This week’s newsletter also looks at why the world may be on the verge of a bigger oil shock than in 1973 and investor Tom Steyer’s plan to cut California energy prices
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on the legal travails of Big Tech, follow Adi Robertson. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started The year was 1998, and reigning personal computer […]
Is social media not just bad, but illegally bad? Should tech companies pay for making it that way? According to two US juries – and no shortage of outside commentary – the answer to both questions is “yes.” Earlier this week, two juries – one in New Mexico, one in Los Angeles – held Meta […]
A new official White House app on Android and iOS takes the content from the White House website and copies it into app format. A tweet announcing the app on Friday morning appeared alongside a video joking about missile launches that also appears to feature an iPhone, rather than the elusive Trump Phone. There’s no […]
Where’s the Trump phone? We’re going to keep talking about it every week. We’ve reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone’s whereabouts. This week I think I’ve found an FCC listing for the phone, showing it’s received certification to launch in the US. Last week I issued a reminder that Trump Mobile’s […]
Members of a convoy that delivered humanitarian aid to Cuba were detained and interrogated by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) upon returning to the United States on a charter flight from Havana. Of the 20 US citizens who were pulled for secondary inspection at Miami International Airport on Wednesday morning, 18 had their phones and […]
Social media companies have long seemed impervious to legal threats. Meta, YouTube, Snap, and the rest have long waved off criticism of their platforms on free speech and Section 230 grounds. But twice this week, juries rendered verdicts against the platforms, not because of some bad videos but because of the design and structure of […]
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr never meant to threaten broadcast licenses over their coverage of the war in Iran, he told reporters after an event hosted by FGS and Semafor. “My comments weren’t actually on the Iran war,” Carr said in response to a question from The Verge about his statement regarding coverage of […]
David Sacks, the venture capitalist and tech billionaire who’d become Silicon Valley’s primary advocate inside the White House and a key architect of its aggressive AI policy initiatives, revealed on Thursday that he was no longer a special government employee – and therefore no longer President Donald Trump’s Special Advisor on AI and Crypto. Sacks’ […]
Today on Decoder, we’re talking about the major antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation, and what it might mean for antitrust and competition law in general now that the Justice Department under Trump has decided to settle its part of the case. That’s even as many states — including New York, California, and Texas — carry […]