#WorkforceWednesday: NLRB Wants Shuttered Starbucks Stores Reopened, Big Tech Retreats from DEI Programs, and Employers Scrap College Requirements - Employment Law This Week®
Nota Bene Podcast Episode 134: U.S. Q3 Check In: Infrastructure Bill Updates and Big Tech Antitrust with Elizabeth Frazee and Chani Wiggins
Nota Bene Episode 116: Challenging the U.S. Big Tech Antitrust Debate Assumptions: A Deep Dive with Thomas Dillickrath and Bill Margeson
What to Expect from the Biden Administration
Nota Bene Episode 104: European Q4 Check In: Brexit, Digital Platform Regulation, and National Security Regulation with Oliver Heinisch
Nota Bene Episode 68: The Current Antitrust Enforcement Climate in the United States with Capitol Forum Senior Editor Nate Soderstrom
Nota Bene Episode 46: America’s Existential Antitrust Crisis with Thomas Dillickrath
The EU’s DSA, which regulates online intermediaries and platforms in digital space, came into effect in February 2024. The purpose of the DSA is to make the online environment safer, fairer, and more transparent by imposing...more
In July, Instagram’s parent company Meta Platforms, Inc. (“Meta”) agreed to a $68.5 million class-action biometric privacy settlement in connection with the company’s alleged violation of Illinois’ Biometric Information...more
On Friday, July 21, 2023, the White House announced that Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI voluntarily committed to numerous principles for the responsible development of artificial...more
On 6 July 2023 (or 5 July 2023 in the US), Meta launched ‘Threads’—a text-based social media platform that is linked to users’ Instagram accounts. The launch of Threads closely followed the announcement by the European...more
On December 8, 2022, the same day that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) delivered its opening arguments to a federal judge in California in the FTC’s bid to halt Meta’s acquisition of virtual reality gaming company Within,...more
In July 2022, the FTC brought an enforcement action to enjoin Meta’s acquisition of virtual reality app maker Within. The FTC’s approach in that complaint could have implications for Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of...more
On October 21, 2021, the CFPB sent orders to Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, PayPal, and Square requiring them to provide information about their current and planned payments products, practices, and data collection and...more
The FTC's case against Facebook will be allowed to proceed now that the district court has held its Amended Complaint plausibly alleged violations of Section 2 of the Sherman Act related to Facebook's acquisition of Instagram...more
In a blow to Google and the rest of Big Tech, an EU appeals court has refused to “overturn a landmark antitrust ruling by European regulators” from 2017 over Google’s alleged “preferential treatment to its own...more
The U.S. antitrust laws are slow to keep up with technical innovation and changing marketplaces. Nowhere is that more evident than in the tech sector, where companies and other players in the market do not fit neatly into...more
Facing pressure from Congress and a groundswell of complaints by parents, many of the biggest technology companies are taking belated action to improve privacy protections for their teenage users. Though the Children’s Online...more
Big Tech earnings are in, and BIG remains the operative modifier. Apple saw its profits almost double in Q2, Microsoft had its most profitable quarter ever, and Alphabet’s revenue rose an incredible 62% compared to a year...more
A federal judge recently blocked a Florida law that would have penalized social media companies for removing, or refusing to publish, posts by politicians. Florida legislators approved the legislation after Facebook, Twitter...more
Last week was momentous for the Federal Trade Commission. First, the campaign use antitrust to reign in “Big Tech” faced a setback as the United States District Court for District of Columbia dismissed the FTC’s suit against...more
Columbia University Law Professor Tim Wu has written profoundly and persuasively for decades about anti-competitive behavior in the U.S. tech industry - from Western Union’s telegraph monopoly in the 1860s forward toward the...more
On May 24, 2021, Florida’s governor signed into law legislation prohibiting social media companies from blocking political candidates seeking to use those companies’ websites to communicate with the sites’ users. Almost...more
After a series of denials, it has emerged that Colonial Pipeline reportedly paid 75 Bitcoin (roughly $5 million) to recover its stolen data from last weekend’s ransomware attack. The move likely put a quicker end to the...more
The Washington State Legislature enacted legislation increasing civil penalties under the state’s consumer protection law. By substantially raising civil penalties, the new law provides the Attorney General significantly more...more
The Fed’s Open Market Committee meeting broke yesterday leaving rates at near-zero and pledging to “continue buying government-backed bonds at a steady pace as it tries to support the economy’s recovery from the coronavirus...more
More on how the clogged Suez Canal is combining with “a burst of demand for consumer goods” thanks to a resurgent U.S. economy is “heaping pressure on already strained supply chains” and potentially push prices higher in...more
After more than half a year without a leader, the WTO is poised to welcome its “first woman and first African” to the role in the form of Nigerian economist and former finance minister Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. ...more
Google has threatened to pull its search engine from the entirety of the Australian continent “if the government approved legislation that would force tech companies to pay for journalism shared on their platforms.” Facebook...more
The latest lame-duck Covid relief package proposal would trim about 150 billion dollars (and a number of key sticking points, including funds “to bolster state and local governments, and a temporary coronavirus liability...more
Because too much of a good thing is always trouble (especially on Wall Street), market watchers are warning of a new tech bubble after Airbnb’s monster IPO on Thursday. The home-sharing app’s shares rose more than 112% to...more
The long-awaited Facebook antitrust bomb dropped on Wednesday, with the FTC and attorneys general from more than 40 states accusing Zuck & Co. of “buying up its rivals to illegally squash competition” in D.C. federal district...more