw the first U.S. union formed in a big game publisher.

Raven Software, owned by Activision Blizzard, unionized in May after the NLRB ruled against an Activision Blizzard challenge to the vote. Testers at Activision Blizzard Albany unionized this month.

Between the lines: Those moves mean that Microsoft, which still hopes to close its acquisition of Activision  Blizzard despite regulatory challenges, will soon become a union employer.

In June, Microsoft announced it had reached a "neutrality pact" with the union that has organized Activision workers and pledged not to interfere with unionization drives. 

Last week, hundreds of workers in the ZeniMax Studio Group, which Microsoft purchased for $7.5 billion in 2020, announced they were taking steps to vote on unionization.

“We remain committed to providing employees with an opportunity to freely and fairly make choices about their workplace representation,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Axios.

Zoom out: Tech’s outburst of organizing overcame decades of Silicon Valley  resistance to labor unions.

The industry rose in the '80s and '90s in an era dominated by free-market ideas. Most tech leaders and many workers saw unions as a relic of the analog past, a drag on the economy and a constraint on their flexibility and efficiency.

The tech industry operates under an implicit bargain with skilled workers: They get stock option ownership and high pay in return for keeping the workplace union-free. 

Today, however, the wider public has warmed to unions. 

An August 2022 Gallup poll found that U.S. approval of labor unions is at its highest point since 1965.

At the same time, the pull of the tech-firm stock-option magnet has weakened, at least briefly, as the industry faces its worst downturn in two decades.

What they’re saying: “The rate of organizing and the significance of the wins that we're seeing is like nothing I've experienced in my lifetime,” Sara Steffens, secretary-treasurer of the Communications Workers of America, which has been involved in several tech organization efforts, told Axios.

Steffens attributed 2022's rise in tech unions to pandemic-driven cultural shifts and long- germinating efforts to organize.

“When you have a QA tester who's just killing themselves at crunch time, really taking on a crazy amount of work and all the health burdens that go along with that, they can understand that they're being exploited,” Steffens said.

Amazon, Apple, Activision Blizzard and the NLRB declined to comment for this story.

Steffens praised Microsoft's approach as “showing the other tech companies that there's a different way to do this, besides digging in and fighting — that you could actually support your workers rights to make this decision on their own through an orderly process.”

“I think that people will see that it's turned out to be a really good thing business-wise for Microsoft.”

What's next: Negotiating contracts amid layoffs

Tech's labor organizing is still in its infancy. 

Only a few unions have successfully formed, and most of those still face the often-arduous process of negotiating contracts with employers.

Pandemic-driven labor shortages gave workers an unusual boost in leverage for a time, but that dynamic could change again as the economy slows down.

The tech industry laid off over 120,000 employees in 2022.

The bottom line: Steffens predicts that the “exponential” momentum built in 2022 will continue in 2023.

The year labor organizing came to tech

But unions had their greatest wins on the industry's fringes, in Amazon warehouses, Apple stores and game studios..

Illustration of a dialogue box that reads "unionize" with a cursor aiming for the ok button

Labor unions

Google must delete search results about people in Europe if they can prove that the information is clearly incorrect, the EU's highest court said on Thursday.

Driving the news: The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that search engines must "dereference information found in the referenced content where the person requesting dereferencing proves that such information is manifestly inaccurate."

Context: A 2014 EU ruling granted European citizens the right to ask search engines to remove sensitive or outdated information from listings about their past, known as the "right to be forgotten."

Thought bubble, via Axios' Ashley Gold: This court ruling is part of a trend in which governments, both in the U.S. and abroad, are holding platforms increasingly responsible for the content that others post — which companies say could ruin the business models that have made them successful.

Details: The case originated from a complaint filed in Germany's top court by two managers of a group of investment companies, according to the CJEU.

They requested Google remove search results based on their names, which provided links to certain articles criticizing that group’s investment model that they said contained inaccurate claims.

The managers also requested Google remove thumbnail images of them. But the tech giant declined to do so, "arguing that it was unaware whether the information contained in those articles was accurate or not," per the CJEU.

Of note: In the German case, the CJEU ruled that such proof does not need to "result from a judicial decision made against the publisher of the website."

The person seeking removal of online data only needs to provide "evidence that can reasonably be required of him or her to try to find" it, according to the ruling.

What they're saying: "Since 2014, we've worked hard to implement the right to be forgotten in Europe, and to strike a sensible balance between people’s rights of access to information and privacy," a Google spokesperson said in a statement, per Reuters.

The spokesperson noted the online information referred to in the case had long been removed.

Go deeper: EU's regulatory iceberg bears down on tech's big ships

Google must remove inaccurate search data if asked, EU court rules

Such proof doesn't need to "result from a judicial decision," the court said.

In this photo illustration the American multinational technology company and search engine Google logo is seen on an Android mobile device screen with the EU flag in the background.

Photo illustration: Chukrut Budrul/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

China is becoming the most formidable rival America has faced, and the risk of confrontation with Russia, North Korea or Iran still looms. Authoritarians are rising, the chaotic Afghanistan exit revealed the limits of U.S. power, and the pandemic, climate change and other critical challenges continue to pose grave threats.

World

President Biden has made the COVID-19 crisis and a post-Trump return to national unity and traditional democratic ideals his top priorities. From vaccinations to stimulus to schools, Biden is seeking bipartisan compromise while showing a willingness to use executive authority and bare Democratic majorities in the U.S. House and Senate to implement his policies. Republican leaders are navigating deep party divisions over if and how to move beyond former President Trump.

Politics & Policy

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Outside journalists working with Twitter owner Elon Musk posted a new batch of internal communications from the company Thursday night with what they said was evidence the firm's employees "build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts."

Why it matters: Musk has framed the "Twitter Files" as an effort to show that his predecessors at Twitter engaged in censorship. Others, including experts in online platforms, say the documents just depict Twitter executives imperfectly but conscientiously struggling to apply complex policies in difficult cases. 

Driving the news: In a series of tweets, newsletter author and former New York Times opinion columnist Bari Weiss highlighted cases where Twitter has limited the distribution and recommendation of tweets.

Weiss zeroed in on several specific accounts, including conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Stanford doctor Jay Bhattacharya, and Chaya Raichik, who operates the Libsoftiktok account.

Libsoftiktok has aggressively attacked providers of gender-affirming care for transgender youth, including Boston Children's Hospital, which became the subject of a bomb threat. 

Libsoftiktok was temporarily suspended and other actions taken — though Twitter did not permanently ban the account, as some civil rights groups had called for.

Flashback: The previous "Twitter Files" installment, by newsletter author Matt Taibbi, focused on how Twitter handled a controversial decision, three weeks before the 2020 presidential election, to limit access to an article about the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop.

Weiss says she and Taibbi "have broad and expanding access to Twitter’s files."

Between the lines: Twitter has long made it clear that it might reduce the   visibility of tweets by users who violate its rules. However, the company has not always been transparent about when it took such actions or who was making those decisions.

Yes, but: The company also denied it engaged in the practice of "shadow banning" users, as many on the right have charged. 

But that term lacks an agreed-upon definition. While Twitter may not have considered what it did "shadow banning," others clearly do.

The intrigue: Musk says Twitter will double down on such tactics, suspending fewer users and taking down less content in favor of limiting the reach of some material.

"New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach," Musk said last month, adding, of negative and hate tweets: "You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet."

Following Weiss' report on Thursday, Musk tweeted, "Twitter is working on a software update that will show your true account status, so you know clearly if you’ve been shadowbanned, the reason why and how to appeal."

The big picture: Twitter was early to adopt policies that allowed content that wasn't banned outright to be limited in visibility. 

Others in the industry have also moved in that direction, particularly Google-owned YouTube, which has made limiting distribution and recommendation of borderline content a key part of its efforts to limit the spread of conspiracy theories and misinformation.

What's next: Weiss promised more to come from herself and Taibbi. 

Musk's second "Twitter Files" claims "secret blacklists"

Outside journalists posted more internal documents showing Twitter's content decisions under Musk's predecessors.

Illustration of the Twitter bird logo with emoji side eyes

Gaming

Axios Gaming

The Federal Trade Commission will seek to block Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of video game developer Activision Blizzard, the agency announced Thursday.

Why it matters: If the FTC is successful, it will be a major blow to the biggest attempted deal in gaming history. And the suit itself is another clear signal from the agency that any big tech company looking to buy a smaller one should be wary.

Driving the news: The commission voted 3-1, with Republican commissioner Christine Wilson voting no, to file an administrative complaint seeking to block the merger. 

The FTC alleges in its complaint that the deal would allow Microsoft to "suppress competitors to its Xbox gaming consoles and its rapidly growing subscription content and cloud-gaming business."

It's a major setback for Microsoft, after a full-court press tour which sought to warm regulators to the deal, including an op-ed by the company's president Brad Smith in the Wall Street Journal.

What they're saying: "Microsoft has already shown that it can and will withhold content from its gaming rivals," said Holly Vedova, director of the FTC’s bureau of competition, in a statement. "Today we seek to stop Microsoft from gaining control over a leading independent game studio and using it to harm competition in multiple dynamic and fast-growing gaming markets."

FTC sues to block Microsoft-Activision Blizzard merger

The commission voted 3-1 to file an administrative complaint seeking to block the merger.

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