Amy Klobuchar

January 31, 2024 @ 9:32 AM Senator Amy Klobuchar tore into the CEOs of social media companies attending a Congressional hearing on child safety Wednesday, calling out platforms Meta, X, Snap, TikTok, and Discord for dragging their feet over legislation.  On Wednesday, the CEOs of all five companies appeared in front of a Senate hearing to discuss the safety and protections of minors on their platforms.  Klobuchar grilled the CEOs on whether they supported bills like STOP CSAM and the Shield Act to…

Apple’s recent move to block Beeper Mini, the app that lets Android users chat with iPhone through the iMessage protocol, has caught the eye and a fair bit of ire of several U.S. congresspeople. Now lawmakers are calling for an investigation into the tech giant over “potential anticompetitive treatment” of the smaller messaging app.Threads Needs These Five Missing Features to Be a Twitter KillerOn Sunday, Sens Amy Klobuchar and Mike Lee and representatives Jerry Nadler and Ken Buck signed a letter requesting that the…

A powerful and bizarre coalition of Senators have teamed up on a bill that could strike down the digital ad dominance of Google and Meta, though the proposed legislation never mentions those companies by name. The AMERICA Act could radically transform advertising technology, the financial backbone of the internet.Google’s Antitrust Case Is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to AITry to say the bill’s title in one breath: The Advertising Middlemen Endangering Rigorous Internet Competition Accountability Act, aka the AMERICA…

Photo: Pixels Hunter / Shutterstock.com (Shutterstock)A bill introduced Thursday in response to the reversal of Roe v. Wade would enshrine first-of-its kind protections for location data and health information. If it passes, it has the potential to be one of the most significant privacy laws in American history.The bill, called the Upholding Protections for Health and Online Location Data (UPHOLD) Privacy Act was introduced by three Democratic senators, citing digital privacy concerns in the wake ofthe Supreme Court…

Live Nation Entertainment, the company that’s owned Ticketmaster since 2010, knows it’s hard out there for music fans. Really, it does. That’s why the company, which faced massive public pushback earlier this year in the aftermath of a Taylor Swift ticket sale meltdown, has proposed a (kind of) solution. As part of Live Nation’s quarterly earnings report on Thursday, the company also announced its support for what it’s calling a “FAIR Ticketing Act.” In a separate blogpost, the entertainment goliath outlined a set of…

Photo: Chip Somodevilla (Getty Images)The Supreme Court’s ruling on a pair of ISIS terrorism cases this week will rest on the nine justices’ interpretation of 26 words written in 1996 that collectively have come to define the nature and scope of modern online expression. The ruling could fundamentally alter the types of content social companies are held legally liable for and couldforce them to re-examine the ways they use recommendation algorithms to serve users content. Though that sounds esoteric, tech companies being…

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing this week titled, "That's the Ticket: Promoting Competition and Protecting Consumers in Live Entertainment," which focused on the state of Live Nation Entertainment and the lack of competition in the primary and secondary ticketing markets."I just want to dispel this notion that this is not a monopoly and then we can go from there about solutions," Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said at the hearing, which was held Tuesday.Live Nation Entertainment is composed of Live Nation, an…

A protestor demonstrates outside of the U.S. Capitol Building ahead of Tuesday’s committee hearing on Live Nation Ticketmaster. Image: Drew Angerer (Getty Images)If there’s one thing the polarized body of the U.S. Congress can agree on, it’sthat Ticketmaster sucks. After a spectacular failure of Live Nation Ticketmaster’s sale systems during presale for Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour, the company was under the microscope of a Senate hearing today.In the hearing, cheekily titled “That’s the Ticket: Promoting Competition and…

Photo: Tada Images (Shutterstock)Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, drew a line in the sand Tuesday, saying it adamantly opposes a proposed law that would allow newspapers to bargain collectively with social media companies for more ad money in exchange for content. Allowing such a thing would create a “cartel-like entity,” the company claimed. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone outlined the company’s opposition to the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), which was introduced by Democratic Sen.…

“We asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand,” Swift said about Ticketmaster in a statement Image: Theo Wargo (Getty Images)The fallout continues from last week’s Ticketmaster fiasco as Taylor Swift fans scrambled to buy tickets to the popstar’s upcoming The Eras Tour. The surge promptly crashed Ticketmaster’s website. In the aftermath, an echoing battlecry from fans, musicians, and politicians emerged against Ticketmaster for their alleged mishandling ofthe tour’s presale. Today, Democratic…