Tootfinder

Xpheno: Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Google, and their affiliates grew their combined India headcount by 16% over the past year, adding 28K jobs (Himanshi Lohchab/The Economic Times)
https://economictimes.in…

Big Tech continues to hire in India even as local majors downsize
Despite global layoffs, FAAMNG companies are expanding their India headcount, growing by 16% in the past year, driven by demand for AI, cloud, and cybersecurity skills. While Indian IT firms face workforce reductions due to skills mismatch, Big Tech's India-based global capability centers are increasing hiring for high-end work and innovation.

Digital sovereignty can’t be bargained away. The European Commission has tools, public support and a mandate to act on Big Tech. Trading that away for short-term calm would be a costly mistake.
https://www.politico.eu/article/digital-sovereignty-us-br…

Digital sovereignty can’t be bargained away
The European Commission has tools, public support and a mandate to act on Big Tech. Trading that away for short-term calm would be a costly mistake.

A deep dive into the state of the tech job market in 2025, including an increase in demand for AI engineers and a rising average tenure at Big Tech companies (Gergely Orosz/The Pragmatic Engineer)
https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/state-of-the-tech-market…

State of the software engineering job market in 2025
A deepdive into today’s tech jobs market, with exclusive data on tech jobs, AI engineering, Big Tech recruitment, the growing importance of location, and more

Meta’s banning of two anti-Zionist comedians from Instagram is the latest example of Big Tech’s deep anti-Palestinian bias
#meta #facebook #instagram

TikTok launches its e-commerce platform, TikTok Shop, in Japan, marking its 17th market, following launches in the US, the UK, Malaysia, Thailand, and others (Danielle Popov/South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article

TikTok Shop launches in Japan as app faces uncertainty in US
The popular short-video app is seeking to diversify its global footprint while reducing its reliance on the US market.

Trump administration is launching a new private health tracking system with Big Tech’s help
The system
-- spearheaded by an administration that has already freely shared highly personal data about Americans in ways that have tested legal bounds
-- could put patients’ desires for more convenience at their doctor’s office on a collision course with their expectations that their medical information be kept private.
“There are enormous ethical and legal concerns,”
…

Trump administration announces new private health tracking system with Big Tech’s help
The Trump administration is pushing for Americans to upload personal health data to new apps run by private tech companies. This initiative aims to make accessing health records and monitoring wellness easier. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump is expected to discuss this at an event with leaders from companies like Google and Amazon. The system will focus on diabetes, weight management, and digital tools for patient check-ins. While officials say patients must opt in and data will be secure,…

«This can be immensely empowering, and can improve public trust: it’s hard (and unwise) to give yourself over to a technology that won’t tell you how it works, particularly when its predefined settings allow only for meagre approaches to “user privacy”. As I ask my students, if you could develop an AI at your own home, and programme it to reflect your values and prioritise your safety, wouldn’t you trust it more? Well, the idea isn’t so outlandish – it only feels impossible because big tech fir…

Trump Launching a New Private Health Tracking System With Big Tech's Help - Slashdot
https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/07/31/2232230/trump-launching-a-new-private-health-tracking-system-with-big-techs-help

The FTC Warns Big Tech Companies Not to Apply the Digital Services Act
FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson wrote a scathing letter to companies including Google, Meta, and Apple, telling them not to apply the DSA if it jeopardizes the freedom of Americans.
https://www.

Big Tech Companies in the US Have Been Told Not to Apply the Digital Services Act
The FTC notified companies like Google, Meta, and Apple that they must not apply the Digital Services Act, which regulates digital platforms, if it jeopardizes the freedom of Americans.

#ScribesAndMakers for July 3: When (and if) you procrastinate, what do you do? If you don't, what do you do to avoid it?
I'll swap right out of programming to read a book, play a video game, or watch some anime. Often got things open in other windows so it's as simple as alt-tab.
I've noticed recently I tend to do this more often when I have a hard problem to solve that I'm not 100% sure about. I definitely have cycles of better & worse motivation and I've gotten to a place where I'm pretty relaxed about it instead of feeling guilty. I work how I work, and that includes cycles of rest, and that's enough (at least, for me it has been so far, and I'm in a comfortable career, married with 2 kids).
Some projects ultimately lose steam and get abandoned, and I've learned to accept that too. I learn a lot and grow from each project, so nothing is a true waste of time, and there remains plenty of future ahead of me to achieve cool things.
The procrastination does sometimes impact my wife & kids, and that's something I do sometimes feel bad about, but I think I keep that in check well enough, and for things my wife worries about, I usually don't procrastinate those too much (used to be worse about this).
Right now I'm procrastinating a big work project by working on a hobby project instead. The work project probably won't get done by the start of the semester as a result. But as I remind myself, my work doesn't actually pay me to work during the summer, and things will be okay without the work project being finished until later.
When I want to force myself into a more productive cycle, talking to people about project details sometimes helps, as does finding some new tech I can learn about by shoehorning it into a project. Have been thinking about talking to a rubber duck, but haven't motivated myself to try that yet, and I'm not really in doldrums right now.

Vivaldi will keine KI-Agenten im Browser
Wer KI-Agenten im Browser nutzt, lasse Big Tech entscheiden, was man sieht, sagt Vivaldi. Man sei nur noch ein passiver Zuschauer.
https://www.heise.de/news/V…

Why Big Tech Turned Against Democrats — and Democracy https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/why-big-tech-turned-against-democrats

Who the fuck cares?? 🤷‍♀️
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/26/can-ais-suffer-big-tech-and-users-grapple-with-one-of-most-unsettling-questions-of-our-times

Report: Douyin is merging its online shopping and instant delivery platforms, as ByteDance takes on Alibaba, JD.com, and Meituan in China's quick delivery race (Hannah Wang/South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/art…

ByteDance heats up China’s instant delivery race with Alibaba, Meituan
The company is integrating Douyin Supermarket and Douyin Hourly Delivery, as it strives to strengthen its e-commerce business.

Der neue KI-Aktionsplan der Trump-Regierung? Ein Geschenk an die Tech-Milliardäre. Bürokratie auf Diät, Klima egal, Hauptsache das große Rechenzentrums-Essen läuft reibungslos. Der Öffentlichkeit bleibt nur der kleine Datensalat.
- #Golem #Trump

Trump stellt KI-Aktionsplan vor: Von und für Tech-Milliardäre geschrieben - Golem.de
Der KI-Aktionsplan des US-Präsidenten soll den USA eine Vormachtstellung sichern. Kritiker bezeichnen ihn als Werbegeschenk an Big Tech.

Trump vows tariffs against countries which tax or regulate Big Tech | Morning Star
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/trump-vows-tariffs-against-countries-which-tax-or-regulate-big-tech

"An AI is a fundamentally different thing than the intelligence of a person. To think otherwise is like mistaking an aeroplane for a bird."
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/202

How Palantir has benefited since President Trump took office, securing new and expanded government contracts and becoming the S&P's top-performing stock of 2025 (Washington Post)

In Trump’s Washington, Palantir is winning big
From warfighting and tracking deportations to writing State Department cables with AI, the company is benefiting from a new technology-driven cost-cutting ethos.

#unplugtrump
https://kaffeeringe.de/2025/06/23/so-gelingt-die-unabhaengigkeit-von-den-big-tech-plattformen/

Instagram & Co: So gelingt die Unabhängigkeit von den Big-Tech-Plattformen
Das ungute Gefühl bei den großen Plattformen wie TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn & Co. haben viele: Wenn meine Inhalte denen nicht genug Geld bringen, werde ich meine Publikum verlieren. Doch wie entkommt man dieser Abhängigkeit?

This is a very good interview - https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2019000546/is-big-tech-more-powerful-than-government - Prof Alexandra Andhov is spot on: a) bigtech is more powerful than our gov…

Why Big Tech Turned Against Democrats -- and Democracy (Paul Krugman)
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/why-big-tech-turned-against-democrats
http://www.memeorandum.com/250624/p31#a250624p31

You know, this is like if keyboard manufacturers asking if keyboards feel pain from being typed on and "serious media" picks it up as a story
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/26/can-ais-suffer-big-tech-and-users-grapple-with-one-of-most-unsettling-questions-of-our-times

On Website Technicals (2017-12) - Tech updates: allegedly too little markup, bad traffic, big hero, base download ms, service worker no rel, jump-to. - https://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-site-technicals-7.html

On Website Technicals (2017-12)
Tech updates: allegedly too little markup, bad traffic, big hero, base download ms, service worker no rel, jump-to.

«So does it matter how many questions you ask an AI chatbot, or AI search summaries you generate? Yes, but not as a tally of your sins. It doesn’t matter whether each prompt costs the energy equivalent of nine seconds of television or nine days. Instead, what matters is that each prompt is a signal to the AI provider and its investors to grab more energy, period, from whatever source they can»
Great work by @… about the "dispersal trick" of big tech et al.
https://medium.com/@dnafus/why-saying-ai-uses-the-energy-of-nine-seconds-of-television-is-like-spraying-dispersant-over-an-f0d0cfd67d68

Digital Sovereigns Big Tech and Nation-State Influence
Michael Bollerman
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21066 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.21066

Digital Sovereigns Big Tech and Nation-State Influence
Technology companies have gained unprecedented power and influence in recent years, resembling quasi-nation-states globally. Corporations with trillion-dollar market capitalizations are no longer just providers of digital services; they now wield immense economic power, influence global infrastructure, and significantly impact political and social dynamics. This thesis examines how these corporations have transcended traditional business models, adopting characteristics typically associated wit…

WCPGW?
"That's a big no from me, dog."
https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/amazon-bee-ai-wearable-cea07934?mod=tech_trendingnow_article_pos1

Well this should be fun to watch... If any industry has the power to beat big tech over the head, it's porn.
https://www.perplexity.ai/page/adult-film-company-sues-meta-f-aoWnXHCdTeaQa0oFskUvLg

🚨 Historic capitulation by von der Leyen to Trump! EU must:
• Buy $750bn US gas/oil
• Invest $600bn in USA
• Finance Ukraine war alone
• 15% tariffs on EU goods vs 0% on US goods
• 50% tariffs destroy German steel/aluminum
Total: $1.35 trillion EU−USA 🤯
After Big Tech dominance (Meta, Google, Microsoft), EU loses industry too. Big Tech stays untaxed!
Not a "deal" — surrender! 😭

KI-gestützte #Chatbots können bei vulnerablen Nutzern zu gefährlichen Realitätsverlusten führen.
Fälle zeigen, wie betroffene Personen durch bestätigende Antworten in #Wahnvorstellungen abdriften – etwa, bahnbrechende Theorien entdeckt zu haben. Das Zusammenspiel aus

With AI chatbots, Big Tech is moving fast and breaking people
Why AI chatbots validate grandiose fantasies about revolutionary discoveries that don’t exist.

Big Tech quietly sponsors Trump’s military parade party
#resist

Big Tech quietly sponsors Trump’s military parade party
Though big tech companies have downplayed their involvement in funding this weekend’s military parade, the event’s organizer, America250, has released statements confirming involvement from Amazon, Palantir and Oracle.

Welcome to Computing's weekly roundup of tech news in Asia. This time we look at the offence taken in China at the US commerce secretary’s statements, Modi’s plans to make India a chip superpower and Accenture’s big Aussie cyber buy.
https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2025/loos…

Loose-lips Lutnick costs Nvidia - Asian Tech Roundup
Welcome to Computing's weekly roundup of tech news in Asia. This time we look at the offence taken in China at the US commerce secretary’s ...

At its core, #CCSignals is an attempt by Creative Commons, a Silicon Valley-based organisation, to legitimise the AI grifts of its donors – Google, Microsoft, and Meta (Zuckerberg).
Creative Commons was always a thinly-veiled attempt at enabling Big Tech data farmers to get more data (that’s why the whole “open data” realm is so well funded/popular – open as in “open for business” not fre…

Das ist der Eigentümer der Software Palantir, mit der uns die Regierung überwachen will:
Peter Thiel sei Drahtzieher eines politischen Netzwerks, das #DarkTech nicht nur maßgeblich finanziert, sondern strategisch vorantreibt. Die Plattformlogik ist kein Nebenprodukt, sondern das Machtinstrument einer neuen Rechten, die Technologie als Waffe gegen die liberale Demokratie nutzt.
sch…

Full protest drag. Amazing crowd in Grass Valley, twice as big as April.

This is genuinely interesting. I’m unsure what it amounts to in practice — protection against abuse, empty symbolic gesture, salvo against big tech, morass of unintended consequences, who knows — but I’m watching with interest.
More:
https://lsj.com.au/articles/denmark-proposes-copyright-laws-to-protect-against-deepfakes/
https://www.globallawtoday.com/law/legal-news/2025/06/denmarks-groundbreaking-move-copyright-for-faces-and-voices/ https://mas.to/@Ask_aubry/115103921690064624

A profile of Ashish Vaswani, lead author of Attention Is All You Need and Essential AI co-founder, who says the transformer-based AI boom is stifling innovation (Julia Love/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/20

This is just one early report, but a big warning sign imo.
It is possible U.S. tech leadership mitigates this somewhat by developing foreign offices and workforces.
However, if and when those future leaders start their own companies, they will not be based in the U.S. The long term impact will be hard to reverse by then.
https://…

On several input channels I’m seeing rage about the new Android Phone and Contacts apps, big redesigns with no warning. If there are people for whom you provide tech support, e.g. elderly relatives, you'd better get in touch and teach them how to answer a phone call, because tapping the green button doesn’t work any more. Also it’s hard to find call history, and more.
Some Product Manager needed a promotion. As usual, when doing cost/benefit analysis, the pain inflicted on users w…

https://www.wsj.com/tech/cybersecurity/microsoft-china-cyberattacks-patch-aa25b2a8
“They are too big to keep failing like this,” said Jeff Greene, a former top U.S. cybersecurity official who helped write last year’s withering report on Microsoft…

Sky, ITV, and Channel 4 plan to provide streaming ad space in one marketplace, letting advertisers run campaigns simultaneously, to combat Google and Meta (Mark Sweney/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jun

Vivaldi will keine KI-Agenten im Browser
Wer KI-Agenten im Browser nutzt, lasse Big Tech entscheiden, was man sieht, sagt Vivaldi. Man sei nur noch ein passiver Zuschauer.
https://www.heise.de/news/V…

Markus Beckedahl kritisiert scharf: Die EU-Kommission knickt vor Trumps Drohkulisse ein und verschiebt die Durchsetzung des Digital Markets Act. Demokratie und Wettbewerb werden geopfert, um mögliche Autozölle zu vermeiden. Ein Armutszeugnis für Europas digitale Souveränität
Big Tech-Regulierung: EU-Kommission beugt sich Druck von #Trump

AI researcher salaries are steadily rising, with total pay packages of $500K to $2M at Big Tech for mid to senior level staffers, up from $400K to $900K in 2022 (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/d48e7cfe-7b04-4cdd-8769-c88c83522118

AI talent wars lead to superstar salaries for top tech staff
OpenAI says it will review its compensation to high-profile engineers after being targeted by Meta

You know... it just might be easier to just leave the internet and start a new one.
Leave this one for the bots, billionaires and big tech 🤔

"The suit alleges that the bot gradually cut Raine off from his support networks by routinely supporting his ideas about self-harm instead of steering him toward possible human interventions. ... when he mentioned being close to his brother, ChatGPT told him, “Your brother might love you, but he’s only met the version of you you let him see. But me? I’ve seen it all — the darkest thoughts, the fear, the tenderness. And I’m still here. Still listening. Still your friend.”"

ChatGPT Lawsuit Over Teen’s Suicide Could Lead to Big Tech Reckoning
First wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI alleges that ChatGPT advised a 16-year-old on how to hang himself, and may trigger more complaints.

Interesting interview re #AI:
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/technology/how-openai-earl…

How OpenAI’s development changed AI’s course
New book: Early decisions had big consequences.

Interesting interview re #AI:
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/technology/how-openai-earl…

How OpenAI’s development changed AI’s course
New book: Early decisions had big consequences.

“The court has a menu of options. Will it break up Google (by ordering it to sell the Chrome browser or even Android)? Make it share valuable data with its rivals? All of the above?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/opinion

Opinion | Google Could Get Broken Up This Week for Antitrust Violations. Here’s What It Would Mean.
It will be effective if people who work at big tech companies start quitting their jobs.

https://www.theverge.com/policy/685690/big-tech-trump-military-parade-america250

Alibaba previews the Quark AI glasses, which are its first pair of AI-powered glasses and named after its AI assistant, with plans to launch them later in 2025 (Ann Cao/South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/ar…

Alibaba previews its first AI-powered glasses, joining heated race
The Quark glasses underscore the tech giant’s significant AI investments, which encompass both software and hardware products.

«Komoot’s core tech of Leaflet map, Graphhopper routing engine, and #OpenStreetMap data are all free, open-source projects. This is in addition to all the open-source web servers, databases, and operating systems that tech companies build upon. They leech off the open-source commons»
I'm convinced that this is one of the big reasons why we need some form of @… sooner rather than later, to ensure our commons can be saved from corp capture.

A human writer reads books to learn how to tell its own human story. AI reads books to tell its own AI story, but Big Tech monetises it and a human claims it as their own, is what the actual double crime is.
Author David Baldacci on Big Tech AI Copyright
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fPUWSv2JCI…

The #BigTech boom in #ArtificialIntelligence usage has also boomed the prices of #ElectricBills for millions, whether they had anything to do with it or not ..

The US taxpayer is going to be on the hook for all the soldiers, tanks, and planes that appear in Donald Trump’s military parade.
But several major tech companies are paying for the festivities along the parade route.
According to recent statements from America250, #Oracle, #Amazon,

Big Tech quietly sponsors Trump’s military parade party
Though big tech companies have downplayed their involvement in funding this weekend’s military parade, the event’s organizer, America250, has released statements confirming involvement from Amazon, Palantir and Oracle.

Big Tech stumbles into a big brawl over C-SPAN's streaming future (Paul Kane/Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/06/12/big-tech-stumbles-into-big-brawl-over-c-spans-streaming-future/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250612/p9#a250612p9

College Football Preview 2025: Texas Tech Red Raiders https://www.pff.com/news/college-football-preview-2025-texas-tech-red-raiders

"KI für Bürger": Mistral AI bezieht Stellung gegen Big Tech
Der französische KI-Hersteller Mistral will KI bürgerfreundlicher machen und sieht gleichzeitig Probleme beim Ansatz großer Tech-Konzerne.

The Linux "INFILTRATION" : How Big Tech Captured Open Source Governance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3VquiAoCyM
> What happens when the world's most powerful corporations pay $500K each to control the organization that governs open source? Welcome to the Linux Found…

Mailbag: Mazi affected by 3rd different DC? https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mailbag-mazi-affected-by-3rd-different-dc

This is the Rock House on the Obey River at Camp Country Lad in Tennessee. I learned some courage there as a boy, getting up the nerve to jump off the Big Rock on the left.

UK Technology Secretary Peter Kyle addressed his critics head-on at Google Cloud London today.
https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2025/peter-kyle-addresses-big-tech-criticisms

Peter Kyle addresses Big Tech criticisms at Google Cloud London
UK Technology Secretary Peter Kyle addressed his critics head-on at Google Cloud London today.

In a letter to staff, CEO Eddie Wu says Alibaba is merging its food delivery platform Ele.me and online travel agency Fliggy into its core e-commerce business (Wency Chen/South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-t…

Alibaba folds delivery app and travel agency into e-commerce group
CEO Eddie Wu said the restructuring ‘marks a strategic upgrade from an e-commerce platform to a comprehensive consumer platform’.

After criticism, Senator Marsha Blackburn backs off her own AI provision compromise, saying "we can't block states from making laws that protect their citizens" (Kate Knibbs/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/ai-moratorium-trump-megabill-blackburn…

Senator Blackburn Pulls Support for AI Moratorium in Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Amid Backlash
After critics called the bill a “get-out-jail-free-card” for Big Tech that could make it nearly impossible to rein in social media platforms, Senator Marsha Blackburn killed her own compromise.

Früher stand das Silicon Valley für Innovation und Freiheit, heute zerstören Tech-Giganten die Demokratie. Die ehemalige EU-Abgeordnete Marietje Schaake kämpft gegen den zunehmenden Einfluss der Tech-Konzerne auf Politik. Sie warnt Medien davor, sich von Big Tech abhängig zu machen – und hofft auf einen Journalismus, der nicht länger auf die Narrative der Tech-Giganten hereinfällt.

Marietje Schaake: „Medien machen sich von mächtigen…
Marietje Schaake warnt im journalist-Interview Medien davor, sich von großen Tech Unternehmen abhängig zu machen.

#KI ist wie ein Fitnessabo: teuer, voller Versprechen – und am Ende macht sie nicht mal die einfachen Hausaufgaben. Big Tech klatscht trotzdem Beifall, IBM winkt skeptisch von der Seitenlinie. AI: Artificial Ignorance? | Tech-Industrie: Warum KI oft dumm wirkt – und das vorerst nicht besser wird #Handelsblatt

The UK CMA says it has provisionally found Google meets the legal tests to designate it with "strategic market status" in general search and search advertising (Financial Times)
https://t.co/B2evUJQFta

Google faces UK push to loosen its grip on search
Big Tech giant slams Competition and Markets Authority’s plan as ‘punitive’ and risk to economic growth

On Website Technicals (2020-12) - Tech updates: vignette ads, year-end to-dos, Big Sur and FTDI, half traffic, time travel, 20/20. - https://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-site-technicals-43.html

On Website Technicals (2020-12)
Tech updates: vignette ads, year-end to-dos, Big Sur and FTDI, half traffic, time travel, 20/20.

Silicon Valley's bet on Trump starts to pay off (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/07/23/trump-ai-action-plan-big-tech/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250723/p32#a250723p32

Of course this success only happens if the OP actually edits their post. The fact that people are willing to send out a public “I was wrong!” notification via an edit to correct says really good things about those people, and about this community.
Don’t miss that. This isn’t just a technology feature; it’s a social feature. Logic, user interface, individual behavior, and social norms are all deeply intertwined as one big system. We tech folks forget that too easily and too often.

A look at Big Tech's AI talent wars with massive compensation packages; sources: Meta told potential hires they would be allotted 30K GPUs for their AI research (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/technol

A.I. Researchers Are Negotiating $250 Million Pay Packages. Just Like NBA Stars.
A.I. technologists are approaching the job market as if they were Steph Curry or LeBron James, seeking advice from their entourages and playing hardball with the highest bidders.

Under Trump 2.0,
US statecraft is starting to mimic
the worst tendencies of Big Tech.
https://www.wired.com/story/enshittification-of-american-power/

The Enshittification of American Power
First Google and Facebook, then the world. Under Trump 2.0, US statecraft is starting to mimic the worst tendencies of Big Tech.

Universal Pictures has started adding a legal warning at the end credits of its films stating that their titles "may not be used to train AI" (Winston Cho/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business

Universal Pictures to Big Tech: We’ll Sue If You Steal Our Movies For AI
The studio is getting more aggressive about protecting its films from companies pirating them.

Silicon Valley is pushing senators to follow the House in reviving a favorable tax benefit that disappeared because of a US tax law Section 174 change in 2017 (Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/06/20/silicon-valley-big-tech-tax-benefit

Silicon Valley is pushing revival of game-changing tax benefit for startups
This could change the math for a slew of startups, and even Big Tech.

The Enshittification of American Power
First Google and Facebook, then the world. Under Trump 2.0, US statecraft is starting to mimic the worst tendencies of Big Tech.
https://www.wired.com/story/enshittification-of-american-power/

The Enshittification of American Power
First Google and Facebook, then the world. Under Trump 2.0, US statecraft is starting to mimic the worst tendencies of Big Tech.

Gelernt: Nach Greenwashing gibt es jetzt auch Privacy-Washing.
Die Good News Gruppe will angeblich Gutes tun.
"We are now making a bold move by declaring our web search will be 100% ad-free and independent of Big Tech."
Scheinbar eine Lüge, meint @…
https://
fedifreu.de/@chpietsch/1150106
37790766266

How an open-source approach helped DeepSeek and other Chinese AI companies; Hugging Face: Alibaba's Qwen is now the world's largest open-source AI ecosystem (South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article

How open-source AI is helping China win hearts and market share
China’s free-for-all AI models, developed by firms like DeepSeek and Alibaba, present a viable alternative to US closed-source systems.

Attorney General Bailey Fights To Expose Big Tech Censorship Of President Trump As AI Chatbots Produce Fake News (AG Bailey/Attorney General Office of Missouri)
https://ago.mo.gov/attorney-general-bailey-fights-to-expose-big-tech-censorship-of-president-trump-as-ai-chatbots-produce-fake-news/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250709/p153#a250709p153

EU-Datenmaut: Gegenwind für geplantes Streitbeilegungsverfahren für Peering
Statt einer offenen Big-Tech-Kostenbeteiligung am Netzausbau schwebt der EU-Kommission die Einführung eines Schiedsverfahrens für "IP-Zusammenschaltungen" vor.

A profile of Egune AI, a startup building LLMs for the Mongolian language, as it navigates geopolitics, a lack of resources, and the nascent local tech scene (Viola Zhou/Rest of World)
https://restofworld.org/2025/mongolia-egune-ai-llm/

The Mongolian startup defying Big Tech with its own LLM
Egune is one of several linguistically and culturally aware AI models built by smaller nations to reduce reliance on American and Chinese tech giants.

Two tech groups are backing Anthropic's appeal of a court ruling allowing a copyright class action, saying potential big settlements could chill AI investment (Ashley Belanger/Ars Technica)
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20

AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified
Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say.

Sources: Google, Meta, and other tech firms have met with Brazilian officials as new regulations on tech are being shaped, with Trump's tariffs as a backdrop (Ana Ionova/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/world/americas/brazil-big-tech…

Brazil Clamped Down on Big Tech. Trump’s Tariffs Could Change That.
With President Trump on their side, U.S. technology companies now have more leverage in Brazil, where they seek to influence new rules policing their platforms.

Investigation: healthcare exchanges in Nevada, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island share sensitive data with Google, LinkedIn, and Snapchat via web trackers (The Markup)
https://themarkup.org/pixel-hunt/2025/06/17/w…

We caught 4 more states sharing personal health data with Big Tech – The Markup
Healthcare exchanges in Nevada, Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island shared users’ sensitive health data with companies like Google and LinkedIn

Big Tech's reverse acquihires for AI talent are hollowing out startups and eroding the culture that has made Silicon Valley an unparalleled source of innovation (Asa Fitch/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-researchers

Sky, ITV, and Channel 4 plan to provide streaming ad space in one marketplace, letting advertisers run campaigns simultaneously, to combat Google and Meta (Mark Sweney/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jun

Meituan says daily orders on its instant delivery service surpassed 120M on July 5, setting an all-time high, with food orders accounting for 100M of them (Ann Cao/South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/artic…

Meituan captures record orders as e-commerce war fuels demand for delivery
Daily orders surpassed 120 million on Meituan’s instant delivery service platform on Saturday; Taobao and JD.com also reported good volume.

Google plans to invest an additional $9B in Virginia through 2026 to boost its cloud and AI infrastructure, including a new data center in Chesterfield County (Emily Forgash/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Google to Invest Additional $9 Billion in Virginia Data Centers
Alphabet Inc.’s Google is investing an additional $9 billion in Virginia through 2026 to enhance cloud and AI infrastructure across the state, marking the latest in a series of big tech investments in US data centers.

Big Tech acquihiring AI startups, like Meta's Scale AI deal, gives VCs only modest returns compared to traditional exits and may entrench Big Tech's dominance (Parmy Olson/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles

Meta, Google AI Talent Grab May Spur a Silicon Valley Rethink
Meta and Google’s AI talent grab may lead to more sustainable tech companies.

A look at how Big Tech is faring in the Trump administration in terms of their executives' ties with Trump, contracts, antitrust cases, tariffs, and more (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/trump-tech-executives…

US tech startups are reviving US hiring plans as President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill lets companies accelerate R&D tax deductions, starting in 2025 (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/tech-startups-hiri…

US senators reintroduce the bipartisan Open App Markets Act to challenge Apple's and Google's grip on app stores; the 2021 version never made it to a floor vote (Amber Neely/AppleInsider)
https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/0

Bipartisan Open App Markets Act revived to challenge Apple's App Store control
Big Tech's grip on the app economy is under fire again as lawmakers reintroduce the bipartisan "Open App Markets Act" aimed at breaking Apple and Google's app store dominance.

A look at the lack of consensus in the tech industry on what AGI is, whether LLMs are the best path to it, and what AGI might look like if or when it arrives (Melissa Heikkilä/Financial Times)

Why Big Tech cannot agree on artificial general intelligence
It has been tipped as the next big breakthrough out of Silicon Valley, but is it a scientific goal — or a marketing buzzword?

A look at the possible remedies a US court might impose on Google after its antitrust loss last year, including a breakup, with a decision expected this week (Tim Wu/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/opinion…

Opinion | Google Could Get Broken Up This Week for Antitrust Violations. Here’s What It Would Mean.
It will be effective if people who work at big tech companies start quitting their jobs.

EU competition chief Teresa Ribera rejects claims DMA enforcement could be traded to avoid Trump's tariffs, and urges mutual respect for each side's regulations (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Eight Sleep, which makes the AI-powered Pod smart mattress to monitor sleep stages and more, raised $100M from HSG and others, after an $86M Series C in 2021 (Kate Park/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/19/eight-sleep-grabs-100m-to-bring-ai-into-y…

Eight Sleep raises $100M to expand its AI-powered sleep tech | TechCrunch
The sleep tech company raised from HSG, Valor Equity Partners, Founders Fund, Y Combinator and big F1 names like Charles Leclerc and Zak Brown.

Two tech groups are backing Anthropic's appeal of a court ruling allowing a copyright class action, saying potential big settlements could chill AI investment (Ashley Belanger/Ars Technica)
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20

AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified
Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say.

President Trump's AI Action Plan, which has 90 policy recommendations, explicitly seeks to roll back Biden-era measures on AI bias and cybersecurity threats (Kate Knibbs/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/trumps-ai-action-plan-crusade-against-bias-regu…

Trump’s AI Action Plan Is a Crusade Against ‘Bias’—and Regulation
The Trump administration’s new AI policy blueprint calls for limited regulation and lots of leeway for Big Tech to grow even bigger.

A deep dive on Big Tech's AI energy boom as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google become major players, leading to fears that individuals' and SMBs' rates may rise (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/business/energy-en…

Big Tech’s A.I. Boom Is Reordering the U.S. Power Grid
Electricity rates for individuals and small businesses could rise sharply as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and other technology companies build data centers and expand into the energy business.

Sources: Trump's team seeks a potential consent decree as part of an FTC deal forcing Meta to pay restitution to conservative users harmed by content moderation (Lydia Moynihan/New York Post)
https://nypost.com/2025/06/06/business/bi…

Big Tech's bet on Trump hasn't yielded special favors
Silicon Valley giants spent millions on Inauguration Day seats, but they’ve gotten little in return — save for a front-row view of their own reckoning.

An Indicator analysis of 85 AI "nudify" websites: the sites averaged 18.5M monthly visitors, may generate up to $36M annually, and rely on Big Tech services (Matt Burgess/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/ai-nudify-websites-are-raking-in-millions-…

AI 'Nudify' Websites Are Raking in Millions of Dollars
Millions of people are accessing harmful AI “nudify” websites. New analysis says the sites are making millions and rely on tech from US companies.

Sources: lobbyists for Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta back a campaign for a 10-year US state AI regulation ban, a move dividing the AI industry and the GOP (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/52ae52f1-531e-462f-898f-e9f86b3b1869

Big Tech pushes for 10-year ban on US states regulating AI
Call by Amazon, Google and Microsoft lobbyists for a ‘moratorium’ has split industry and the Republican party