Internet retailers are receiving questions over their approaches to recalled products. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has sent letters to Amazon, Ebay, Meta, Walmart and other online shopping portals asking about their efforts to thwart sales of recalled and banned goods on their platforms. They're particularly concerned that Meta allegedly failed to stop Facebook Marketplace sales of two recalled child products, the Fisher-Price Rock 'n Play sleeper and Boppy Newborn Lounger.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recalled the Rock 'n Play in 2019, and the Newborn Lounger in 2021. However, it says the takedown request rate (an average of 1,000 per month) hasn't slowed, and that there haven't been any "proactive measures" to bar sales. The Rock 'n Play has been linked to roughly 100 baby deaths. The members of Congress, including committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, are concerned that online marketplaces may be putting children and all users at risk by doing too little to stop these sales.

The House representatives ask all the companies to detail their current efforts to block sales of recalled products, including the presence of dedicated staff. The politicians also want to know what the companies will do in the future and whether there's any legal uncertainty about how to tackle the problems. The letters ask if the companies are willing to work with the committee on a solution to the problem. The companies have been told to respond no later than August 31st.

We've asked Amazon, Ebay, Walmart for comment. In a statement to Engadget, a Meta spokesperson says that sales of recalled goods aren't unique to Facebook Marketplace. The representative says Meta takes the issue "seriously" and pulls listings that violate its rules.

The enquiries come just as Amazon is facing a potential antitrust lawsuit over its sales practices, and amid greater effort to scrutinize tech giants' behavior. Meta has also been scaling back some of its shopping features, including the shutdowns of live shopping on Facebook and Instagram. Those closures are cost-cutting efforts, but they also leave the company's remaining commerce initiatives in a more fragile position.

After announcing the deal last year, Intel will no longer acquire Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 billion, the company announced in a press release. It was unable to "obtain in a timely manner the regulatory approvals required under the merger agreement" it wrote — specifically in China, according to Bloomberg. Tower produces various types of chips for clients across multiple industries, and Intel made the acquisition to expand its foundry business and better compete with rivals like Taiwanese giant TSMC. 

Tower has seven fabrication facilities (located in Israel, Italy, the US and Japan) that build 6-inch, 8-inch and 12-inch chip wafers. While the company doesn't manufacture cutting edge mobile and other process, its clients don't necessarily need the latest technology. Instead, Tower focuses on reliably manufacturing large volumes of chips for automakers, equipment manufacturers, medical industries and others. 

Before announcing its Tower acquisition, Intel was reported to be in talks to purchase the much larger chip manufacturer and AMD spinoff GlobalFoundries for around $30 billion. Intel launched its foundry services as a separate business unit back in 2021, committing $20 billion to build two Arizona factories. It also revealed plans to build a massive semiconductor facility in Ohio designed to become "the largest silicon manufacturing location on the planet."

Intel said its still executing its roadmap "to retain transistor performance and power performance leadership by 2025," with the aim of becoming the second-largest global external foundry by 2030. "Our respect for Tower has only grown through this process, and we will continue to look for opportunities to work together in the future." As part of its merger agreement, Intel will pay a termination fee of $353 million to Tower. 

As a potential FTC antitrust lawsuit looms in the background, Amazon plans to reduce its in-house brands. According toThe Wall Street Journal, the retailer will eliminate 27 of its 30 clothing brands and all of its private-label furniture lines. It isn’t clear how many other areas the cuts could affect, but the Amazon Basics brand appears to remain largely, if not wholly, intact. The retailer told the WSJ that it looks to eliminate products that “aren’t resonating with customers.”

Among the Amazon clothing labels reportedly being phased out are Lark & Ro, Daily Ritual and Goodthreads. (Amazon Essentials, Amazon Collection and Amazon Aware will reportedly remain.) Meanwhile, the retailer is allegedly dropping its Rivet and Stone & Beam furniture brands once their current stock is depleted. “We always make decisions based on what our customers want, and we’ve learned that customers seek out our biggest brands — like Amazon Basics and Amazon Essentials — for great value with high quality products at great price points,” Matt Taddy, VP of Amazon Private Brands, said in a statement to the WSJ.

Although Amazon didn’t explicitly connect the changes to the expected FTC lawsuit, the timing seems unlikely to be coincidental. Company representatives will reportedly sit down next week with FTC chair Lina Khan and commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya. The chat is viewed as a “last rites” meeting, giving the company one final chance to sway the government agency to back down before a filing decision. The anticipated lawsuit culminates a four-year investigation into the company’s alleged anticompetitive practices. It also faces a separate FTC lawsuit related to tricking customers into Prime subscriptions.

Part of the FTC’s interest reportedly lies in Amazon’s dealings with third-party sellers, a longstanding point of focus in antitrust arguments. The WSJ reported in 2020 that Amazon employees used internal data about third-party sellers to create in-house products. That led to the company agreeing to stop boosting its in-house brands in search results, making them harder to sell.

Federal regulatory agencies have fined 11 financial institutions a combined $549 million for using “off-channel” messaging apps (WhatsApp, iMessage, Signal and text messages) for conversations about trades and other business. Securities laws require investment firms and banks to preserve communications records and ensure employees only carry out business through authorized channels. “The firms did not maintain or preserve the substantial majority of these off-channel communications, in violation of the federal securities laws,” the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) wrote in a statement today.

The Wall Street firms were fined over half a billion dollars in penalties for using messaging apps instead of email, approved messaging platforms or other easily archived channels. Firms penalized by the SEC include Wells Fargo ($125 million), BNP Paribas ($35 million), SG Americas Securities ($35 million), BMO Capital Markets ($25 million), Mizuho Securities ($25 million), Houlihan Lokey Capital ($15 million), Moelis & Company ($10 million), Wedbush Securities ($10 million) and SMBC Nikko Securities America ($9 million). Meanwhile, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined Wells Fargo ($75 million), BNP Paribas ($75 million), Société Générale ($75 million) and Bank of Montreal ($35 million).

“Recordkeeping failures such as those here undermine our ability to exercise effective regulatory oversight, often at the expense of investors,” said Sanjay Wadhwa, the SEC’s Deputy Director of Enforcement. “The Commission’s message could not be more clear — recordkeeping and supervision requirements are fundamental, and registrants that fail to comply with these core regulatory obligations do so at their own peril,” said CFTC Director of Enforcement Ian McGinley.

Federal regulators said all firms admitted to the facts about unapproved communications in agreeing to the penalties. “As described in the SEC’s orders, the firms admitted that from at least 2019, their employees often communicated through various messaging platforms on their personal devices, including iMessage, WhatsApp, and Signal, about the business of their employers,” the SEC wrote in a statement. “The firms did not maintain or preserve the substantial majority of these off-channel communications, in violation of the federal securities laws. By failing to maintain and preserve required records, certain of the firms likely deprived the Commission of these off-channel communications in various SEC investigations.”

Both government agencies stressed that the problem was pervasive and not limited to entry-level employees and junior staff. “The failures involved employees at multiple levels of authority, including supervisors and senior executives,” the SEC said.

The Apple TV+ film Tetris was copied from a book written years ago, according to a lawsuit filed against the tech giant and the Tetris Company. Dan Ackerman, the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo, has accused the plaintiffs of ripping off his book The Tetris Effect, which tells the history of the game in the form of a Cold War-era thriller. In his lawsuit (PDF, via Reuters), Ackerman said he sent the Tetris Company and its CEO Maya Rogers a pre-publication copy of his book back in 2016. Later that year, his agent received a "strongly worded Cease and Desist letter" to stop him from pursuing film and TV opportunities. 

Ackerman accused Rogers of working with screenwriter Noah Pink to develop a screenplay using content taken from his book without his knowledge or consent. Apparently, numerous producers showed interest in adapting his book, but the Tetris Company refused to license its IP for the project. "This was done at the direction and behest of Ms. Rogers so that she and the Tetris Company could pursue their own project and opportunities based on Mr. Ackerman's book without compensating him," the lawsuit reads. 

In his complaint, Ackerman explained that for writers, the option to license their work for film and TV is typically a major source of revenue. That's why he takes the Tetris Company's actions not as a means to prevent the unauthorized use of its IP, but as an "economic attack" on his business. To drive the point home, Ackerman included quite a lengthy list of "glaring similarities" between his book and the film in his lawsuit. Several items in the list explain how scenes in the movie mirrored his versions of events. That said, those events were based on scenarios that happened in real life, so it remains to be seen if the court will agree with him. Ackerman is asking for actual, compensatory and punitive damages equivalent to 6 percent of the film's $80 million production budget. 

Zoom has made changes to its terms of service after online blowback over recent updates to the company’s fine print allowing AI training on customer data. A report from StackDiary over the weekend highlighted how the changes, which rolled out in March without fanfare, appeared to grant the company sweeping control over customer data for AI training purposes. In response, Zoom published a blog post today claiming it wouldn’t do what its terms said it could do; the company then updated its terms in response to the continued blowback. It now says it doesn’t train AI models on consumer video, audio or chats “without customer consent.”

At least part of the issue stemmed from Zoom’s experimental AI tools, including IQ Meeting Summary (ML-powered summarizations) and IQ Team Chat Compose (AI-powered message drafting). Although account owners have to provide consent before starting a meeting using these tools, additional participants are only presented with two options: accept the terms and join the meeting, or reject them and leave the meeting.

“What raises alarm is the explicit mention of the company’s right to use this data for machine learning and artificial intelligence, including training and tuning of algorithms and models,” Alex Ivanovs wrote for Stack Diary. “This effectively allows Zoom to train its AI on customer content without providing an opt-out option, a decision that is likely to spark significant debate about user privacy and consent.” Ivanovs highlighted how the terms give it the right to “redistribute, publish, import, access, use, store, transmit, review, disclose, preserve, extract, modify, reproduce, share, use, display, copy, distribute, translate, transcribe, create derivative works, and process Customer Content and to perform all acts with respect to the Customer Content.”

In the company blog post published today, Zoom’s Chief Product Officer Smita Hashim stressed that account owners and administrators indeed have to provide consent before choosing to share their data for AI training, insisting it’s “used solely to improve the performance and accuracy of these AI services.” Hashim added that “even if you chose to share your data, it will not be used for training of any third-party models.” Continuing, she wrote, “We have permission to use this customer content to provide value-added services based on this content, but our customers continue to own and control their content. For example, a customer may have a webinar that they ask us to livestream on YouTube. Even if we use the customer video and audio content to livestream, they own the underlying content.”

“We will not use customer content, including education records or protected health information, to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent,” the blog post reads. A new section added to Zoom’s terms today makes it clearer: “Notwithstanding the above, Zoom will not use audio, video or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent.”

“Our goal is to enable Zoom account owners and administrators to have control over these features and decisions, and we’re here to shed light on how we do that and how that affects certain customer groups,” Hashim wrote.

Amazon will reportedly meet with the FTC next week before the filing of a possible antitrust lawsuit against the online retailer. The New York Timesreports that FTC chair Lina Khan and commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya will sit down with Amazon representatives as the government agency nears a decision on whether to sue the company for antimonopoly laws. The scheduled conversation is viewed as a “last rites” meeting: Amazon’s final chance to persuade the FTC to back off before filing a suit.

The FTC began investigating Amazon in 2019 for using its influence to hurt competition. Investigators reportedly began the probe by interviewing third-party marketplace vendors, asking how their earnings on Amazon compared to those on competing platforms like eBay and Walmart. Politicoreported in July that the potential lawsuit “will likely challenge a host of Amazon’s business practices” and “could lead to a court-ordered restructuring of the $1.3 trillion empire.” This suit is separate from one the FTC filed in June against the retailer, accusing it of tricking customers into Prime subscriptions and making it hard to cancel the service.

Khan has been a longtime Amazon critic. While a law student at Yale, she wrote a paper suggesting the rethinking of antitrust laws in response to the company’s dominance. Her report criticized US antitrust laws for focusing too much on consumer prices while dismissing other ways companies can break the law to gain competitive advantages. “As consumers, as users, we love these tech companies,” she toldThe New York Times in 2018. “But as citizens, as workers, and as entrepreneurs, we recognize that their power is troubling. We need a new framework, a new vocabulary for how to assess and address their dominance.” Amazon has argued for Khan’s recusal from the case based on her academic work and previous statements.

The Biden administration has reportedly “grown increasingly concerned” about the influence of Big Tech companies. Bloombergdescribes the executive branch as “seeking to reverse what it has viewed as decades of lax oversight over corporate consolidation and market power.” The DOJ has sued Meta and Google multiple times (although a federal judge recently narrowed the scope of one of those cases).

The ghost kitchen company that runs MrBeast Burger has countersued Jimmy Donaldson, aka YouTube megastar MrBeast. Virtual Dining Concepts (VDC) alleges that Donaldson and his Beast Investments (BI) company failed to abide by contractual obligations, such as carrying out promotional work, and that they "materially damaged" its reputation. VDC is seeking over $100 million in damages according to Variety, which first reported the news.

“VDC alleges that Mr. Donaldson’s and BI’s actions have materially damaged the reputation of MrBeast Burger and VDC, turned away customers, and shattered hard-won relationships with vendors and suppliers, damaging the bottom lines of hundreds of restaurants across the country and around the world, and causing damages to VDC that, according to VDC’s evidence and Mr. Donaldson’s own estimations are in the nine-figure range,” VDC told Nation's Restaurant News in a statement.

Donaldson filed suit against VDC and its parent company last week. He sought to end his partnership with them, citing issues including "disgusting" and "inedible" food. The original suit claimed VDC caused “material, irreplaceable harm” to the MrBeast brand. Donaldson also alleged that VDC had generated millions of dollars in revenue but he had “not received a dime.”

In its countersuit, VDC claims that Donaldson made “disparaging comments” against the company and MrBeast Burger. It cites several tweets (some of which seem to have been deleted) from the YouTube sensation, including claims that he wanted to shut down MrBeast Burger and that “the company I partnered with won’t let me stop even though it’s terrible for my brand.”

“This case is about a social media celebrity who believes his fame means that his word does not matter, that the facts do not matter, and that he can renege and breach his contractual obligations without consequence,” VDC's countersuit claims. “He is mistaken.”

MrBeast Burger primarily uses a ghost kitchen format, which VDC specializes in. Ghost kitchens don't have dedicated storefronts (though some operate out of existing brick-and-mortar restaurants) and only fulfill orders for delivery or pickup. When the first physical MrBeast Burger location opened in New Jersey with Donaldson and his crew in attendance last September, more than 10,000 people showed up.

Google just won a partial reprieve in one of the antitrust cases leveled against the company. Federal Judge Amit Mehta has ruled that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and key states can't claim that Google is protecting a monopoly by promoting its own products in search results over alternatives. The plaintiffs haven't proved there's an "anticompetitive effect," according to the decision. Judge Mehta also tossed antitrust allegations regarding Android's compatibility and anti-fragmentation agreements, Google Assistant, internet of things devices and the Android Open Source Project.

The DOJ can still make its remaining arguments, Judge Mehta says. Notably, officials claim Google is abusing its power through deals that require Android manufacturers to both pre-load Google apps and make Google the default search engine in their mobile browsers. The DOJ and states are concerned this prevents rivals like Bing and DuckDuckGo from gaining significant adoption.

In a statement to Engadget, Google President of Global Affairs Kent Walker says the company welcomes the judge's "careful consideration" when dismissing the search issues. He maintains that people choose Google only "because it's helpful," and that the firm would show at trial that its other practices are both competitive and lawful. We've asked the DOJ for comment and will let you know if we hear back.

The DOJ and partner states filed the lawsuit in 2020. They didn't advocate for specific penalties at the time, but punishments could include fines, business restrictions and splitting divisions into separate companies. At the time, Google defended itself by arguing that it still had to negotiate partnerships and had competitions from services like Twitter (now X) and Expedia.

This isn't the only antitrust case against Google, including in the US. An alliance of states sued Google in 2020 over allegedly anticompetitive ad pricing. However, the narrowed scope might make the case more difficult, not to mention limit the potential damages.

Google thinks it has a way to get more hybrid workers into the office: eliminate the commute when they do need to leave home. CNBC says it has learned of a summer promotion that lets full-time staff book stays at the Bay View campus' hotel for $99 per night through September 30th. The offer is meant to help employees "transition to the hybrid workplace," according to the offer. Workers can theoretically have the benefits of both the office and home while never having to travel far.

We've asked Google for comment. A spokesperson talking to CNBC says the firm routinely offers employee specials for its facilities.

The catch, as you might guess, is that employees have to pay for the hotel stays themselves. While the roughly $3,000 per month needed to take up the offer isn't out of line with apartment rentals and includes full service, it still amounts to paying to live at work without a substantial discount. Google team members have to either forego a home of their own or effectively pay rent for two places. The hotel offer is also only truly useful for people working at Bay View, which primarily houses ad-related teams. Those who still have to work at the older campus can't benefit.

The hotel special comes as Google steps up pressure on remote workers it wants to come back. The tech giant started returning some employees to its offices in 2022, when it mandated three days a week for affected people. Some balked at the prospect, though, arguing that in-person work led to high living costs and reduced productivity. Google wasn't deterred, though, and this June started considering office presences in performance reviews.

The escalating tensions now come with the prospect of regulatory action. YouTube contractors who voted to unionize have accused Google and its contracting firm Cognizant of abusing return-to-office policies to stifle labor organization, and filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board.