The Biden administration will ban all sales of Kaspersky antivirus software in the US starting in July, according to reporting from Reuters and a filing from the US Department of Commerce (PDF).
The US believes that security software made by Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab represents a national security risk and that the Russian government could use Kaspersky’s software to install malware, block other security updates, and “collect and weaponize the personal information of Americans,” said US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
“When you think about national security, you may think about guns and tanks and missiles,” said Raimondo during a press briefing, as reported by Wired. “But the truth is, increasingly, it’s about technology, and it’s about dual-use technology, and it’s about data.”
US businesses and consumers will be blocked from buying new software from Kaspersky starting on or around July 24, 2024, 30 days after the restrictions are scheduled to be published in the federal register. Current users will still be able to download the software, resell it, and download new updates for 100 days, which Reuters says will give affected users and businesses time to find replacement software. Rebranded products that use Kaspersky’s software will also be affected.
Companies that continue to sell Kaspersky’s software in the US after the ban goes into effect could be subject to fines.
The ban follows a two-year national security probe of Kaspersky’s antivirus software by the Department of Commerce. It’s being implemented using authority that the government says it was given under a national defense authorization act signed during the Trump administration in 2018.
The ban is the culmination of long-running concern across multiple presidential administrations. Kaspersky’s software was banned from systems at US government agencies following allegations of the company’s links to Russian intelligence operations. A month after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, the US Federal Communications Commission went one step further, adding Kaspersky to a security threat list that included Chinese hardware makers Huawei and ZTE. Adding Kaspersky to that list didn’t ban consumer sales, but it did prevent Kaspersky from receiving funding from the FCC.
For its part, Kaspersky and its representatives have always denied the US government’s allegations. CEO Eugene Kaspersky called the 2017 reports “BS brewed on [a] political agenda,” and the company similarly accused the FCC in 2022 of making decisions “on political grounds” and “not based on any technical assessment of Kaspersky products.”
A 911 vendor’s malfunctioning firewall caused a statewide outage in the emergency calling system in Massachusetts on Tuesday afternoon, the state government said. A Massachusetts government press release issued yesterday said the state’s 911 vendor, Comtech, “has advised State 911 that they have applied a technical solution to ensure that this does not happen again.”
“A preliminary investigation conducted by the State 911 Department and Comtech determined that the outage was the result of a firewall, a safety feature that provides protection against cyberattacks and hacking,” the announcement said. “The firewall prevented calls from getting to the 911 dispatch centers, also known as Public Safety Answer Points (PSAPs).”
Comtech’s initial review “confirmed that the interruption was not the result of a cyberattack or hack,” but “the exact reason the firewall stopped calls from reaching dispatch centers remains under review,” the state said. A full review is continuing.
The 911 outage lasted two hours. Shortly after it began, the State 911 Department alerted local law enforcement and issued a statewide emergency alert to residents advising them to call their local public safety business line directly if they had an emergency.
“Although some calls may not have gone through, the system allows dispatch centers to identify the phone number of callers and return those calls. The Department has not received any reports of emergencies impacted during the interruption,” the Massachusetts announcement said.
State 911 Department Executive Director Frank Pozniak promised that the department “will take all necessary steps to prevent a future occurrence.” Massachusetts has 204 Public Safety Answering Points that received an average of 8,800 calls, combined, per day in 2023.
Comtech announced a five-year contract extension with Massachusetts in May 2024. “Since 2014, Comtech has been developing, implementing and operating a secure, IP-based NG911 [Next Generation 911] system for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” the vendor announcement said. Comtech says it has provided public safety and security technology for over 25 years and that “service providers, states, and local jurisdictions nationwide rely on our portfolio of mission‑critical products and services.”
911 disruptions happen occasionally and are sometimes caused by broader outages in phone networks. A 37-hour CenturyLink outage in December 2018 that disrupted 911 service for millions of Americans was caused by “malformed packets.” In February 2024, a major AT&T wireless outage caused by a botched network update led to warnings that 911 access could be disrupted.
Meta got hit Tuesday with a lawsuit alleging that the company knowingly overlooks sexist treatment of female employees. That includes an apparent practice of hiring and promoting less qualified men to roles over more qualified female applicants.
The complaint was filed in a US district court in New York by Jeffrey Smith, an engineer who joined Meta in 2018. Smith alleged that Meta was on the brink of promoting him when suddenly his “upward trajectory stopped” after he started speaking up about allegedly misogynistic management practices at Meta.
Smith claimed that instead of a promotion, his Meta manager, Sacha Arnaud, suggested that he resign shortly after delivering Smith’s first-ever negative performance review, which reduced his bonus payout and impacted his company stock. Smith has alleged he suffered emotional distress and economic injury due to this alleged retaliation.
“Punished almost immediately”
The engineer—whose direct reports consider him to be “pro-active” and “the most thoughtful manager” ever, the complaint noted—started protesting Meta’s treatment of women in the summer of 2023.
For Smith, the tipping point toward advocating for women at Meta came when an “exceedingly capable female Meta employee” had her role downsized during a company reorganization. Some of her former responsibilities were allocated to two male employees, one of which Smith considered “a particularly poor fit,” because the male employee had significantly less experience than the female employee and no experience managing other managers.
After that, Smith learned about a Meta research scientist, Ran Rubin, who allegedly evaluated “a high-performing” female employee’s work “more critically than men’s work.”
Smith said that he repeatedly raised concerns about the perceived sexist management with Meta’s human resources and leadership, but nothing came of it.
Instead of prompting Meta to intervene, Smith was overwhelmed as more women came forward, revealing what he considered “a pattern of neglectful management” at Meta, routinely providing “overly critical feedback” and exhibiting “bias against the women.” Three women specifically complained about Rubin, who allegedly provided poor management and “advocated for white men to have supervision” over the women whose competence he “denigrated.”
“Rubin’s comments about each of these women was not based on any evidence, and all had significant experience and no complaints against them,” Smith’s complaint said.
As Smith tells it, he couldn’t help but speak up after noticing “a qualified female employee was inexplicably stripped of responsibilities, a male supervisor was hyper-critical of a female direct report, certain male managers exhibited bias towards women they oversaw and that Meta exhibited systematic preferential treatment towards men in promotions and ratings, while failing to provide career development support to women,” his complaint said.
Smith alleged that Meta “punished” him “almost immediately” after he spoke up for these women. Rather than incorporate employee feedback into his performance review, his manager took the “highly unusual” step of skipping a formal review and instead delivering an informal critical review.
Meta accused of “driving women away”
“Smith felt intimidated,” the complaint said, and he stopped reporting alleged mistreatment of women for a short period. But in October 2023, “Smith decided that he could not stay silent any longer,” resuming his criticism of Meta’s allegedly sexist male managers with gusto. Some women had left Meta over the alleged treatment, and once again, he felt he ought to be “voicing his concerns that the actions of Rubin and other managers were driving women away from Meta by treating them unequally.”
Weeks later, Smith received a negative annual performance review, but that didn’t stop him from raising a red flag when he learned that a manager intended to fill a research science manager role “with a junior white man.”
Smith told his manager that “the two most qualified people for the role” were “both women and were not being considered,” Smith’s complaint said. But allegedly, his manager “responded by lashing out” and “questioning whether Smith’s response was ‘productive.'” After that, another employee accused of acting “disrespectfully” toward women “yelled at and insulted Smith,” while everyday workplace activity like taking previously approved time off suddenly seemed to negatively impact his performance review.
Ultimately, “no action was ever taken regarding his complaints about Mr. Rubin or the culture at Meta,” Smith’s complaint said, but his manager suggested that he “search for a new job internally” before later “stating that Smith should consider resigning his role.”
Smith hopes a jury will agree that Meta violated anti-retaliation and anti-interference laws in New York. A victory could result in civil and punitive damages compensating Smith for harm to his “professional and personal reputations and loss of career fulfillment.” It could also block Meta from any further mistreatment of women in the workplace, as alleged in the complaint.
An attorney for Smith, Valdi Licul, provided Ars with a statement, characterizing Smith’s case as “yet another example of how major corporations are failing to address sexist cultures and how they try to silence those who speak out against their practices. We look forward to holding Meta accountable and making it clear that sexism has no place in the workforce.”
Meta did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.
AT&T is imposing $10 and $20 monthly price hikes on users of older unlimited wireless plans starting in August 2024, the company announced. The single-line price of these 10 “retired” plans will increase by $10 per month, while customers with multiple lines on a plan will be hit with a total monthly increase of $20.
“If you have a single line of service on your plan, your monthly plan charge will increase by $10. If you have multiple lines on your plan, your monthly plan charge will increase by a total of $20. This is the total monthly increase, not per line increase,” AT&T said.
AT&T has offered a dizzying array of “unlimited” data plans over the years, all with different limits and perks. While unlimited plans let customers avoid overage fees, speeds can be slowed once customers hit their high-speed data limit. There are also limits on the usage of hotspot data.
The $10 and $20 price increases “affect most of our older unlimited plans,” AT&T said. The list of affected plans is as follows:
AT&T Unlimited & More Premium
AT&T Unlimited Choice Enhanced
AT&T Unlimited & More
AT&T Unlimited Choice II
AT&T Unlimited Plus
AT&T Unlimited Choice
AT&T Unlimited Plan
AT&T Unlimited Plus Enhanced
AT&T Unlimited Value Plan
AT&T Unlimited Plan (with TV)
AT&T softens blow with more high-speed data
To soften the blow of the price increase, AT&T said it would let customers who keep their older plans have more high-speed data and hotspot data:
AT&T Unlimited Choice, Choice II, Choice Enhanced, Unlimited & More, and Unlimited Value plans will now include 75GB of high-speed data and 30GB of hotspot data. AT&T Unlimited Plus, Plus Enhanced, Unlimited &More Premium, and AT&T Unlimited (with TV) plans will now include 100GB of high-speed data and 60GB of hotspot data.
Customers may get a better price by switching to one of AT&T’s current unlimited plans, which range from $66 to $86 for a single line before taxes and fees. In 2019, as we wrote at the time, Unlimited & More cost $70 per month for one line while Unlimited & More Premium cost $80 per month for a single line.
The Unlimited & More plans replaced Unlimited Plus and Unlimited Choice in 2018. The 2018 change resulted in AT&T’s entry-level unlimited plan starting at $70 instead of the previous $65. All those plans are affected by the price increase slated for August 2024.
Unlimited & More originally didn’t have any set amount of high-speed data. Instead, that plan was subject to reduced speeds during times of network congestion regardless of how much data the customer used. The more expensive Unlimited & More Premium was given 22GB of high-speed data before possible slowdowns.
Unlimited & More originally did not allow mobile hotspot usage, while Unlimited & More Premium allowed 15GB of high-speed mobile hotspot use. The new increases to high-speed data and hotspot allotments make these older plans behave a bit more like AT&T’s current mid-range and high-end plans.
Limits on current “unlimited” plans
Before deciding whether to switch to a current plan, AT&T customers should examine their limits. For the current entry-level plan titled “AT&T Unlimited Starter SL,” which costs $66 for a single line, AT&T says it “may temporarily slow data speeds if the network is busy” regardless of how much data you’ve used.
The current mid-range offering, AT&T Unlimited Extra EL, is $76 for a single line and comes with 75GB of smartphone data before possible slowdowns. The high-end Unlimited Premium PL, which is $86 for a single line, does not have slowdowns based on the amount of smartphone data you’ve used.
The above limits don’t apply to hotspot data, which is handled separately. Unlimited Premium PL comes with 60GB of high-speed hotspot data, the mid-range plan has 30GB of high-speed hotspot data, and the entry-level plan has 5GB of high-speed hotspot data. On all three plans, hotspot speeds are slowed to a maximum of 128 kbps once customers use the allotment.
AT&T’s price hike on older plans follows a similar move by T-Mobile. But unlike T-Mobile, AT&T didn’t promise that it would never raise prices on these plans.
Elon Musk is still frantically pushing to launch X payment services in the US by the end of 2024, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.
Launching payment services is arguably one of the reasons why Musk paid so much to acquire Twitter in 2022. His rebranding of the social platform into X revives a former dream he had as a PayPal co-founder who fought and failed to name the now-ubiquitous payments app X. Musk has told X staff that transforming the company into a payments provider would be critical to achieving his goal of turning X into a so-called everything app “within three to five years.”
Late last year, Musk said it would “blow” his “mind” if X didn’t roll out payments by the end of 2024, so Bloomberg’s report likely comes as no big surprise to Musk’s biggest fans who believe in his vision. At that time, Musk said he wanted X users’ “entire financial lives” on the platform before 2024 ended, and a Bloomberg review of “more than 350 pages of documents and emails related to money transmitter licenses that X Payments submitted in 11 states” shows approximately how close he is to making that dream a reality on his platform.
X Payments, a subsidiary of X, reports that X already has money transmitter licenses in 28 states, but X wants to secure licenses in all states before 2024 winds down, Bloomberg reported.
Bloomberg’s review found that X has a multiyear plan to gradually introduce payment features across the US—including “Venmo-like” features to send and receive money, as well as make purchases online—but hopes to begin that process this year. Payment providers like Stripe and Adyen have already partnered with X to process its transactions, Bloomberg reported, and X has told regulators that it “anticipated” that its payments system would also rely on those partnerships.
Musk initially had hoped to launch payments globally in 2024, but regulatory pressures forced him to tamp down those ambitions, Bloomberg reported. States like Massachusetts, for example, required X to resubmit its application only after more than half of US states had issued licenses, Bloomberg found.
Ultimately, Musk wants X to become the largest financial institution in the world. Bloomberg reported that he plans to do this by giving users a convenient “digital dashboard” through X “that will serve as a centralized hub for all payments activity” online. To make sure that users keep their money stashed on the platform, Musk plans to offer “extremely high yield” savings accounts that X Payments’ chief information security officer, Chris Stanley, teased in April would basically guarantee that funds are rarely withdrawn from X.
“The end goal is if you ever have any incentive to take money out of our system, then we have failed,” Stanley posted on X.
Stanley compared X payments to Venmo and Apple Pay and said X’s plan for its payment feature was to “evolve” so that X users “can gain interest, buy products,” and “eventually use it to buy things in stores.”
Bloomberg confirmed that X does not plan to charge users any fees to send or receive payments, although Musk has told regulators that offering payments will “boost” X’s business by increasing X users’ “participation and engagement.” Analysts told Bloomberg that X could also profit off payments by charging merchants fees or by “offering banking services, such as checking accounts and debit cards.”
Musk has told X staff that he plans to offer checking accounts, debit cards, and even loans through X, saying that “if you address all things that you want from a finance standpoint, then we will be the people’s financial institution.”
X CEO Linda Yaccarino has been among the biggest cheerleaders for Musk’s plan to turn X into a bank, writing in a blog last year, “We want money on X to flow as freely as information and conversation.”
T-Mobile has agreed to change its advertising for the “Price Lock” guarantee that doesn’t actually lock in a customer’s price, but continues to defend the offer.
T-Mobile users expressed their displeasure about being hit with up to $5 per-line price hikes on plans that seemed to have a lifetime price guarantee, but it was a challenge by AT&T that forced T-Mobile to agree to change its advertising. AT&T filed the challenge with the advertising industry’s self-regulatory group, which ruled that T-Mobile’s Price Lock ads were misleading.
As we’ve reported, T-Mobile’s guarantee (currently called “Price Lock” and previously the “Un-contract”) is simply a promise that T-Mobile will pay your final month’s bill if the carrier raises your price and you decide to cancel. Despite that, T-Mobile promised users that it “will never change the price you pay” if you’re on a plan with the provision.
BBB National Programs’ National Advertising Division (NAD), the ad industry’s self-regulatory body, ruled against T-Mobile in a decision issued yesterday. BBB National Programs is an independent nonprofit that is affiliated with the International Association of Better Business Bureaus.
The NAD’s decisions aren’t binding, but advertisers usually comply with them. That’s what T-Mobile is doing.
“T-Mobile is proud of its innovative Price Lock policy, where customers can get their last month of service on T-Mobile if T-Mobile ever changes the customer’s price, and the customer decides to leave,” the company said in its official response to the NAD’s decision. “While T-Mobile believes the challenged advertisements appropriately communicate the generous terms of its Price Lock policy, T-Mobile is a supporter of self-regulation and will take NAD’s recommendations to clarify the terms of its policy into account with respect to its future advertising.”
AT&T: Price Lock not a real price lock
While our recent reports on Price Lock concerned mobile plans, the ads challenged by AT&T were for T-Mobile’s 5G home Internet service.
“AT&T argued that the ‘Price Lock’ claims are false because T-Mobile is not committing to locking the pricing of its service for any amount of time,” the NAD’s decision said. “AT&T also argued that T-Mobile’s disclosures contradict the ‘Price Lock’ claim because they set forth limitations which make clear that T-Mobile may increase the price of service for any reason at any time.”
T-Mobile countered “that its home Internet service ‘price lock’ is innovative and unique in the industry, serving as a strong disincentive to T-Mobile against raising prices and offering a potential benefit of free month’s service, and that it has the discretion as to how to define a ‘price lock’ so long as it clearly communicates the terms,” the NAD noted.
AT&T challenged print and online ads, and a TV commercial featuring actors Zach Braff, Donald Faison, and Jason Momoa. The ads displayed a $50 monthly rate with the text “Price Lock” and included language clarifying the actual details of the offer.
The NAD said that “impactful claims about pricing policies require clear communication of what those policies are and cannot leave consumers with a fundamental misunderstanding about what those policies mean.” T-Mobile’s ads created a fundamental misunderstanding, the NAD found.
Apple has abruptly discontinued its “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) service, Apple Pay Later, which turned Apple into a money lender when it launched last March in the US and became widely available in October.
The service previously allowed users to split the cost of purchases of up to $1,000 into four installments that were repaid over six weeks without worrying about extra fees or paying interest. For Apple, it was likely a move to increase total Apple Pay users as the company sought to offer more core financial services through its devices.
Now, it appears that Apple has found a different route to offer short-term loans at checkout in Apple Pay. An Apple spokesperson told 9to5Mac that the decision to end Apple Pay Later came ahead of the company’s plan to start offering new types of installment loans globally.
“Starting later this year, users across the globe will be able to access installment loans offered through credit and debit cards, as well as lenders, when checking out with Apple Pay,” Apple’s spokesperson said. “With the introduction of this new global installment loan offering, we will no longer offer Apple Pay Later in the US.”
Apple also noted its decision to kill off the service on a support page posted Monday, confirming that “Apple Pay Later is no longer offering new loans.” Apple specified that all “existing Apple Pay Later loans and purchases are not affected,” and loans can continue to be managed through users’ wallets.
One of the biggest challenges for BNPL customers is often seeking a refund for returned purchases, but Apple has assured Apple Pay Later customers that the refund process has not changed for any existing purchases. Customers can contact Apple Support if they have “trouble with a refund,” Apple’s support page said.
Apple announced its new installment loan program at its recent annual developer event, confirming that it had partnered with banks, including Citi in the US, to provide short-term loans as a payment option in its upcoming iOS 18 operating system due out before the end of 2024. Apple’s spokesperson told 9to5Mac that unlike Apple Pay Later, which was only available in the US, installment loans will be an option offered in more countries.
“Our focus continues to be on providing our users with access to easy, secure, and private payment options with Apple Pay, and this solution will enable us to bring flexible payments to more users, in more places across the globe, in collaboration with Apple Pay enabled banks and lenders,” Apple’s spokesperson said.
In a blog post, Apple described new features “available for any Apple Pay-enabled bank or issuer to integrate in supported markets.” These features allow users to “view and redeem rewards, and access installment loan offerings from eligible credit or debit cards, when making a purchase online or in-app with iPhone and iPad,” the blog said. For users in the US, Apple will soon make it easy to “apply for loans directly through Affirm when they check out with Apple Pay.”
A brief history of short-lived Apple Pay Later
The iPhone maker rolled out Apple Pay Later in March 2023, just after BNPL services fell under scrutiny by regulators globally, The Verge reported in 2022. Early studies found that “BNPL users are twice as likely to overdraft” and estimated that 43 percent of younger BNPL users have missed a payment.
A fear quickly arose that Apple Pay Later might “normalize” reliance on BNPL lending for frivolous large purchases that customers might then struggle to repay, The Verge reported. BNPL had already become hugely popular with Gen Z shoppers eager to purchase the latest TikTok fashions they may not otherwise be able to afford, The Verge noted.
In 2021, the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) launched an inquiry into BNPL, flagging emerging potential consumer risks in 2022. Those included privacy risks from data harvesting and excessive debt accumulation from frequently reported borrower overextension.
However, despite emerging concerns about BNPL, Apple Pay Later was immediately popular, according to a JD Power survey of 8,000 consumers. In the first three months that the service was available, nearly one-fifth of BNPL customers used Apple Pay Later. With its BNPL offering, Apple attracted new customers who were interested in trying a new BNPL service from a trusted brand, JD Power reported, posing an immediate threat to BNPL services offered by “traditional payments juggernauts” like PayPal.
At that time, Apple was well-positioned to provide short-term loans, JD Power reported, finding that the “average Apple Pay Later user tended to be more financially healthy than most other BNPL customers, potentially giving it a more sustainable user base than its competitors.”
US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wants to put a warning label on social media platforms, alerting young users of potential mental health harms.
“It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents,” Murthy wrote in a New York Times op-ed published Monday.
Murthy argued that a warning label is urgently needed because the “mental health crisis among young people is an emergency,” and adolescents overusing social media can increase risks of anxiety and depression and negatively impact body image.
Spiking mental health issues for young people began long before the surgeon general declared a youth behavioral health crisis during the pandemic, an April report from a New York nonprofit called the United Health Fund found. Between 2010 and 2022, “adolescents ages 12–17 have experienced the highest year-over-year increase in having a major depressive episode,” the report said. By 2022, 6.7 million adolescents in the US were reporting “suffering from one or more behavioral health condition.”
However, mental health experts have maintained that the science is divided, showing that kids can also benefit from social media depending on how they use it. Murthy’s warning label seems to ignore that tension, prioritizing raising awareness of potential harms even though parents potentially restricting online access due to the proposed label could end up harming some kids. The label also would seemingly fail to acknowledge known risks to young adults, whose brains continue developing after the age of 18.
To create the proposed warning label, Murthy is seeking better data from social media companies that have not always been transparent about studying or publicizing alleged harms to kids on their platforms. Last year, a Meta whistleblower, Arturo Bejar, testified to a US Senate subcommittee that Meta overlooks obvious reforms and “continues to publicly misrepresent the level and frequency of harm that users, especially children, experience” on its platforms Facebook and Instagram.
According to Murthy, the US is past the point of accepting promises from social media companies to make their platforms safer. “We need proof,” Murthy wrote.
“Companies must be required to share all of their data on health effects with independent scientists and the public—currently they do not—and allow independent safety audits,” Murthy wrote, arguing that parents need “assurance that trusted experts have investigated and ensured that these platforms are safe for our kids.”
“A surgeon general’s warning label, which requires congressional action, would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe,” Murthy wrote.
Kids need safer platforms, not a warning label
Leaving parents to police kids’ use of platforms is unacceptable, Murthy said, because their efforts are “pitted against some of the best product engineers and most well-resourced companies in the world.”
That is nearly an impossible battle for parents, Murthy argued. If platforms are allowed to ignore harms to kids while pursuing financial gains by developing features that are laser-focused on maximizing young users’ online engagement, platforms will “likely” perpetuate the cycle of problematic use that Murthy described in his op-ed, the American Psychological Association (APA) warned this year.
Downplayed in Murthy’s op-ed, however, is the fact that social media use is not universally harmful to kids and can be beneficial to some, especially children in marginalized groups. Monitoring this tension remains a focal point of the APA’s most recent guidance, which noted that in April 2024 that “society continues to wrestle with ways to maximize the benefits of these platforms while protecting youth from the potential harms associated with them.”
“Psychological science continues to reveal benefits from social media use, as well as risks and opportunities that certain content, features, and functions present to young social media users,” APA reported.
According to the APA, platforms urgently need to enact responsible safety standards that diminish risks without restricting kids’ access to beneficial social media use.
“By early 2024, few meaningful changes to social media platforms had been enacted by industry, and no federal policies had been adopted,” the APA report said. “There remains a need for social media companies to make fundamental changes to their platforms.”
The APA has recommended a range of platform reforms, including limiting infinite scroll, imposing time limits on young users, reducing kids’ push notifications, and adding protections to shield kids from malicious actors.
Bejar agreed with the APA that platforms owe it to parents to make meaningful reforms. His ideal future would see platforms gathering more granular feedback from young users to expose harms and confront them faster. He provided senators with recommendations that platforms could use to “radically improve the experience of our children on social media” without “eliminating the joy and value they otherwise get from using such services” and without “significantly” affecting profits.
Bejar’s reforms included platforms providing young users with open-ended ways to report harassment, abuse, and harmful content that allow users to explain exactly why a contact or content was unwanted—rather than platforms limiting feedback to certain categories they want to track. This could help ensure that companies that strategically limit language in reporting categories don’t obscure the harms and also provide platforms with more information to improve services, Bejar suggested.
By improving feedback mechanisms, Bejar said, platforms could more easily adjust kids’ feeds to stop recommending unwanted content. The APA’s report agreed that this was an obvious area for platform improvement, finding that “the absence of clear and transparent processes for addressing reports of harmful content makes it harder for youth to feel protected or able to get help in the face of harmful content.”
Ultimately, the APA, Bejar, and Murthy all seem to agree that it is important to bring in outside experts to help platforms come up with better solutions, especially as technology advances. The APA warned that “AI-recommended content has the potential to be especially influential and hard to resist” for some of the youngest users online (ages 10–13).
Meta has apparently paused plans to process mounds of user data to bring new AI experiences to Europe.
The decision comes after data regulators rebuffed the tech giant’s claims that it had “legitimate interests” in processing European Union- and European Economic Area (EEA)-based Facebook and Instagram users’ data—including personal posts and pictures—to train future AI tools.
There’s not much information available yet on Meta’s decision. But Meta’s EU regulator, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), posted a statement confirming that Meta made the move after ongoing discussions with the DPC about compliance with the EU’s strict data privacy laws, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
“The DPC welcomes the decision by Meta to pause its plans to train its large language model using public content shared by adults on Facebook and Instagram across the EU/EEA,” the DPC said. “This decision followed intensive engagement between the DPC and Meta. The DPC, in co-operation with its fellow EU data protection authorities, will continue to engage with Meta on this issue.”
The European Center for Digital Rights, known as Noyb, had filed 11 complaints across the EU and intended to file more to stop Meta from moving forward with its AI plans. The DPC initially gave Meta AI the green light to proceed but has now made a U-turn, Noyb said.
Meta’s policy still requires update
In a blog, Meta had previously teased new AI features coming to the EU, including everything from customized stickers for chats and stories to Meta AI, a “virtual assistant you can access to answer questions, generate images, and more.” Meta had argued that training on EU users’ personal data was necessary so that AI services could reflect “the diverse cultures and languages of the European communities who will use them.”
Before the pause, the company had been hoping to rely “on the legal basis of ‘legitimate interests’” to process the data, because it’s needed “to improve AI at Meta.” But Noyb and EU data regulators had argued that Meta’s legal basis did not comply with the GDPR, with the Norwegian Data Protection Authority arguing that “the most natural thing would have been to ask the users for their consent before their posts and images are used in this way.”
Rather than ask for consent, however, Meta had given EU users until June 26 to opt out. Noyb had alleged that in going this route, Meta planned to use “dark patterns” to thwart AI opt-outs in the EU and collect as much data as possible to fuel undisclosed AI technologies. Noyb urgently argued that once users’ data is in the system, “users seem to have no option of ever having it removed.”
Noyb said that the “obvious explanation” for Meta seemingly halting its plans was pushback from EU officials, but the privacy advocacy group also warned EU users that Meta’s privacy policy has not yet been fully updated to reflect the pause.
“We welcome this development but will monitor this closely,” Max Schrems, Noyb chair, said in a statement provided to Ars. “So far there is no official change of the Meta privacy policy, which would make this commitment legally binding. The cases we filed are ongoing and will need a determination.”
Ars was not immediately able to reach Meta for comment.
Apple has spent years “intentionally, knowingly, and deliberately paying women less than men for substantially similar work,” a proposed class action lawsuit filed in California on Thursday alleged.
A victory for women suing could mean that more than 12,000 current and former female employees in California could collectively claw back potentially millions in lost wages from an apparently ever-widening wage gap allegedly perpetuated by Apple policies.
The lawsuit was filed by two employees who have each been with Apple for more than a decade, Justina Jong and Amina Salgado. They claimed that Apple violated California employment laws between 2020 and 2024 by unfairly discriminating against California-based female employees in Apple’s engineering, marketing, and AppleCare divisions and “systematically” paying women “lower compensation than men with similar education and experience.”
Apple allegedly has displayed an ongoing bias toward male employees, offering them higher starting salaries and promoting them for the “same behaviors” that female employees allegedly were punished for.
Jong, currently a customer/technical training instructor on Apple’s global developer relations/app review team, said that she only became aware of a stark pay disparity by chance.
“One day, I saw a W-2 left on the office printer,” Jong said. “It belonged to my male colleague, who has the same job position. I noticed that he was being paid almost $10,000 more than me, even though we performed substantially similar work. This revelation made me feel terrible.”
But Salgado had long been aware of the problem. Salgado, currently on a temporary assignment as a development manager in the AppleCare division, spent years complaining about her lower wages, prompting Apple internal investigations that never led to salary increases.
Finally, late last year, Salgado’s insistence on fair pay was resolved after Apple hired a third-party firm that concluded she was “paid less than men performing substantially similar work.” Apple subsequently increased her pay rate but dodged responsibility for back pay that Salgado now seeks to recover.
Eve Cervantez, a lawyer for women suing, said in a press release shared with Ars that these women were put in “a no-win situation.”
“Once women are hired into a lower pay range at Apple, subsequent pay raises or any bonuses are tracked accordingly, meaning they don’t correct the gender pay gap,” Cervantez said. “Instead, they perpetuate and widen the gap because raises and bonuses are based on a percentage of the employee’s base salary.”
Apple did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.
A group of Tesla investors yesterday sued Elon Musk, the company, and its board members, alleging that Tesla was harmed by Musk’s diversion of resources to his xAI venture. The diversion of resources includes hiring AI employees away from Tesla, diverting microchips from Tesla to X (formerly Twitter) and xAI, and “xAI’s use of Tesla’s data to develop xAI’s own software/hardware, all without compensation to Tesla,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit in Delaware Court of Chancery was filed by three Tesla shareholders: the Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund, Daniel Hazen, and Michael Giampietro. It seeks financial damages for Tesla and the disgorging of Musk’s equity stake in xAI to Tesla.
“Could the CEO of Coca-Cola loyally start a competing soft-drink company on the side, then divert scarce ingredients from Coca-Cola to the startup? Could the CEO of Goldman Sachs loyally start a competing financial advisory company on the side, then hire away key bankers from Goldman Sachs to the startup? Could the board of either company loyally permit such conduct without doing anything about it? Of course not,” the lawsuit says.
Tesla and Musk have touted artificial intelligence “as the key to Tesla’s future” and described Tesla as an AI company, the lawsuit said. By founding xAI, Musk started a competing company “and then divert[ed] talent and resources from his corporation to the startup,” with the apparent approval of Tesla’s board, the lawsuit said.
After founding xAI in March 2023, “Musk hired away numerous key AI-focused employees from Tesla to xAI” and later diverted Nvidia GPUs from Tesla to X and xAI, the lawsuit said. The GPU diversion was recently confirmed by Nvidia emails that were revealed in a report by CNBC.
GPU diversion
Before founding xAI, “Musk stated that Tesla needed more Nvidia H100 GPUs than Nvidia had available for sale, a common problem in the AI industry… After Musk established xAI, however, he began personally directing Nvidia to redirect GPUs from Tesla to xAI and X,” the lawsuit said.
The investors suing Musk and Tesla don’t buy Musk’s justification. “For his part, Musk dubiously claimed in a post on X following the publication of the CNBC report that, contrary to his prior public representations about Tesla’s appetite for Nvidia hardware, ‘Tesla had no place to send the Nvidia chips to turn them on, so they would have just sat in a warehouse,'” the lawsuit said.
The complaint says that a pitch deck to potential investors in xAI said the new firm “intended to harvest data from X and Tesla to help xAI catch up to AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic. X would provide data from social media users, and Tesla would provide video data from its cars.”
“It is apparent that Musk has pitched prospective investors in xAI partly by exploiting information owned by Tesla,” the lawsuit also said. “On information and belief, Musk has already or intends to have xAI harvest data from Tesla without appropriately compensating Tesla even though X has already been provided xAI equity for its data contributions. None of this would be necessary if Musk properly created xAI as a subsidiary of Tesla.”
We contacted Tesla today and will update this article if the company provides a response to the lawsuit. The filing of the complaint was previously reported by TechCrunch.
Same court nullified Musk’s pay
The Delaware Court of Chancery is the same one that nullified Elon Musk’s 2018 pay package following a different investor lawsuit. Tesla shareholders yesterday re-approved the $44.9 billion pay plan, with 72 percent voting yes on the proposal, but the re-vote doesn’t end the legal battle over Musk’s pay. Tesla shareholders also approved a corporate move from Delaware to Texas, which was proposed by Musk and Tesla after the pay-plan court ruling.
That drama factors into the lawsuit filed yesterday. After the pay ruling that effectively reduced Musk’s stake in Tesla, “Musk accelerated his efforts to grow xAI” by “raising billions of dollars and poaching at least eleven employees from Tesla,” the new lawsuit said. The lawsuit also points to Musk’s threat “that he would only build an AI and robotics business within Tesla if Tesla gave him at least 25% voting power.”
The lawsuit accuses Tesla’s board of “permit[ting] Musk to create and grow xAI, hindering Tesla’s AI development efforts and diverting billions of dollars in value from Tesla to xAI.” The board’s failure to act is alleged to be “an obvious breach of its members’ unyielding fiduciary duty to protect the interests of Tesla and its stockholders.”
The Tesla board members’ close ties to Musk could play a key role in the case. In the pay-plan ruling, Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen McCormick found that most of Tesla’s board members were beholden to Musk or had compromising conflicts. The lawsuit filed yesterday points to the court’s previous findings on those board members, including Kimbal Musk, Elon Musk’s brother; and James Murdoch, a longtime friend of Musk.
Brussels is set to charge Apple over allegedly stifling competition on its mobile app store, the first time EU regulators have used new digital rules to target a Big Tech group.
The European Commission has determined that the iPhone maker is not complying with obligations to allow app developers to “steer” users to offers outside its App Store without imposing fees on them, according to three people with close knowledge of its investigation.
The charges would be the first brought against a tech company under the Digital Markets Act, landmark legislation designed to force powerful “online gatekeepers” to open up their businesses to competition in the EU.
The commission, the EU’s executive arm, said in March it was investigating Apple, as well as Alphabet and Meta, under powers granted by the DMA. An announcement over the charges against Apple was expected in the coming weeks, said two people with knowledge of the case.
These people said regulators have only made preliminary findings, and Apple could still take actions to correct its practices, which could then lead regulators to reassess any final decision. They added the timing of any announcement could also shift.
The EU could also decide to announce charges against other tech groups, with regulators still investigating whether Google parent Alphabet is favoring its own app store and Facebook owner Meta’s use of personal data for advertising.
If found to be breaking the DMA, Apple faces daily penalties for non-compliance of up to 5 percent of its average daily worldwide turnover, which is currently just over $1 billion.
The move comes as competition watchdogs around the world increase their scrutiny of Big Tech companies and their market dominance. In March, the US brought an antitrust case against Apple for allegedly using its power in the smartphone sector to squash rivals and limit consumer choice.
Epic Games, which sued Apple over the App Store in 2020, is also awaiting a decision from a California federal judge on whether Apple failed to comply with a US injunction prohibiting its steering rules, following a series of court hearings over recent weeks.
In January, Apple announced historic changes to its iOS mobile software, App Store, and Safari browser in the EU.
The changes were an effort to placate regulators in Brussels and meant Apple would allow users to access rival app stores and download apps from other sources. The changes also included slashing the fee paid by companies using the App Store to sell digital goods and services from 30 percent to 17 percent.
However, the EU is also looking at whether these fee changes properly adhere to its new digital rules. Apple introduced new charges in Europe, including a “core technology fee” of 50 cents on developers with apps that have more than 1 million users for every first installment by a user. Apple will also charge an additional 3 percent fee to app developers that use its payment processor.
Some developers have argued they could face higher charges as a result of the fee changes. The EU could also announce initial charges over these developer fees, people familiar with the commission’s thinking said.
According to analysis by Sensor Tower, consumer spending on Apple’s App Store throughout the second quarter of 2024 was “relatively flat,” suggesting the EU rules have yet to affect the company’s bottom line.
Apple declined to comment but pointed to an earlier statement that said: “We’re confident our plan complies with the DMA, and we’ll continue to constructively engage with the European Commission as they conduct their investigations.”
