Category: Government & Policy

Anthropic agrees with the U.S. government that implementing robust export controls on domestic-made AI chips will help the U.S. compete in the AI race against China. But the company is suggesting a few tweaks to the proposed restrictions. Anthropic released a blog post on Wednesday stating that the company “strongly supports” the U.S. Department of…

IBM pledges to spend $150B in the US over the next few years

April 28, 2025

Enterprise tech giant IBM says that it plans to invest $150 billion in the U.S. over the next five years, which will include a “more than” $30 billion investment in mainframe and quantum computing research. The goal is to fuel the economy and “accelerate [IBM’s] role as the global leader in computing,” the company said in a press release Monday.…

Google’s DeepMind UK team reportedly seeks to unionize

April 26, 2025

Around 300 London-based members of Google’s AI-focused DeepMind team are seeking to unionize with the Communication Workers Union, according to a Financial Times report that cites three people involved with the unionization effort. These DeepMind employees are reportedly unhappy about Google’s decision to remove a pledge not to use AI for weapons or surveillance from…

Government officials are kind of bad at the internet

April 26, 2025

Perhaps no one in the world has made such catastrophic tech flubs this year as U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The saga started when the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, reported that he had been mistakenly added to an unauthorized Signal group chat by U.S. National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, where numerous high-ranking…

An OpenAI researcher who worked on GPT-4.5 had their green card denied

April 25, 2025

Kai Chen, a Canadian AI researcher working at OpenAI who’s lived in the U.S. for 12 years, was denied a green card, according to Noam Brown, a leading research scientist at the company. In a post on X, Brown said that Chen learned of the decision Friday and must soon leave the country. “It’s deeply…

Public comments to White House on AI policy touch on copyright, tariffs

April 24, 2025

Individuals, industry groups, and local governments submitted over 10,000 comments to the White House about its work-in-progress national AI policy, also known as the AI Action Plan. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on Thursday published the text of the submissions in a PDF spanning 18,480 pages. The comments, which touch…

IBM affected by DOGE cuts, downplays impact during Q1 earnings call

April 23, 2025

Tech and consulting giant IBM was not immune to the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) cuts. IBM had 15 of its federal contracts cancelled due to DOGE-related cuts during the first quarter of 2025, according to reporting from Reuters and Bloomberg. These cuts amount to $100 million in future payments, per Bloomberg. Federal contracts represent…

DOJ reportedly probes Disney-FuboTV deal over competition concerns

April 23, 2025

The U.S. Department of Justice is probing Disney’s deal to take a controlling stake in FuboTV, Bloomberg reports. Fubo is a live TV streaming service known for its extensive sports coverage. Officials are examining whether the deal would create a concentration of power in the sports streaming market. In January, Disney announced that it was going…

EU fines Apple, Meta millions for breaching tech competition rules

April 23, 2025

The European Union has fined Apple €500 million (about $568 million) and Meta €200 million (about $227 million) for allegedly breaching the bloc’s Digital Markets Act, according to The Wall Street Journal. The EU has accused Apple of failing to comply with an obligation to allow app developers to inform customers of alternative ways to…

Feds accuse Uber of charging customers for subscriptions without consent

April 21, 2025

The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit Monday against Uber, alleging the ride-hail and delivery giant charged customers for its Uber One subscription service without their consent. The lawsuit also claims Uber failed to deliver the savings promised in its subscription service and made it unreasonably difficult for users to cancel despite its “cancel anytime”…

Tariff turmoil may have killed the tech M&A market’s comeback

April 21, 2025

The tech market doesn’t need to be soaring up and to the right to foster healthy M&A activity. Deals can get done even in down markets. But can M&A thrive in an uncertain market? That’s a harder question. The venture market soured in 2022 as fundraising and exits largely dried up. Since then, venture investors…

An AI doctoral candidate in California says they had their student visa revoked

April 21, 2025

An AI doctoral student in California had their SEVIS record — the digital proof of their valid student visa — terminated, putting their immigration status at risk. Speaking to TechCrunch, the student, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, said they were notified via their college’s international student center that they’d been identified in a criminal records…

Palantir exec defends company’s immigration surveillance work

April 20, 2025

One of the founders of startup accelerator Y Combinator offered unsparing criticism this weekend of the controversial data analytics company Palantir, leading a company executive to offer an extensive defense of Palantir’s work. The back-and-forth came after federal filings showed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — tasked with carrying out the Trump administration’s…

Congress has questions about 23andMe bankruptcy

April 19, 2025

3The leaders of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce said they are investigating how 23andMe’s bankruptcy might affect customers’ data. Representatives Brett Guthrie, Gus Bilirakis, and Gary Palmer (all Republicans) sent a letter Thursday to the genetic testing company’s interim CEO Joe Selsavage asking a number of questions about how 23andMe will handle customer…

White House replaces covid.gov website with ‘lab leak’ theory

April 18, 2025

The government-run website covid.gov used to host information about COVID-19 vaccines, testing, and treatment. Now, under President Trump’s purview, the page redirects to a White House website espousing the unproven theory that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory. The theory, which has been opposed by many virologists, was espoused in a report by House Republicans…

Trump EPA targets two-man geoengineering startup for ‘polluting the air’

April 18, 2025

The company sells “cooling credits” for its sulfur dioxide-based geoengineering projects.

As the trade war escalates, Hence launches an AI ‘advisor’ to help companies manage risk

April 17, 2025

President Donald Trump’s tariffs have underscored the increasing geopolitical risk that almost all businesses now face. As the situation continues to shift with Trump’s unpredictable deal-making, it’s also becoming clear how challenging it is for companies, nonprofits, consultants, and lawyers to keep up with the rapid day-to-day changes. “We are drowning in trade updates every…

Here are all the tech companies rolling back DEI or still committed to it — so far

April 17, 2025

Companies around America have started cutting DEI programs and eliminating DEI commitments from public documents in response to legal and political threats from the Trump administration. Just a few weeks ago, Attorney General Pam Bondi instructed the Department of Justice to “investigate, eliminate, and penalize,” DEI programs deemed illegal in private sector companies that receive…

Judge rules Google illegally monopolized ad tech, opening door to potential breakup

April 17, 2025

A federal judge has found that Google has violated antitrust laws by “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” in the advertising technology market, rounding out a two-year saga after the U.S. and eight states filed its initial complaints against the Alphabet-owned company. The court will set a briefing schedule and hearing date to determine appropriate…

Shein and Temu to raise prices for US shoppers in response to tariffs

April 17, 2025

Temu and Shein plan to raise prices for U.S. customers starting next week on April 25th, due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs on goods shipped from China, the Associated Press reports. The 145% tariff on products made in China, along with Trump’s decision to end a customs exemption that had allowed goods under $800 to…

Chapter, a Medicare startup with links to Vance, Thiel and Ramaswamy, just raised a round at $1.5B valuation

April 16, 2025

Chapter, a Medicare advisory startup co-founded by former Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, has closed a $75 million funding round at a valuation of $1.5 billion led by private equity and venture firm Stripes. The startup helps seniors choose Medicare health plans analyzing doctors, hospitals, and prescription drug coverage. Unlike many other Medicare insurance brokers,…

Trump administration reportedly considers a US DeepSeek ban

April 16, 2025

The Trump administration is considering new restrictions on the Chinese AI lab DeepSeek that would limit it from buying Nvidia’s AI chips, and potentially bar Americans from accessing its AI services, The New York Times reported on Wednesday. The restrictions are part of the Trump administration’s effort to compete with China on AI. Months after…

Trump-appointed judge orders Trump admin to ‘turn the funding spigots back on’

April 16, 2025

U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy said that the administrations actions were “neither reasonable nor reasonably explained.”

AMD estimates $800M charge on US license requirement for AI chips

April 16, 2025

AMD says that the U.S. government’s license control requirement for exporting AI chips to China and certain other countries may impact its earnings materially. If AMD doesn’t successfully obtain a license, the company could be on the hook for roughly $800 million in inventory, purchase commitments, and related reserves charges, the company said in a…

Google used AI to suspend over 39M ad accounts suspected of fraud

April 16, 2025

Google on Wednesday said it suspended 39.2 million advertiser accounts on its platform in 2024 — more than triple the number from the previous year — in its latest crackdown on ad fraud. By leveraging large language models (LLMs) and using signals such as business impersonation and illegitimate payment details, the search giant said it could suspend…

How Musk manages his growing family: WSJ

April 15, 2025

Elon Musk says it’s his duty to “make new humans.” Now, a WSJ investigation suggests he may have fathered more than the 14 children already known, with sources claiming the real number could be significantly higher. The report also describes how Musk keeps those details under wraps. At the center of it all, per the…

Tech tariff exemptions are only temporary, according to Trump’s commerce secretary

April 13, 2025

The tech industry may not be safe from new tariffs, according to U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The Trump administration announced Friday evening that consumer electronics such as laptops and smartphones would be exempt from the tariffs it unveiled earlier this month. (While Trump delayed many of those tariffs this week, he left a 10%…

Trump exempts smartphones, laptops, and semiconductors from new tariffs

April 12, 2025

The Trump administration is carving out big tariff exemptions for the tech industry. While President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would delay many of the market-shaking tariffs that he’d announced the previous week, he kept a universal baseline 10% tariff in place, while also increasing tariffs on Chinese goods to 125% (on top of…

Law professors side with authors battling Meta in AI copyright case

April 11, 2025

A group of professors specializing in copyright law has filed an amicus brief in support of authors suing Meta for allegedly training its Llama AI models on ebooks without permission. The brief, filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, calls Meta’s fair use defense “a…

38 consumer startup founders lobby over Trump tariffs: One faces a surprise $200K bill

April 11, 2025

Small businesses could be crushed under President Trump’s increased tariffs, according to an open letter by 38 female consumer product founders. While Trump paused his tariff increases for 90 days for various countries – setting the rate at 10% for now – China’s was raised to 145%, which includes the previous 20% levy. In the…

Ireland’s data regulator investigates X’s use of European user data to train Grok

April 11, 2025

Ireland’s data regulator, the Data Protection Commission (DPC), said Friday that it has opened an investigation into Elon Musk’s X over the social media platform’s use of personal data collected from European users to train Grok. The DPC will investigate how X processes personal data “comprised” in publicly accessible posts by European users for the…

Yahoo removes DEI pages from its website

April 10, 2025

Several tech companies have scaled back public commitments to DEI amid a broader crackdown by the Trump administration.

The US Secretary of Education referred to AI as ‘A1,’ like the steak sauce

April 10, 2025

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon attended the ASU+GSV Summit this week, where experts in education and technology gathered to discuss how AI will impact learning. While speaking on a panel about AI in the workforce, McMahon repeatedly referred to AI as “A1,” like the steak sauce. “You know, AI development — I mean, how…

The US Secretary of Education referred to AI as ‘A1,’ like the steak sauce

April 10, 2025

The US Secretary of Education referred to AI as ‘A1,’ like the steak sauce

April 10, 2025

OpenAI countersues Elon Musk, calls for enjoinment from ‘further unlawful and unfair action’

April 9, 2025

The dramatic tiff between OpenAI and its estranged co-founder, billionaire Elon Musk, shows no sign of letting up. In a filing on Wednesday, attorneys for OpenAI and other defendants in the case, including CEO Sam Altman, called for Musk to be enjoined from “further unlawful and unfair action” and “held responsible for the damage he…

Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams says company targeted ads at teens based on their ‘emotional state’

April 9, 2025

Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams, the former director of Global Public Policy for Facebook and author of the recently released tell-all book “Careless People,” told U.S. senators during her testimony on Wednesday that Meta actively targeted teens with advertisements based on their emotional state. This claim was first documented by Wynn-Williams in her book, which documents…

Whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams accuses Meta of colluding with China

April 9, 2025

Sarah Wynn-Williams, Facebook’s former head of Global Public Policy, testified before the U.S. Senate today about the company’s relationship with China. According to Wynn-Williams, the company now known as Meta worked directly with the Chinese Community Party (CCP) to “undermine U.S. national security and betray American values,” she said. She alleges that Facebook created custom-built…

Microsoft reportedly fires staff whose protest interrupted its Copilot event

April 7, 2025

On Monday, Microsoft reportedly terminated the roles of two software engineers, Ibtihal Aboussad and Vaniya Agrawal, who protested the company’s reported dealings with the Israeli military during Microsoft’s Copilot and 50th anniversary event last week. According to an internal message viewed by CNBC, Microsoft wrote that Aboussad could have raised concerns “confidentially with your manager,…

Analyst says Apple, Tesla have biggest exposure to Trump’s tariffs

April 7, 2025

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives slashed his price targets for Apple and Tesla over the weekend as President Trump’s tariffs threaten to disrupt both businesses. “The tariff economic Armageddon unleashed by Trump is a complete disaster for Apple given its massive China production exposure,” Ives said in a warning note over the weekend. “In our…

Nintendo says it is ‘actively assessing’ the impact of U.S. tariffs

April 7, 2025

Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser said that the company did not factor in possible tariffs from the U.S. when deciding on the pricing for its Nintendo Switch 2 console, according to Wired. Nintendo unveiled its highly anticipated Switch 2 last week and announced that the console would be released on June 5, priced at…

White House reportedly blames auto-suggested iPhone contact for Signal scandal

April 6, 2025

How did Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg get added to a Signal group chat with Trump administration officials discussing their plans for an airstrike in Yemen? The simplest explanation: National Security Adviser Mike Waltz had Goldberg saved as a contact in his phone and accidentally added him. Indeed, when Waltz first claimed that Goldberg’s phone number…

DOGE reportedly planning a hackathon to build ‘mega API’ for IRS data

April 5, 2025

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) plans to host a hackathon next week focused on the creation of a “mega API” that will provide access to taxpayer data, according to Wired. Wired says the hackathon is being organized by two DOGE staffers at the Internal Revenue Service — Gavin Kliger and Sam Corcos, who’s…

SF Mayor Lurie to tech CEOs: ‘How can we get you back?’

April 5, 2025

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie wants to bring his city back to its glory days. And he’s convinced tech leaders — who often pitch utopian ideals of their own — can help him deliver. “I’m a mayor that is picking up the phone and calling CEOs,” said Lurie during TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC event on Thursday night.…

Protester interrupts Microsoft Copilot keynote, says company has ‘blood on its hands’

April 4, 2025

A protester interrupted Microsoft’s Copilot-focused keynote Friday afternoon, calling attention to the company’s reported dealings with the Israeli military. “Shame on you,” the protester said. “You claim that you care about using AI for good, but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military […] All of Microsoft has blood on its hands.” Microsoft Head…

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie thinks his city is on the verge of a rebound

April 4, 2025

The perception of San Francisco has been on the decline for years due to a number of factors. The city’s mayor, Daniel Lurie, joined TechCrunch’s Maxwell Zeff to talk about Lurie’s efforts to turn that around. Lurie highlighted his administrative and on-the-ground efforts in a push for San Francisco to remain the center of the…

Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen still sees opportunity in global trade despite Trump’s tariffs

April 4, 2025

Flexport’s business is built on supply chains, and the new tariffs the U.S. is placing upon its trading partners have plunged international trade into chaos. Flexport founder and CEO Ryan Petersen joined TechCrunch Editor in Chief Connie Loizos for a StrictlyVC conversation on the ins and outs of the tariffs’ impact, the industry’s reaction, and…

Nintendo delays Switch 2 pre-orders in response to tariffs

April 4, 2025

Nintendo is delaying preorders for the newly-announced Switch 2 in the U.S. due to concerns around President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Preorders will no longer begin on April 9. “Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions,”…

Nintendo delays Switch 2 preorders in response to tariffs

April 4, 2025

Nintendo is delaying preorders for the newly announced Switch 2 in the U.S. due to concerns around President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Preorders will no longer begin on April 9. “Preorders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025, in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market…

Trump fires head of National Security Agency and Cyber Command

April 4, 2025

Haugh’s firing has seemingly caught senior lawmakers by surprise

Federal judge allows the EFF’s lawsuit against DOGE and Elon Musk to proceed

April 3, 2025

A federal judge ruled on Thursday that a lawsuit attempting to stop the Department of Government Efficiency from obtaining records on millions of Americans may proceed. In conjunction with privacy watchdog the Electronic Frontier Foundation and two labor unions, more than 100 current and former federal employees sued DOGE, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management…

Apple loses $250B market value as tariffs tank tech stocks

April 3, 2025

Apple lost more than $250 billion in market value Thursday, with shares down as much as 8.5% as a result of President Donald Trump’s tariff spree. The iPhone maker took one of the biggest hits on Wall Street, where tech stocks dropped as investors shifted money away from volatile assets. Tesla, Nvidia, and Meta were…

Researchers suggest OpenAI trained AI models on paywalled O’Reilly books

April 1, 2025

OpenAI has been accused by many parties of training its AI on copyrighted content sans permission. Now a new paper by an AI watchdog organization makes the serious accusation that the company increasingly relied on non-public books it didn’t license to train more sophisticated AI models. AI models are essentially complex prediction engines. Trained on…

Signal sees its downloads double after scandal

March 31, 2025

Encrypted messaging app Signal continues to see spiking downloads in the wake of the messaging scandal, which saw The Atlantic’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg added to a group chat where high-ranking officials in the Trump administration were discussing an attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen. The resulting press coverage around the leak of these…

‘Tesla Takedown’ protesters are planning a global day of action on March 29, and things might get ugly

March 29, 2025

“Tesla Takedown” organizers have promised their biggest day of global action today, encouraging thousands to protest outside Tesla showrooms, dealerships, and even charging stations to peacefully object to Elon Musk’s role in slashing government spending. As Tesla protests have spread, so has the backlash. Activists holding up signs are being conflated with masked vandals throwing…

‘Tesla Takedown’ protesters are planning a global day of action on March 29, and things might get ugly

March 28, 2025

‘Tesla Takedown’ organizers have promised their biggest day of global action this weekend, encouraging thousands to protest outside Tesla showrooms, dealerships, and even charging stations to peacefully object to Elon Musk’s role in slashing government spending. As Tesla protests have spread, so has the backlash. Activists holding up signs are being conflated with masked vandals…

New Utah law makes app stores responsible for age verification

March 27, 2025

Meta, X, and Snap are celebrating a new Utah law that will require Apple and Google to take responsibility for verifying users’ ages on their app stores and obtain parental consent for minors. The tech giants have been battling to determine which party should be responsible for age verification on the app stores. Companies like…

UnitedHealth removes mentions of DEI from its website

March 26, 2025

The health insurance giant is the latest to remove references to diversity, equity and inclusion policies amid mounting pressure from the Trump administration.

SpaceX reportedly has a secret backdoor for Chinese investment

March 26, 2025

Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX has allowed Chinese investors to buy stakes as long as the funds are routed through the Cayman Islands or other offshore hubs, according to reporting from ProPublica. SpaceX is a defense contractor for the Pentagon, one that handles sensitive work like building a classified spy satellite network. Investment from China…

Bradley Tusk says he makes more money with ‘equity-for-services’ than he did as a traditional VC

March 26, 2025

Bradley Tusk, co-founder and managing partner at Tusk Venture Partners, told TechCrunch in today’s episode of Equity that VC as we know it is dead. And it has been for the last four years. “Maybe there’s some VC that I’ve never heard of that’s awash with liquidity the last couple of years, but we haven’t…

Trump admin directs DOE officials to shield DOGE documents from disclosure

March 24, 2025

The Department of Energy’s acting general counsel reportedly issued a memo telling political appointees how to complete DOGE spreadsheets.

Google claims news is worthless to its ad business after test involving 1% of search results in eight EU markets

March 21, 2025

Google has reported the results of an experiment it ran which removed news from search results for 1% of users for 2.5 months in eight* markets in Europe — claiming the results show that news is essentially worthless to Google’s ad business. The search giant conducted the test because European copyright law requires it to…

AI’s answers on China differ depending on the language, analysis finds

March 20, 2025

It’s well-established that AI models developed by Chinese AI labs like DeepSeek censor certain politically sensitive topics. A 2023 measure passed by China’s ruling party forbids models from generating content that “damages the unity of the country and social harmony.” According to one study, DeepSeek’s R1 refuses to answer 85% of questions about subjects deemed…

Meta AI is finally coming to the EU, but with limitations

March 20, 2025

Amid an ongoing regulatory battle with European privacy authorities, Meta announced on Thursday that its AI-powered virtual assistant, Meta AI, is finally launching in the European Union. The chatbot-like tool will be rolled out across Meta’s portfolio of social platforms, albeit with a more limited feature set compared to what it offers in its domestic…

Sequoia shutters D.C. office, lets go of policy team

March 19, 2025

Sequoia will shutter its D.C. office as well as part ways with the policy team there at the end of March, TechCrunch has confirmed. The news comes — and is somewhat in contrast — with the other prominent VC firms in Silicon Valley strengthening their ties with Capitol Hill and the new Trump administration. Andreessen…

Group co-led by Fei-Fei Li suggests that AI safety laws should anticipate future risks

March 19, 2025

In a new report, a California-based policy group co-led by Fei-Fei Li, an AI pioneer, suggests that lawmakers should consider AI risks that “have not yet been observed in the world” when crafting AI regulatory policies. The 41-page interim report released on Tuesday comes from the Joint California Policy Working Group on Frontier AI Models,…

Judge orders Citibank to release nonprofit funds, rejects EPA’s arguments

March 19, 2025

Google search, Play Store falling foul of Digital Markets Act rules, says EU

March 19, 2025

Google Search and its Play Store app marketplace are suspected of breaching the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), per preliminary findings announced Wednesday by EU Commission enforcers of the bloc’s flagship market contestability law, who have been investigating the company for months. The DMA applies to a handful of tech giants, Alphabet (Google’s parent)…

EPA was ‘arbitrary and capricious’ when it froze nonprofits’ Citibank accounts, judge finds

March 19, 2025

EU sends Apple first DMA interoperability instructions for apps and connected devices

March 19, 2025

The European Union has sent Apple preliminary instructions on how it expects the iPhone maker to comply with interoperability provisions in the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), its flagship market contestability reform. According to the Commission, device manufacturers and app developers should be able to access nine iOS connectivity features that were restricted to Apple’s…

Cape opens $99/month beta of its privacy-first mobile plan, inks Proton deal, raises $30M

March 19, 2025

Mobile networks continue to be a major target for cybersecurity breaches, and Chinese hacking group Salt Typhoon‘s persistent attacks on multiple carriers are only the latest known examples. The mobile carrier startup Cape is taking a novel approach to addressing the problem: it has built a service it says can provide a more secure, private…

Trump fires FTC commissioners, setting up a legal battle

March 18, 2025

President Trump fired the two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, setting up a challenge to a 1935 Supreme Court precedent prohibiting the firing of FTC commissioners for reasons other than “good cause.” The White House terminated commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya earlier Tuesday, The New York Times reported. In…

Elon Musk’s DOGE leadership likely violates constitution’s appointments clause, judge says

March 18, 2025

Elon Musk’s role overseeing the Department of Government Efficiency is likely a violation of the United States constitution’s appointments clause, a federal judge wrote Tuesday. Theodore Chuang, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, wrote in an opinion there is more than enough evidence — mostly from statements made by…

FTC removes posts critical of big tech from its website

March 18, 2025

The FTC has removed over 300 blog posts published during the agency’s leadership under former chair Lina Khan, Wired reports. These include posts that are critical of companies like Amazon and Microsoft for their handling of customer data. The FTC did not respond to a request for comment. As FTC chair during the Biden years,…

Apple loses appeal against Germany’s special abuse control for Big Tech

March 18, 2025

Being a staggeringly successful big tech company does have some downsides: Apple has lost an appeal against a special abuse control regime that Germany’s competition watchdog applied to it last year. The iPhone maker can expect to continue to face bespoke competition controls in a major European market, in addition to other similar laws (such…

Google revives talks to acquire Wiz at higher valuation

March 17, 2025

Google’s parent company Alphabet is again in advanced talks to acquire cloud cybersecurity startup Wiz, a person familiar with the deal told TechCrunch. The two companies were close to securing a deal at a $23 billion valuation last summer, but the transaction failed to materialize. This time, the price being discussed is higher, the person…

DOGE staffer violated Treasury rules by emailing unencrypted personal data

March 17, 2025

UK’s internet watchdog puts storage and file-sharing services on watch over CSAM

March 17, 2025

As duties under the U.K.’s Online Safety Act (OSA) related to tackling illegal content came into force Monday, the internet watchdog, Ofcom, said it has launched a new enforcement program focused on online storage and file-sharing services. The regulator said its evidence shows that file-sharing and file-storage services are “particularly susceptible” to being used for…

European tech industry coalition calls for ‘radical action’ on digital sovereignty — starting with buying local

March 17, 2025

A broad coalition drawn from across the ranks of Europe’s tech industry is calling for “radical action” from European Union lawmakers to shrink reliance on foreign-owned digital infrastructure and services to bolster the bloc’s economic prospects, resilience, and security in increasingly fraught geopolitical times. In an open letter to European Commission president, Ursula von der…

Meta takes aim at ex-employee’s memoir ‘Careless People’

March 16, 2025

Meta won a legal victory this week against Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former employee who recently published a memoir of her time at the company titled “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism.” An arbitrator ruled that the company has made a valid argument that Wynn-Williams, who worked at Facebook (now Meta)…

Republican Congressman Jim Jordan asks Big Tech if Biden tried to censor AI

March 14, 2025

On Thursday, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent letters to 16 American technology firms, including Google and OpenAI, asking for past communications with the Biden Administration that might suggest the former President “coerced or colluded” with companies to “censor lawful speech” in AI products. The Trump Administration’s top technology advisers previously signaled it would pick…

What to know about TikTok’s uncertain future in the US and the people who want to buy it

March 14, 2025

TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has been at the center of controversy in the U.S. for four years now due to concerns about user data potentially being accessed by the Chinese government. Just this past month, the app experienced a temporary outage in the U.S. that left millions of users in suspense before…

UK’s secret iCloud backdoor order triggers civil rights challenge

March 14, 2025

The U.K. government’s secret order to Apple demanding it backdoor the end-to-end encrypted version of its iCloud storage service has now been challenged by two civil rights groups, Liberty and Privacy International, which filed complaints Thursday. They called the order “unacceptable and disproportionate” and warned of “global consequences” as the access order is thought to…

Trump family is reportedly in talks to acquire stake in Binance’s US arm

March 14, 2025

President Trump’s family has been weighing an investment in Binance.US, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. The investment would come just a couple of years after Binance’s U.S. arm pleaded guilty to violating anti-money laundering regulation. As part of that guilty plea, Binance’s founder Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, paid a…

Y Combinator urges the White House to support Europe’s Digital Markets Act

March 13, 2025

Y Combinator, one of the world’s most prolific startup accelerators, sent a letter on Wednesday urging the Trump Administration to openly support Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), a wide-ranging piece of legislation that aims to crack open Big Tech’s market power. The DMA designates six tech companies as “gatekeepers” to the internet — Alphabet, Amazon,…

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