Policy – Page 21

Air quality problems spur $200 million in funds to cut pollution at ports

carbon emissions, climate change, inflation reduction act, Policy, pollution, Science, syndication / Paul Patrick / November 11, 2024

Diesel equipment will be replaced with hydrogen- or electric-power gear.

Raquel Garcia has been fighting for years to clean up the air in her neighborhood southwest of downtown Detroit.

Living a little over a mile from the Ambassador Bridge, which thousands of freight trucks cross every day en route to the Port of Detroit, Garcia said she and her neighbors are frequently cleaning soot off their homes.

“You can literally write your name in it,” she said. “My house is completely covered.”

Her neighborhood is part of Wayne County, which is home to heavy industry, including steel plants and major car manufacturers, and suffers from some of the worst air quality in Michigan. In its 2024 State of the Air report, the American Lung Association named Wayne County one of the “worst places to live” in terms of annual exposure to fine particulate matter pollution, or PM2.5.

But Detroit, and several other Midwest cities with major shipping ports, could soon see their air quality improve as port authorities receive hundreds of millions of dollars to replace diesel equipment with cleaner technologies like solar power and electric vehicles.

Last week, the Biden administration announced $3 billion in new grants from the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Ports program, which aims to slash carbon emissions and reduce air pollution at US shipping ports. More than $200 million of that funding will go to four Midwestern states that host ports along the Great Lakes: Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana.

The money, which comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, will not only be used to replace diesel-powered equipment and vehicles, but also to install clean energy systems and charging stations, take inventory of annual port emissions, and set plans for reducing them. It will also fund a feasibility study for establishing a green hydrogen fuel hub along the Great Lakes.

The EPA estimates that those changes will, nationwide, reduce carbon pollution in the first 10 years by more than 3 million metric tons, roughly the equivalent of taking 600,000 gasoline-powered cars off the road. The agency also projects reduced emissions of nitrous oxide and PM2.5—both of which can cause serious, long-term health complications—by about 10,000 metric tons and about 180 metric tons, respectively, during that same time period.

“Our nation’s ports are critical to creating opportunity here in America, offering good-paying jobs, moving goods, and powering our economy,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in the agency’s press release announcing the funds. “Delivering cleaner technologies and resources to US ports will slash harmful air and climate pollution while protecting people who work in and live nearby ports communities.”

Garcia, who runs the community advocacy nonprofit Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision, said she’s “really excited” to see the Port of Detroit getting those funds, even though it’s just a small part of what’s needed to clean up the city’s air pollution.

“We care about the air,” she said. “There’s a lot of kids in the neighborhood where I live.”

Jumpstarting the transition to cleaner technology

Nationwide, port authorities in 27 states and territories tapped the Clean Ports funding, which they’ll use to buy more than 1,500 units of cargo-handling equipment, such as forklifts and cranes, 1,000 heavy-duty trucks, 10 locomotives, and 20 seafaring vessels, all of which will be powered by electricity or green hydrogen, which doesn’t emit CO2 when burned.

In the Midwest, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority in Ohio were awarded about $95 million each from the program, the Detroit-Wayne County Port Authority in Michigan was awarded $25 million, and the Ports of Indiana will receive $500,000.

Mark Schrupp, executive director of the Detroit-Wayne County Port Authority, said the funding for his agency will be used to help port operators at three terminals purchase new electric forklifts, cranes, and boat motors, among other zero-emission equipment. The money will also pay for a new solar array that will reduce energy consumption for port facilities, as well as 11 new electric vehicle charging stations.

“This money is helping those [port] businesses make the investment in this clean technology, which otherwise is sometimes five or six times the cost of a diesel-powered equipment,” he said, noting that the costs of clean technologies are expected to fall significantly in the coming years as manufacturers scale up production. “It also exposes them to the potential savings over time—full maintenance costs and other things that come from having the dirtier technology in place.”

Schrupp said that the new equipment will slash the Detroit-Wayne County Port Authority’s overall carbon emissions by more than 8,600 metric tons every year, roughly a 30 percent reduction.

Carly Beck, senior manager of planning, environment and information systems for the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, said its new equipment will reduce the Port of Cleveland’s annual carbon emissions by roughly 1,000 metric tons, or about 40 percent of the emissions tied to the port’s operations. The funding will also pay for two electric tug boats and the installation of solar panels and battery storage on the port’s largest warehouse, she added.

In 2022, Beck said, the Port of Cleveland took an emissions inventory, which found that cargo-handling equipment, building energy use, and idling ships were the port’s biggest sources of carbon emissions. Docked ships would run diesel generators for power as they unloaded, she said, but with the new infrastructure, the cargo-handling equipment and idling ships can draw power from a 2-megawatt solar power system with battery storage.

“We’re essentially creating a microgrid at the port,” she said.

Improving the air for disadvantaged communities

The Clean Ports funding will also be a boon for people like Garcia, who live near a US shipping port.

Shipping ports are notorious for their diesel pollution, which research has shown disproportionately affects poor communities of color. And most, if not all, of the census tracts surrounding the Midwest ports are deemed “disadvantaged communities” by the federal government. The EPA uses a number of factors, including income level and exposure to environmental harms, to determine whether a community is “disadvantaged.”

About 10,000 trucks pass through the Port of Detroit every day, Schrupp said, which helps to explain why residents of Southwest Detroit and the neighboring cities of Ecorse and River Rouge, which sit adjacent to Detroit ports, breathe the state’s dirtiest air.

“We have about 50,000 residents within a few miles of the port, so those communities will definitely benefit,” he said. “This is a very industrialized area.”

Burning diesel or any other fossil fuel produces nitrous oxide or PM2.5, and research has shown that prolonged exposure to high levels of those pollutants can lead to serious health complications, including lung disease and premature death. The Detroit-Wayne County Port Authority estimates that the new port equipment will cut nearly 9 metric tons of PM2.5 emissions and about 120 metric tons of nitrous oxide emissions each year.

Garcia said she’s also excited that some of the Detroit grants will be used to establish workforce training programs, which will show people how to use the new technologies and showcase career opportunities at the ports. Her area is gentrifying quickly, Garcia said, so it’s heartening to see the city and port authority taking steps to provide local employment opportunities.

Beck said that the Port of Cleveland is also surrounded by a lot of heavy industry and that the census tracts directly adjacent to the port are all deemed “disadvantaged” by federal standards.

“We’re trying to be good neighbors and play our part,” she said, “to make it a more pleasant environment.”

Kristoffer Tigue is a staff writer for Inside Climate News, covering climate issues in the Midwest. He previously wrote the twice-weekly newsletter Today’s Climate and helped lead ICN’s national coverage on environmental justice. His work has been published in Reuters, Scientific American, Mother Jones, HuffPost, and many more. Tigue holds a master’s degree in journalism from the Missouri School of Journalism.

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

Air quality problems spur $200 million in funds to cut pollution at ports Read More »

TSMC will stop making 7 nm chips for Chinese customers

china, lithography, Policy, syndication, Taiwan, Tech, TSMC / Rejus Almole / November 9, 2024

The company is understood to be particularly wary of being targeted as unreliable or uncooperative as Donald Trump is set to become the next US president.

This year, Trump accused Taiwan of “stealing” the US chip industry, and suggested TSMC could move its production back home after pocketing billions of dollars in subsidies from Washington for building fabrication plants in the US.

A person close to TSMC said its move was “not a show for Trump but definitely designed to underscore that we are the good guys and not acting against US interests.”

Being cut off from TSMC could hurt Chinese tech giants that have bet on making their most advanced AI chips in Taiwan. Search giant Baidu, in particular, is aiming to build a full stack of software and hardware to underpin its AI business.

Near the center of those efforts is its Kunlun series of AI chips. Its Kunlun II processor is made by TSMC on its 7-nanometer level of miniaturization, according to Bernstein Research.

“Kunlun chips are now especially well-suited for large model inference and will eventually be suitable for training,” Baidu founder Robin Li told a conference last year. Li added that the group had been effective in cutting costs by designing its own chips.

The people briefed on the situation said TSMC’s new rules were clear in targeting AI processors, but it was so far unclear how widely that would be applied to other chips. China has a number of leading start-ups designing AI chips for self-driving, including Hong Kong-listed Horizon Robotics and Black Sesame International Holding.

Executives and company materials at both groups have indicated their newest generation of chips would be made by TSMC on the 7-nanometer node.

The people close to TSMC said its new restrictions would not have a major impact on its revenue. TSMC’s October revenue increased 29.2 percent to NT$314 billion ($9.8 billion), a slight deceleration of growth compared with preceding months.

In a statement, TSMC said it was a “law-abiding company and we are committed to complying with all applicable rules and regulations, including applicable export controls.”

The news was first reported by Chinese media site ijiwei.com.

Nian Liu contributed reporting from Beijing.

TSMC will stop making 7 nm chips for Chinese customers Read More »

Verizon, AT&T tell courts: FCC can’t punish us for selling user location data

AT&T, FCC, Location Data, Policy, T-Mobile, verizon / Paul Patrick / November 8, 2024

Supreme Court ruling could hurt FCC case

Both AT&T and Verizon cite the Supreme Court’s June 2024 ruling in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, which held that “when the SEC seeks civil penalties against a defendant for securities fraud, the Seventh Amendment entitles the defendant to a jury trial.”

The Supreme Court ruling, which affirmed a 5th Circuit order, had not been issued yet when the FCC finalized its fines. The FCC disputed the 5th Circuit ruling, saying among other things that Supreme Court precedent made clear that “Congress can assign matters involving public rights to adjudication by an administrative agency ‘even if the Seventh Amendment would have required a jury where the adjudication of those rights is assigned to a federal court of law instead.'”

Of course, the FCC will have a tougher time disputing the Jarkesy ruling now that the Supreme Court affirmed the 5th Circuit. Verizon pointed out that in the high court’s Jarkesy decision, “Justice Sotomayor, in dissent, recognized that Jarkesy was not limited to the SEC, identifying many agencies, including the FCC, whose practice of ‘impos[ing] civil penalties in administrative proceedings’ would be ‘upend[ed].'”

Verizon further argued: “As in Jarkesy, the fact that the FCC seeks ‘civil penalties… designed to punish’ is ‘all but dispositive’ of Verizon’s entitlement to an Article III court and a jury, rather than an agency prosecutor and adjudicator.”

Carriers: We didn’t get fair notice

Both carriers said the FCC did not provide “fair notice” that its section 222 authority over customer proprietary network information (CPNI) would apply to the data in question.

When it issued the fines, the FCC said carriers had fair notice. “CPNI is defined by statute, in relevant part, to include ‘information that relates to… the location… of a telecommunications service,'” the FCC said.

Verizon, AT&T tell courts: FCC can’t punish us for selling user location data Read More »

Discord terrorist known as “Rabid” gets 30 years for preying on kids

child sexual abuse materials, cyber terrorism, discord, online child safety, Policy, Terrorism / Paul Patrick / November 8, 2024

Densmore likely motivated by fame

Online, Densmore was known in so-called “Sewer” communities under the alias “Rabid.” During their investigation, the FBI found that Densmore kept a collection of “child pornography and bloody images of ‘Rabid,’ ‘Sewer,’ and ‘764’ carved into victims’ limbs, in some cases with razor blades and boxcutters nearby.” He also sexually exploited children, the DOJ said, including paying another 764 member to coerce a young girl to send a nude video with “Rabid” written on her chest. Gaining attention for his livestreams, he would threaten to release the coerced abusive images if kids did not participate “on cam,” the DOJ said.

“I have all your information,” Densmore threatened one victim. “I own you …. You do what I say now, kitten.”

In a speech Thursday, Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen described 764 as a terrorist network working “to normalize and weaponize the possession, production, and distribution of child sexual abuse material and other types of graphic and violent material” online. Ultimately, by attacking children, the group wants to “destroy civil society” and “collapse the US government,” Olsen said.

People like Densmore, Olsen said, join 764 to inflate their “own sense of fame,” with many having “an end-goal of forcing their victims to commit suicide on livestream for the 764 network’s entertainment.”

In the DOJ’s press release, the FBI warned parents and caregivers to pay attention to their kids’ activity both online and off. In addition to watching out for behavioral shifts or signs of self-harm, caregivers should also take note of any suspicious packages arriving, as 764 sometimes ships kids “razor blades, sexual devices, gifts, and other materials to use in creating online content.” Parents should also encourage kids to discuss online activity, especially if they feel threatened.

“If you are worried about someone who might be self-harming or is at risk of suicide, please consult a health care professional or call 911 in the event of an immediate threat,” the DOJ said.

If you or someone you know is feeling suicidal or in distress, please call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline number, 1-800-273-TALK (8255), which will put you in touch with a local crisis center.

Discord terrorist known as “Rabid” gets 30 years for preying on kids Read More »

Meta beats suit over tool that lets Facebook users unfollow everything

facebook, Meta, middleware, Policy, Section 230, third-party, unfollow everything / Kris Guyer / November 8, 2024

Meta has defeated a lawsuit—for now—that attempted to invoke Section 230 protections for a third-party tool that would have made it easy for Facebook users to toggle on and off their news feeds as they pleased.

The lawsuit was filed by Ethan Zuckerman, a professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst. He feared that Meta might sue to block his tool, Unfollow Everything 2.0, because Meta threatened to sue to block the original tool when it was released by another developer. In May, Zuckerman told Ars that he was “suing Facebook to make it better” and planned to use Section 230’s shield to do it.

Zuckerman’s novel legal theory argued that Congress always intended for Section 230 to protect third-party tools designed to empower users to take control over potentially toxic online environments. In his complaint, Zuckerman tried to convince a US district court in California that:

Section 230(c)(2)(B) immunizes from legal liability “a provider of software or enabling tools that filter, screen, allow, or disallow content that the provider or user considers obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.” Through this provision, Congress intended to promote the development of filtering tools that enable users to curate their online experiences and avoid content they would rather not see.

Digital rights advocates, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, supported Zuckerman’s case, urging that the court protect middleware. But on Thursday, Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley granted Meta’s motion to dismiss at a hearing.

Corley has not yet posted her order on the motion to dismiss, but Zuckerman’s lawyers at the Knight Institute confirmed to Ars that their Section 230 argument did not factor into her decision. In a statement, lawyers said that Corley left the door open on the Section 230 claims, and EFF senior staff attorney Sophia Cope, who was at the hearing, told Ars Corley agreed that on “the merits the case raises important issues.”

Meta beats suit over tool that lets Facebook users unfollow everything Read More »

Trump’s likely FCC chair wrote Project 2025 chapter on how he’d run the agency

fcc brendan carr, Policy / Rejus Almole / November 7, 2024

Brendan Carr wants to preserve data caps, punish NBC, and give money to SpaceX.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland on Saturday, Feb. 29, 2020. Credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg

The Republican who is likely to lead the Federal Communications Commission under President-elect Donald Trump detailed how he would run the agency when he wrote a chapter for the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Carr, a longtime opponent of net neutrality rules and other broadband regulations, has also made his views clear numerous times when opposing rulemakings initiated by the current Democratic majority.

If Trump makes Carr the next FCC chairman after his inauguration, the FCC is likely to ditch consumer protection initiatives, like a recently announced inquiry into data caps, and attempt to regulate Big Tech companies while reducing regulation of Internet service providers. That could include forcing Big Tech companies to pay into a fund that subsidizes ISPs’ broadband network construction.

A Carr-led FCC could also try to punish news organizations that are perceived to be anti-Trump. Just before the election, Carr alleged that NBC putting Kamala Harris on Saturday Night Live was “a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule,” and that the FCC should consider issuing penalties. Despite Carr’s claim, NBC did provide equal time to the Trump campaign.

Carr might also try to steer money to Elon Musk’s Starlink system. Carr was a vocal opponent of the FCC decision to deny SpaceX’s application for $886 million in government funding and claimed that “President Biden gave federal agencies a greenlight” to punish Musk after he bought Twitter.

FCC chair’s power

Carr became an FCC commissioner in August 2017 after being nominated by then-President Trump. Carr was previously a legal adviser to Commissioner Ajit Pai and was briefly the FCC’s general counsel during Pai’s first year as chair in 2017.

Carr’s Project 2025 chapter, published in 2023, said “the FCC’s Chairperson serves as the agency’s CEO and is empowered with significant authority that is not shared with other Commissioners.” The chair “sets the FCC’s agenda, decides what matters the agency will vote on and when, and has authority to organize and coordinate the FCC’s work,” Carr wrote. Although the president’s nominations for each commissioner require Senate approval, the president can appoint any sitting commissioner to the chair spot without a Senate vote.

The chair does not have unlimited power, of course. Congress can expand or reduce the FCC’s authority by passing new laws or eliminating existing ones. FCC decisions are routinely challenged in court, and a recent Supreme Court ruling limited the regulatory authority of federal agencies.

Carr wants the FCC to regulate less, at least when it comes to Internet service providers. “The FCC is a New Deal–era agency. Its history of regulation tends to reflect the view that the federal government should impose heavy-handed regulation rather than relying on competition and market forces to produce optimal outcomes,” he wrote.

The FCC, he said, “should engage in a serious top-to-bottom review of its regulations and take steps to rescind any that are overly cumbersome or outdated,” and “focus its efforts on creating a market-friendly regulatory environment that fosters innovation and competition from a wide range of actors, including cable-based, broadband-based, and satellite-based Internet providers.”

Chris Lewis, president and CEO of consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge, told Ars that Carr appears to be a leading candidate for the chairmanship “because of his experience and active presence in trying to chart a course for Republicans on telecom policy,” with the Project 2025 chapter being a prime example.

Public Knowledge generally argues that the FCC should take a bigger role in regulating Internet providers. “The public expects that there is an agency protecting consumers over communications networks and I think it would be wise for the new majorities and new administration to be clearheaded about that,” Lewis said.

Carr targets Big Tech and online speech

The FCC should have four primary goals, Carr wrote. Those goals are “reining in Big Tech, promoting national security, unleashing economic prosperity, and ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.”

On Big Tech, Carr wants to implement Trump’s 2020 plan to crack down on social media websites for alleged anti-conservative bias. At the time, Trump formally petitioned the FCC to reinterpret Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act in a way that would limit social media platforms’ legal protections for hosting third-party content when the platforms take down content they consider objectionable.

Trump was so keen on getting this done in 2020 that he withdrew his re-nomination of then-Commissioner Michael O’Rielly, a Republican who took the party line on most issues but did not support Trump’s attempt to punish social networks. Trump and the Senate replaced O’Rielly with Nathan Simington, who was a member of the Trump administration before becoming an FCC commissioner just before Trump’s first term ended. Simington is another possible chairman and has similar views as Carr, but Carr has a longer tenure on the FCC and has sought the media spotlight more than Simington.

In the Project 2025 publication, Carr’s “reining in Big Tech” section said the FCC “should issue an order that interprets Section 230 in a way that eliminates the expansive, non-textual immunities that courts have read into the statute.”

“The FCC has an important role to play in addressing the threats to individual liberty posed by corporations that are abusing dominant positions in the market. Nowhere is that clearer than when it comes to Big Tech and its attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square,” Carr wrote.

First Amendment

Lewis said Public Knowledge is worried that changes to Section 230 would harm the ability of online platforms to moderate content or choose not to moderate content, because companies could face great legal liability for those choices if 230 is weakened or scrapped.

O’Rielly argued in a July 2020 speech that apparently angered Trump that the FCC shouldn’t regulate in this area. “The First Amendment protects us from limits on speech imposed by the government—not private actors—and we should all reject demands, in the name of the First Amendment, for private actors to curate or publish speech in a certain way,” O’Rielly said at the time. “Like it or not, the First Amendment’s protections apply to corporate entities, especially when they engage in editorial decision making.”

Carr claimed in his Project 2025 chapter that “the FCC has authority to take this action because Section 230 is codified in the Communications Act,” and he pointed to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ views on the law as evidence that the FCC can act.

Carr’s chapter also said the FCC should “address TikTok’s threat to US national security,” saying the Chinese-owned social network “provides Beijing with an opportunity to run a foreign influence campaign by determining the news and information that the app feeds to millions of Americans.”

Carr’s Kamala Harris complaint

On November 2, Carr claimed that NBC was trying to evade the Equal Time rule by putting Democratic nominee Kamala Harris on Saturday Night Live. “The purpose of the rule is to avoid exactly this type of biased and partisan conduct—a licensed broadcaster using the public airwaves to exert its influence for one candidate on the eve of an election. Unless the broadcaster offered Equal Time to other qualifying campaigns,” Carr wrote.

Carr later told Fox News that “all remedies should be on the table,” including “license revocations.”

“One commissioner standing alone, there’s no real consequence that I can impose at this point,” he said. “You need the FCC chairperson or at least three commissioners on the FCC to agree to take action. We’ll see if we end up there with this commission or otherwise.”

Carr was wrong about the Equal Time rule, media advocacy group Free Press said on November 3. The group pointed to an FCC fact sheet that says the rule “does not require a station to provide opposing candidates with programs identical to the initiating candidate.”

“Despite Carr’s claim, there is no evidence that the network was trying to avoid the rules,” Free Press said. “Broadcasters have no legal obligation to set aside broadcast time for opposing candidates, unless the candidates request it. Equal-opportunity requests are commonplace in the final days of a national election, and broadcasters typically honor them.”

NBC did honor a request for equal time from the Trump campaign, giving him two free 60-second messages during NASCAR and NFL coverage.

“Carr is desperate to become the FCC chair”

Free Press co-CEO Jessica González said, “It’s bizarre that a sitting FCC commissioner would engage in such a blatant and wrongheaded attempt to curry favor with a presidential candidate. But this is just the sort of reckless behavior we’ve come to expect from Brendan Carr. You’d expect an FCC commissioner to be familiar with his own agency’s regulations. Instead Carr seems willing to concoct falsehoods if it means he’ll get noticed by the former president.”

González added, “It’s no secret around Washington that Carr is desperate to become the FCC chair should Trump be elected president. First Carr wrote a chapter in the widely discredited policy platform for Project 2025, a far-right master plan to disassemble US democracy. Now he’s making grossly inaccurate claims about communications law to win points with the former president.”

Carr continued claiming that NBC violated the rule even after Trump was given free TV time. “NBC and SNL decided to bring just one candidate on less than 50 hours before Election Day,” he wrote on November 6. “The FCC has previously addressed these types of ‘last minute’ situations. I encourage any candidate that does not believe that their Equal Time rights were honored to bring the issue forward to the FCC for our adjudication.”

Making Big Tech pay

Carr wants to help Internet service providers achieve a long-held dream of making tech companies pay for broadband network upgrades. Carr’s Project 2025 chapter said the FCC should “require that Big Tech begin to contribute a fair share” into “the FCC’s roughly $9 billion Universal Service Fund.”

The fund has long been paid for by telecom companies, which generally pass the cost on to consumers on their telephone bills. “While Big Tech derives tremendous value from the federal government’s universal service investments—using those federally supported networks to deliver their products and realize significant profits—these large corporations have avoided paying a fair share into the program,” Carr wrote.

The Biden administration urged Europe to reject a similar idea last year, saying that payments from online platforms to ISPs would “distort competition” and undermine net neutrality. The European plan was also criticized by Meta, Google, Netflix, and the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC). The group of regulators from European countries said it found no evidence of “free-riding” by tech companies or evidence that ISPs’ costs weren’t fully covered.

If he becomes chair, Carr would have significant influence over which companies get money from the Universal Service Fund. Carr was angry about the FCC decision to reject Starlink’s application to receive $885.51 million in broadband funding.

The grant was tentatively awarded during Pai’s tenure but canceled in a 2022 ruling that called Starlink a “nascent LEO [low Earth orbit] satellite technology” with “recognized capacity constraints.” The Biden-era FCC had earlier pointed out that Pai’s system for choosing grant winners led to “complaints that the program was poised to fund broadband to parking lots and well-served urban areas.”

When the FCC rejected Starlink’s appeal in 2023, Carr said the FCC decision “certainly fits the Biden Administration’s pattern of regulatory harassment.” The FCC, Carr said, is one of a “growing list of administrative agencies that are taking action against Elon Musk’s businesses.” He alleged that “the Biden Administration is choosing to prioritize its political and ideological goals at the expense of connecting Americans.”

Killing broadband regulation

Carr also wants to help ISPs avoid regulation. A Carr-led FCC would likely drop the agency’s legal defense of its net neutrality rules, and that defense is off to a rocky start in court already.

California and other states have been regulating net neutrality themselves since the Pai FCC eliminated Obama-Era rules that prohibited paid prioritization and blocking or throttling of lawful traffic. The next FCC chair could try to revive Pai’s attempt to preempt state laws, which was rejected in court in 2019.

Carr would likely try to halt or unwind other initiatives that Democratic Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has undertaken to help broadband consumers. Carr dissented last year in the FCC’s 3-2 decision to impose rules that prohibit discrimination in access to broadband services. Carr described Rosenworcel’s discrimination proposal as “President Biden’s plan to give the administrative state effective control of all Internet services and infrastructure in the US,” claiming it was “motivated by an ideology of government control that is not compatible with the fundamental precepts of free market capitalism.”

Rosenworcel last month announced a formal inquiry into data caps to consider their effect on consumers and whether the FCC has authority to regulate them. In dissent, Carr said, “I cannot support the Biden-Harris Administration’s inexorable march towards rate regulation,” and that “the FCC plainly does not have the legal authority” to regulate data caps.

He also said that data caps can be good for Internet users. “Prohibiting customers from choosing to purchase plans with data caps—which are more affordable than unlimited ones—necessarily regulates the service rates they are paying for,” Carr said.

Lewis told Ars that ditching the data cap inquiry means that “we will miss out on opportunities to look at when a broadband provider preferences its own streaming service or other service over a competitor’s. Ending the data caps probe will mean we will not be able to look at those sorts of specific cases and see if there is an anticompetitive practice.”

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

Trump’s likely FCC chair wrote Project 2025 chapter on how he’d run the agency Read More »

Man sick of crashes sues Intel for allegedly hiding CPU defects

CPU, desktop processors, fraud, intel, Policy, unfair trade / Mike M. / November 7, 2024

“Had Intel disclosed the defect, including through advertising, press releases, the Product packaging, or the initial setup process, Plaintiff and class members would not have purchased a Product, or would have paid substantially less for it,” Vanvalkenburgh’s complaint said.

According to Tom’s Hardware, “Intel’s 13th Generation Raptor Lake processors have a return rate four times higher than that of the previous generation,” and “14th Generation Raptor Lake Refresh chips also have return rates thrice as high as the 12th Generation Alder Lake processors.” But instead of alerting the public to the defects, Vanvalkenburgh’s complaint alleged, Intel continued touting the processors as providing the ultimate desktop experience for serious gamers and people with “the most demanding of multitasking workloads” seeking speed, efficiency, and reliability.

Vanvalkenburgh alleged that Intel misled customers because Intel wanted to protect its brand and seek unjust enrichment. According to his complaint, Intel knows “consumers are willing to pay more for a reliable processor that runs stably, without failing or crashing frequently.” By failing to alert customers to known defects, Intel’s alleged deceptions increased demand for its CPUs, spiking sales into the millions, while its customers paid hundreds for processors and allegedly “sustained an economic injury.”

“Reasonable consumers do not expect that the Products will crash and fail at high rates, or that running the Products will damage the Products themselves,” Vanvalkenburgh’s complaint said, noting that a patch Intel later provided failed to fix the issue.

Vanvalkenburgh is hoping a jury will agree that Intel deceived customers and order an injunction preventing any future misconduct like misleading advertising or failure to disclose defective products.

If the class action is certified, Intel could owe extensive damages, potentially paying hundreds of millions in a loss. Because Vanvalkenburgh alleged that “Intel’s fraudulent concealment was malicious, oppressive, deliberate, intended to defraud” him, he’s seeking “an assessment of punitive damages in an amount sufficient to deter such conduct.” That’s on top of requests for maximum statutory damages for allegedly unfair and deceptive practices and disgorgement for alleged unjust enrichment.

Man sick of crashes sues Intel for allegedly hiding CPU defects Read More »

Fate of Google’s search empire could rest in Trump’s hands

Antitrust law, Donald Trump, Google, google search monopoly, Policy, us department of justice / Mike M. / November 6, 2024

“Are you going to destroy the company?”

Trump may sway DOJ away from breaking up Google.

A few weeks before the US presidential election, Donald Trump suggested that a breakup of Google’s search business may not be an appropriate remedy to destroy the tech giant’s search monopoly.

“Right now, China is afraid of Google,” Trump said at a Chicago event. If that threat were dismantled, Trump suggested, China could become a greater threat to the US, because the US needs to have “great companies” to compete.

Trump’s comments came about a week after the US Department of Justice proposed remedies in the Google monopoly trial, including mulling a breakup.

“I’m not a fan of Google,” Trump insisted. “They treat me badly. But are you going to destroy the company by doing that? If you do that, are you going to destroy the company? What you can do, without breaking it up, is make sure it’s more fair.”

Now that Trump is presumed to soon be taking office before the remedies phase of the DOJ’s litigation ends next year, it seems possible that Trump may sway the DOJ away from breaking up Google.

Experts told Reuters that a final ruling isn’t expected until August, giving Trump plenty of time to possibly influence the DOJ’s case. But Trump’s stance on Google has seemed to shift throughout his campaign, so there’s no predicting his position once he takes power.

Business Insider noted that Trump was extremely critical of Google on the campaign trail, vowing to “do something” to curtail Google’s power after accusing the search giant of only highlighting negative stories about him in search results. (Google has repeatedly denied the accusation.) On Truth Social as recently as September, Trump vowed to prosecute Google “at the maximum levels,” seemingly less concerned then about how this could influence competition with China.

It would be unusual for Trump to meddle with the DOJ’s ongoing litigation, antitrust expert George Hay told Business Insider, but then again, “Trump is a bit more of a wild card.”

“It’s very rare that, at the presidential level, there’s any attempt to influence the course of cases which have already been filed. Those have a life of their own,” Hay said. “They depend on the judge, the courts, the lawyers who carry on a case. It’s extraordinarily unusual for the administration to become at all active.”

Trump may still feel some ownership over the DOJ’s investigation into Google’s core business since it began in 2019 under his administration, and tensions between Trump and Google have not diminished much since. The Verge noted that Trump warned Google to “be careful” in August because he “had a feeling Google is going to be close to shut down.” And earlier this year, Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, called for Google’s breakup on X (formerly Twitter), proclaiming that a stop to Google’s “monopolistic control of information” was “long overdue.”

Trump’s on-and-off feud with Google

For Trump, disabling Google’s search monopoly might feel personal, as he has spent years accusing Google of manipulating results to disfavor him.

His feud with Google appear to have begun in 2016 when Trump falsely accused Google of manipulating votes, claiming Google wanted to make it appear that he didn’t have a “big victory” over Hillary Clinton, CNN reported.

The feud continued through the 2020 election, Politico reported, with Trump warning Google that his administration was “watching Google very closely” after a former Google employee went on Fox News to claim that Google search results were biased against Trump. Google disputed the employee’s report.

And yet throughout this feud, there have also been times where Trump seems to warm to Google. During his last administration, he backtracked a threat to investigate Google’s alleged work with China’s military, Politico noted, after meeting with Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Most recently, he claimed Pichai reached out to praise Trump’s ability to trend on the search engine during Trump’s McDonald’s campaign stunt, SF Gate reported.

So far, Google is not commenting on Trump’s comments on the DOJ’s proposed breakup of its search business. But Pichai did send an internal memo to Google staff on the night before the election, The Verge reported, praising them for boosting accurate information during the US election and reminding them that “the outcome will be a major topic of conversation in living rooms and other places around the world.”

At a time when Trump might continue heavily criticizing Google from the Oval Office, Pichai told Googlers that maintaining trust in Google is a top priority.

“Whomever the voters entrust, let’s remember the role we play at work, through the products we build and as a business: to be a trusted source of information to people of every background and belief,” Pichai’s memo said. “We will and must maintain that.”

The DOJ may not even want to seek a breakup

When the DOJ finally proposed a framework for remedies last month, they emphasized that there’s still so much more to consider before landing on final remedies and that the DOJ reserves “the right to add or remove potential proposed remedies.”

That means that while the DOJ has said that requiring a divestment of Chrome or Android isn’t completely off the table, they currently aren’t committed to following through on ordering a breakup.

Through the remedies phase of litigation, the DOJ expects that discovery will reveal more about whether requiring a breakup is needed or if other remedies might resolve antitrust concerns while preserving Google’s search empire.

One reason it might be necessary to spin off Chrome or Android, however, would be to “prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search and Google search-related products and features—including emerging search access points and features, such as artificial intelligence—over rivals or new entrants,” the DOJ said.

Google has warned that a breakup could hurt small businesses that depend on open source code Google develops for Android and Chrome. Costs of Android devices could also rise, Google warned.

Adam Epstein—the president and co-CEO of adMarketplace, which bills itself as “the largest consumer search technology company outside of Google and Bing”—told Ars last September that spinning out Android and Chrome may inflict “maximum pain” on Google. But it could also “cause pain to users and publishers and might not be the best way to create competition in search results and advertising.”

Buried in a story from The New York Times is perhaps the biggest clue that Trump may again be warming to Google as he likely heads back to Washington. The Times noted that at the Chicago event, Trump seemed to be echoing a Google talking point.

Google has argued that “a breakup could hurt America’s interests in a heated geopolitical competition with China over dominance in areas like artificial intelligence,” The Times reported. And Trump appeared to be running with that same logic when seemingly shifting his position on wanting to destroy Google in his final days on the campaign trail.

“It’s a very dangerous thing, because we want to have great companies,” Trump said. “We don’t want China to have these companies.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Fate of Google’s search empire could rest in Trump’s hands Read More »

Trump plans to dismantle Biden AI safeguards after victory

AI, AI regulation, Biden, Biz & IT, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, large language models, machine learning, Policy, US government, White House / Rejus Almole / November 6, 2024

That’s not the only uncertainty at play. Just last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson—a staunch Trump supporter—said that Republicans “probably will” repeal the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, which is a Biden initiative to spur domestic semiconductor chip production, among other aims. Trump has previously spoken out against the bill. After getting some pushback on his comments from Democrats, Johnson said he would like to “streamline” the CHIPS Act instead, according to The Associated Press.

Then there’s the Elon Musk factor. The tech billionaire spent tens of millions through a political action committee supporting Trump’s campaign and has been angling for regulatory influence in the new administration. His AI company, xAI, which makes the Grok-2 language model, stands alongside his other ventures—Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, and X (formerly Twitter)—as businesses that could see regulatory changes in his favor under a new administration.

What might take its place

If Trump strips away federal regulation of AI, state governments may step in to fill any federal regulatory gaps. For example, in March, Tennessee enacted protections against AI voice cloning, and in May, Colorado created a tiered system for AI deployment oversight. In September, California passed multiple AI safety bills, one requiring companies to publish details about their AI training methods and a contentious anti-deepfake bill aimed at protecting the likenesses of actors.

So far, it’s unclear what Trump’s policies on AI might represent besides “deregulate whenever possible.” During his campaign, Trump promised to support AI development centered on “free speech and human flourishing,” though he provided few specifics. He has called AI “very dangerous” and spoken about its high energy requirements.

Trump allies at the America First Policy Institute have previously stated they want to “Make America First in AI” with a new Trump executive order, which still only exists as a speculative draft, to reduce regulations on AI and promote a series of “Manhattan Projects” to advance military AI capabilities.

During his previous administration, Trump signed AI executive orders that focused on research institutes and directing federal agencies to prioritize AI development while mandating that federal agencies “protect civil liberties, privacy, and American values.”

But with a different AI environment these days in the wake of ChatGPT and media-reality-warping image synthesis models, those earlier orders don’t likely point the way to future positions on the topic. For more details, we’ll have to wait and see what unfolds.

Trump plans to dismantle Biden AI safeguards after victory Read More »

Trump’s 60% tariffs could push China to hobble tech industry growth

china tariffs, consumer technology, Donald Trump, Policy, us-china trade war / Tim Belzer / November 6, 2024

Retaliation likely, experts say

Tech industry urges more diplomacy as it faces Trump’s proposed sweeping tariffs.

Now that the US presidential election has been called for Donald Trump, the sweeping tariffs regime that Trump promised on the campaign trail seems imminent. For the tech industry, already burdened by the impact of tariffs on their supply chains, it has likely become a matter of “when” not “if” companies will start spiking prices on popular tech.

During Trump’s last administration, he sparked a trade war with China by imposing a wide range of tariffs on China imports, and President Joe Biden has upheld and expanded them during his term. These tariffs are taxes that Americans pay on restricted Chinese goods, imposed by both presidents as a tactic to punish China for unfair trade practices, including technology theft, by hobbling US business with China.

As the tariffs expanded, China has often retaliated, imposing tariffs on US goods and increasingly limiting US access to rare earth materials critical to manufacturing a wide range of popular products. And any such retaliation from China only seems to spark threats of more tariffs in the US—setting off a cycle that seems unlikely to end with Trump imposing a proposed 60 percent tax on all China imports. Experts told Ars that the tech industry expects to be stuck in the middle of the blow-by-blow trade war, taking punches left and right.

Currently, there are more than $300 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports, but notably, there are none yet on popular tech like smartphones, laptops, tablets, and game consoles. Back when Trump last held office, the tech industry successfully lobbied to get those exemptions, warning that the US economy would hugely suffer if tariffs were imposed on consumer tech. Prices on game consoles alone could spike by as much as 25 percent as tech companies coped with increasing costs from tariffs, the industry warned, since fully decoupling from China was then, and is still now, considered impossible.

Trump’s proposed 60 percent tariff would cost tech companies four times more than that previous round of tariffs that the industry dodged when Trump last held office. A recent Consumer Technology Association (CTA) study found that prices could jump even higher than previously feared if consumer tech is as heavily taxed as Trump intends. Laptop prices could nearly double, game console prices could rise by 40 percent, and smartphone prices by 26 percent.

Any drastic spike in pricing could radically reshape markets for popular tech products at a time when tariffs and political tensions increasingly block US business growth into China. Diverting resources to decouple from China could disrupt companies’ abilities to fund more US innovation, risking Americans’ access to the latest tech at affordable prices. Experts told Ars that it’s unclear exactly how China will respond if Trump’s proposed tariffs become a reality, but that retaliation seems likely given the severity and broad scope of the looming tariffs regime. While some experts speculate that China may currently have fewer options to retaliate, according to CTA VP of International Trade Ed Brzytwa, “in terms of economic tools, there’s a lot of things that China could still do.”

How would China respond to Trump’s tariffs?

Nearly everyone—tech companies, lawmakers, and even US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen—agrees that it would be impossible to fully decouple from China, where 30 percent of global manufacturing occurs. It will take substantial time and investment to shift supply chains that were built over decades of tech progress.

For tech companies, alienating China also comes with the additional risk of stifling growth into China markets, as China seemingly runs out of obvious ways to retaliate against the US without directly targeting US businesses.

After Trump’s early round of tariffs started a US-China trade war, China retaliated with more tariffs, and nothing the Biden administration has done has seemingly eased those tensions.

According to a November report from the nonpartisan nonprofit US-China Business Council, any “escalation of US tariffs would likely trigger retaliatory measures from China,” which could include increasing tariffs on US exports.

That could hurt tech companies even more than current tariffs already are, while spiking net job losses to more than 800,000 by 2025, the council warned, making “US businesses less competitive in the Chinese market” and “resulting in a permanent loss of revenue.” In another report from 2021, the council estimated that if the US intensifies the trade war while forcing a decoupling with China, it could ultimately decrease the US real gross domestic product by $1.6 trillion over the next five years.

The US-China Business Council declined to comment on how Trump’s proposed tariffs could impact the GDP.

In May, following Biden’s latest round of tariffs—on imports like electric vehicles, semiconductors, battery components, and critical minerals used in tech manufacturing—China immediately threatened retaliation. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, confirmed that “China opposes the unilateral imposition of tariffs which violate World Trade Organization [WTO] rules and will take all necessary actions to protect its legitimate rights,” CNN reported.

Nobody is sure how China may retaliate if Trump’s sweeping tariff regime is implemented. Peterson Institute for International Economics senior fellow Mary Lovely said that China’s response to Biden’s 100 percent tariff on EVs was surprisingly “muted,” but if a 60 percent tariff were imposed on all China goods, the country “would likely retaliate.”

Tech industry strategist and founder of Tirias Research Jim McGregor told Ars that China has already “threatened to start cutting back on access to rare earth materials,” potentially limiting US access to critical components of semiconductors. Brzytwa told Ars that “the processed materials that result from those rare earths are important for manufacturing of a variety of products in the United States or elsewhere.”

China “might be running out of room to retaliate with tariffs,” Brzytwa suggested, but the country could also place more restrictions on US exports or heighten the scrutiny of US companies, possibly even limiting investments. McGregor pointed out that China could also block US access to Taiwan or stop shipments into and out of Taiwan.

“They’ve already encircled the island recently with military weaponry, so they didn’t even have to invade Taiwan,” McGregor said. “They can actually block aid to Taiwan, and with the vast majority of our semiconductors still produced there, that would have a huge impact on our industry and our economy.”

Brzytwa is worried that if China is pushed too far in a trade war, it may lash out in other ways.

“I think what we worry about as well is that whatever actions the United States undertakes become so provocative that China decides to act out outside the economic arena through other means,” Brzytwa told Ars.

What should the US be doing?

If the US wants to succeed in safeguarding US national security and tech innovation, Lovely told Congress the country must clarify “its strategic intent with respect to trade with China” and reform tariffs to align with that strategic intent.

She said that Trump’s “whole kitchen sink” approach has not worked, and rather than being strategic, Biden has been capricious in upholding and expanding on Trump’s tariffs.

“If you try to do everything, you end up doing nothing well,” Lovely told Ars. “Rather than just vilifying China (which, granted, China deserves a lot of vilification)” and “deluding” Americans into thinking tariffs are good for them, Lovely suggested, Trump should analyze “what’s the best thing for the United States?”

Instead, when Lovely shared a report in August with the Trump campaign—estimating that it would cost “a typical US household in the middle of the income distribution more than $2,600 a year” if Trump follows through on his tariff plans, which also include a 20 percent universal tariff on all imports from anywhere—Trump’s team rejected input “from so-called experts,” Lovely said.

Lovely thinks the US should commit to a long-term solution to reduce reliance on China that can be sustained through each presidential administration. That could mean working to support decarbonization efforts and raise labor standards in allied nations where manufacturing could potentially be diverted, essentially committing to build a new global value chain after the past 35 years of China’s manufacturing dominance.

“The vast majority of the world’s electronic assembly is done in China,” McGregor told Ars. And while “a lot of companies are trying to have slowly migrated some of their manufacturing out of China and trying to build new facilities, that takes decades to really shift.”

Even if the US managed to block all imports from China in a decade, Lovely suggested that “we would still have a lot of imports from China because Chinese value added is going to be embedded in things we import from Vietnam and Thailand and Indonesia and Mexico.”

“The tariff can be effective in changing these direct imports, as we’ve seen, yeah, but they’re not going to really push China out of the global economy,” Lovely told Ars.

Consequences of a lack of diplomacy

All experts agreed that more diplomacy is needed since decoupling is impossible, especially in the tech industry, where isolating China has threatened to diverge standards and restrict growth into China markets that could spur US innovation.

“We need somebody desperately that’s going to try to bridge barriers, not create them,” McGregor told Ars. “Unfortunately, we have nobody in Washington that appears to want to do that.”

Choosing diplomacy over tariffs could also mean striking trade agreements to curtail China’s unfair trade practices that the US opposes, such as a deal holding China accountable to WTO commitments, Brzytwa told Ars.

But even though China’s spokesperson cited the WTO commitments in his statement opposing US tariffs last May, Brzytwa said, the US has seemingly given up on the WTO dispute settlement process, feeling that it doesn’t work because “China doesn’t fit the WTO.”

“It’s a lot of defeatism, in my view,” Brzytwa said.

Consumers will pay the costs

Brzytwa warned that if Trump deepens US-China trade tensions, it would likely cause ripple effects across the US, potentially constricting access to the best tech available today, which would result in limited productivity across industry.

Any costs of new tariffs “would be passed on to consumers, and consumers would purchase less of those products,” Brzytwa said. “In our view, that is not supportive of innovation when people are not purchasing the latest technologies that might be more capable, more energy-efficient, and might have new features in them that allow us to be more productive.”

Brzytwa said that a CTA study showed that if tariffs are imposed across the economy, all companies would have to stop everything to move away from China and into the US. That would take at least a decade, 10 times the labor force the US has now, and cost $500 billion in direct business investments, the study estimated. “And that’s before you get to environmental costs or energy costs,” Brzytwa told Ars, while noting that an alternative strategy relying on treaty allies and trading partners could cut those costs to $127 billion but not eliminate them.

“It wouldn’t happen in a way where there’s no cost increase,” Brzytwa said. “Of course, there’s going to be a cost increase.”

The hardest-hit tech companies by China tariffs so far have likely been small businesses with little chance to grow since they’re “paying more in tariff costs or they’re paying more in administrative costs, and they’re not spending money on research and development, or they’re not hiring new people, because they’re just trying to stay alive,” Brzytwa said.

Lovely has testified three times to Congress and plans to continue stressing what the negative impacts “might be for American manufacturers for consumers” from what she thinks are “rather extreme moves” expanding tariffs without clear purpose under both Trump and Biden.

But while Congress controls the power to tax, it’s the executive branch that controls foreign policy, and in this highly politicized environment, even well-researched studies done by nonpartisan civil servants can’t be depended on to influence presidents who are determined to use tariffs to appear strong against China, Lovely suggested.

On the campaign trail, both candidates appeared to be misleading Americans into thinking that tariffs “are good for them,” Lovely said. If Trump’s tariffs get implemented once he’s sworn back in, that will only make it that much worse if the rug gets yanked from under them and Americans are suddenly hit with higher prices on their favorite devices.

“It’s going to be like shock therapy, and it’s not going to be pleasant,” Lovely told Ars.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Trump’s 60% tariffs could push China to hobble tech industry growth Read More »

RTO mandate was attempt at thwarting Grindr workers unionizing: US labor board

grindr, nlrb, Policy, return-to-office, unions / Paul Patrick / November 5, 2024

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is accusing Grindr of using a return-to-office (RTO) mandate in an attempt to block employee efforts to form a union.

On July 20, 2023, employees at the LGBTQ+ dating app announced plans to unionize. On August 3, 2023, Grindr told employees that they had two weeks to decide if they would start working in an office location two days per week or exit Grindr with six months of severance, per The New York Times, which reported that it saw the memo. Grindr also reportedly offered up to $15,000 for relocation expenses to its offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington DC. Before the RTO mandate, Grindr allowed fully remote work.

Despite the announcement’s timing, Grindr said in August 2023 that it had been working on an RTO mandate for months and that employees were notified of this in early summer 2023, per the NYT. On August 4, 2023, the Communications Workers of America Union, which Grindr employees were working to join, filed a complaint with the NLRB.

Most workers attempting to unionize quit after RTO mandate

About 80 of the 120 workers who were trying to unionize left due to the RTO mandate, Bloomberg reported on Monday. Grindr was said to have 178 employees when it announced the mandate, meaning it lost about 45 percent of employees overall.

In August 2023, a Grindr spokesperson told The Times that Grindr’s RTO plans were unrelated to union efforts and claimed that Grindr executives “respect and support our team members’ rights to make their own decision about union representation.”

In a September 2023 statement, Eric Cortez, a member of the group organizing the Grindr union, said regarding the employee departures: “These decisions have left Grindr dangerously understaffed and raises questions about the safety, security, and stability of the app for users.”

NLRB files complaint against Grindr

The NLRB’s general counsel office followed up on Friday with a complaint against Grindr, saying that the RTO mandate was issued illegally in retaliation of workers unionizing, Bloomberg reported Monday. The NLRB’s also accusing Grindr of breaking the law by not recognizing or negotiating with the union.

RTO mandate was attempt at thwarting Grindr workers unionizing: US labor board Read More »

Google has no duty to refund gift card scam victims, judge finds

gift card scams, Google, google play, online scams, Policy / Tim Belzer / November 5, 2024

But Freeman ruled that “May suffered economic harm because of third-party scammers’ fraudulent inducement, not Google’s omission or misrepresentation.”

Additionally, May failed to show that Google had any duty to refund customers after Google cited Target and Walmart policies to show that it’s common to refuse refunds.

Scam victims did not use gift card “as designed”

Freeman mostly sided with Google, deciding that the company engaged in no unfair practices, while noting that May had not used the gift cards “in their designed way.” The judge also agreed with Google that May’s funds were not considered stolen at the time she purchased the gift cards, because May still controlled the funds at that point in time.

Additionally, May’s attempt to argue that Google has the technology to detect scams failed, Freeman wrote, because May couldn’t prove that Google deployed that technology when her particular scam purchases were made. Even after May argued that she reported the theft to Google, Freeman wrote, May’s complaint failed because “there is no allegation that Google had a duty to investigate her report.”

Ultimately, May’s complaint “identifies no public policy suggesting Google has a duty to refund the scammed victims or that the harm of Google’s conduct outweighs any benefits,” Freeman concluded.

In her order, Freeman provided leave to amend some claims in the next 45 days, but Ars could not immediately reach May’s lawyer to confirm if the complaint would likely be amended. However, the judge notably dismissed a claim seeking triple damages because May’s complaint “failed to show a likelihood that May will be a victim of gift card scams again given her awareness of such scams,” which may deflate May’s interests to amend.

That particular part of the ruling may be especially frustrating for May, whose complaint was sparked by a claim that she never would have been victimized if Google had provided adequate warnings of scams.

Google did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.

Google has no duty to refund gift card scam victims, judge finds Read More »