politics

The Crypto Industry Is Helping Trump Pick SEC Chair
26 Nov

The Crypto Industry Is Helping Trump Pick SEC Chair

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In July, at a bitcoin conference in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump pledged to fire Gensler if reelected, drawing perhaps the most raucous applause of the night. “I will appoint an SEC chair who will build the future, not block the future,” Trump said.Last week, Gensler announced that he would resign from his office on January 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration. Representatives of the industry in which Gensler has become so maligned are now helping to pick out his successor, sources tell WIRED.The promise of an SEC overhaul was one of many made to the crypto industry by Trump on the…
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Elizabeth Warren Calls for Crackdown on Internet ‘Monopoly’ You’ve Never Heard of
22 Nov

Elizabeth Warren Calls for Crackdown on Internet ‘Monopoly’ You’ve Never Heard of

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US senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and congressman Jerry Nadler of New York have called on government bodies to investigate what they allege is the “predatory pricing” of .com web addresses, the Internet’s prime real estate.In a letter delivered today to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a branch of the Department of Commerce (DOC) that advises the US President, the two Democrats accuse VeriSign, the company that administers the .com top-level domain, of abusing its market dominance to overcharge customers.In 2018, under the Donald Trump administration, the NTIA modified the terms on…
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Is Silicon Valley Actually Libertarian?
21 Nov

Is Silicon Valley Actually Libertarian?

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Lauren Goode: It sounds like you're a little bit aligned with the successful tech entrepreneurs who were surveyed by the junior college in Palo Alto in terms of being a liberaltarian.Michael Calore: No, I go further left than that, I would say.Zoë Schiffer: He sounds like maybe he's Yang Gang.Lauren Goode: Oh, the Yang Gang. I interviewed Andrew Yang once.Michael Calore: Andrew Yang, he was one of the first big vocal proponents of universal basic income in the political sphere, wasn't he?Lauren Goode: Yes, he was indeed.Michael Calore: Well, I don't know anything else about him, so I can't say…
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X sues California over deceptive AI-made election content ban
17 Nov

X sues California over deceptive AI-made election content ban

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Elon Musk’s X is taking the state of California to court over a new law that prevents the spread of AI-generated election misinformation. reports that X filed a lawsuit against AB 2655, also known as the Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024, in a Sacramento federal court.California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law on September 17, creating accountability standards for using false political speech faked with AI programs close to an election. The legislation prevents the distribution of “materially deceptive audio or visual media of a candidate within 60 days of an election at which the…
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ADL’s report on racist Steam Community posts prompts a letter from Virginia senator
17 Nov

ADL’s report on racist Steam Community posts prompts a letter from Virginia senator

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A damning report from the Anti-Defamation League published Thursday on the “unprecedented” amount of racist and violent content on Steam Community has prompted a US Senator to take action. In a letter spotted by The Verge, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) asked Valve CEO Gabe Newell how he and his company are addressing the issue.“My concern is elevated by the fact that Steam is the largest single online gaming digital distribution and social networking platform in the world with over 100 million unique user accounts and a user base similar in scale to that of the ‘traditional social media and social…
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Meta Lobbyist Turned Regulator Says Europe’s Big Tech Rules Have Gone Too Far
15 Nov

Meta Lobbyist Turned Regulator Says Europe’s Big Tech Rules Have Gone Too Far

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According to Salla, Big Tech rules should be left to the new administration entering the White House. “Big Tech should be regulated by their home continent … That needs to be done in the US first and foremost.”President-elect Donald Trump has been vague about how he would regulate Big Tech, suggesting “something” should be done about Google but implied breaking the company apart may go too far.Salla’s critics are troubled by the way her arguments overlap with Meta’s. Bram Vranken, a researcher at Corporate Observatory Europe, a charity that tracks lobbying, points to an open letter, signed by 49 industry…
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Donald Trump Isn’t the Only Chaos Agent
08 Nov

Donald Trump Isn’t the Only Chaos Agent

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Eight years ago, the November US election results profoundly shocked the small staff at Backchannel, the boutique tech publication I headed. The morning after, an editor posted on our Slack that working on a technology story seemed tone-deaf, if not futile. On a plane from New York to San Francisco, I wrote a column to answer that impulse, directed as much to myself and my colleagues as it was to readers. I argued that regardless of the enormity of this event, one thing hadn’t changed; the biggest story of our time was still the technological revolution we were living through.…
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As Trump Takes a Victory Lap, the Crypto Faithful Kiss the Ring
06 Nov

As Trump Takes a Victory Lap, the Crypto Faithful Kiss the Ring

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On the campaign trail, Trump went out of his way to court their favor. In July, speaking to thousands of bitcoiners at a conference in Nashville, Tennessee, Trump duly sang from the bitcoin hymn sheet, promising to cement the US as the foremost bitcoin mining powerhouse, establish a national “bitcoin stockpile,” and appoint a bitcoin advisory council if reelected. Trump claimed he would turn the US into the “crypto capital of the planet.”In October, Trump went as far as to launch his own crypto platform, World Liberty Financial, which his family has marketed as a way to “make finance great…
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TikTok Employees Shrug Off the US Election
05 Nov

TikTok Employees Shrug Off the US Election

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TikTok is one of the tech companies that could be most impacted by the outcome of the US elections. But as the election result looms, employees there found themselves surprisingly disengaged from the high-level political drama that could decide the app’s fate.A San Jose-based product manager, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media, says he was more worried about the TikTok ban before he joined the company earlier this year than now. He claims his colleagues rarely bring up the topic, and his team plans future product features in the app as if there’s…
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