FTC

What an ‘Airbnbopoly’ Game Says About Silicon Valley’s Standoff With Lina Khan
01 Nov

What an ‘Airbnbopoly’ Game Says About Silicon Valley’s Standoff With Lina Khan

stp2y0 CommentsRAG models, , , , , ,
Four years ago, one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ top donors—the billionaire cofounder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman—celebrated the IPO of Airbnb, a company he was heavily invested in, by fashioning Monopoly boards where the game’s “jail” space is replaced by “government regulation.”Since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, many billionaire tech investors have come out of the woodwork to support her campaign. While they often tout Harris as a business-friendly politician, they’ve been vocal in their dislike of Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan’s antitrust agenda. Hoffman is one of the most influential donors in that group. He has donated…
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Lyft will have to tell drivers how much they can truly earn, with evidence
27 Oct

Lyft will have to tell drivers how much they can truly earn, with evidence

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Lyft has agreed to to tell its drivers how much they can truly earn on the ride-hailing platform — and back it up with evidence — as part of its settlement for a lawsuit filed by the US Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission. The lawsuit accused the company of making "numerous false and misleading claims" in the advertisements it released in 2021 and 2022, when the demand for rides recovered following COVID-19 lockdowns in the previous years. Lyft promised drivers up to $43 an hour in some locations, the FTC said, without revealing that those numbers were based…
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FTC ratifies ‘click-to-cancel’ rule, making it easier for consumers to end subscriptions
17 Oct

FTC ratifies ‘click-to-cancel’ rule, making it easier for consumers to end subscriptions

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The Federal Trade Commission has made it easier for consumers to cancel subscriptions. In a decision that went down along party lines, the agency voted to ratify a “click-to-cancel” rule that will require providers to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one. First proposed last year, the rulemaking prohibits companies from misrepresenting their recurring services and memberships, as well as failing to clearly disclose any material terms related to those offerings.“Too often, businesses make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription,” said Chair Lina Khan. “The FTC’s rule…
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Marriott reaches $52 million settlement over years of data breaches
14 Oct

Marriott reaches $52 million settlement over years of data breaches

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Marriott International is being taken to task after the hotel chain suffered multiple data breaches that exposed sensitive information for more than 344 million customers around the world. First, Marriott agreed to a settlement of with a group of 50 US attorneys general. According to Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, 131.5 million hotel customers in the states had their information compromised in the attacks on the hotels.Second, a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission will require Marriott and its Starwood Hotels & Resorts subsidiary to implement a new information security system to protect against future data exposures. The FTC agreement…
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DoNotPay ‘robot lawyer’ fined $193K by the FTC for not being a lawyer
26 Sep

DoNotPay ‘robot lawyer’ fined $193K by the FTC for not being a lawyer

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The Federal Trade Commission is taking against DoNotPay, alleging that the AI-powered company billing itself as "the world's first robot lawyer" failed to back its claims that it could replace human legal representation. The agency's argues that DoNotPay did not conduct tests to assess whether its AI chatbot was equivalent to a human lawyer, and that the company did not hire or retain any attorneys of its own. DoNotPay has agreed to a proposed settlement that would see it face fines of $193,000. In addition, the settlement will require DoNotPay to inform customers who subscribed to its service between 2021…
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Texas judge blocks the FTC from enforcing its ban on noncompete agreements
21 Aug

Texas judge blocks the FTC from enforcing its ban on noncompete agreements

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The Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) efforts to ban noncompete agreements has been blocked by a federal judge in Texas. According to The Washington Post, US District Judge Ada Brown has determined that the agency doesn't have the authority to enforce the rule, which was supposed to take effect on September 4. She reportedly wrote in her decision that the FTC only looked at "inconsistent and flawed empirical evidence" and didn't consider evidence in support of noncompetes. "The role of an administrative agency is to do as told by Congress, not to do what the agency thinks it should do," she…
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The Justice Department sues TikTok for breaking child privacy laws
02 Aug

The Justice Department sues TikTok for breaking child privacy laws

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The US Department of Justice TikTok for violating a child privacy law and violating a 2019 agreement with the Federal Trade Commission for previous privacy violations. The lawsuit stems from an earlier investigation into the company by the Federal Trade Commission, which its privacy case to the DoJ earlier this year.The FTC had been looking into whether TikTok had violated the terms of an earlier privacy settlement with Musical.ly, which was acquired by ByteDance prior to the launch of TikTok. According to , the investigation found that TikTok had “flagrantly” violated both the 2019 settlement and the Children's Online Privacy…
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Open Source AI Has Founders—and the FTC—Buzzing
26 Jul

Open Source AI Has Founders—and the FTC—Buzzing

stp2y0 CommentsAI, , , , ,
Many of yesterday’s talks were littered with the acronyms you’d expect from this assemblage of high-minded panelists: YC, FTC, AI, LLMs. But threaded throughout the conversations—foundational to them, you might say—was boosterism for open source AI.It was a stark left turn (or return, if you’re a Linux head) from the app-obsessed 2010s, when developers seemed happy to containerize their technologies and hand them over to bigger platforms for distribution.The event also happened just two days after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared that “open source AI is the path forward” and released Llama 3.1, the latest version of Meta’s own open…
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The FTC is as mad about the Xbox Game Pass price increase as you are
21 Jul

The FTC is as mad about the Xbox Game Pass price increase as you are

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Microsoft has made changes to its Xbox Game Pass service that are "exactly the sort of consumer harm" from its Activision acquisition that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was worried about, the agency wrote in a letter addressed to the US Appeals Court. The FTC's letter focused on a recent price hike for the Xbox Game Pass and pointed out that the Game Pass Ultimate now costs $20 a month, which is $3 more per month than before and represents a 17 percent year-over-year increase.In addition, the agency called attention to Microsoft's decision to discontinue the $11 Console Game Pass…
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Three senators introduce bill to protect artists and journalists from unauthorized AI use
14 Jul

Three senators introduce bill to protect artists and journalists from unauthorized AI use

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Three US Senators introduced a bill that aims to rein in the rise and use of AI generated content and deepfakes by protecting the work of artists, songwriters and journalists.The Content Original Protection and Integrity from Edited and Deepfaked Media (COPIED) Act was introduced to the Senate Friday morning. The bill is a bipartisan effort authorized by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), according to a press alert issued by Blackburn’s office.The COPIED ACT would, if enacted, create transparency standards through the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) to set guidelines for…
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