Chinese artificial intelligence company Shanghai Zhizhen Intelligent Network Technology Co Ltd, also known as Xiao-i, has filed a lawsuit against Apple Inc, alleging it has infringed on its patents. The company is calling for 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) in damages and demands that Apple cease “manufacturing, using, promising to sell, selling, and importing” products that infringe on the patent, it said in a social media post.
Read the article: Reuters
Twitter said that the Federal Trade Commission may soon fine it up to $250 million for improper use of users’ phone numbers and email addresses. The potential fines would come for violations of Twitter’s 2011 agreement with the FTC to no longer mislead consumers about how it protects their personal information.
Read the article: The Verge
A manipulated and widely shared video that depicts House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) slurring her speech and appearing intoxicated was labeled “partly false” by Facebook over the weekend, renewing scrutiny on social media and its role in reining in misinformation. TikTok, Twitter and YouTube all removed the footage from their platforms after CNN inquired about it, but it remains on Facebook.
Read the article: The Washington Post
U.S. President Donald Trump said the U.S. government should get a “substantial portion” of the sales price of the U.S. operations of TikTok and warned he will ban the service in the United States on September 15 without a sale. The turnaround came after Trump said he was planning to ban the Chinese-owned video app’s U.S. operations after dismissing a possible sale to Microsoft.
Read the article: Reuters
Facebook has complied with an order by Brazil's Supreme Court to block the accounts of a dozen top allies of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. The group are accused of spreading fake news against judges. However, the social media giant said the measure was a threat to freedom of speech, and said it would appeal against the order.
Read the article: BBC News
Google kicked an email app off its Play Store, just days after its developers revealed they were cooperating with House lawmakers who questioned the tech giants’ chief executives during a landmark tech antitrust hearing. The founders of Blix, the maker of the “BlueMail” app, say they believe the move was retaliation for their outspokenness on antitrust issues.
Read the article: The Washington Post
A group of members of Congress is asking the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into the mobile advertising industry’s practice of covertly tracking consumers using digital display ads. The complaint sent to the FTC cites a little-known practice of using what is called “bidstream” data derived from the ads that appear on websites and in mobile applications to obtain sensitive information about consumers that can include their real-world locations and information about their age and gender.
Read the article: The Wall Street Journal
China’s ByteDance has agreed to divest the U.S. operations of TikTok completely in a bid to save a deal with the White House, after President Donald Trump said he had decided to ban the popular short-video app, two people familiar with the matter said. ByteDance’s concession will test whether Trump’s threat to ban TikTok is a negotiating tactic, or whether he is intent on cracking down on a social media app that boasts it has 100 million users in the United States.
Read the article: Reuters
The authorities said that a Florida teenager was the “mastermind” of a recent high-profile hack of 130 Twitter accounts, including the accounts of celebrities like former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Silicon Valley mogul Elon Musk. Graham Ivan Clark, 17, was arrested in his Tampa home and is believed to be the linchpin of a hack that turned into an embarrassment for Twitter and called into question the security measures of a range of tech companies. Two other people were also charged with taking part in the hack.
Read the article: The New York Times
Telegram, the messaging app, has become the latest company to file a formal antitrust complaint to the EU over Apple’s App Store. In a complaint to EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager, Telegram, which has more than 400 million users, said Apple must “allow users to have the opportunity of downloading software outside of the App Store.”
Read the article: Ars Technica
Europe’s lawmakers and regulators have shifted to a new stage in their battle to limit the power of the world’s biggest tech companies. The region has long been at the forefront of using existing antitrust laws and levying multibillion dollar penalties against the tech giants, but officials now say that those tactics have not gone far enough in altering the behavior of Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook. So they are drafting at least half a dozen new laws and regulations to aim at the heart of how those tech companies’ businesses work.
Read the article: The New York Times
Senators Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, and Josh Hawley, a Republican, wrote to the U.S. Justice Department to urge a probe of video technology company Zoom and Chinese-owned social media company TikTok. The lawmakers said Americans, many of whom are largely staying home because of the COVID-19 pandemic, were substituting Zoom calls for personal interaction and binging on TikTok videos.
Read the article: Reuters
The European Union slapped sanctions on six people and three organizations, including Russia’s military intelligence agency, accusing them of responsibility for several cyber-attacks that threatened EU interests. EU headquarters said in a statement that those targeted include people considered to be involved in the 2017 “WannaCry” ransomware attack, the “NotPetya” strike that notably caused havoc in Ukraine, and the “Operation Cloud Hopper” hacking campaign.
Read the article: The Associated Press
The chief executives of Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook, four tech giants worth nearly $5 trillion combined, faced withering questions from Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike for the tactics and market dominance that had made their enterprises successful. For more than five hours, the 15 members of an antitrust panel in the House lobbed questions and repeatedly interrupted and talked over Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Google.
Read the article: The New York Times
The U.S. has filed new and expanded charges against two former Twitter employees and a third individual for allegedly spying on behalf of the government of Saudi Arabia. The three men have now been charged with acting as agents of a foreign government, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and wire fraud.
Read the article: The Verge
TikTok pledged it will allow U.S. regulators and privacy experts to take a closer look under its digital hood, offering them the ability to “examine” its underlying software code in response to claims it is handing off data to the Chinese government. The commitment from the company’s chief executive — Kevin Mayer, who recently arrived from Disney — is part of an enhanced push by the popular short-form video app to “show users, advertisers, creators, and regulators that we are responsible and committed members of the American community that follows US laws,” he wrote in a blog post.
Read the article: The Washington Post
Arizona is leading a multi-U.S. state probe into whether Apple Inc’s deliberate slowing of older iPhones violated deceptive trade practice laws, documents reviewed by Reuters showed. Last week, a separate document released by a tech watchdog group showed the Texas attorney general might sue Apple for such violations in connection with a multi-state probe, without specifying charges.
Read the article: Reuters
Twitter has temporarily limited the account belonging to Donald Trump Jr., President Donald Trump's eldest child, for 12 hours after he posted content that violated the company's policies on misinformation related to the coronavirus pandemic. A Twitter spokesperson says the tweet with video Trump Jr. directly shared -- dismissing masks and lockdowns and promoting hydroxychloroquine -- violated its "COVID-19 misinformation policy." President Trump separately retweeted the video.
Read the article: ABC News
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced legislation that would condition legal protections for online platforms that utilize behavioral advertising, the use of browsing habits to serve tailored ads to users. The Behavioral Advertising Decisions Are Downgrading Services (BAD ADS) Act would take Section 230 protections away from the biggest tech companies that use the advertising method.
Read the article: The Hill
A sequence of clips showing police officers beating, pushing and tasing protesters and other unarmed Americans is set against President Trump’s description of himself as “your president of law and order” and his notorious 2017 directive to law enforcement, “Please don’t be too nice.” The 30-second spot, aimed at mobilizing black voters, was rejected by Google, along with Hulu and Verizon. Facebook, by contrast, approved the ad.
Read the article: The Washington Post
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