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On Monday, the US Supreme Court dismissed Elon Musks appeal about a 2018 SEC settlement regarding his infamous funding secured tweet. Ars Technica reports that the conservative-majority court took a break from weighing whether US Presidents should be above the law to pass on Musks attempt to throw out the agreement, which required him to pay fines, step down from Teslas board and have his tweets pre-screened by a lawyer. The justices denied Musks petition without commenting. Their unwillingness to take up the billionaires appeal leaves intact an appeals court ruling from a year ago that smacked down the Tesla founders claims of victimhood. The saga began in 2018 when Musk tweeted, Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured. He also posted, Investor support is confirmed. Only reason why this is not certain is that its contingent on a shareholder vote. Teslas stock rose by more than six percent. There was only one tiny problem: The funding wasnt secured, and the SEC takes false statements that affect investors very seriously. The SEC said, Musk had not even discussed, much less confirmed, key deal terms, including price, with any potential funding source and that he knew that he had not satisfied numerous additional contingencies. The government agency claimed the post caused significant confusion and disruption in the market for Teslas stock. The SEC settlement hit his wallet hard, requiring Musk and Tesla to each pay $20 million in penalties. He also had to step down from his board chairman role at the automaker and have a Tesla attorney screen any investor-related tweets before posting. Of course, Musk later bought Twitter and changed its name to X. But at least thats going splendidly! His appeal said the settlement forced him to waive his First Amendment rights to speak on matters ranging far beyond the charged violations. Musk, who currently has an estimated net worth of $185 billion, claimed he was a victim of economic duress when agreeing to the settlement, which he described as a tactic to muzzle and harass him and his company. The 2nd Circuit appeals court, whose ruling will now be the final word on the matter, shot down Musks arguments. Parties entering into consent decrees may voluntarily waive their First Amendment and other rights, they said. The appeals court saw no evidence to support Musks contention that the SEC has used the consent decree to conduct bad-faith, harassing investigations of his protected speech.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-us-supreme-court-rejects-elon-musks-appeal-in-funding-secured-tweet-ruling-183554065.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
Apples iPad has been added to the list of tech products that must abide by the EUs DMA rules, as reported by Bloomberg. The European Commission has officially designated iPadOS as a gatekeeper under the DMA, alongside the Safari web browser, the iOS operating system and the App Store. The organization states that users are basically locked-in to Apples iPadOS ecosystem and that it disincentivizes people from switching to competitors. The company has six months to comply with various preemptive measures. This follows a months-long investigation into iPadOS to decide whether or not it qualifies as gatekeeper software. iPadOS constitutes an important gateway on which many companies rely to reach their customers, wrote Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President in charge of competition policy at the European Commission. Todays decision will ensure that fairness and contestability are preserved also on this platform. What does Apple have to do to ensure iPadOS compliance? According to the DMA, gatekeepers are prohibited from favoring their own services over rivals and from locking users into the ecosystem. The software must also allow third parties to interoperate with internal services, which is why third-party app stores are becoming a thing on iPhones in Europe. The iPad, presumably, will soon follow suit. In other words, the DMA is lobbing some serious stink bombs into Apples walled garden. In a statement published by Forbes, Apple said it will continue to constructively engage with the European Commission to ensure its designated services comply with the DMA, including iPadOS. The company isnt exactly pleased, however, and has accused the legislation of creating new privacy and data security risks. To that end, Apple has issued a legal challenge to the EUs General Court in Luxembourg, with hearings set to take place later this year. In happier tablet news for Apple, the company recently announced an event for May 7 to showcase new iPads. We're likely to see an OLED iPad Pro and new iPad Air, in addition to updated peripherals.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-eu-will-force-apple-to-open-up-ipados-181553238.html?src=rss
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Walmart's Discovered experience started out last year as a way for kids to buy virtual items for Roblox inside the game. But today, that partnership is testing out an expanded pilot program that will allow teens to buy real-life goods stocked on digital shelves before they're shipped to your door. Available to children 13 and up in the US, the latest addition to Walmart Discovered is an IRL commerce shop featuring items created by partnered user-generated content creators including MD17_RBLX, Junozy, and Sarabxlla. Customers can browse and try on items inside virtual shops, after which the game will open a browser window to Walmart's online store (displayed on an in-game laptop) in order to view and purchase physical items. Furthermore, anyone who buys a real-world item from Discovered will receive a free digital twin so they can have a matching virtual representation of what they've purchased. Some examples of the first products getting the dual IRL and virtual treatment are a crochet bag from No Boundaries, a TAL stainless steel tumbler and Onn Bluetooth headphones. According to Digiday, during this initial pilot phase (which will take place throughout May), Roblox will not be taking a cut from any of the physical sales made as part of Walmart's Discovered experience as it looks to determine people's level of interest. However, the parameters of the partnership may change going forward as Roblox gathers more data about how people embrace buying real goods inside virtual stores. Unfortunately, while Roblux's latest test may feel like an unusually exploitative way to squeeze even more money from teenagers (or more realistically their parent's money), this is really just another small step in the company's efforts to turn the game into an all-encompassing online marketplace. Last year, Roblox made a big push into digital marketing when it launched new ways to sell and present ads inside the game before later removing requirements for advertisers to create bespoke virtual experiences for each product. So in case you needed yet another reason not to save payment info inside a game's virtual store, now instead of wasting money on virtual items, kids can squander cash on junk that will clutter up their rooms too. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/walmart-thinks-its-a-good-idea-to-let-kids-buy-irl-items-inside-roblox-180054985.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
The European Union is getting ready to launch a new investigation into Meta over its handling of election-related content, according to a new report in The Guardian. Details of the investigation could be announced later this week, but European officials are reportedly concerned about deceptive advertising and political content. According to the Financial Times, the EU has also raised concerns about Russias efforts to undermine upcoming European elections and other foreign interference campaigns. The EU is set to hold parliamentary elections in June. If the company is found to have run afoul of the Europes Digital Services Act, it could be hit with large fines. EU officials are also particularly concerned about Metas plan to shut down CrowdTangle in August. The tool has been widely used by researchers and fact checkers for years to study how content spreads across Facebook and Instagram. Dozens of researchers and fact-checking groups signed an open letter to the company last month saying that shutting down the tool ahead of dozens of global elections would be a direct threat to election integrity efforts around the world. We have a well-established process for identifying and mitigating risks on our platforms, a Meta spokesperson told Engadget in a statement. We look forward to continuing our cooperation with the European Commission and providing them with further details of this work. Elsewhere, the EU is also investigating Meta over its ad-free subscription plan available to European users. That investigation, which could last up to a year, will look into whether the social media company has violated Europes Digital Markets Act, by not offering users a real alternative to opt out of data collection.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-european-union-will-reportedly-open-a-new-investigation-into-meta-over-election-policies-174818594.html?src=rss
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The Financial Times has become the latest news organization to strike a deal with OpenAI. In a joint announcement on Monday, the Financial Times and OpenAI said that maker of ChatGPT will use the Financial Times journalism to train its AI models and collaborate on developing new AI products and features for the publications readers. ChatGPT will also attribute and and link back to the Financial Times when it includes information from the publication in its responses It is right, of course, that AI platforms pay publishers for the use of their material, said Financial Times CEO John Ridding in a statement and added that the Times is committed to human journalism. Neither company disclosed the financial terms of the agreement. Earlier this year, The Information reported that OpenAI offers publishers between $1 million and $5 million a year to license their content to train its AI models. Generative AI is only as good as the training data used to train the models that power it. So far, AI companies have scraped everything they can from the public internet often without the consent of creators, and are constantly on the hunt for new data sources to keep the outputs generated by these models current. Training AI models on news is one way to achieve that, but some publishers are wary of giving up their content to AI companies for free. The New York Times and the BBC, for instance, have OpenAI from scraping their websites. As a result, OpenAI has been striking financial deals with leading publishers to keep its models trained. Last year, the company partnered with German publisher Axel Springer to train its models on new from Politico and Business Insider in the US and Bild and Die Welt in Germany. The company also has deals with the Associated Press, Frances Le Monde, and Spains Prisa Media. Subscribing to the Financial Times costs at least $39 a month for. But, as some pointed out, its partnership with OpenAI effectively means a dismantling of its own paywall for general readers through generative AI.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/openai-will-train-its-ai-models-on-the-financial-times-journalism-173249177.html?src=rss
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Marketing and Advertising
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