Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge subscribers that covers the political intrigue and power struggles between Big Tech and Big Government. Subscribe here for a weekly dispatch of tech oligarchs fighting regular oligarchs. Prior to last week, only highly specialized political insiders knew the extent of David Sacks’ influence in the Trump […]
Apple is not planning to comply with an order from the Indian government directing phone manufacturers to preload a state-backed cybersecurity app, according to Reuters. Industry sources tell Reuters that Apple plans to tell India’s government that they don’t comply with requests like this due to privacy and security concerns. However, Apple won’t go to […]
One year after the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan, his alleged shooter, Luigi Mangione, faces charges of first and second degree murder, criminal possession of a weapon, stalking, forgery, and others. Mangione has become a folk hero to many online, amid debates over wealth inequality, healthcare affordability, and even content moderation. His […]
India’s Department of Telecommunications is giving phone manufacturers 90 days to comply with an order to pre-install a state-owned app on new phones and push it to existing phones through software updates, reports Reuters. The government order was privately sent out to phone manufacturers on November 28th, according to Reuters, including Apple, Samsung, Vivo, Oppo, […]
For years, lawmakers at the state and federal levels have tried a variety of measures aimed at making kids safer on the internet, from kids-tailored design standards to age verification for individual websites. More recently, a new model has caught on in the states, and now it’s gaining steam in Congress: putting the onus on […]
After the Online Safety Act’s onerous internet age restrictions took effect this summer, it didn’t take long for Brits to get around them. Some methods went viral, like using video game Death Stranding’s photo mode to bypass face scans. But in the end, the simplest solution won out: VPNs. Virtual private networks have proven remarkably […]
OpenAI’s response to a lawsuit by the family of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old who took his own life after discussing it with ChatGPT for months, said the injuries in this “tragic event” happened as a result of Raine’s “misuse, unauthorized use, unintended use, unforeseeable use, and/or improper use of ChatGPT.” NBC News reports the filing […]
Military contractors are trying to thwart a widely-supported right-to-repair provision in the annual defense policy bill — and their efforts may pay off. A source familiar with the negotiations tells The Verge that there are significant concerns that the bill’s right-to-repair language will be replaced by a “data-as-a-service” model, potentially requiring the Department of Defense […]
Hello and welcome back to Regulator. It’s been a very long two weeks away from your inboxes, but luckily for us, Big Tech and Big Government did not stop fighting. In fact, it’s gotten even spicier. Let’s get into it. Last week, I was following up on several rumors that Donald Trump would sign an […]
The House Energy and Commerce Committee released a package of 19 bills aimed at protecting kids on the internet, teeing Congress up for a chance at passing some of the most substantive internet regulations in recent history, alongside a fight over online speech rights. The subcommittee on commerce will consider the bills during a hearing […]