As reported by Ars Technica,
The Senate last night approved a bill that orders TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the company within 270 days or lose access to the US market. The House had already passed the bill, and President Biden signed it into law today.
The “Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” was approved as part of a larger appropriations bill that provides aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. It passed in a 79-18 vote. Biden last night issued a statement saying he will sign the appropriations bill into law “as soon as it reaches my desk.” He signed the bill into law today (4/24), the White House announced.
The bill classifies TikTok as a “foreign adversary controlled application” and gives the Chinese company ByteDance 270 days to sell it to another entity. Biden can extend the deadline by up to 90 days if a sale is in progress.
TikTok would maintain access to the US market if the president determines that the divestiture “would result in the relevant foreign adversary controlled application no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary.” The same divestiture-or-sale requirement would apply to other applications subsequently designated as being controlled by foreign adversaries.
If ByteDance doesn’t sell TikTok, app stores in the US would have to drop the app, and Internet hosting services would be prohibited from providing services that enable distribution of TikTok in the US. Companies that violate the prohibition would have to pay civil penalties.
“Congress is not acting to punish ByteDance, TikTok, or any other individual company,” Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said, according to the Associated Press. “Congress is acting to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance, maligned operations, harming vulnerable Americans, our servicemen and women, and our US government personnel.”
Reuters quoted Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) as saying the bill is “really just a TikTok ban” and that “censorship is not who we are as a people. We should not downplay or deny this trade-off.” Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) expressed concern that the bill “provides broad authority that could be abused by a future administration to violate Americans’ First Amendment rights.”
Despite those statements, Markey and Wyden both voted in favor of the appropriations bill that includes the TikTok-inspired law.
ByteDance has said it will file a lawsuit in an attempt to block the law. “This legislation is a clear violation of the First Amendment rights of TikTok’s 170 million American users,” Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s public policy head in the US, reportedly told staff in a memo after the House vote on Saturday. “We’ll continue to fight… This is the beginning, not the end of this long process.”In a statement today, TikTok said it “will ultimately prevail” in court and that “we have invested billions of dollars to keep US data safe and our platform free from outside influence and manipulation.”
As reported by Ars Technica,
TikTok and its owner ByteDance today sued the federal government to block the “Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications” law that would prohibit TikTok in the US if the company isn’t sold to a non-Chinese firm. The complaint in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit alleges that the law is unconstitutional and asks for a court order prohibiting enforcement.
TikTok and ByteDance say the law “would allow the government to decide that a company may no longer own and publish the innovative and unique speech platform it created. If Congress can do this, it can circumvent the First Amendment by invoking national security and ordering the publisher of any individual newspaper or website to sell to avoid being shut down.”
The law will “silenc[e] the 170 million Americans who use the platform to communicate in ways that cannot be replicated elsewhere,” TikTok and ByteDance alleged.
“By banning all online platforms and software applications offered by ‘TikTok’ and all ByteDance subsidiaries, Congress has made a law curtailing massive amounts of protected speech,” the lawsuit said. “Unlike broadcast television and radio stations, which require government licenses to operate because they use the public airwaves, the government cannot, consistent with the First Amendment, dictate the ownership of newspapers, websites, online platforms, and other privately created speech forums.”
TikTok and ByteDance claim the law violates “the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause because it singles Petitioners out for adverse treatment without any reason for doing so” and “effects an unlawful taking of private property without just compensation, in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause.” TikTok and ByteDance also say the US law “is an unconstitutional bill of attainder” because it singles out the plaintiffs “for legislative punishment.”
The US would try to justify the law on national security grounds. US lawmakers have alleged that the Chinese Communist Party can weaponize TikTok to manipulate public opinion and access user data.
The TikTok lawsuit names Attorney General Merrick Garland as the defendant.
As reported by Dexerto,
YouTube is at war against ad-blockers, and is simultaneously testing different ways to show ads to non-Premium subscribers. The company wants to expand its ad presence during video playback.
During Alphabet’s Q1 2024 earnings call, Philipp Schindler, a Senior Vice President at Google, shared results about an ad experiment they’ve been running on YouTube.
“In Q1, we saw strong traction from the introduction of a Pause Ads pilot on connected TVs. This is a new non-interruptive ad format that appears when users pause their organic content. Initial results show that Pause Ads are driving strong brand lift results and are commanding attention.”
Schindler didn’t say when the pause ads will hit your devices, but if Google execs are happy with them, don’t be surprised if they start popping up soon.
YouTube started testing pause ads last year, as reported by Adweek. These ads will pop up as banners around the video and can be removed by hitting the “dismiss” button.
Gamers Nexus made two amazing videos on the topic and trying to summarize them would do them injustice.
As reported by The Register,
Leaders of the world’s most prominent AI companies are being recruited for the Homeland Security Department’s new advisory group.
Officially titled the Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board, the group will counsel the US government on a wide range of AI-related issues. The guidance would concern not only national security but also electricity consumption (which is a problem on the horizon for AI) and manufacturing, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The board is reportedly set to meet up for the first time in May and intends to gather once per quarter.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that while AI could bring immense benefits to the US, implementing AI-based tech improperly could have consequences. “A failure to deploy AI in a safe and secure and responsible manner when it comes to critical infrastructure can be devastating,” Mayorkas said.
The department is pulling out all the stops for the board’s membership, which includes some of the biggest names in the tech industry: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Other important figures also got tipped for the job, including AMD CEO Lisa Su and Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins.
The tech chiefs make up only a portion of the board, which is understood to have almost two dozen members who boast important credentials in other areas such as academia, politics, and other industries.
Other notable non-AI company members are Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law Damon Hewitt, and Governor of Maryland Wes Moore, a member of the Democratic Party like President Biden, who last fall put in place AI safety measures via an executive order.
The report didn’t give a complete list of the AI safety board’s membership or how prominently the various industries are represented, however, it seems likely that the tech industry is going to compose the single largest group with eight known members. The board is expected to have 23 member seats in total.
If the cohort of tech and AI chiefs present a united front, then they could be just four additional votes away from achieving a majority on decisions. “They understand the mission of this board,” Mayorkas said in respect to these concerns. “This is not a mission that is about business development.”
Although it’s not clear how successful this board will be in its aims to guide the US government on AI-related issues, it’s certain that the topic of AI is getting very complex. In the defense industry, it’s being tested for autonomous fighting vehicles including jets; at the same time, House Reps are debating whether AI companies need to disclose whether or not their training data include copyrighted content.
Oh, and AI might make election interference even more potent than it was the last couple of times. Given that the upcoming Presidential election is only a little over six months away, the board’s creation is very timely.
As reported by Digiday,
The introduction of real-life e-commerce could be a watershed moment for the company’s ambitions to become an all-encompassing destination for virtual life.
Walmart’s Roblox e-commerce experience launches later today, with users inside the pre-existing Walmart Discovered able to have real-life items shipped directly to their doorsteps. Users entering the experience will be greeted with a new storefront showcasing virtual twins of select physical items sold at real-life Walmart stores.
After trying out the virtual items on their avatars, players will be able to load an e-commerce experience that takes the form of a browser window inside Roblox imitating the experience of shopping on Walmart’s website — essentially a virtual laptop set up inside Roblox to access Walmart.com. The commerce feature within Walmart Discovered will be gated specifically to users aged 13 or older in the United States only.
“There is a traditional sort of checkout flow where you put your name, your address and your credit card information, and that’s all powered by a Walmart API that handles all of the information super securely — it’s very safe,” said Walmart director of brand experiences and strategic partnerships Justin Breton. “And once you hit checkout, you’ll get your confirmation email from Walmart. All of that is handled by us on the back end, the user will then get their item in the mail, but the virtual twin is granted immediately back on Roblox.”
To promote the e-commerce experience, Walmart collaborated with three Roblox creators — Sarabxlla, MD17_RBLX and Junozy — to design Robloxified versions of three physical Walmart products, which include a No Boundaries festival hobo bag, a TAL stainless steel tumbler and Onn wireless headphones.
Roblox first teased the launch of e-commerce during November’s Roblox Investor Day, and the Walmart experience is a pilot test that will run through the month of May. During the pilot test, Roblox will not receive a cut of item sales, with all revenues going directly to Walmart. Instead of acting as a new revenue stream for Roblox in the short term, the test will gauge users’ willingness to purchase physical goods on the platform.
Today’s pilot test is the first of multiple e-commerce tests that Roblox is planning with different products, brands and shopping methodologies. When it all shakes out, it’s possible that future e-commerce experiences on the platform will ultimately look very different than Walmart’s pilot test.
“We are excited to start testing real-world commerce as a key step towards enabling it in the future for our community of creators and brands,” said Roblox vp of economy Enrico D’Angelo. “Shopping for virtual items is already an important element of how people engage and express themselves on Roblox daily, so our goal is to gather feedback, test the technology and learn what resonates with Gen Z customers the most when it comes to shopping for physical items.”
