Amazon for years “has knowingly duped” millions of consumers into “unknowingly enrolling” in Amazon Prime, in violation of the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA), alleged the FTC in a partially redacted fraud complaint Wednesday (docket 2:23-cv-00932) in U.S. District Court for Western Washington in Seattle.
Karl Herchenroeder
Karl Herchenroeder, Associate Editor, is a technology policy journalist for publications including Communications Daily. Born in Rockville, Maryland, he joined the Warren Communications News staff in 2018. He began his journalism career in 2012 at the Aspen Times in Aspen, Colorado, where he covered city government. After that, he covered the nuclear industry for ExchangeMonitor in Washington. You can follow Herchenroeder on Twitter: @karlherk
Microsoft will pay $20 million to settle FTC claims the company violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting kids’ gaming data without parental consent and illegally storing data for years, the agency announced Monday.
A federal judge should deny Google’s attempt to block an expert opinion that the loss of consumer “variety” is an antitrust harm, economists argued Friday in docket 3:21-md-02981 before the U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco (see 2305250052). Seventy plaintiffs, including three dozen states and D.C., allege Google monopolized the market for the distribution of Android mobile apps through the Google Play Store.
Montana’s statewide ban of TikTok should be blocked because it violates the First Amendment and the commerce clause and it’s preempted by federal law, the company argued Monday in a lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for Montana in Missoula in docket 9:23-cv-00061-DLC.
Montana’s TikTok ban violates the First Amendment, and the state doesn’t have authority to enact a law attempting to advance U.S. national security interests, a group of TikTok influencers and users argued in a complaint Wednesday (docket 9:23-cv-00056) in U.S. District Court for Montana in Missoula.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to address the application of Section 230 in two terrorist-related cases, saying Thursday lawsuits against Google and Twitter fail to state “plausible” claims.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday declined to address the application of Section 230 in two terrorist-related cases, saying lawsuits against Google and Twitter failed to state “plausible” claims. Tech groups lauded victories in Gonzalez v. Google (21-1333) and Twitter v. Taamneh (21-1496) (see 2304040064). In an unsigned opinion, the high court found that “much (if not all)” of the Gonzalez complaint “seems to fail under either our decision in Twitter or the Ninth Circuit’s unchallenged holdings below.” The court found Twitter didn’t aid and abet the terror attack at issue in Taamneh. In Gonzalez, the court declined to “address the application of §230 to a complaint that appears to state little, if any, plausible claim for relief. Instead, we vacate the judgment below and remand the case for the Ninth Circuit to consider plaintiffs’ complaint in light of our decision in Twitter.”
Online dating company Match Group must produce documents it withheld from the FTC’s investigation into claims the company improperly shared user photos with a facial recognition startup, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled Monday in docket 2022-0054.
Twitter isn’t liable for sex-trafficking violations for allowing child pornography to circulate on the platform, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday in 22-15103 (see 2210310063).
Attorneys general in New York and more than 45 states waited too long to bring an antitrust lawsuit against Meta for alleged anticompetitive conduct in its buys of Instagram and WhatsApp, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit ruled Thursday, affirming a district court decision, in docket 21-7078.