Apple says a former product design employee stole information about hardware products, unannounced features and future plans and leaked them to a journalist, breaking the company's nondisclosure policies and trade secrets laws. From a report: In the the lawsuit, filed Thursday in the US District Court of the Northern District of California, Apple outlined a working relationship between a former employee, Simon Lancaster, and an unnamed journalist. The tech giant alleges Lancaster used his access at the company to download confidential information and attend meetings specifically to forward to this media contact. Apple said he attended one of his last meetings at the company, about "Project X" as it's called in the filing, after submitting his resignation despite being instructed by others not to attend. Apple Insider earlier reported the news.

"Tens of thousands of Apple employees work tirelessly every day on new products, services and features in the hopes of delighting our customers and empowering them to change the world," an Apple spokesman said in an emailed statement. "Stealing ideas and confidential information undermines their efforts, hurting Apple and our customers." Lancaster didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Lancaster's website and LinkedIn page say he worked on product design for the MacBook Pro TouchBar, the Apple Watch and iPhone, among other devices. He's listed on more than a dozen patents and patent applications while working for the company.

Facebook asked a federal court on Wednesday to dismiss major antitrust cases filed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and nearly every U.S. state, saying they failed to show the company had a monopoly or harmed consumers. From a report: "By a one-vote margin, in the fraught environment of relentless criticism of Facebook for matters entirely unrelated to antitrust concerns, the agency decided to bring a case against Facebook," Facebook said in its response to the FTC complaint. "None of the harms typically alleged in antitrust actions is alleged here," it said. In lawsuits filed in December, the FTC and states asked the court to force the social media giant to sell two prized assets, its messaging app WhatsApp and photo-sharing app Instagram. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in the District of Columbia will hear the cases.

Epic Games filed a lawsuit against Google in Australia, widening a fight against the tech giant over the commissions charged in its app store. From a report: The maker of Fortnite is alleging that Google has abused its control over the Android operating system by forcing developers to use its payment systems, according to a statement on Epic's website on Wednesday. The Alphabet unit also makes it "egregiously difficult" for consumers to download software directly to Android devices, forcing the vast majority to obtain the apps through the Google Play Store, the statement said. Epic has pursued multiple legal claims against both Google and Apple, which operates its own App Store for iPhones, after they removed its popular Fortnite video game from their platforms last year in a dispute over commissions. Both Google and Apple take a 30% cut from in-app payments and Epic had attempted to introduce its own direct payment option to circumvent the charges.

Twitter on Monday filed a lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), saying that his office launched an investigation into the social media giant because it banned former President Trump from its platform. From a report: Twitter is seeking to halt an investigation launched by Paxton into moderation practices by Big Tech firms including Twitter for what he called "the seemingly coordinated de-platforming of the President," days after they banned him following the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. In the suit, filed in a Northern California court, Twitter said "Paxton made clear that he will use the full weight of his office, including his expansive investigatory powers, to retaliate against Twitter for having made editorial decisions with which he disagrees." Twitter said it has rights under the First Amendment "to make decisions about what content to disseminate through its platform," including "the discretion to remove or otherwise restrict access to Tweets, profiles, or other content posted to Twitter." The company added in an emailed statement that in this case, "the Texas Attorney General is misusing the powers of his office to infringe on Twitter's First Amendment rights and attempt to silence free speech."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: U.S. officials blacklisted Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi Corp. as a company with military ties partly due to an award given to the company's founder for his service to the state, the U.S. Department of Defense said in a legal filing. Lei Jun, the chief executive officer and founder of Xiaomi, received the award of "Outstanding Builder of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" in 2019 from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Xiaomi touts the award -- given to 100 Chinese executives that year -- on Mr. Lei's biography page on the company's website and in its annual report.

The award -- coupled with Xiaomi's ambitious investment plans in advanced technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence -- was enough for the Defense Department in January to add Xiaomi to a list of companies that support China's military, according to the filing. The designation prohibits Americans from investing in the company, the world's third-largest smartphone seller. The U.S. rationale for adding Xiaomi to its list was laid out in a court filing by the Defense Department in response to a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., by the Chinese company seeking to overturn the military designation. The filing, which appeared last week but hasn't previously been reported, for the first time shed light on the department's reasoning in adding a company to the list.

John McAfee, creator of the eponymous anti-virus software, has been indicted in Manhattan federal court on fraud and money laundering conspiracy crimes, stemming from two schemes concerning the fraudulent promotion to investors of cryptocurrencies, officials said on Friday. From a report: McAfee and his bodyguard Jimmy Gale Watson Jr were charged for a scheme to exploit McAfee's large Twitter following by publicly touting cryptocurrency offerings and digital tokens that they later sold once prices rose on the promotions, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. McAfee is being detained in Spain on separate criminal charges filed by the Justice Department's tax division, the department said. Watson, an executive adviser of McAfee's so-called cryptocurrency team, was arrested on Thursday night, the Justice Department said.

Microsoft is in danger of losing a contract to provide $10 billion of cloud computing services to the Pentagon, a deal the government has threatened to scrap altogether after years of legal squabbling. From a report: The U.S. Defense Department said it will reconsider the controversial procurement if a federal judge declines to dismiss Amazon's allegations that former President Donald Trump's meddling cost the company the winner-take-all contract. That means the fate of a cloud project the Pentagon considers critical for its war fighters may rest in the hands of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which could soon issue a ruling on Amazon's accusations. The Pentagon said last month it would take too long to prove in court that its decision to award Microsoft the lucrative cloud deal wasn't unduly influenced by the White House. If the judge allows Amazon to argue its bias claims in the case, the government may decide to stop fighting.

"If the court denies the government's motion we will most likely be facing an even longer litigation process," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said at a press conference late last month. "The DOD Chief Information Officer will reassess the strategy going forward." The warning is another twist in a contentious process that has involved years of legal challenges, behind-the-scenes lobbying and a public relations campaign by technology rivals to unseat Amazon as the original front-runner for the cloud contract when it was unveiled in 2018. More than a year after Microsoft was named the winner, the Defense Department is still fighting to execute the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud -- or JEDI, an acronym intended to evoke "Star Wars" imagery -- to serve as the primary data repository for military services worldwide. The deal is worth $10 billion over a decade. There are signs the Pentagon is already moving on. The Defense Department is talking up its other cloud contracts beyond JEDI, and some of the program's biggest cheerleaders have left the department, leaving new leaders to make decisions on a procurement they inherited from the Trump administration. Even Microsoft executives are trumpeting all the other work the company plans to keep doing for the Defense Department, in the event that its image-boosting JEDI deal goes south.

Social media app Parler has dropped its federal case against Amazon.com for cutting off its web-hosting services and filed a separate lawsuit against the company and its web services unit in a Washington state court, according to court documents from late Tuesday. From a report: The new lawsuit filed by Parler accused Amazon of defamation and breach of contract. Parler, an app popular among American right-wing users, came back online last month after going dark in January as many service providers pulled back support, accusing it of failing to monitor violent content related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the nation's legislative seat, by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. Parler sued Amazon, accusing it of making an illegal, politically motivated decision to shut it down to benefit Twitter but a U.S. judge rejected its demand that Amazon restore services for the platform later in January. A month later, Parler re-launched its services online and said the new platform was built on "sustainable, independent technology."

The United States Navy is liable for a mass copyright infringement. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sided with the German software company Bitmanagement, which accused the Navy of copying software without permission. Bitmanagement claimed more than $500 million in damages, but the final amount has yet to be determined. From a report: The dispute started when the US Navy decided that it would like to run the software across its entire network. This meant that it would be installed on hundreds of thousands of computers, with "Flexera" software keeping track of the number of simultaneous users. Bitmanagement didn't offer such a license by default, so the Navy requested this option separately. These requests took place through a reseller, Planet 9 Studios, which complicated matters. After several back and forths, the Navy was convinced that it had permission, but Bitmanagement later disagreed. The problem for the Court was that the Navy and Bitmanagement didn't sign a contract, so there was no direct permission given. This meant that the Court had to review the conversations and exchanges that took place, to determine which side was right.

After reviewing all evidence, the Federal Claims court eventually sided with the US Navy, dismissing the copyright infringement claim. However, this wasn't the end of it. Bitmanagement maintained that the Navy clearly committed mass copyright infringement and the company took the matter to the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, with success. In an order issued a few days ago, the Appeals Court agrees with pretty much all conclusions of the Federal Claims Court. The evidence indeed shows that Bitmanagement 'authorized' the U.S. Navy's copying of BS Contact Geo across its network. While this wasn't formalized in an official contract, the Navy had an "implied license."

michaelmalak writes: The Colorado Senate President Pro Tempore, Kerry Donovan, is the prime sponsor of SB21-132, Digital Communications Regulation, which if passed, would fine websites $5,000 per day as a class 2 misdemeanor if they "allow" user comments that:

"...promote hate speech; undermine election integrity; disseminate intentional disinformation, conspiracy theories, or fake news; or authorize, encourage, or carry out violations of users' privacy..."

A "digital communications division" would assume responsibility for licensing websites.

This is obviously a blatant violation of the First Amendment, as it would immediately shut down any website expressing views outside those of the said digital communications division (DCD):

* Political websites from a party other than the majority within the DCD.

* Religious websites, if they express views contrary to the majority within the DCD.

Sure, it wouldn't stand up to court challenge today, but maybe it will in the near future if there is court packing.

Not only does it reveal plainly, in writing, in an official government document, the intent of some legislators to outlaw all speech and thought that they disagree with, it is an embarrassment to the state of Colorado that will discourage tech companies from locating here.

A US magistrate judge has ordered Valve to provide sales data to Apple in response to a subpoena issued amid Apple's continuing legal fight with Epic Games. From a report: In addition to some aggregate sales data for the entirety of Steam, Valve will only have to provide specific, per-title pricing and sales data for "436 specific apps that are available on both Steam and the Epic Games Store," according to the order. That's a significant decrease from the 30,000+ titles Apple for which Apple originally requested data. In resisting the subpoena, Valve argued that its Steam sales data was irrelevant to questions about the purely mobile app marketplaces at issue in the case. Refocusing the request only on games available on both Steam and the Epic Games Store makes it more directly relevant to the questions of mobile competition in the case, Judge Thomas Hixson writes in his order.

"Recall that in these related cases, [Epic] allege that Apple's 30% commission on sales through its App Store is anti-competitive and that allowing iOS apps to be sold through other stores would force Apple to reduce its commission to a more competitive level," Hixson writes in the order. "By focusing... on 436 specific games that are sold in both Steam and Epic's store, Apple seeks to take discovery into whether the availability of other stores does in fact affect commissions in the way [Epic] allege." The California judge overseeing Apple's attempts to drag Valve into an ongoing beef with Epic Games admitted that Apple "salted the Earth with subpoenas, so don't worry, it's not just you."

The first church of artificial intelligence has shut its conceptual doors. From a report: Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer who avoided an 18-month prison sentence after receiving a presidential pardon last month, has closed the church he created to understand and accept a godhead based on artificial intelligence. The Way of the Future church, which Levandowski formed in 2015, was officially dissolved at the end of the year, according to state and federal records. However, the process had started months before in June 2020, documents filed with the state of California show. The entirety of the church's funds -- exactly $175,172 -- were donated to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. The nonprofit corporation's annual tax filings with the Internal Revenue Service show it had $175,172 in its account as far back as 2017. Levandowski told TechCrunch that he had been considering closing the church long before the donation. The Black Lives Matter movement, which gained momentum over the summer following the death of George Floyd while in police custody, influenced Levandowski to finalize what he had been contemplating for a while. He said the time was right to put the funds to work in an area that could have an immediate impact. "I wanted to donate to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund because it's doing really important work in criminal justice reform and I know the money will be put to good use," Levandowski told TechCrunch.

Way of the Future sparked interest and controversy -- much like Levandowski himself -- from the moment it became public in a November 2017 article in Wired. It wasn't just the formation of the church or its purpose that caused a stir in Silicon Valley and the broader tech industry. The church's public reveal occurred as Levandowski was steeped in a legal dispute with his former employer Google. He had also become the central figure of a trade secrets lawsuit between Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that is now a business under Alphabet, and Uber. The engineer was one of the founding members in 2009 of the Google self-driving project also known as Project Chauffeur and had been paid about $127 million by the search engine giant for his work, according to court documents. In 2016, Levandowski left Google and started self-driving truck startup Otto with three other Google veterans: Lior Ron, Claire Delaunay and Don Burnette. Uber acquired Otto less than eight months later.

Business Insider reports: Facebook executives knew for years its "potential reach" advertising metric was inflated and overruled an employee warning to adjust it to avoid a revenue hit, plaintiffs of a lawsuit against the social media giant argued in an unredacted court filing.
Gizmodo writes: In a nutshell, this class action suit, which was first filed back in 2018, alleges that Facebook massaged figures for "Potential Reach" — an estimate that Facebook gives its advertisers for the number of people that might see their ad — to goad advertisers into spending more money on the platform, all in the hopes of reaching the people that Facebook had promised. These filings detail that some of Facebook's top brass, including Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, were fully aware that the company spent years exaggerating the number of eyeballs its advertisers could reach...

Thanks to these unsealed filings, we know just how inflated some of those figures were. Here's an example: in 2018, Facebook told its advertisers that it had a Potential Reach of 230 million adults across the U.S., out of the 250 million adults that were counted by U.S. census data that year. But according to a 2018 Pew Research study, only about 68% (or 170 million adults) actually use the platform at all. Sandberg acknowledged in an internal email that "she'd known about problems with Potential Reach for years." But she repeatedly shot down employee's attempts to rectify those figures, according to the filing.

Internally, employees acknowledged that while the product bills itself as an estimate for how many "people" your ad might reach, it is, at best, an estimate for the number of accounts — including the untold numbers of fakes and duplicates. Some employees even ran the numbers in 2018, just to see what would happen if known duplicate accounts were cut out of Potential Reach, and saw a 10% drop in the numbers advertisers were given. Facebook chose not to cut them...

The suit points out that numbers Facebook continues to give its advertisers make even less sense, like telling them it can reach "100 million" 18-to-34 year old's across the country. Census data shows there's in fact only 76 million of them — and we know not all of them use Facebook.

A new court filing has revealed that, as part of the ongoing legal battle between Apple and Epic Games, Apple subpoenaed Valve Software in November 2020, demanding it provide huge amounts of commercial data about Steam sales and operations going over multiple years. From a report: Apple subpoenaed Valve under the basic argument that certain Steam information would be crucial to building its case against Epic, which is all about competitive practices. Yesterday a joint discovery letter was filed to the District court in Northern California relating to the subpoena, which contains a summary of the behind-the-scenes tussles thus far, and both sides' arguments about where to go from here.

[...] Apple wants Valve to provide the names, prices, configurations and dates of every product on Steam, as well as detailed accounts of exactly how much money Steam makes and how it is all divvied-up. Apple argues that this information is necessary for its case against Epic, is not available elsewhere, and "does not raise risk of any competitive harm." Needless to say, Valve does not agree. Its counter-argument to the above says that Valve has co-operated to what it believes to be a reasonable extent -- "Valve already produced documents regarding its revenue share, competition with Epic, Steam distribution contracts, and other documents" -- before going on to outline the nature of Apple's requests: "that Valve (i) recreate six years' worth of PC game and item sales for hundreds of third party video games, then (ii) produce a massive amount of confidential information about these games and Valve's revenues." In a masterpiece of understatement, Valve's legal counsel writes: "Apple wrongly claims those requests are narrow. They are not." Apple apparently demanded data on 30,000+ games initially, before narrowing its focus to around 600. Request 32 gets incredibly granular, Valve explains: Apple is demanding information about every version of a given product, all digital content and items, sale dates and every price change from 2015 to the present day, the gross revenues for each version, broken down individually, and all of Valve's revenues from it.

Valve says it does not "in the ordinary course of business keep the information Apple seeks for a simple reason: Valve doesn't need it." Valve's argument goes on to explain to the court that it is not a competitor in the mobile space (this is, after all, a dispute that began with Fortnite on iOS), and makes the point that "Valve is not Epic, and Fortnite is not available on Steam." It further says that Apple is using Valve as a shortcut to a huge amount of third party data that rightfully belongs to those third parties. The conclusion of Valve's argument calls for the court to throw Apple's subpoena out. "Somehow, in a dispute over mobile apps, a maker of PC games that does not compete in the mobile market or sell 'apps' is being portrayed as a key figure. It's not. The extensive and highly confidential information Apple demands about a subset of the PC games available on Steam does not show the size or parameters of the relevant market and would be massively burdensome to pull together. Apple's demands for further production should be rejected."

Uber has lost a long running employment tribunal challenge in the UK's Supreme Court -- with the court dismissing the ride-hailing giant's appeal and reaffirming earlier rulings that drivers who brought the case are workers, not independent contractors. From a report: The case, which dates back to 2016, has major ramifications for Uber's business model (and other gig economy platforms) in the UK -- and likely regionally, as similar employment rights challenges are ongoing in European courts. European Union lawmakers are also actively eyeing how to improve conditions for gig workers, so policymakers were already feeling pressure to clarify the law around gig work -- today's ruling only increases that.

The court rejected Uber's argument that it merely acted akin to a booking agent for drivers, noting that the company would have no means of performing its contractual obligations to passengers (nor complying with its regulatory obligations as a licensed private hire vehicle operator) -- "without either employees or subcontractors to perform driving services for it." The court also weighed how Uber's business operates in light of UK employment law which provides for a 'worker' status -- a classification which is neither employed nor self-employed -- considering other case law and the detail of the drivers' relationship with Uber in coming to its interpretation of the legislation. Its conclusion is that "the transportation service performed by drivers and offered to passengers through the Uber app is very tightly defined and controlled by Uber."

Top lobbying groups backed by Amazon, Facebook, Google and other technology giants sued Maryland on Thursday, seeking to scuttle a new state tax on their massive online-advertising revenue -- and stop other local governments from following its lead. From a report: The legal challenge contends that Maryland's first-in-the-nation tax is unfair, unconstitutional and incompatible with federal laws that prohibit state policymakers from instituting levies specifically targeting online services. The lawsuit is backed by a broad coalition of businesses nationwide through a series of trade groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Internet Association, a Washington-based organization that counts Silicon Valley's most prominent companies among its members. It carries great legal and political significance at a time when lawmakers well beyond Maryland's borders are starting to eye the tech industry's eye-popping pandemic profits as a potential source of much-needed new revenue.

"In light of the current pandemic and economic uncertainty, increasing taxes on services used by small businesses to keep themselves running is a particularly poor and ill-timed policy," Caroline Harris, the vice president for tax policy at the U.S. Chamber, said in a statement. In the complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland, the tech giants and their political allies argue that the state's online advertising tax suffers from "many infirmities" and, as a result, threatens to "raise costs for consumers and make it more difficult for businesses to connect with potential customers."

schwit1 writes: With a pair of votes, Maryland can now claim to be a pioneer: it's the first place in the country that will impose a tax on the sale of online ads. The House of Delegates and Senate both voted this week to override Gov. Larry Hogan's veto of a bill passed last year to levy a tax on online ads. The tax will apply to the revenue companies like Facebook and Google make from selling digital ads, and will range from 2.5% to 10% per ad, depending on the value of the company selling the ad. (The tax would only apply to companies making more than $100 million a year.)

Proponents say the new tax is simply a reflection of where the economy has gone, and an attempt to have Maryland's tax code catch up to it. The tax is expected to draw in an estimated $250 million a year to help fund an ambitious decade-long overhaul of public education in the state that's expected to cost $4 billion a year in new spending by 2030. (Hogan also vetoed that bill, and the Democrat-led General Assembly also overrode him this week.) Still, there remains the possibility of lawsuits to stop the tax from taking effect; Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh warned last year that "there is some risk" that a court could strike down some provisions of the bill over constitutional concerns.

New York's attorney general, Letitia James, sued Amazon on Tuesday evening, arguing that the company provided inadequate safety protection for workers in New York City during the pandemic and retaliated against employees who raised concerns over the conditions. From a report: The case focuses on two Amazon facilities: a large warehouse on Staten Island and a delivery depot in Queens. Ms. James argues that Amazon failed to properly clean its buildings, conducted inadequate contact tracing for known Covid-19 cases, and "took swift retaliatory action" to silence complaints from workers. "Amazon's extreme profits and exponential growth rate came at the expense of the lives, health and safety of its frontline workers," Ms. James argued in the complaint, filed in New York Supreme Court. Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for Amazon, said the company cared "deeply about the health and safety" of its workers. "We don't believe the attorney general's filing presents an accurate picture of Amazon's industry-leading response to the pandemic," Ms. Nantel said. Last week, Amazon preemptively sued Ms. James in federal court in an attempt to stop her from bringing the charges. The company argued that workplace safety was a matter of federal, not state, law.

"A cryptocurrency company that owns 67,000 acres in rural northern Nevada wants state government to grant technology companies power to form local governments on land they own," reports the Associated Press.

Jeffrey Berns, CEO of Nevada-based Blockchains LLC, ultimately envisions "a city where people not only purchase goods and services with digital currency but also log their entire online footprint — financial statements, medical records and personal data — on blockchain."

The Associated Press calls him "a cryptocurrency magnate" who "hopes to turn dreams of a futuristic "smart city" into reality." To do that, he's asking the state to let companies like his form local governments on land they own, which would grant them power over everything from schools to law enforcement...

The company wants to break ground by 2022 in rural Storey County, 12 miles east of Reno. It's proposing to build 15,000 homes and 33 million square feet of commercial and industrial space within 75 years. Berns, whose idea is the basis for draft legislation that some lawmakers saw behind closed doors last week, said traditional government doesn't offer enough flexibility to create a community where people can invent new uses for his technology.

"There's got to be a place somewhere on this planet where people are willing to just start from scratch and say, 'We're not going to do things this way just because it's the way we've done it,'" Berns said. He wants Nevada to change its laws to allow "innovation zones," where companies would have powers like those of a county government, including creating court systems, imposing taxes and building infrastructure while making land and water management decisions...

If lawmakers back the proposal, technology companies with 50,000 acres of land that promise a $1 billion investment could create zones governed by three people like county commissioners. The draft legislation says two of them initially would be from the company itself... The former consumer protection attorney said the idea was born from how he sees government as an unnecessary middleman between people and ideas.

"For us to be able to take risks and be limber, nimble and figure things out like you do when you're designing new products, that's not how government works. So why not let us just create a government that lets us do those things?" Berns said.
The article notes that "innovation zones" and Blockchains LLC were both a key part of the governor's annual "State of the State" address last month. And that both the governor's campaign and an affiliated political action committee "received a combined $60,000 from the company."

When Tim Cook told an interviewer that Apple wouldn't get in a Facebook-style data-collection controversy, "Mr. Zuckerberg shot back that Mr. Cook's comments were 'extremely glib' and 'not at all aligned with the truth,'" reports the Wall Street Journal.

But "In private, Mr. Zuckerberg was even harsher. 'We need to inflict pain,' he told his team, for treating the company so poorly, according to people familiar with the exchange." It wasn't the first time — or the last — that Mr. Cook's comments and actions would leave Mr. Zuckerberg seething and, at times, plotting to get back at Apple...

Apple has positioned itself as the protector of digital privacy, upholding a greater good, while often leveling criticisms at Facebook's business model — without naming the company. All of that grates on Facebook, which sees Apple as overreaching in a way that threatens Facebook's existence, and hypocritical, including by doing extensive business is China where privacy is scarce. A 2017 attempt to address tensions through a face-to-face meeting between the two CEOs resulted in a tense standoff.

The trigger last month was a new privacy tool the iPhone maker plans to roll out that will further restrict Facebook's ability to collect data. Mr. Zuckerberg accused Apple on an earnings call of using its platform to interfere with how Facebook apps work. Mr. Cook, without naming Facebook, delivered an online speech condemning "conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms" — a jab that came just days after the Capitol riot.

At stake is how the internet will evolve and which companies will dominate it. Facebook and Apple's visions are diverging and increasingly incompatible. Facebook wants to capture and monetize eyeballs on every possible device and platform. Apple wants to draw users to its own hardware-centric universe, partly by marketing itself as a privacy-focused company. The outcome of the battle could affect what kinds of information users see when they browse the internet.

The war of words and ideas will ultimately play out in court, regulatory agencies and user decisions as both companies defend themselves against antitrust investigations. The potential regulatory settlements and legal decisions are likely to affect hundreds of millions of consumers' phones in coming years.
The Journal describes Zuckerberg as "a hacker-turned-Harvard-dropout who once touted the end of privacy as a social norm," and notes that Facebook assisted Epic in its lawsuit against Apple with supporting materials and documents, and "placed full-page ads on the matter in several newspapers, including the Journal. 'We're standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere,' the ads said...."

"Some people familiar with Mr. Zuckerberg's thinking said he has taken Apple's broadsides personally, running the risk of distracting him at a time when Facebook is fighting many other battles in the U.S. and abroad over antitrust and content moderation..."

"Privately, he and other Facebook employees have been waging a campaign against Apple, asserting in meetings and communications with government officials, antitrust regulators and advertisers that the company is abusing its power and deserves more regulatory scrutiny, according to people familiar with the matter."