Policy

some-company-heads-hoped-return-to-office-mandates-would-make-people-quit,-survey-says

Some company heads hoped return-to-office mandates would make people quit, survey says

Policy, return-to-office, work from home / /

HR study —

1,504 workers, including 504 HR managers questioned.

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Man and woman talking at an office water cooler

Enlarge / RTO mandates can boost workers’ professional networks, but in-office employees may also spend more time socializing than remote ones.

A new survey suggests that some US companies implemented return-to-office (RTO) policies in the hopes of getting workers to quit. And despite the belief that such policies could boost productivity compared to letting employees work from home, the survey from HR software provider BambooHR points to remote and in-office employees spending an equal amount of time working.

BambooHR surveyed 1,504 full-time US employees, including 504 human resources (HR) workers who are a manager or higher, from March 9 to March 22. According to the firm, the sample group used for its report “The New Surveillance Era: Visibility Beats Productivity for RTO & Remote” is equally split across genders and includes “a spread of age groups, race groups, and geographies.” Method Research, the research arm of technology PR and marketing firm Method, prepared the survey, and data collection firm Rep Data distributed it.

Trying to make people quit

Among those surveyed, 52 percent said they prefer working remotely compared to 39 percent who prefer working in an office.

A generation-based breakdown of respondents who prefer remote work. BambooHR's report didn't specify how many respondents it surveyed from each category.

Enlarge / A generation-based breakdown of respondents who prefer remote work. BambooHR’s report didn’t specify how many respondents it surveyed from each category.

Despite an apparently large interest in remote work, numerous companies made workers return to the office after COVID-19 pandemic restrictions were lifted. The report suggests that in at least some cases, this was done to get workers to quit:

Nearly two in five (37 percent) managers, directors, and executives believe their organization enacted layoffs in the last year because fewer employees than they expected quit during their RTO. And their beliefs are well-founded: One in four (25 percent) VP and C-suite executives and one in five (18 percent) HR pros admit they hoped for some voluntary turnover during an RTO.

It’s hard to get a firm understanding of the effectiveness of RTO policies, as 22 percent of HR professionals surveyed said that their company has no metrics for measuring a successful RTO. The report points to a “disconnect between stated goals for RTO and actually measuring the success of those goals.”

The report also found that 28 percent of remote workers fear they will be laid off before those working in the office. While BambooHR’s report doesn’t comment on this, some firms have discouraged employees from working remotely. Dell, for example, told remote workers that they can’t be promoted.

“By using RTO mandates as a workforce reduction tactic, companies are losing talent and morale among their employees,” BambooHR’s report says. The report notes that 45 percent of people surveyed whose companies have RTO policies said they lost valued workers. The finding is similar to that of a May study of Apple, Microsoft, and SpaceX that suggested that RTO mandates drove senior talent away.

In BambooHR’s survey, 28 percent said they would consider leaving their jobs if their employer enacted an RTO mandate.

Productivity

A frequently cited reason for in-office mandates is to drive teamwork, collaboration, and productivity. BambooHR’s data, however, doesn’t support the idea of RTO mandates driving productivity.

According to the report, regardless of whether they’re working in their home or in an office, employees work for 76 percent of a 9-to-5 shift. The report adds:

When it comes to who’s more productive overall, in-office workers spend around one hour more socializing than their remote counterparts, while remote workers spend that time on work-related tasks and responsibilities.

Despite this, 32 percent of managers said that one of the main goals of their firm implementing an in-office policy was to track employee working habits, with some companies tracking VPN usage and company badge swipes to ensure employees are coming into the office as expected.

RTO works for some

Although the majority of people surveyed prefer working from home, the survey also highlighted some perceived benefits of working in the office. For example, 48 percent of the people surveyed said “their work results have improved” since returning to the office, per the report. And 58 percent said they have a “stronger professional network” since going back, BambooHR reported.

Preferences for working from home or in an office can vary by various factors, like age. This points to the benefits of building RTO strategies around worker feedback and needs.

“The mental and emotional burdens workers face today are real, and the companies who seek employee feedback with the intent to listen and improve are the ones who will win employee loyalty and ultimately customer satisfaction,” Anita Grantham, head of HR at BambooHR, said in a statement.

Some company heads hoped return-to-office mandates would make people quit, survey says Read More »

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Google avoids jury trial by sending $2.3 million check to US government

Google, google antitrust, Policy / /

Judge, no jury —

Google gets a bench trial after sending unexpected check to Justice Department.

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At Google headquarters, the company's logo is seen on the glass exterior of a building.

Getty Images | Justin Sullivan

Google has achieved its goal of avoiding a jury trial in one antitrust case after sending a $2.3 million check to the US Department of Justice. Google will face a bench trial, a trial conducted by a judge without a jury, after a ruling today that the preemptive check is big enough to cover any damages that might have been awarded by a jury.

“I am satisfied that the cashier’s check satisfies any damages claim,” US District Judge Leonie Brinkema said after a hearing in the Eastern District of Virginia on Friday, according to Bloomberg. “A fair reading of the expert reports does not support” a higher amount, Brinkema said.

The check was reportedly for $2,289,751. “Because the damages are no longer part of the case, Brinkema ruled a jury is no longer needed and she will oversee the trial, set to begin in September,” according to Bloomberg.

The payment was unusual, but so was the US request for a jury trial because antitrust cases are typically heard by a judge without a jury. The US argued that a jury should rule on damages because US government agencies were overcharged for advertising.

The US opposed Google’s motion to strike the jury demand in a filing last week, arguing that “the check it delivered did not actually compensate the United States for the full extent of its claimed damages” and that “the unilateral offer of payment was improperly premised on Google’s insistence that such payment ‘not be construed’ as an admission of damages.”

The government’s damages expert calculated damages that were “much higher” than the amount cited by Google, the US filing said. In last week’s filing, the higher damages amount sought by the government was redacted.

Lawsuit targets Google advertising

The US and eight states sued Google in January 2023 in a lawsuit related to the company’s advertising technology business. There are now 17 states involved in the case.

Google’s objection to a jury trial said that similar antitrust cases have been tried by judges because of their technical and often abstract nature. “To secure this unusual posture, several weeks before filing the Complaint, on the eve of Christmas 2022, DOJ attorneys scrambled around looking for agencies on whose behalf they could seek damages,” Google said.

The US and states’ lawsuit claimed that Google “corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry” in a plan to “neutralize or eliminate ad tech competitors, actual or potential, through a series of acquisitions” and “wield its dominance across digital advertising markets to force more publishers and advertisers to use its products while disrupting their ability to use competing products effectively.”

The US government lawsuit said that federal agencies bought over $100 million in advertising since 2019 and aimed to recover treble damages for Google’s alleged overcharges on those purchases. But the government narrowed its claims to the ad purchases of just eight agencies, lowering the potential damages amount.

Google sent the check in mid-May. While the amount wasn’t initially public, Google said it contained “every dollar the United States could conceivably hope to recover under the damages calculation of the United States’ own expert.” Google also said it “continues to dispute liability and welcomes a full resolution by this Court of all remaining claims in the Complaint.”

US: We want more

The US disagreed that $2.3 million was the maximum it could recover. “Under the law, Google must pay the United States the maximum amount it could possibly recover at trial, which Google has not done,” the US said. “And Google cannot condition acceptance of that payment on its assertion that the United States was not harmed in the first place. In doing so, Google attempts to seize the strategic upside of satisfying the United States’ damages claim (potentially allowing it to avoid judgment by a jury) while at the same time avoiding the strategic downside of the United States being free to argue the common-sense inference that Google’s payment, is, at minimum, an acknowledgment of the harm done to federal agency advertisers who used Google’s ad tech tools.”

In a filing on Wednesday, Google said the DOJ previously agreed that its claims amounted to less than $1 million before trebling and pre-judgment interest. The check sent by Google was for the exact amount after trebling and interest, the filing said. But the “DOJ now ignores this undisputed fact, offering up a brand new figure, previously uncalculated by any DOJ expert, unsupported by the record, and never disclosed,” Google told the court.

Siding with Google at today’s hearing, Brinkema “said the amount of Google’s check covered the highest possible amount the government had sought in its initial filings,” the Associated Press reported. “She likened receipt of the money, which was paid unconditionally to the government regardless of whether the tech giant prevailed in its arguments to strike a jury trial, as equivalent to ‘receiving a wheelbarrow of cash.'”

While the US lost its attempt to obtain more damages than Google offered, the lawsuit also seeks an order declaring that Google illegally monopolized the market. The complaint requests a breakup in which Google would have to divest “the Google Ad Manager suite, including both Google’s publisher ad server, DFP, and Google’s ad exchange, AdX.”

Google avoids jury trial by sending $2.3 million check to US government Read More »

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Tesla chair says Elon Musk needs $46 billion pay plan to stay motivated

elon musk pay plan, Policy, tesla elon musk / /
Elon Musk sitting down and speaking at a conference.

Enlarge / Elon Musk speaks onstage at SXSW on March 11, 2018, in Austin, Texas.

Getty Images | Diego Donamaria

Tesla Board Chairperson Robyn Denholm urged shareholders to re-approve CEO Elon Musk’s $46 billion pay package this week, saying the vote is “not about the money” while suggesting that Musk could leave Tesla or devote less time to the company if he isn’t properly compensated.

“This is obviously not about the money. We all know Elon is one of the wealthiest people on the planet, and he would remain so even if Tesla were to renege on the commitment we made in 2018,” Denholm wrote in a June 5 letter to shareholders.

Musk’s pay plan was nullified by a Delaware Court of Chancery ruling in January 2024 after a lawsuit filed by a shareholder. The ruling said that Denholm had a “lackadaisical approach to her oversight obligations” and “derived the vast majority of her wealth from her compensation as a Tesla director.” It also said most board members “were beholden to Musk or had compromising conflicts,” and that the proxy information given to shareholders before the 2018 vote was “materially deficient.”

Musk’s pay plan “is the largest potential compensation opportunity ever observed in public markets by multiple orders of magnitude—250 times larger than the contemporaneous median peer compensation plan and over 33 times larger than the plan’s closest comparison, which was Musk’s prior compensation plan,” the court ruling noted.

Tesla’s board subsequently asked shareholders to approve a transfer of Tesla’s state of incorporation from Delaware to Texas and to reinstate the pay plan, which was previously estimated to be worth $56 billion but was more recently valued at $46 billion. Votes can be submitted before Tesla’s annual meeting on June 13. A survey found that more than 80 percent of early votes were in favor of Musk’s pay package, despite some shareholders’ vocal opposition.

Lawsuit slams Musk’s “strong-arm, coercive tactics”

The pay plan and Texas move are also being challenged by a new shareholder lawsuit filed in the same Delaware court that nullified the 2018 pay package. Donald Ball, who owns 28,245 shares of Tesla stock, yesterday filed a lawsuit against Tesla, Musk, Denholm, and other board members.

The Ball lawsuit points to Musk’s January 2024 statement that he “would prefer to build products outside of Tesla” if he isn’t given 25 percent voting control. It also points to reports that “Musk has directed Nvidia to ship thousands of AI chips reserved for Tesla to X and xAI, delaying Tesla’s ability to build up its data center and AI infrastructure by several months.”

“Musk has engaged in strong-arm, coercive tactics to obtain stockholder approval for both the Redomestication Vote and the Ratification Vote,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit also alleges that the Tesla board has not “disclosed a complete or fair picture” to shareholders on the impact of re-approving Musk’s pay plan. The lawsuit said “there could be radical tax implications for Tesla that will potentially wipe out Tesla’s pre-tax profits for the last two years.”

Tesla chair says Elon Musk needs $46 billion pay plan to stay motivated Read More »

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US agencies to probe AI dominance of Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI

microsoft, microsoft ai, NVIDIA, nvidia ai, openai, Policy / /

AI Antitrust —

DOJ to probe Nvidia while FTC takes lead in investigating Microsoft and OpenAI.

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A large Nvidia logo at a conference hall

Enlarge / Nvidia logo at Impact 2024 event in Poznan, Poland on May 16, 2024.

Getty Images | NurPhoto

The US Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission reportedly plan investigations into whether Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI are snuffing out competition in artificial intelligence technology.

The agencies struck a deal on how to divide up the investigations, The New York Times reported yesterday. Under this deal, the Justice Department will take the lead role in investigating Nvidia’s behavior while the FTC will take the lead in investigating Microsoft and OpenAI.

The agencies’ agreement “allows them to proceed with antitrust investigations into the dominant roles that Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia play in the artificial intelligence industry, in the strongest sign of how regulatory scrutiny into the powerful technology has escalated,” the NYT wrote.

One potential area of investigation is Nvidia’s chip dominance, “including how the company’s software locks customers into using its chips, as well as how Nvidia distributes those chips to customers,” the report said. An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by Ars today.

High-end GPUs are “scarce,” antitrust chief says

Jonathan Kanter, the assistant attorney general in charge of the DOJ’s antitrust division, discussed the agency’s plans in an interview with the Financial Times this week. Kanter said the DOJ is examining “monopoly choke points and the competitive landscape” in AI.

The DOJ’s examination of the sector encompasses “everything from computing power and the data used to train large language models, to cloud service providers, engineering talent and access to essential hardware such as graphics processing unit chips,” the FT wrote.

Kanter said regulators are worried that AI is “at the high-water mark of competition, not the floor” and want to take action before smaller competitors are shut out of the market. The GPUs needed to train large language models are a “scarce resource,” he was quoted as saying.

“Sometimes the most meaningful intervention is when the intervention is in real time,” Kanter told the Financial Times. “The beauty of that is you can be less invasive.”

Microsoft deal scrutinized

The FTC is scrutinizing Microsoft over a March 2024 move in which it hired the CEO of artificial intelligence startup Inflection and most of the company’s staff and paid Inflection $650 million as part of a licensing deal to resell its technology. The FTC is investigating whether Microsoft structured the deal “to avoid a government antitrust review of the transaction,” The Wall Street Journal reported today.

“Companies are required to report acquisitions valued at more than $119 million to federal antitrust-enforcement agencies, which have the option to investigate a deal’s impact on competition,” the WSJ wrote. The FTC reportedly sent subpoenas to Microsoft and Inflection in an attempt “to determine whether Microsoft crafted a deal that would give it control of Inflection but also dodge FTC review of the transaction.”

Inflection built a large language model and a chatbot called Pi. Former Inflection employees are now working on Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot.

“If the agency finds that Microsoft should have reported and sought government review of its deal with Inflection, the FTC could bring an enforcement action against Microsoft,” the WSJ report said. “Officials could ask a court to fine Microsoft and suspend the transaction while the FTC conducts a full-scale investigation of the deal’s impact on competition.”

Microsoft told the WSJ that it complied with antitrust laws, that Inflection continues to operate independently, and that the deals gave Microsoft “the opportunity to recruit individuals at Inflection AI and build a team capable of accelerating Microsoft Copilot.”

OpenAI

Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI has also faced regulatory scrutiny, particularly in Europe. Microsoft has a profit-sharing agreement with OpenAI.

Microsoft President Brad Smith defended the partnership in comments to the Financial Times this week. “The partnerships that we’re pursuing have demonstrably added competition to the marketplace,” Smith was quoted as saying. “I might argue that Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI has created this new AI market,” and that OpenAI “would not have been able to train or deploy its models” without Microsoft’s help, he said.

We contacted OpenAI today and will update this article if it provides any comment.

In January 2024, the FTC launched an inquiry into AI-related investments and partnerships involving Alphabet, Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI.

The FTC also started a separate investigation into OpenAI last year. A civil investigative demand sent to OpenAI focused on potentially unfair or deceptive privacy and data security practices, and “risks of harm to consumers, including reputational harm.” The probe focused partly on “generation of harmful or misleading content.”

US agencies to probe AI dominance of Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI Read More »

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Canada demands 5% of revenue from Netflix, Spotify, and other streamers

netflix, Policy, streaming / /

Streaming fees —

Canada says $200M in annual fees will support local news and other content.

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Illustrative photo featuring Canadian 1-cent coins with the Canadian flag displayed on a computer screen in the background,

Getty Images | NurPhoto /

Canada has ordered large online streaming services to pay 5 percent of their Canadian revenue to the government in a program expected to raise $200 million per year to support local news and other home-grown content. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced its decision yesterday after a public comment period.

“Based on the public record, the CRTC is requiring online streaming services to contribute 5 percent of their Canadian revenues to support the Canadian broadcasting system. These obligations will start in the 2024–2025 broadcast year and will provide an estimated $200 million per year in new funding,” the regulator said.

The fees apply to both video and music streaming services. The CRTC imposed the rules despite opposition from Amazon, Apple, Disney, Google, Netflix, Paramount, and Spotify.

The new fees are scheduled to take effect in September and apply to online streaming services that make at least $25 million a year in Canada. The regulations exclude revenue from audiobooks, podcasts, video game services, and user-generated content. The exclusion of revenue from user-generated content is a win for Google’s YouTube.

Streaming companies have recently been raising prices charged to consumers, and the CBC notes that streamers might raise prices again to offset the fees charged in Canada.

Fees to support local news, Indigenous content

The CRTC said it is relying on authority from the Online Streaming Act, which was approved by Canada’s parliament in 2023. The new fees are similar to the ones already imposed on licensed broadcasters.

“The funding will be directed to areas of immediate need in the Canadian broadcasting system, such as local news on radio and television, French-language content, Indigenous content, and content created by and for equity-deserving communities, official language minority communities, and Canadians of diverse backgrounds,” the CRTC said.

CRTC Chairperson Vicky Eatrides said the agency’s “decision will help ensure that online streaming services make meaningful contributions to Canadian and Indigenous content.” The agency also said that streaming companies “will have some flexibility to direct parts of their contributions to support Canadian television content directly.”

Industry groups blast CRTC

The Motion Picture Association-Canada criticized the CRTC yesterday, saying the fee ruling “reinforces a decades-old regulatory approach designed for cable companies” and is “discriminatory.” The fees “will make it harder for global streamers to collaborate directly with Canadian creatives and invest in world-class storytelling made in Canada for audiences here and around the world,” the lobby group said.

The MPA-Canada said the CRTC didn’t fully consider “the significant contributions streamers make in working directly with Canada’s creative communities.” The group represents streamers including Netflix, Disney Plus, HAYU, Sony’s Crunchyroll, Paramount Plus, and PlutoTV.

“Global studios and streaming services have spent over $6.7 billion annually producing quality content in Canada for local and international audiences and invested more in the content made by Canadian production companies last year than the CBC, or the Canada Media Fund and Telefilm combined,” the group said.

The fees were also criticized by the Digital Media Association, which represents streaming music providers including Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Spotify. The “discriminatory tax on music streaming services… is effectively a protectionist subsidy for radio” and may worsen “Canada’s affordability crisis,” the group said.

The Canadian Media Producers Association praised the CRTC decision, saying the decision benefits independent producers and “tilts our industry toward a more level playing field.”

Canada demands 5% of revenue from Netflix, Spotify, and other streamers Read More »

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Elon Musk’s X defeats Australia’s global takedown order of stabbing video

Australian, censorship, elon musk, First Amendment, free speech, julie inman-grant, online safety act, Policy, Twitter, X, x corp / /
Elon Musk’s X defeats Australia’s global takedown order of stabbing video

Australia’s safety regulator has ended a legal battle with X (formerly Twitter) after threatening approximately $500,000 daily fines for failing to remove 65 instances of a religiously motivated stabbing video from X globally.

Enforcing Australia’s Online Safety Act, eSafety commissioner Julie Inman-Grant had argued it would be dangerous for the videos to keep spreading on X, potentially inciting other acts of terror in Australia.

But X owner Elon Musk refused to comply with the global takedown order, arguing that it would be “unlawful and dangerous” to allow one country to control the global Internet. And Musk was not alone in this fight. The legal director of a nonprofit digital rights group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Corynne McSherry, backed up Musk, urging the court to agree that “no single country should be able to restrict speech across the entire Internet.”

“We welcome the news that the eSafety Commissioner is no longer pursuing legal action against X seeking the global removal of content that does not violate X’s rules,” X’s Global Government Affairs account posted late Tuesday night. “This case has raised important questions on how legal powers can be used to threaten global censorship of speech, and we are heartened to see that freedom of speech has prevailed.”

Inman-Grant was formerly Twitter’s director of public policy in Australia and used that experience to land what she told The Courier-Mail was her “dream role” as Australia’s eSafety commissioner in 2017. Since issuing the order to remove the video globally on X, Inman-Grant had traded barbs with Musk (along with other Australian lawmakers), responding to Musk labeling her a “censorship commissar” by calling him an “arrogant billionaire” for fighting the order.

On X, Musk arguably got the last word, posting, “Freedom of speech is worth fighting for.”

Safety regulator still defends takedown order

In a statement, Inman-Grant said early Wednesday that her decision to discontinue proceedings against X was part of an effort to “consolidate actions,” including “litigation across multiple cases.” She ultimately determined that dropping the case against X would be the “option likely to achieve the most positive outcome for the online safety of all Australians, especially children.”

“Our sole goal and focus in issuing our removal notice was to prevent this extremely violent footage from going viral, potentially inciting further violence and inflicting more harm on the Australian community,” Inman-Grant said, still defending the order despite dropping it.

In court, X’s lawyer Marcus Hoyne had pushed back on such logic, arguing that the eSafety regulator’s mission was “pointless” because “footage of the attack had now spread far beyond the few dozen URLs originally identified,” the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

“I stand by my investigators and the decisions eSafety made,” Inman-Grant said.

Other Australian lawmakers agree the order was not out of line. According to AP News, Australian Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland shared a similar statement in parliament today, backing up the safety regulator while scolding X users who allegedly took up Musk’s fight by threatening Inman-Grant and her family. The safety regulator has said that Musk’s X posts incited a “pile-on” from his followers who allegedly sent death threats and exposed her children’s personal information, the BBC reported.

“The government backs our regulators and we back the eSafety Commissioner, particularly in light of the reprehensible threats to her physical safety and the threats to her family in the course of doing her job,” Rowland said.

Elon Musk’s X defeats Australia’s global takedown order of stabbing video Read More »

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GameStop stock influencer Roaring Kitty may lose access to E-Trade, report says

Policy / /

“I like the stock” —

E-Trade fears restricting influencer’s trading may trigger boycott, sources say.

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Keith Gill, known on Reddit under the pseudonym DeepFuckingValue and as Roaring Kitty, is seen on a fragment of a YouTube video.

Enlarge / Keith Gill, known on Reddit under the pseudonym DeepFuckingValue and as Roaring Kitty, is seen on a fragment of a YouTube video.

E-Trade is apparently struggling to balance the risks and rewards of allowing Keith Gill to continue trading volatile meme stocks on its platform, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The meme-stock influencer known as “Roaring Kitty” and “DeepF—Value” is considered legendary for instantly skyrocketing the price of stocks, notably GameStop, most recently with a single tweet.

E-Trade is concerned, according to The Journal’s insider sources, that on the one hand, Gill’s social media posts are potentially illegally manipulating the market—and possibly putting others’ investments at risk. But on the other, the platform worries that restricting Gill’s trading could incite a boycott fueled by his “meme army” closing their accounts “in solidarity.” That could also sharply impact trading on the platform, sources said.

It’s unclear what gamble E-Trade, which is owned by Morgan Stanley, might be willing to make. The platform could decide to take no action at all, the WSJ reported, but through its client agreement has the right to restrict or close Gill’s account “at any time.”

As of late Monday, Gill’s account was still active, the WSJ reported, apparently showing total gains of $85 million over the past three weeks. After Monday’s close, Gill’s GameStop positions “were valued at more than $289 million,” the WSJ reported.

Trading platforms unprepared for Gill’s comeback

In 2021, Gill’s social media activity on Reddit helped drive GameStop stock to historic highs. At that time, Gill encouraged others to invest in the stock—not based on the fundamentals of GameStop business but on his pure love for GameStop. The craze that he helped spark rapidly triggered temporary restrictions on GameStop trading, as well as a congressional hearing, but ultimately there were few consequences for Gill, who disappeared after making at least $30 million, the WSJ reported.

All remained quiet until a few weeks ago when Roaring Kitty suddenly came back. On X (formerly Twitter), Gill posted a meme of a man sitting up in his chair, then blitzed his feed with memes and movie clips, seemingly sending a continual stream of coded messages to his millions of followers who eagerly posted about their trades and gains on Reddit.

“Welcome back, legend,” one follower responded.

Once again, Gill’s abrupt surge in online activity immediately kicked off a GameStop stock craze fueling prices to a spike of more than 60 percent. And once again, because of the stock’s extreme volatility, Gill’s social posts prompted questions from both trading platforms and officials who continue to fret over whether Gill’s online influencing should be considered market manipulation.

For Gill’s biggest fans, the goal is probably to profit as much as possible before the hammer potentially comes down again and trading gets restricted. That started happening late on Sunday night, when it became harder or impossible to purchase GameStop shares on Robinhood, prompting some traders to complain on X.

The WallStreetBets account shared a warning that Robinhood sent to would-be buyers, which showed that trading was being limited, but not by Robinhood. Instead, the platform that facilitates Robinhood’s overnight trading of the stock, Blue Ocean ATS, set the limit, only accepting “trades 20 percent above or below” that day’s reference price—a move designed for legal or compliance reasons to stop trading once the stock exceeds a certain price.

These limits are set, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) noted in 2021, partly to prevent fraudsters from spreading misleading tips online and profiting at the expense of investors from illegal price manipulation. A common form of this fraud is a pump-and-dump scheme, where fraudsters “make false and misleading statements to create a buying frenzy, and then sell shares at the pumped-up price.”

GameStop stock influencer Roaring Kitty may lose access to E-Trade, report says Read More »

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ISPs seek halt of net neutrality rules before they take effect next month

fcc net neutrality, Policy / /

Net neutrality back in court —

Fate of net neutrality may hinge on Supreme Court’s “major questions” doctrine.

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Illustration of network data represented by curving lines flowing on a dark background.

Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino

As expected, broadband industry lobby groups have sued the Federal Communications Commission in an attempt to nullify net neutrality rules that prohibit blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.

Lobby groups representing cable, telecom, and mobile Internet service providers sued the FCC in several US appeals courts last week. Industry groups also filed a petition with the FCC on Friday asking for a stay of the rules, claiming the regulations shouldn’t take effect while litigation is pending because the industry is likely to prevail in court.

The FCC is highly likely to reject the petition for a stay, but the groups can then ask appeals court judges to impose an injunction that would prevent enforcement. The industry lost a similar case during the Obama era, but is hoping to win this time because of the Supreme Court’s evolving approach on whether federal agencies can decide “major questions” without explicit instructions from Congress.

The petition for a stay was filed by groups including NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, which represents large cable providers such as Comcast and Charter; and USTelecom, which represents telcos including AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink/Lumen.

“By reclassifying broadband under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, the Commission asserts the power to set prices, dictate terms and conditions, require or prohibit investment or divestment, and more. It should be ‘indisputable’ that the major-questions doctrine applies to that seismic claim of authority,” the petition for a stay said.

Broadband classified as telecommunications

The FCC’s net neutrality order reclassified broadband as telecommunications, which makes Internet service subject to common-carrier regulations under Title II. The order reverses the Trump-era FCC’s classification of broadband as an information service and is scheduled to take effect on July 22. The FCC approved it in a 3-2 vote on April 25.

Despite the industry’s claim that classification is a major question that can only be decided by Congress, a federal appeals court ruled in previous cases that the FCC has authority to classify broadband as either a telecommunications or information service.

The lobby groups claim that without a stay preventing enforcement, their members “will suffer irreparable harm, as they did in the wake of the 2015 Order. In particular, petitioners’ members will be forced to delay or forego valuable new services, incur prohibitive compliance costs, and pay more to obtain capital.”

Lawsuits against the FCC were filed in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by CTIA-The Wireless Association, which represents mobile providers; America’s Communications Association (ACA), which represents small and medium-sized cable providers; and the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA), which represents fixed wireless providers.

The FCC was sued in other federal circuit appeals courts by the Texas Cable Association, the Ohio Telecom Association, the Ohio Cable Telecommunications Association, the Missouri Internet & Television Association, and Florida Internet & Television Association.

The cases will be consolidated into one court. The DC Circuit appeals court handled challenges to the Obama-era and Trump-era net neutrality decisions, ruling in favor of the FCC both times. Despite the Trump-era repeal, many ISPs still have to follow net neutrality rules because of regulations imposed by California and other states.

FCC: Authority “clear as day”

FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks said before the April 25 vote that the FCC’s authority to regulate broadband as a telecommunications service “is clear as day.”

To find otherwise, a court “would need to conclude that ‘this is a major questions case.’ Yet major questions review is reserved for only ‘extraordinary cases’—and this one doesn’t come close,” Starks said. “There’s no ‘unheralded power’ that we’re purporting to discover in the annals of an old, dusty statute—we’ve been classifying communications services one way or the other for decades, and the 1996 [Telecommunications] Act expressly codified our ability to continue that practice.”

If the industry loses at the appeals-court level again, lobby groups would seek review at the Supreme Court. Their hopes depend partly on Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who argued in a 2017 dissent as a circuit court judge that the “net neutrality rule is unlawful and must be vacated” because “Congress did not clearly authorize the FCC to issue the net neutrality rule.”

The CTIA lawsuit against the FCC said, “Given the undisputed fact that broadband Internet is an essential engine of the nation’s economic, social, and political life, the major-questions doctrine requires the FCC to identify clear statutory authority to subject broadband Internet access service to common-carrier regulation. The Order does not and cannot point to such authority. And to the extent there is any statutory ambiguity, the Order’s Title II approach far exceeds the bounds of reasonable interpretation and infringes rights protected by the Constitution.”

ISPs seek halt of net neutrality rules before they take effect next month Read More »

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Butts, breasts, and genitals now explicitly allowed on Elon Musk’s X

adult content, non-consensual intimate imagery, online porn, Policy, pornography, Twitter, X / /
Butts, breasts, and genitals now explicitly allowed on Elon Musk’s X

Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Adult content has always proliferated on Twitter, but the platform now called X recently clarified its policy to officially allow “consensually produced and distributed adult nudity or sexual behavior.”

X’s rules seem simple. As long as content is “properly labeled and not prominently displayed,” users can share material—including AI-generated or animated content—”that is pornographic or intended to cause sexual arousal.”

“We believe that users should be able to create, distribute, and consume material related to sexual themes as long as it is consensually produced and distributed,” X’s policy said.

The policy update seemingly reflects X’s core mission to defend all legal speech. It protects a wide range of sexual expression, including depictions of explicit or implicit sexual behavior, simulated sexual intercourse, full or partial nudity, and close-ups of genitals, buttocks, or breasts.

“Sexual expression, whether visual or written, can be a legitimate form of artistic expression,” X’s policy said. “We believe in the autonomy of adults to engage with and create content that reflects their own beliefs, desires, and experiences, including those related to sexuality.”

Today, X Support promoted the update on X, confirming that “we have launched Adult Content and Violent Content policies to bring more clarity of our Rules and transparency into enforcement of these areas. These policies replace our former Sensitive Media and Violent Speech policies—but what we enforce against hasn’t changed.”

Seemingly also unchanged: none of this content can be monetized, as X’s ad policy says that “to ensure a positive user experience and a healthy conversation on the platform, X prohibits the promotion of adult sexual content globally.”

Under the policy, adult content is also prohibited from appearing in live videos, profile pictures, headers, list banners, or community cover photos.

X has been toying with the idea of fully embracing adult content and has even planned a feature for adult creators that could position X as an OnlyFans rival. That plan was delayed, Platformer reported in 2022, after red-teaming flagged a seemingly insurmountable obstacle to the launch: “Twitter cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity at scale.”

The new adult content policy still emphasizes that non-consensual adult content is prohibited, but it’s unclear if the platform has gotten any better at distinguishing between consensually produced content and nonconsensual material. X did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.

For adult content to be allowed on the platform, X now requires content warnings so that “users who do not wish to see it can avoid it” and “children below the age of 18 are not exposed to it.”

Users who plan to regularly post adult content can adjust their account’s media settings to place a label on all their images and videos. That results in a content warning for any visitor of that account’s profile, except for “people who have opted in to see possibly sensitive content,” who “will still see your account without the message.”

Users who only occasionally share adult content can choose to avoid the account label and instead edit an image or video to add a one-time label to any individual post, flagging just that post as sensitive.

Once a label is applied, any users under 18 will be blocked from viewing the post, X said.

Butts, breasts, and genitals now explicitly allowed on Elon Musk’s X Read More »

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TikTok vaguely disputes report that it’s making a US-only app

bytedance, First Amendment, Policy, tiktok, TikTok ban / /

Exploring a different route —

TikTok has spent months separating code for US-only algorithm, insiders claim.

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TikTok vaguely disputes report that it’s making a US-only app

TikTok is now disputing a Reuters report that claims the short-video app is cloning its algorithm to potentially offer a different version of the app, which might degrade over time, just for US users.

Sources “with direct knowledge” of the project—granted anonymity because they’re not authorized to discuss it publicly—told Reuters that the TikTok effort began late last year. They said that the project will likely take a year to complete, requiring hundreds of engineers to separate millions of lines of code.

As these sources reported, TikTok’s tremendous undertaking could potentially help prepare its China-based owner ByteDance to appease US lawmakers who passed a law in April forcing TikTok to sell its US-based operations by January 19 or face a ban. But TikTok has maintained that the “qualified divestiture” required by the law would be impossible, and on Thursday, TikTok denied the accuracy of Reuters’ report while reiterating its stance that a sale is not in the cards.

“The Reuters story published today is misleading and factually inaccurate,” the TikTok Policy account posted on X (formerly Twitter). “As we said in our court filing, the ‘qualified divestiture’ demanded by the Act to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally. And certainly not on the 270-day timeline required by the Act.”

It remains unclear precisely which parts of Reuters’ report are supposedly “misleading and factually inaccurate.” A Reuters spokesperson said that Reuters stands by its reporting.

A TikTok spokesperson told Ars that “while we have continued work in good faith to further safeguard the authenticity of the TikTok experience, it is simply false to suggest that this work would facilitate divestiture or that divestiture is even a possibility.”

TikTok is currently suing to block the US law on First Amendment grounds, and this week a court fast-tracked that legal challenge to attempt to resolve the matter before the law takes effect next year. Oral arguments are scheduled to start this September, with a ruling expected by December 6, which Reuters reported leaves time for a potential Supreme Court challenge to that ruling.

However, in the meantime, sources told Reuters that TikTok is seemingly exploring all its options to avoid running afoul of the US law, including separating its code base and even once considering open-sourcing parts of its algorithm to increase transparency.

Separating out the code is not an easy task, insiders told Reuters.

“Compliance and legal issues involved with determining what parts of the code can be carried over to TikTok are complicating the work,” one source told Reuters. “Each line of code has to be reviewed to determine if it can go into the separate code base.”

But creating a US-only content-recommendation algorithm could be worth it, as it could allow TikTok US to operate independently from the China-based TikTok app in a manner that could satisfy lawmakers worried about the Chinese government potentially spying on Americans through the app.

However, there’s no guaranteeing that the US-only version of TikTok’s content-recommendation algorithm will perform as well as the currently available app in the US, sources told Reuters. By potentially cutting off TikTok US from Chinese engineers who developed and maintain the algorithm, US users could miss out on code updates improving or maintaining desired functionality. That means TikTok’s popular For You Page recommendations may suffer, as “TikTok US may not be able to deliver the same level of performance as the existing TikTok,” sources told Reuters.

TikTok vaguely disputes report that it’s making a US-only app Read More »

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NYT targets Street View Worldle game in fight to wipe out Wordle clones

daily puzzle, geography games, Google Street View, new york times, online games, Policy, trademark infringement, word games, wordle, wordle clones, worldle / /

A world of difference? —

Worldle creator surprised by fight, refuses to bow to NYT.

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NYT targets Street View Worldle game in fight to wipe out Wordle clones

The New York Times is fighting to take down a game called Worldle, according to a legal filing viewed by the BBC, in which The Times apparently argued that the geography-based game is “creating confusion” by using a name that’s way too similar to Wordle.

Worldle is “nearly identical in appearance, sound, meaning, and imparts the same commercial impression” to Wordle, The Times claimed.

The Times bought Wordle in 2022, paying software developer Josh Wardle seven figures for the daily word-guessing puzzle game after its breakout success during the pandemic. Around the same time, Worldle was created—along with more than 100 other Wordle spinoffs offering niche alternatives to Wordle, including versions in different languages and completely different games simply using the name construction ending in “-le.” The Times filed for a Wordle trademark the day after buying the game and by March 2022, it started sending takedown requests.

Today, millions visit the Times site daily to play Wordle, but the Times is seemingly concerned that some gamers might be diverted to play Worldle instead, somehow mistaking the daily geography puzzle—where players have six chances to find a Google Street View location on a map—with the popular word game.

This fear seems somewhat overstated, since a Google search for “Worldle” includes Wordle in the top two results and suggests that searchers might be looking for Wordle, but a search for Wordle does not bring up Worldle in the top results.

Despite Google seemingly favoring the popular game in results and likely because of Wordle‘s enormous success, The Times’ litigiousness over the Wordle brand seems to be rising this year as the company looks to rapidly expand its profitable games platform to increase subscriptions. In March, 404 Media reported when The Times began more aggressively taking aim at hundreds of Wordle clones, sending DMCA notices to defend the Wordle trademark.

Some developers, like Chase Wackerfuss, the creator of Reactle, immediately took down their games, feeling it wasn’t worth getting into an intellectual property (IP) battle with the Times, 404 Media reported. The same thing happened with the Wordle Archive, which confirmed in 2022 that access to previous Wordle puzzles was shut down because “sadly, the New York Times has requested that the Wordle Archive be taken down.”

“To me, Wordle is like Tetris or a deck of cards. It’s such a simple premise,” Wackerfuss told 404 Media. He pointed to unique games that wouldn’t exist without building on Wordle‘s premise, including “a Taylor Swift version, a version in all different types of languages. The New York Times would never build those, so I’m not sure why they feel like we’re encroaching on their IP.”

But Worldle’s developer, Kory McDonald, is not backing down just because the Times threatened legal action.

McDonald told the BBC that he was disappointed in the Times targeting Worldle. He runs the game all by himself, attracting approximately 100,000 players monthly, and said that “most of the money he makes from the game goes to Google because he uses Google Street View images, which players have to try to identify.” The game can only be played through a web browser and is supported by ads and annual subscriptions that cost less than $12.

“I’m just a one-man operation here, so I was kinda surprised,” McDonald told the BBC, while vowing to defend his game against the Times’ attempt to take it down.

“There’s a whole industry of [dot]LE games,” McDonald told the BBC. “Wordle is about words, Worldle is about the world, Flaggle is about flags.”

It’s not clear how strong a case the Times would have to enforce the takedown or if it will target other “-le” games next. The list of potential next targets is long and includes a completely different game also called Worldle, where players guess the country based on its outline. Wackerfuss told 404 Media in March that it seemed like the Times was chasing down every lead.

The Times is not commenting on the legal action, the BBC reported, but in the past has targeted Wordle clones that either use the Wordle trademark or its copyrighted gameplay without authorization or permission.

Because McDonald’s game has vastly different gameplay than Wordle, the Times may be limited to only arguing that the similar-sounding names are creating confusion for an average user.

Now it seems possible that McDonald’s fight, if successful, could encourage others to resist takedowns over the Wordle trademark.

McDonald doesn’t think that “world” sounding too much like “word” is an issue, but even if the Times wins the fight, he intends to keep his game online.

“Worst-case scenario, we’ll change the name, but I think we’ll be OK,” McDonald told the BBC.

NYT targets Street View Worldle game in fight to wipe out Wordle clones Read More »

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Musk can’t avoid testifying in SEC probe of Twitter buyout by playing victim

elon musk, Morgan Stanley, Policy, SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission, Twitter, X, x corp / /
Musk can’t avoid testifying in SEC probe of Twitter buyout by playing victim

After months of loudly protesting a subpoena, Elon Musk has once again agreed to testify in the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation into his acquisition of Twitter (now called X).

Musk tried to avoid testifying by arguing that the SEC had deposed him twice before, telling a US district court in California that the most recent subpoena was “the latest in a long string of SEC abuses of its investigative authority.”

But the court did not agree that Musk testifying three times in the SEC probe was either “abuse” or “overly burdensome.” Especially since the SEC has said it’s seeking a follow-up deposition after receiving “thousands of new documents” from Musk and third parties over the past year since his last depositions. And according to an order requiring Musk and the SEC to agree on a deposition date from US district judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, “Musk’s lament does not come close to meeting his burden of proving ‘the subpoena was issued in bad faith or for an improper purpose.'”

“Under Musk’s theory of reasonableness, the SEC must wait to depose a percipient witness until it has first gathered all relevant documents,” Corley wrote in the order. “But the law does not support that theory. Nor does common sense. In an investigation, the initial depositions can help an agency identify what documents are relevant and need to be requested in the first place.”

Corley’s court filing today shows that Musk didn’t even win his fight to be deposed remotely. He has instead agreed to sit for no more than five hours in person, which the SEC argued “will more easily allow for assessment of Musk’s demeanor and be more efficient as it avoids delays caused by technology.” (Last month, Musk gave a remote deposition where the Internet cut in and out, and Musk repeatedly dropped off the call.)

Musk’s deposition will be scheduled by mid-July. He is expected to testify on his Twitter stock purchases prior to his purchase of the platform, as well as his other investments surrounding the acquisition.

The SEC has been probing Musk’s Twitter stock purchases to determine if he violated a securities law that requires disclosures within 10 days from anyone who buys more than a 5 percent stake in a company. Musk missed that deadline by 11 days, as he amassed close to a 10 percent stake, and a proposed class action lawsuit from Twitter shareholders has suggested that he intentionally missed the deadline to keep Twitter stock prices artificially low while preparing for his Twitter purchase.

In an amended complaint filed this week, an Oklahoma firefighters pension fund—which sold more than 14,000 Twitter shares while Musk went on his buying spree—laid out Musk’s alleged scheme. The firefighters claim that the “goal” of Musk’s strategy was to purchase Twitter “cost effectively” and that this scheme was carried out by an unnamed Morgan Stanley banker who was motivated “to acquire billions of dollars of Twitter securities without tipping off the market” to curry favor with Musk.

As a seeming result, the firefighters’ complaint alleged that Morgan Stanley “pocketed over $1,460,000 in commissions just for executing” the “secret Twitter stock acquisition scheme.” And Morgan Stanley’s work seemingly pleased Musk so much that he went back for financial advising on the Twitter deal, the complaint alleged, paying Morgan Stanley an “estimated $42 million in fees.”

Messages from the banker show he was determined to keep the trading “absofuckinglutely quiet” to avoid the prospect that “anyone sniff anything out.”

Because of this secrecy, Twitter “investors suffered enormous damages” when Musk “belatedly disclosed his Twitter interests,” and “the price of Twitter’s stock predictably skyrocketed,” the complaint said.

“Ultimately, Musk went from owning zero shares of Twitter stock as of January 28, 2022 to spending over $2.6 billion to secretly acquire over 70 million shares” on April 4, 2022, the complaint said.

Musk can’t avoid testifying in SEC probe of Twitter buyout by playing victim Read More »