Trump Media's planned Truth API is drawing regulatory scrutiny as lawmakers question whether premium access to market-moving Truth Social posts creates fairness concerns.
Meta avoided a closely watched social media addiction trial after the plaintiff dropped the remaining claim, leaving broader questions over platform design unresolved.
Alibaba’s reign as the worst offender under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) lasted just four days, after the European Commission yesterday fined Google €890 million for breaches of the law –€340 million more than the Chinese e-commerce company will pay. Europe even fined Google twice – once for treating its own services more favorably in search rankings and the second time for failing to properly inform users of its “Play” app store. The search infractions attracted a fine of €460 million ($523.5m/£393m) and the Play offenses will cost the Chocolate Factory €430 million ($490m/£367.5m). In US dollars, the fines total $1.013 billion – or one quarter of one percent of the $402 billion in revenue that Google’s parent company Alphabet won in its last full financial year. The Big G’s net income was $132 billion in the same year, making these fines less than one percent of its profits. Investors won’t be happy that the company has a billion-dollar bill to pay in Europe, but the ten-percent dip in Alphabet’s stock price this week may have more to do with news that it burned cash for the first time in 20 years to fund AI investments. The Commission fined Google after finding it “gives preferential treatment to its own services, including shopping, hotels, transport and sports results, over those of third parties in Google Search.” “Google displays its own services more prominently in search results, including at the top of the search results page or by using enhanced visuals and filters, while similar third-party services do not have the same prominence,” the Commission wrote. The Commission ordered the Play store fine because the DMA requires app store operators to let developers inform buyers about third party app stores or other distribution channels that offer cheaper ways to acquire software. The EU’s regulatory authorities felt Google didn’t meet that obligation. We’re told Google “… has proposed and started testing changes to how it presents its own services on Google Search,” and the Commission will “monitor the implementation of these solutions which constitute substantial progress towards compliance.” Interestingly, the Commission has also started talking to Google about the search fine in the context of the Web giant’s new AI Overviews and AI Mode. Those tools show even fewer links that Google search and are already driving more revenue for Google. Google has also taken steps to ensure that visitors to Play get more info about alternative software-marts. “These constitute good progress towards compliance and will also be assessed in light of the cease and desist order of today's decision,” the Commission states. Google has opposed the decision, arguing it weakens its services and makes Play less secure. The company says it’s also developing artificial general intelligence, so probably has enough smarts to figure out how to keep its services safe and relevant. ®
Reddit's reported review of its Google AI partnership highlights growing publisher concerns that AI-powered search is changing the economics of web traffic.
The European Commission yesterday fined Alibaba subsidiary AliExpress €550 million ($630m/ £467m) for not doing enough to stop selling dodgy products - the largest ever fine issued under the Digital Services Act. AliExpress is Alibaba’s consumer-facing e-commerce brand and complements the parent company’s B2B biz. Brussels last year warned AliExpress that it wasn’t doing enough to stop sellers on the service hawking illegal products, or to ensure its recommendation engines didn’t promote those dodgy goods. Wielding the awesome powers of the Digital Services Act (DSA), Brussels told the Chinese e-commerce company to clean up its act and spelled out the steps required to do so. A year later, the Commission (EC) decided AliExpress hasn’t done enough and announced the giant fine, which the Commission justified because it found AliExpress did not properly evaluate whether it had sufficient staff to review potentially illegal products, and did not conduct an adequate assessment of how its recommender and advertising systems exacerbate the spread of illegal products. The Commission also made the following four findings: AliExpress' system to detect illegal products did not work properly; AliExpress did not properly enforce its penalty policy for traders selling illegal products; AliExpress' product compliance checks could be easily circumvented through mis-categorisation of products; AliExpress failed to adequately prevent the spread of counterfeit products. In its announcement of the fine, the Commission noted that it set fine at €550 million after considering “mitigating circumstances that operate in favor of AliExpress, such as the novelty of the Digital Services Act.” The Act allows fines of up to six percent of global turnover and Alibaba Group’s annual revenue was $148 billion for the year ended March 31st. Brussels could therefore have demanded almost $9 billion. The fine comes weeks after Europe introduced new customs fees seemingly designed to make life hard for Alibaba and its Chinese peers Temu and Shein. Europe doesn’t like very cheap single-item imports, which policymakers fear can lead to illegal and unsafe products reaching the continent, at prices that local retailers can’t match. The EC understands that its new fees could see e-tailers adapt their operations by shipping in bulk to warehouses within the European Union, an outcome felt to give the bloc a better chance of regulating cheap products. Fining AliExpress €550 million is another nudge towards changing business models. ®
On March 31, 2026, a rather odd complaint arrived at the Bucks County, Pennsylvania District Attorney's Office.
It came from the local sheriff's office, and it concerned one of their own, Deputy Sheriff Ryan Gaffney. The allegation was unusual: Gaffney had used his iPhone to snap photos of nude prisoners he had encountered in his job—and he had then shared those photos with "several female civilian employees inside the Sheriff's Office."
The main claim involved a local man suffering a mental health crisis on the morning of January 30, 2026. Five fully uniformed deputies had arrived at the house and were in the upstairs bedroom. Their detainee was naked from the waist down and had just been persuaded to put on some pants.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has fined HP Inc. and some of its resellers, for what it calls “cartelisation” activities that inflated the cost of PCs and printers – and which it says HP used to head off threats from resellers to sell counterfeit ink cartridges. The ₹138.85 crores/$14.4 million fine won’t be a massive inconvenience to HP. The facts of the case may be, as the CCI found HP told its resellers what prices to charge when they bid for tenders posted to a government procurement site. The PC and printer giant also prohibited some of its resellers from bidding on tenders. In its order related to HP’s bids to sell printer supplies, the regulator reveals it accessed WhatsApp records that show HP staff and some of its resellers “were operating in a collusive arrangement and shows the practice of bid rigging including cover bidding, price fixation, and customer allocation, during 2017-2020.” Cover bidding is the practice of having one reseller make a ridiculously high bid that a vendor knows won’t win a deal, in the hope other resellers who offer more reasonable quotes will get the sale. The order also claims that HP would decide in advance which of its resellers would sell to which customer. The CCI found that one of HP’s motives was to ensure that it remained competitive with other PC and printer makers, rather than to favor a particular reseller. Another motive was to stop resellers from selling counterfeit ink and toner. “Due to constant downward pressure on pricing because of new resellers, Tier-2 resellers threatened a shift to low-cost counterfeit products to compete on price,” the order states. Some of those resellers formed an “understanding” about the prices they would charge, so they would not undercut each other’s bids. The order says HP “facilitated” development of that understanding to defend its printer supplies business. “HP India was commercially forced into a position where it had to support the collusive arrangement adopted by the Tier-2 resellers,” the order states. In a second order regarding the sale of PCs, the CCI found HP’s actions helped HP to navigate the reverse auction process used to determine the winner of some tenders. “HP India faced the risk if its resellers exited early due to unsustainable downward pricing pressure resulting in no sale for HP India,” the order states. “The coordination amongst HP India’s reseller was accordingly designed to ensure that at least one HP reseller remained present in the final round.” The orders compel HP, and the resellers it worked with, to cease all such activity. ®
Apple has filed a lawsuit against former employees who now work at OpenAI, and the AI upstart itself, alleging theft of intellectual property. Cupertino’s complaint [PDF] opens with an accusation that a former employee joined OpenAI after eight years at Apple, and on his way out dodged an exit interview and didn’t return his work laptop. The filing alleges that once he “exploited a rare, previously unknown authentication bug to access Apple’s shared network folders” – but didn’t report the bug, return the laptop, or delete the program that allowed the access. Apple alleges its former staffer then “surreptitiously accessed and downloaded dozens of Apple’s confidential hardware-related files, including voluminous, detailed information about unreleased products, engineering presentations, technical specifications, and proprietary project data.” The company claims the man then used that info to help OpenAI. Another staffer who jumped from Apple to OpenAI allegedly emailed himself supply chain information, and once working for the AI company was present in interviews that tried to lure other employees of the iGiant. In those chat, the filing alleges, the former Apple staffer asked candidates who still worked for Cupertino for updates on secret internal projects – and even used code names. “He has directed job candidates still working for Apple to bring ‘Actual parts’ from Apple to their interviews for ‘show and tell’sessions in which he and his team at OpenAI can elicit still more Apple confidential information,” the filing alleges. “These directions to bring Apple’s parts to OpenAI job interviews surprised at least one of the candidates, who commented that he ‘didn’t even know we could take those from the office’.” Apple also alleges that OpenAI coached those bailing from Cupertino on how to hide their intentions, so they can prolong their stay at Cupertino and therefore access more useful info. “The Corporate Defendants, with or through their employees or partners, have been acting in concert and as an enterprise, exploiting Apple’s confidential information to advance OpenAI’s efforts to enter the consumer hardware market,” Apple alleges. “They have used confidential Apple information in approaching Apple’s trusted partners, even having one carry out a specific trade secret metal-finishing technique for OpenAI, misleading the partner to believe they had Apple’s permission to do so.” The filing says the above represents “the tip of the iceberg” and alleges that plumbing the depths of OpenAI’s attempt to build a hardware business would likely find more abuse of Apple’s IP. The filing suggests Apple was able to gather digital evidence from the two employees named in the suit, an important allegation because trade secrets cases can be hard to prosecute as it’s hard to prove whether a former staffer shared information stored in their wetware. Apple can presumably present witnesses to some of the other allegations. “Apple does not bring this action lightly,” the filing states. “Apple operates in the most competitive markets in the world and focuses on creating and shipping the very best products and services that embody its innovations.” “But it cannot tolerate the theft of its trade secrets. In light of the troubling evidence it has seen so far, Apple is left with no choice. This lawsuit and the discovery process are needed to expose and begin to remedy the pervasive theft of Apple’s trade secrets.” OpenAI’s communications boss Drew Pusateri used his X account to deny Apple’s allegations. “We have no interest in other companies' trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere,” he wrote. The upstart’s ambition to create a consumer tech business carries enormous risk, as any vendor requires enormous resources to manufacture, market and support AI gadgetry. Even Google has struggled to win more than a few percent of the smartphone market, while Meta’s long effort to create virtual reality eyewear has not resulted in huge sales. Both of those tech giants are massively profitable. OpenAI makes massive losses and will likely do so for the foreseeable future, largely due to the huge sums required to build AI infrastructure with uncertain ROI. ®
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