Tech is reshaping the world — and not always for the better. Whether it’s the rules for Apple’s App Store or Facebook’s plan for fighting misinformation, tech platform policies can have enormous ripple effects on the rest of society. They’re so powerful that, increasingly, companies aren’t setting them alone but sharing the fight with government regulators, civil society groups, and internal standards bodies like Meta’s Oversight Board. The result is an ongoing political struggle over harassment, free speech, copyright, and dozens of other issues, all mediated through some of the largest and most chaotic electronic spaces the world has ever seen.
As SpaceX throttles Ukraine’s Starshield, experts warn that Elon Musk’s de facto monopoly over launch and satellite tech poses a major threat to global security.
Federal regulators want driverless cars to shine a distinct blue-green light to signal that humans aren’t driving.
Blackburn (R-TN) said the updated terms “indicate Meta is attempting to exploit American creators and businesses by granting itself sweeping authority to scrape content from any website associated with Facebook and Instagram business accounts,” according to Reuters.
Following publisher pushback, Meta delayed the enforcement of these new policies until November 20th.
Similar to the lawsuits filed by Arizona, West Virginia, Iowa, and several others, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accuses OpenAI of misleading users about the safety of ChatGPT, allegedly exposing children and other users to a “litany of harms” that’s “driven by the company’s insatiable quest to win the AI arms race and amass
large fortunes.”
The map comes from security researcher Joshua Michael, who is facing a trademark complaint from Flock after he published an interactive map of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) using information from a data leak. Proton is now hosting the map, but notes that it’s a snapshot from December 2025, so “devices installed or removed since then won’t be reflected.”
According to Reuters’ sources, the FTC was investigating Shein over “delivery delays and other customer complaints,” adding that the settlement would be “equivalent to 44% of Shein’s second-quarter profit.” The European Union also opened an investigation into Shein earlier this year over concerns about “addictive design” features and illegal product listings.
The ban comes into force on January 1st, 2027, and applies to any child under the age of 15. Greece is the latest country to consider or pass such legislation, following Australia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, France, the UK, and more. Similar efforts are also being made in some US states, including Florida.
Its previous patent dispute saw Ultrahuman blocked from the US market for almost a year. Now Oura alleges the Ultrahuman Ring Pro violates another two of its patents, including one only issued to Oura this week, and wants it taken off sale. For now at least, that hasn’t happened yet.
And no, you haven’t forgotten about a line of Intel-made Roombas. It requested permission to make hardware changes to the “Automatic Guided Vehicles” it’s used in semiconductor facilities for two decades. It says replacing the machines could take years, and there are no domestic alternatives. The FCC agreed, giving it permission to update its bots for the next year.
Trump asked Musk on Wednesday to fully roll back the interruptions that neither has publicly taken responsibility for, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Today, the WSJ says the system is working “more normally” after the call, citing US and Ukrainian officials.
[The Wall Street Journal]
Some Indian American conservatives say bigotry against their community has driven them away from the party they once supported.
As PCMag notes, Taiwan’s MSI has gotten conditional approval to bring two specific routers into the United States, pending certification: the Radix GRBE94 and GRBE34, which’ll likely have friendlier names when they go on sale. Netgear and Asus inexplicably got blanket approvals for all new routers earlier this year, while TP-Link is fighting for its Wi-Fi 8 ones.
The state’s Attorney General Peter Neronha filed the suit in Providence Superior Court, accusing Meta of making billions in profits from scam ads, while simultaneously telling users it was working hard to protect them. The suit cites reporting on leaked Meta documents from Reuters that said:
… it was earning far more from high-risk scam ads than it expected to pay in fines for allowing them.
According to those documents, Meta displays around 15 billion “higher risk” scam ads to users every day, and earned roughly 10% of its 2024 revenue from fraudulent e-commerce, dubious health products and other banned marketing.
Instead, their money went to a political action committee that funneled the money to the reelection campaign of Colorado’s Democratic Senator John Hickenlooper. According to The Atlantic:
The mix-up wasn’t all AI’s fault. The link led to a misleading donation page that carried Talarico’s name and picture, and specified only at the bottom that the money would go to Hickenlooper. But Google’s AI tool evidently didn’t read the fine print. And perhaps no one would have clicked on it had Google not highlighted the page in an authoritative-sounding AI response.
The Microsoft cofounder isn’t an AI doomer, but he says it’s still “the most dangerous weapon of all time.”
The court-ordered change takes effect from March 1st 2027, following similar rulings in the EU, Japan, and Brazil. Apple will have to let Fortnite back in the App Store too — one of the last holdouts after a global return — and allow developers to offer alternative payment methods. Apple told Reuters it plans to appeal.
[Yahoo News Australia]
It said in a filing that Zuckerberg “was evaluating relocating his primary residence” if California’s Proposition 40 passes. As Bloomberg reports, Meta’s board issued special shares so that he wouldn’t have to leave:
Zuckerberg gets non-voting shares he can sell for liquidity without reducing his voting control. In return, he has committed to remain in California — or wherever Meta is headquartered — for eight years while he remains in a full-time leadership role.
Continuing to push the widely unpopular data center projects, Trump said in a Truth Social post that some of them “have become extremely popular when a financial deal is struck.” His plan sounds lot like Meta’s approach on the Hyperion project in Louisiana, where Mark Zuckerberg has touted $50,000 bonus checks for teachers despite a secretive approval process residents didn’t know much about.
After Ukraine said a Starshield slowdown had interrupted its military operations, Elon Musk claimed any limits “are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.” Then the president told reporters, “It wasn’t me... and I don’t think it was Elon.”
Now WSJ sources are pointing the finger back at Musk, with some claiming “Musk acted unilaterally.”
[Wall Street Journal]
What three hours of a documentary looks like to someone who spent four months at the Holmes trial.
Governor Greg Abbott announced a permitting pause for data centers in September. But state agencies are still processing permits, according to an analysis of public records by advocacy groups Public Citizen and FracTracker. The governor’s office, however, denies approving any data center-related permits.
After 15 years at Meta, the George W. Bush White House alum is exiting, Axios reports, amid a midterm election where Democrats are expected to win back more control in Washington. Kaplan will stay through 2027 to help with the transition, though, which will include bipartisan external affairs executives.
A market asking, “Any of the Cornell 7 charged with a felony sex crime?” racked up more than $450,000 in trading volume before it was removed by Polymarket, Front Office Sports reports. The prediction market defended the market, saying in part that it brought “objective, data-driven insight into how a matter like this is moving through the legal system.”
The Department of Homeland Security ordered the agencies to remove any technology created by the Chinese AI company over concerns that its models may transfer “sensitive data to the PRC,” according to Reuters. The ban also prevents civilian agencies from using third-party services that integrate DeepSeek’s AI models.
A massive review of local contracts by NBC News found 55 places where Flock entered no-bid contracts that escaped public scrutiny by claiming its products couldn’t be compared to others on the market. Another 11 were priced just below thresholds that would have required local council votes.
Navigating local procurement laws is up to each public agency, Flock spokesperson Paris Lewbel said in statement, and the company provides “sole-source letters” when requested that help agencies determine if they meet the criteria.
Update: Added statement from Flock.
The request from political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency was never fulfilled, ProPublica found, but staffers were shocked at the directive not to report flaws back to the voting machine company. It demonstrates why state officials’ trust in CISA has eroded.
The Illinois governor on AI, data centers, privacy, and Trump.
At a moment when voters are fearful of AI, Democrats are finding their footing.
