Last month, the Department of Justice filed its long-awaited antitrust suit against Apple, accusing the company of monopolizing the smartphone market. This makes Apple the last of the U.S.-based tech giants to face a major monopolization lawsuit from a federal agency. (Google also faces one from the Justice Department; Facebook and Amazon have been sued … Read more
Google fired additional workers this week, after it initially terminated 28 people who it said participated in recent protests against the company’s work in Israel. The total number of employees terminated in the wake of the protests — which took place inside Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, Calif. — has grown to more … Read more
TikTok on Wednesday faced a formidable threat to its business, with a new law signed by President Biden that could dramatically change the way the popular video app operates. TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has faced scrutiny from U.S. government officials over how it handles the data of its users here as … Read more
America’s young people face a mental health crisis, and adults constantly debate how much to blame phones and social media. A new round of conversation has been spurred by Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation,” which contends that rising mental health issues in children and adolescents are the result of social media replacing key experiences … Read more
This month, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) unveiled a rare government feat: a bipartisan bill that has lawmakers feeling “optimistic” and “fired up.” It’s the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA), and it’s long overdue. The U.S. lags far behind the rest of the world on privacy legislation; 137 of the … Read more
In the analog days of the 1970s, long before hackers, trolls and edgelords, an audiocassette company came up with an advertising slogan that posed a trick question: “Is it live or is it Memorex?” The message toyed with reality, suggesting there was no difference in sound quality between a live performance and music recorded on … Read more
Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa doesn’t own any cryptocurrency — at least, not yet. But he’s about to become a player in the industry’s push for friendlier cryptocurrency rules. The trading platform Coinbase announced Tuesday that Villaraigosa, a Democrat who was mayor of Los Angeles from 2005 to 2013, is taking a paid position … Read more
“The Hardest Part,” a new song from indie pop artist Washed Out, is all about love lost, among the most human of themes. But ironically, to illustrate the tune’s sense of longing, the musician turned to something far less flesh-and-blood: artificial intelligence. With Thursday’s release of “The Hardest Part,” Macon, Ga.-based Washed Out, whose real … Read more
When you use Facebook Messenger these days, a new prompt greets you with this come-on: “Ask Meta AI anything.” You may have opened the app to send a text to a pal, but Meta’s new artificial-intelligence-powered chatbot is tempting you with encyclopedic knowledge that‘s just a few keystrokes away. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, … Read more
Brandon Hurst has built a loyal social media following and a growing business selling plants on TikTok, where a mysterious algorithm combined with the right content can let users amass thousands of followers. Hurst, who’s based in the San Fernando Valley, sold 20,000 plants in three years while running his business on Instagram. After expanding … Read more