2025-04-24 09:26:35
Reuters:
“This novel form of economic extortion will not be tolerated by the United States,” a White House spokesperson said. “Extraterritorial regulations that specifically target and undermine American companies, stifle innovation, and enable censorship will be recognized as barriers to trade and a direct threat to free civil society.”
2025-04-24 09:23:36
From the European Commission’s announcement today, “Commission closes investigation into Apple’s user choice obligations and issues preliminary findings on rules for alternative apps under the Digital Markets Act”:
Under the DMA, Apple is required to allow for the distribution of apps on its iOS operating system by means other than through the Apple App Store. In practical terms, this means that Apple should allow third party app stores on iOS and apps to be downloaded to the iPhone directly from the web.
The Commission takes the preliminary view that Apple failed to comply with this obligation in view of the conditions it imposes on app (and app store) developers. Developers wanting to use alternative app distribution channels on iOS are disincentivised from doing so as this requires them to opt for business terms which include a new fee (Apple’s Core Technology Fee). Apple also introduced overly strict eligibility requirements, hampering developers’ ability to distribute their apps through alternative channels. Finally, Apple makes it overly burdensome and confusing for end users to install apps when using such alternative app distribution channels.
So is the entire idea of the Core Technology Fee disallowed? Or is the fee too high? Does Apple need to just make app distribution free and unfettered, no fees, no restrictions?
Who knows? The fine is clear — €500M — but what exactly Apple did wrong and should change now is not.
2025-04-24 07:16:59
Michael M. Grynbaum and Benjamin Mullin, reporting for The New York Times:
CBS News entered a new period of turmoil on Tuesday after the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” Bill Owens, said he would resign from the long-running Sunday news program, citing encroachments on his journalistic independence. [...]
“It’s clear the company is done with me,” Mr. Owens said, according to a recording that was obtained by The Times. The correspondents Lesley Stahl and Scott Pelley were in attendance — Ms. Stahl choked up as she praised Mr. Owens, and noted that he had “taken a hell of a beating” — and Anderson Cooper dialed in from Rome, where he was covering Pope Francis’ death for CNN.
During the meeting, Mr. Owens alluded to his displeasure with additional layers of oversight that CBS executives had placed on the program. “In a million years, the corporation didn’t know what was coming up — they trusted ‘60 Minutes’ to report the stories and program the broadcast the way ‘60 Minutes’ saw fit,” he said. Any change to that arrangement, he added, created “a really slippery slope.”
Mr. Owens also discouraged his staff from quitting in protest. “I do think this will be a moment for the corporation to take a hard look at itself and its relationship with us,” he said.
Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is eager to secure the Trump administration’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of her company to Skydance, a company run by the son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison. She has expressed a desire to settle Mr. Trump’s case, which stems from what the president has called a deceptively edited interview in October with Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on “60 Minutes.”
Legal experts have dismissed that suit as baseless and far-fetched. Many journalists at CBS News — the former home of Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace — believe that a settlement would amount to a capitulation to Mr. Trump over what they consider standard-issue gripes about editorial judgment.
Journalistic outlets need owners who are committed to the cause. It’s that simple.
2025-04-24 01:35:41
The European Commission:
Today, the European Commission found that Apple breached its anti-steering obligation under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and that Meta breached the DMA obligation to give consumers the choice of a service that uses less of their personal data. Therefore, the Commission has fined Apple and Meta with €500 million and €200 million respectively. [...]
Non-compliance decision on Apple’s steering terms
Under the DMA, app developers distributing their apps via Apple’s App Store should be able to inform customers, free of charge, of alternative offers outside the App Store, steer them to those offers and allow them to make purchases.
The Commission found that Apple fails to comply with this obligation. Due to a number of restrictions imposed by Apple, app developers cannot fully benefit from the advantages of alternative distribution channels outside the App Store. Similarly, consumers cannot fully benefit from alternative and cheaper offers as Apple prevents app developers from directly informing consumers of such offers. The company has failed to demonstrate that these restrictions are objectively necessary and proportionate.
As part of today’s decision, the Commission has ordered Apple to remove the technical and commercial restrictions on steering and to refrain from perpetuating the non-compliant conduct in the future, which includes adopting conduct with an equivalent object or effect.
The fine imposed on Apple takes into account the gravity and duration of the non-compliance.
This finding — and the scope of the fine (roughly $570M converted from euros) — was completely in line with (at least my) expectations. Apple booked about $184B in profit last year, so this fine is about 0.3% of that. Maybe Apple just considers this the new cost of doing business in the EU? It’s not nothing, but it’s about 1/80th of the theoretical maximum fine the EU could have assessed, $39B.
Something, not nothing, but definitely not a big deal. Teresa Ribera, the EC competition chief, is clearly trying to thread a political needle here. Fines big enough to create the impression that the EU is asserting itself, but small enough not to actually be all that inflammatory amidst the Trump-initiated mad-king trade war. Even Ribera’s job title — Executive Vice-President for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition — seems designed to de-escalate tensions. Margrethe Vestager was adamantly against American companies. Ribera is not.
Non-compliance decision on Meta’s “consent or pay” model
Under the DMA, gatekeepers must seek users’ consent for combining their personal data between services. Those users who do not consent must have access to a less personalised but equivalent alternative.
In November 2023, Meta introduced a binary ‘Consent or Pay’ advertising model. Under this model, EU users of Facebook and Instagram had a choice between consenting to personal data combination for personalised advertising or paying a monthly subscription for an ad-free service.
The Commission found that this model is not compliant with the DMA, as it did not give users the required specific choice to opt for a service that uses less of their personal data but is otherwise equivalent to the ‘personalised ads’ service. Meta’s model also did not allow users to exercise their right to freely consent to the combination of their personal data.
The wild thing about this is that all sorts of companies in the EU use the “pay or OK” model. I get that the whole point of the DMA is that the named “gatekeepers” have to play by different rules because they’re “gatekeepers”, but back in 2018, no less an authority than former EC competition chief Margrethe Vestager said, “I would like to have a Facebook in which I pay a fee each month, but I would have no tracking and advertising and the full benefits of privacy.” That’s exactly what Meta has offered. And it turns out, actual EU citizens don’t want that. They’d almost all rather use Meta’s products free of charge with targeted ads than pay a fair price to use them without tracking. So now the EC has moved the goalposts and insists Meta must, effectively, give away their products for pennies on the dollar.
2025-04-22 06:29:03
Kalley Huang and Erin Woo, reporting for The Information (via Ed Zitron, who summarized it on Bluesky):
Meta Platforms over the past year asked Microsoft, Amazon and others to help pay the costs of training Meta’s flagship large language model, Llama, according to four people briefed on the discussions. Meta’s overtures reflected worries about the growing costs of its artificial intelligence development, according to two of the people. [...]
Meta in particular has faced questions about the business logic behind its AI development, given that Llama is open-source software, freely available for anyone’s use. That makes it difficult to turn into a business. And Meta makes money primarily from advertising and has little experience in selling business software.
While Meta held its most serious discussions with Amazon and Microsoft, it has also discussed the idea with Databricks, IBM and Oracle, as well as representatives from at least one Middle Eastern investor, according to two of the people briefed on the discussions. Meta was still in discussions with companies about the Llama Consortium as recently as the start of this year, the two people said.
“Would you consider throwing a few sacks full of your cash on this bonfire of our cash that we’ve been burning?” is a hell of a pitch.
In its discussions with other companies, Meta primarily asked for money. It also sought servers or other resources that would offset the cost of training its models, according to two of the people briefed on the discussions. In return for their assistance, Meta discussed offering other companies promotion of their services alongside Llama — for example, a Meta executive might appear at a conference hosted by a consortium partner — or providing more insight into the training process for the model, one of those people said.
Pay a little and a Meta representative will show up at your developer conference. Pay more and a Meta rep won’t show up at your developer conference.
2025-04-22 06:14:17
Larry David, in a column for The New York Times:
He loved that story, especially the part where Hitler shot the dog before it got back into the car. Then a beaming Hitler said, “Hey, if I can kill Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals, I can certainly kill a dog!” That perhaps got the biggest laugh of the night — and believe me, there were plenty.
I have been reliably informed that, having linked approvingly to Bill Maher’s “book report” on his dinner with Trump, I must also link to David’s report of dinner with Adolf.
