Senate Commerce Republicans have kept a ten year moratorium on state AI laws in their latest version of President Donald Trump's massive budget package. And a growing number of lawmakers and civil society groups warn that its broad language could put consumer protections on the chopping block.
Republicans who support the provision, which the House cleared as part of its "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," say it will help ensure AI companies aren't bogged down by a complicated patchwork of regulations. But opponents warn that should it survive a vote and a congressional rule that might prohibit it, Big Tech companies could be exempted from state legal guardrails for years to come, without any promise of federal standards to take their place.
"What this moratorium does is prevent every state in the country from having basic regulations to protect workers and to protect consumers," Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), whose district includes Silicon Valley, tells The Verge in an interview. He warns that as written, the language included in the House-passed budget reconciliation package could restrict state laws that attempt to regulate social media companies, prevent algorithmic rent discrimination, …
Chairman Brendan Carr and Democratic commissioner Anna Gomez are the last remaining members of the panel.
After the departure of one Republican and one Democratic commissioner on Friday, the Federal Communications Commission is down to two members, falling below the quorum threshold for what's typically a five-person panel.
Commissioners Nathan Simington and Geoffrey Starks stepped down at the end of the week. That leaves Republican Chair Brendan Carr and Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez as the two remaining voting members. President Donald Trump has nominated Republican Senate staffer Olivia Trusty to the commission, but the chamber has yet to vote on her confirmation, which left the agency deadlocked even before these departures. The FCC is in charge of everything from broadband regulations and subsidies funds, to telecommunications mergers enforcement, to spectrum auctions. Without a three-member quorum, some of that work, and the agenda of Trump-aligned Carr, is left in limbo.
Starks and Simington both announced the date of their departures earlier this week, though Starks indicated in March that he planned to step down; neither offered specific reasons for their departure. Carr indicated he intends to keep up the pace, writing in a blog post that "the show must go on."
For five weeks, the Federal Trade Commission asked a federal judge to imagine a world where Instagram and WhatsApp flourished outside Meta's control instead of being acquired by the tech giant. In the sixth and final week of trial, Meta asked Judge James Boasberg to consider that actually, these apps might be as good as they can get.
Meta rested its case Wednesday after a brief four days in court (many of its witnesses were also called by the FTC, so it already had the chance to question them in prior weeks). In those final days, Meta called on WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton and an early Instagram infrastructure executive to explain how Meta helped those apps grow in ways they'd be unlikely to otherwise - countering testimony from Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom, who claimed Meta withheld resources to help the app grow and become safer, and believed Instagram would have still been a hit on its own.
Meta argues that far from becoming competitors that checked Meta's power, Instagram and WhatsApp might have withered, remaining far less useful or accessible to consumers than they are today.
Several Meta witnesses also called out the elephant in the room: TikTok. The FTC says tha …
When Adam Mosseri took over Meta-owned Instagram as CEO in 2018, the app was experiencing what he'd later call "concerning" drops and plateaus in user engagement, thanks partly to fierce competition from a new app: TikTok. Instagram estimated in 2019 that 23 percent of the decline in time spent on Instagram in the US was due to TikTok. Bytedance's video app kept expanding through the onset of the covid-19 pandemic. "We can't explain it all, but what's clear at this point is that we need to adapt, and do so quickly," Mosseri wrote to his team in March 2020. Instagram needed to recover, he testified Thursday in a DC courtroom, because "you're either growing, or you're slowly dying."
Mosseri described the dire situation while testifying in the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust trial against Meta, where the government alleges the company illegally monopolized the market for personal social networking services, a category that it says includes Snapchat but not more entertainment-focused apps like YouTube or TikTok. Mosseri's testimony highlighted how much Instagram sees itself as in competition with TikTok, but it also showed that even as entertainment content becomes a larger port …
The long-awaited antitrust trial between Meta and the Federal Trade Commission kicked off on April 14th. Over about two months, DC District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg is hearing arguments about whether then-Facebook illegally monopolized the market for “personal social networking services” through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.
The FTC first brought the case in late 2020. While it was initially thrown out by the judge, he let an amended version move forward after the government beefed up details about why it thinks Meta is a monopoly. This phase of the trial will help the judge determine if Meta is liable for breaking antitrust law. If he finds that to be true, he’ll later rule on how those harms should be remedied. The FTC is pushing for Instagram and WhatsApp should be spun off.
This is the third US trial seeking to break up Big Tech in recent years, following the Justice Department’s two separate cases against Google over its search and ad tech businesses.
Read below for all of our updates on the FTC v. Meta case.
Meta’s latest whistleblower, Sarah Wynn-Williams, got a warm reception on Capitol Hill Wednesday, as the Careless People author who the company has fought to silence described the company’s chief executive as someone willing to shapeshift into whatever gets him closest to power.
The message was one that lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and counterterrorism were very open to. Their responses underscore that amid CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s latest pivot in cozying up to the right, his perception in Washington has not yet totally changed, even as he reportedly lobbies President Donald Trump to drop the government’s antitrust case against the company.
“He’s recently tried a reinvention in which he is now a great advocate of free speech, after being an advocate of censorship in China and in this country for years,” subcommittee Chair Josh Hawley (R-MO) said, pointing to longtime conservative allegations that Meta has suppressed things like vaccine skepticism and the Hunter Biden laptop story. “Now that’s all wiped away. Now he’s on Joe Rogan and says that he is Mr. Free Speech, he is Mr. MAGA, he’s a whole new man, and his company, they’re a whole new company. Do you buy this latest reinvention of Mark Zuckerberg?”
“If he is such a fan of freedom of speech, why is he trying to silence me?” Wynn-Williams asked in response. Meta convinced an arbitrator to order her to stop making disparaging statements and halt further publishing and promotion of the book, which details Meta’s alleged dealings with the Chinese government and claims of sexual harassment from a top executive. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone has called Careless People “defamatory,” but the book’s publisher said it would “continue to support and promote it.”
“We don’t know what the next costume’s going to be, but it will be something different”
Wynn-Williams also told Hawley that Zuckerberg “is a man who wears many different costumes. When I was there, he wanted the president of China to name his first child, he was learning Mandarin, he was censoring to his heart’s content. Now his new costume is MMA fighting or free speech. We don’t know what the next costume’s going to be, but it will be something different. It’s whatever gets him closest to power.”
At the hearing, Wynn-Williams testified that during her time at the company between 2011 and 2017, Meta and Zuckerberg were willing to “undermine American national security” in service of currying favor with the Chinese government. She accused Meta of working on “censorship tools” that the Chinese government could use to silence critics and provided the Chinese Communist Party American user data.
In a statement, Meta spokesperson Ryan Daniels called Wynn-Williams’ testimony “divorced from reality and riddled with false claims. While Mark Zuckerberg himself was public about our interest in offering our services in China and details were widely reported beginning over a decade ago, the fact is this: we do not operate our services in China today.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said she found it “ironic” that China was a focus of the hearing, given that when she tried to pass a tech antitrust bill, “one of the things that kept being thrown in my face and in those of others that work on this, is that ‘you’re actually going to destroy us and then China will dominate,’” she said. “Your book actually reveals the extent to which Facebook was willing to put growth over the US national interest to gain favor with the Chinese Communist Party.”
Lawmakers dared Zuckerberg to testify before their committee himself to clear up their issues with her statements. “Stop trying to silence her, stop trying to gag her, stop trying to hide behind your lawyers and millions of dollars in legal fees you’re trying to impose on her,” said Hawley. “Come to this committee, take the oath, sit there, let us question you, and give the American people the truth. We will be waiting for you.”
Wynn-Williams told the subcommittee her testimony “may be the last time I’m allowed to speak” given the legal restrictions. “It’s not going to be the last time you’re allowed to speak if we have anything to do with it,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said. “What I would say to Mark Zuckerberg is, stop gagging Ms. Wynn-Williams, let her speak the truth, and you come here and tell us your version of the truth, if you have the guts to do it.”
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has infiltrated the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an agency that has a say over resources Musk needs or could benefit from for some of his private sector business, The Verge has learned.
Three people who have been identified as DOGE staffers are listed in a public directory called “Finding People at the FCC.” Tarak Makecha, Jordan Wick, and Jacob Altik are all listed in the FCC directory, with email addresses associated with the agency. Each is listed under the office “OCH,” which in other agency documents refers to the Office of the Chairman.
Makecha is a finance executive who, according to LinkedIn, has most recently worked in a drone detection software company and previously worked at Tesla. Makecha has reportedly been involved through DOGE at OPM and the State Department. Wick is a former Waymo engineer who’s reportedly been given access to systems at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Altik is a lawyer who’s reportedly been involved at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Are you a current or former US federal government worker? Reach out securely and anonymously with tips from a non-work device to Lauren Feiner via Signal at laurenfeiner.64.
DOGE has recently expanded into other enforcement agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission, as The Verge reported earlier on Friday. The FCC’s authority over radio, TV, broadband, and satellite intersects with Musk’s businesses, like granting certain permissions for SpaceX’s Starlink operations. Its role as a regulator and enforcer also means it stores information on SpaceX and its competitors in order to make decisions. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has previously said that Musk would recuse himself from potential conflicts. The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment about what the DOGE staffers’ role will be at the agency or what restrictions there will be on their data access.
Login
