An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Google said Friday it will stop linking to New Zealand news content and will reverse its support of local media outlets if the government passes a law forcing tech companies to pay for articles displayed on their platforms. The vow to sever Google traffic to New Zealand news sites -- made in a blog post by the search giant on Friday -- echoes strategies the firm deployed as Australia and Canada prepared to enact similar laws in recent years. It followed a surprise announcement by New Zealand's government in July that lawmakers would advance a bill forcing tech platforms to strike deals for sharing revenue generated from news content with the media outlets producing it.

The government, led by center-right National, had opposed the law in 2023 when introduced by the previous administration. But the loss of more than 200 newsroom jobs earlier this year -- in a national media industry that totaled 1,600 reporters at the 2018 census and has likely shrunk since -- prompted the current government to reconsider forcing tech companies to pay publishers for displaying content. The law aims to stanch the flow offshore of advertising revenue derived from New Zealand news products. If the media law passes, Google New Zealand Country Director Caroline Rainsford said the firm would need to change its involvement in the country. "Specifically, we'd be forced to stop linking to news content on Google Search, Google News, or Discover surfaces in New Zealand and discontinue our current commercial agreements and ecosystem support with New Zealand news publishers."

Google's licensing program in New Zealand contributed "millions of dollars per year to almost 50 local publications," she added.

Amazon is set to roll out a greater number of ads [non-paywalled link] across its blockbuster television shows and movies on Prime Video next year as the US tech giant steps up its push into ad-funded streaming services. Financial Times: The company said it had not seen a sharp drop in subscribers since it introduced advertising to its Prime Video platform eight months ago, allaying fears among top executives of a customer backlash, as it attempts to win over more brands to its streaming service.

Kelly Day, vice-president of Prime Video International, who oversees the streaming video business in global markets, told the Financial Times there would be an increasing number of ad slots for brands to target in 2025. Talking ahead of its first London "up front" on Wednesday evening -- when television companies present their plans to advertisers to attract money over the next year -- Day said its advertising "load" would "ramp up a little bit more into 2025."

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: Look at the top right corner of your phone. You might see an icon with "5G" and another with vertical bars showing the strength of your internet connection. Those symbols don't mean what you think they do.

If your phone shows "5G," you're not necessarily connected to the latest and zippiest cellphone network technology. It might just mean that 5G connections are available nearby. And the bars are a cellular version of a shrug. There is no standard measure of how much signal strength each bar represents. "The connection icon is a lie," said Avi Greengart, president of the technology analysis firm Techsponential...

The good news is you might not need 5G, anyway. Most of the time, your phone calls, texting and web surfing are perfectly fine on the prior generation of wireless technology called 4G or sometimes "LTE." Many phone networks will funnel you over 5G service when it makes a real difference, like if you're on a video call or playing an intense video game.

If you see more specific types of 5G icons, like "5G UW" used by Verizon or "5G UC" if you're on T-Mobile service, Hyers said you're probably connected to a 5G network at that moment. Those extra letters or symbols sometimes indicate types of 5G technology that are capable of faster and more reliable connections, but they aren't always better, depending on your circumstances. Confusingly, AT&T has showed "5G E" icons on phones. That is not 5G service at all.
Here's how major carriers responded to the Post's reporter:

• "AT&T said its '5G' indicators on phones line up with a telecommunications standards organization that established the icon to mean 5G networks are available."

• "Verizon didn't respond to my questions."

• "T-Mobile said for most of its cellphone network, your phone accurately reflects if you're on 5G."

The article suggests setting your phone to just automatically switch to 5G networks when high-bandwidth applications are in use...

A New York federal court has ordered (PDF) the operators of shadow library LibGen to pay $30 million in copyright damages to publishers. The default judgment also comes with a broad injunction that affects third-party services including domain registries, browser extensions, CDN providers, IPFS gateways, advertisers, and more. These parties must restrict access to the pirate site. An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon granted the default judgment without any changes. The anonymous LibGen defendants are responsible for willful copyright infringement and their activities should be stopped. "Plaintiffs have been irreparably harmed as a result of Defendants' unlawful conduct and will continue to be irreparably harmed should Defendants be allowed to continue operating the Libgen Sites," the order reads. The order requires the defendants to pay the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work, a total of $30 million, for which they are jointly and severally liable. While this is a win on paper, it's unlikely that the publishers will get paid by the LibGen operators, who remain anonymous.

To address this concern, the publishers' motion didn't merely ask for $30 million in damages, they also demanded a broad injunction. Granted by the court yesterday, the injunction requires third-party services such as advertising networks, payment processors, hosting providers, CDN services, and IPFS gateways to restrict access to the site. [...] The injunction further targets "browser extensions" and "other tools" that are used to provide direct access to the LibGen Sites. While site blocking by residential Internet providers is mentioned in reference to other countries, ISP blocking is not part of the injunction itself. In addition to the broad measures outlined above, the order further requires domain name registrars and registries to disable or suspend all active LibGen domains, or alternatively, transfer them to the publishers. This includes Libgen.is, the most used domain name with 16 million monthly visits, as well as Libgen.rs, Libgen.li and many others.

At the moment, it's unclear how actively managed the LibGen site is, as it has shown signs of decay in recent years. However, when faced with domain seizures, sites typically respond by registering new domains. The publishers are aware of this risk. Therefore, they asked the court to cover future domain names too. The court signed off on this request, which means that newly registered domain names can be taken over as well; at least in theory. [...] All in all, the default judgment isn't just a monetary win, on paper, it's also one of the broadest anti-piracy injunctions we've seen from a U.S. court.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a law (AB 2426) to combat "disappearing" purchases of digital games, movies, music, and ebooks. The legislation will force digital storefronts to tell customers they're just getting a license to use the digital media, rather than suggesting they actually own it. From a report: When the law comes into effect next year, it will ban digital storefronts from using terms like "buy" or "purchase," unless they inform customers that they're not getting unrestricted access to whatever they're buying. Storefronts will have to tell customers they're getting a license that can be revoked as well as provide a list of all the restrictions that come along with it. Companies that break the rule could be fined for false advertising.

LG has started displaying ads on TV screensavers, intensifying the proliferation of ads in smart TV software. The South Korean company quietly announced the move to advertisers on September 5, forgoing a public statement to consumers.

Ars Technica's Dan Goodin reports: Five years ago, researchers made a grim discovery -- a legitimate Android app in the Google Play market that was surreptitiously made malicious by a library the developers used to earn advertising revenue. With that, the app was infected with code that caused 100 million infected devices to connect to attacker-controlled servers and download secret payloads. Now, history is repeating itself. Researchers from the same Moscow, Russia-based security firm reported Monday that they found two new apps, downloaded from Play 11 million times, that were infected with the same malware family. The researchers, from Kaspersky, believe a malicious software developer kit for integrating advertising capabilities is once again responsible. [...]

The researchers found Necro in two Google Play apps. One was Wuta Camera, an app with 10 million downloads to date. Wuta Camera versions 6.3.2.148 through 6.3.6.148 contained the malicious SDK that infects apps. The app has since been updated to remove the malicious component. A separate app with roughly 1 million downloads -- known as Max Browser -- was also infected. That app is no longer available in Google Play. The researchers also found Necro infecting a variety of Android apps available in alternative marketplaces. Those apps typically billed themselves as modified versions of legitimate apps such as Spotify, Minecraft, WhatsApp, Stumble Guys, Car Parking Multiplayer, and Melon Sandbox. People who are concerned they may be infected by Necro should check their devices for the presence of indicators of compromise listed at the end of this writeup.

Amazon, Meta, and Tesla were named by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) as some of the worst corporate underminers of democracy . These companies were accused of union busting, monopolizing media and technology, violating human rights, contributing to climate change, and fostering political movements that threaten democratic institutions. The full list of "corporate underminers of democracy for 2024" is Amazon, Blackstone Group, ExxonMobil, Glencore, Meta, Tesla and the Vanguard Group. The Register reports: The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) today published a list of seven companies it said were "emblematic" of the ways large international corporations have begun tossing their weight around to influence global affairs. Those businesses, ITUC noted, violate trade union and alleged human rights, monopolize media and technology, exacerbate the climate catastrophe and try to privatize public services in a way that "protects and expands [their] own profits by undermining democracy." "These companies deploy complex lobbying operations to undermine popular will and disrupt existing or nascent global policy that could hold them accountable," ITUC wrote. The desire for greater corporate power, the Confederation added, invariably puts corporate interests in bed with anti-democratic political movements like the modern far-right. Right-wing politicians, ITUC noted, tend to lower taxes, undercut higher wages for workers, crack down on trade unions, and the like - all things sure to please the likes of corporations like Amazon, Tesla, and Meta as evidenced by plenty of prior reporting and research. For Amazon, the ITUC criticized the company for becoming "notorious for its union busting and low wages, monopoly in e-commerce, egregious carbon emissions through its AWS [datacenters], corporate tax evasion and lobbying."

Meta was accused of exploiting user data, undermining privacy laws, manipulating global information, and failing to regulate harmful content on its platforms. "Meta's algorithms can quite literally alter humanity's perceptions of reality," ITUC said. "Its revenue model exploits trillions of personalized data points to deliver highly effective advertising." Some have referred to the company as "a foreign state, populated by people without sovereignty, ruled by a leader with absolute power."

As for Tesla, it was condemned for poor labor practices, anti-union politics, unsafe working conditions, human rights violations, and environmental damage in its supply chain. "The world's most highly-valued automaker has quickly become known as one of its most belligerent employers. Tesla's rapid market success has been outpaced only by the descent of its corporate leaders into anti-democratic, anti-union politics."

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: On Thursday, Amazon Ads announced Video Generator and Live Image, "our first generative AI-powered technology designed to remove creative barriers and enable brands to produce lifestyle imagery that enhances ad performance."

Amazon's blog post calls it "a new feature that uses generative AI technology to make it easier for advertisers to create more interesting and relevant video ads for customers. The new feature, Video generator, creates visually rich video content in a matter of minutes and at no additional cost. Using a single product image, Video generator curates custom AI-generated videos tailored to a product's distinct selling proposition and features, leveraging Amazon's unique insights to vividly bring a product story to life."

An accompanying video demonstrates how Amazon's AI-powered tech can be used to animate still images, making it appear that steam is rising from a coffee mug, flowers are being blown in the wind, the night sky is changing breathtakingly behind a telescope, and that waves are breaking behind a smart speaker at the beach.

In the antitrust trial alleging Google had an ad-selling monopoly, "government lawyers have said some of their strongest evidence is in Google's own internal communications," reports the Wall Street Journal: [In 2010] a new crop of ad-tech companies were threatening Google's bottom line. "One way to make sure we don't get further behind in the market is picking up the one with the most traction and parking it somewhere..." [wrote YouTube Chief Executive Neal Mohan, who previously ran Google's display-ads business]. Google ended up buying one such company, AdMeld, for $400 million in 2011. Google shut down AdMeld two years later, after incorporating some of the startup's technology into its ad exchange, known commonly as AdX.

The Justice Department argued that AdMeld was part of a larger trend: Google acquiring nascent rivals to corner the market and then locking customers into using its products by conditioning access to one software tool on them paying for another... In a 2016 email introduced by the government, Google executive Jonathan Bellack asked colleagues: "Is there a deeper issue with us owning the platform, the exchange, and a huge network? The analogy would be if Goldman or Citibank owned the NYSE [New York Stock Exchange]...." The Justice Department also cited a 2018 email from another then-executive, Chris LaSala, who raised concerns internally over the 20% cut that Google takes from many of its AdX customers, saying Google was extracting "irrationally high rent" from users. "I don't think there is 20% of value in comparing two bids," wrote LaSala. "AdX is not providing additional liquidity to the market. It is simply running the auction."

Another former Google executive, Eisar Lipkovitz, testified that Google's omnipresence in ad-tech gives rise to conflicts of interest. Lipkovitz was rebuffed when he tried to get Google to lower the cut it took from AdX, he testified in a prerecorded deposition. The Justice Department finished presenting its case on Friday. Other witnesses included Google customers. One was Stephanie Layser, a former News Corp executive, who said she felt she had no choice but to use Google technology because the search giant has such market power that switching to another ad server would have meant losing out on millions in advertising revenue.
Google's lawyer countered that "There will be no witness in this case who can say with clarity where this industry is going in the next five years."

Or, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, "It makes no sense to focus on display ads, Google argues, when the industry is shifting to apps, social media and streaming services. Far from monopolizing the space, Google is actually losing ground, Google lawyer Karen Dunn said in her opening trial statement..."

Salon looks closer at a new $51,744-per-violation AI regulation officially approved one month ago by America's FTC — calling it a financial blow "If you're a digital media company whose revenue comes from publishing AI-generated articles and fake product reviews.

But they point out the rules also ban "product review suppression." Per the ruling, that means it's a violation for "anyone to use an unfounded or groundless legal threat, a physical threat, intimidation, or a public false accusation in response to a consumer review... to (1) prevent a review or any portion thereof from being written or created, or (2) cause a review or any portion thereof to be removed, whether or not that review or a portion thereof is replaced with other content."

Finally... The rule makes it a violation for a business to "provide compensation or other incentives in exchange for, or conditioned expressly or by implication on, the writing or creation of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment, whether positive or negative, regarding the product, service or business...." [T]he new rule also prevents secretly advertising for yourself while pretending to be an independent outlet or company. It bars "the creation or operation of websites, organizations or entities that purportedly provide independent reviews or opinions of products or services but are, in fact, created and controlled by the companies offering the products or services."

In an earlier statement, FTC Consumer Protection Bureau head Sam Levine, said the new rule "should help level the playing field for honest companies. We're using all available means to attack deceptive advertising in the digital age," he said.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader mspohr for sharing the article.

The Federal Trade Commission said on Thursday it found that several social media and streaming services engaged in a "vast surveillance" of consumers, including minors, collecting and sharing more personal information than most users realized. From a report: The findings come from a study of how nine companies -- including Meta, YouTube and TikTok -- collected and used consumer data. The sites, which mostly offer free services, profited off the data by feeding it into advertising that targets specific users by demographics, according to the report. The companies also failed to protect users, especially children and teens.

The F.T.C. said it began its study nearly four years ago to offer the first holistic look into the opaque business practices of some of the biggest online platforms that have created multibillion-dollar ad businesses using consumer data. The agency said the report showed the need for federal privacy legislation and restrictions on how companies collect and use data. "Surveillance practices can endanger people's privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from identify theft to stalking," said Lina Kahn, the F.T.C.'s chair, in a statement.

Snapchat's terms of service for its "My Selfie" tool reserve the right to use users' AI-generated images in ads. While users can opt out by disabling the "See My Selfie in Ads" feature, it is enabled by default. 404 Media's Emanuel Maiberg reports: A support page on the Snapchat website titled "What is My Selfie?" explains further: "You'll take selfies with your Snap camera or select images from your camera roll. These images will be used to understand what you look like to enable you, Snap and your friends to generate novel images of you. If you're uploading images from the camera roll, only add images of yourself," Snapchat's site says. "After you've successfully onboarded, you may have access to some features powered by My Selfie, like Cameos stickers and AI Snaps. We are constantly adding features and functionality so stay tuned for more My Selfie features."

After seeing the popup, I searched for instances of people getting ads featuring their own face on Snapchat, and found this thread on the r/Privacy Reddit community where a user claimed exactly this happened to them. In an email to 404 Media, Snapchat said that it couldn't confirm or deny whether this user was served an ad featuring their face, but if they did, the ad was not using My Selfie images. Snapchat also said that it investigated the claim in the Reddit thread and that the advertiser, yourdreamdegree.com, has a history of advertising on Snapchat and that Snapchat believes the ad in question does not violate any of its policies. "The photo that was used in the advertisement is clearly AI, however, it is very clearly me," the Reddit user said. "It has my face, my hair, the clothing I wear, and even has my lamp & part of a painting on my wall in the background. I have no idea how they got photos of me to be able to generate this ad." Snapchat confirmed the news but emphasized that advertisers do not have access to Snapchat users' generative AI data. "You are correct that our terms do reserve the right, in the future, to offer advertising based on My Selfies in which a Snapchatter can see themselves in a generated image delivered to them," a Snapchat spokesperson said. "As explained in the onboarding modal, Snapchatters have full control over this, and can turn this on and off in My Selfie Settings at any time."

Google's acquisition strategy in online advertising has come under scrutiny in the U.S. antitrust trial against the tech giant. Neal Mohan, YouTube CEO and former Google ad executive, defended the company's purchases of DoubleClick and Admeld, saying they were aimed at competing, not neutralizing rivals.

The Justice Department alleges Google built an impenetrable ad empire by owning key parts of the ad tech stack, stifling competition. Prosecutors pointed to internal emails discussing "parking" acquired companies, which they argue shows intent to sideline competitors. Mohan countered that "parking" meant allowing acquired firms to operate independently while integrating with Google's technology.

A Google executive told colleagues the goal for the company's then-nascent online advertising business in 2009 was to "crush" rival advertising networks, according to evidence prosecutors presented at the tech titan's antitrust trial on Wednesday. From a report: The statements underscored the U.S. Department of Justice's claim that Google has sought to monopolize markets for publisher ad servers and advertiser ad networks, and tried to dominate the market for ad exchanges which sit in the middle. On the third day of the trial, prosecutors began to introduce evidence of how Google employees thought about the company's products at the time when the government alleges it set out to dominate the ad tech market.

"We'll be able to crush the other networks and that's our goal," David Rosenblatt, Google's former president of display advertising, said of the company's strategy in late 2008 or early 2009, according to notes shown in court. Google denies the allegations, saying it faces fierce competition from rival digital advertising companies. Rosenblatt came to Google in 2008 when it acquired his former ad tech company, DoubleClick, and left the following year. The notes of his talk showed him discussing the advantages of owning technology on both sides and the middle of the market. "We're both Goldman and NYSE," he said, he said, according to the notes, referring to one of the world's biggest stock exchanges at the time and one of its biggest market makers. "Google has created what's comparable to the NYSE or London Stock Exchange; in other words, we'll do to display what Google did to search," Rosenblatt said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired, written by Guthrie Scrimgeour: It always seemed difficult for the newspaper where I used to work, The Garden Island on the rural Hawaiian island of Kauai, to hire reporters. If someone left, it could take months before we hired a replacement, if we ever did. So, last Thursday, I was happy to see that the paper appeared to have hired two new journalists -- even if they seemed a little off. In a spacious studio overlooking a tropical beach, James, a middle-aged Asian man who appears to be unable to blink, and Rose, a younger redhead who struggles to pronounce words like "Hanalei" and "TV," presented their first news broadcast, over pulsing music that reminds me of the Challengers score. There is something deeply off-putting about their performance: James' hands can't stop vibrating. Rose's mouth doesn't always line up with the words she's saying.

When James asks Rose about the implications of a strike on local hotels, Rose just lists hotels where the strike is taking place. A story on apartment fires "serves as a reminder of the importance of fire safety measures," James says, without naming any of them. James and Rose are, you may have noticed, not human reporters. They are AI avatars crafted by an Israeli company named Caledo, which hopes to bring this tech to hundreds of local newspapers in the coming year. "Just watching someone read an article is boring," says Dina Shatner, who cofounded Caledo with her husband Moti in 2023. "But watching people talking about a subject -- this is engaging."

The Caledo platform can analyze several prewritten news articles and turn them into a "live broadcast" featuring conversation between AI hosts like James and Rose, Shatner says. While other companies, like Channel 1 in Los Angeles, have begun using AI avatars to read out prewritten articles, this claims to be the first platform that lets the hosts riff with one another. The idea is that the tech can give small local newsrooms the opportunity to create live broadcasts that they otherwise couldn't. This can open up embedded advertising opportunities and draw in new customers, especially among younger people who are more likely to watch videos than read articles. Reception of the AI avatars has been poor, notes Scrimgeour. "This ain't that,â says one Instagram commenter. "Keep journalism local." Another just reads: "Nightmares."

There's also concern around the jobs these avatars will take. "Caledo claims its AI won't take news jobs because it only does work that isn't being done otherwise," notes Scrimgeour, agreeing that his newspaper company never had a video broadcast while he worked there.

"The question is, will local audiences buy into the new tech? Early returns suggest that Kauai viewers, at least, might have trouble accepting James and Rose as kama'aina (locals)..."

Ford is seeking a patent for technology that would allow it to tailor in-car advertising by listening to conversations among vehicle occupants, as well as by analyzing a car's historical location and other data, according to a patent application published late last month. The Record: "In one example, the controller may monitor user dialogue to detect when individuals are in a conversation," the patent application says. "The conversations can be parsed for keywords or phrases that may indicate where the occupants are traveling to." The tech -- labeled as "in-vehicle advertisement presentation" -- will determine where a car is located, how fast it is traveling, what type of road it is driving on and whether it is in traffic. It also will predict routes, speeds and destinations to customize ads to drivers, the application said.

The system could pull data from "audio signals within the vehicle and/or historical user data, selecting a number of the advertisements to present to the user during the trip," the patent application said. By monitoring dialogue between vehicle occupants the ad controller system can determine when to deliver audio versus visual ads, providing ads to drivers as they travel "through a human-machine interface (HMI) of the vehicle," the application said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A group of Democratic senators is urging the FTC and Justice Department to investigate whether AI tools that summarize and regurgitate online content like news and recipes may amount to anticompetitive practices. In a letter to the agencies, the senators, led by Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), explained their position that the latest AI features are hitting creators and publishers while they're down. As journalistic outlets experience unprecedented consolidation and layoffs, "dominant online platforms, such as Google and Meta, generate billions of dollars per year in advertising revenue from news and other original content created by others. New generative AI features threaten to exacerbate these problems."

The letter continues: "While a traditional search result or news feed links may lead users to the publisher's website, an AI-generated summary keeps the users on the original search platform, where that platform alone can profit from the user's attention through advertising and data collection. [] Moreover, some generative AI features misappropriate third-party content and pass it off as novel content generated by the platform's AI. Publishers who wish to avoid having their content summarized in the form of AI-generated search results can only do so if they opt out of being indexed for search completely, which would result in a materially significant drop in referral traffic. In short, these tools may pit content creators against themselves without any recourse to profit from AI-generated content that was composed using their original content. This raises significant competitive concerns in the online marketplace for content and advertising revenues."

Essentially, the senators are saying that a handful of major companies control the market for monetizing original content via advertising, and that those companies are rigging that market in their favor. Either you consent to having your articles, recipes, stories, and podcast transcripts indexed and used as raw material for an AI, or you're cut out of the loop. The letter goes on to ask the FTC and DOJ to investigate whether these new methods are "a form of exclusionary conduct or an unfair method of competition in violation of the antitrust laws." [...] The letter was co-signed by Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Tina Smith (D-MN).

Most kitchen products use plastics that are practically unrecyclable, yet a trade group representing major brands is pressuring regulators to allow companies to label such items as "recyclable," even though they are likely to end up in landfills. Experts warn this could worsen the plastic crisis and misleading labels could further deceive consumers about the true recyclability of these products. ProPublica reports: The Consumer Brands Association believes companies should be able to stamp "recyclable" on products that are technically "capable" of being recycled, even if they're all but guaranteed to end up in a landfill. As ProPublica previously reported, the group argued for a looser definition of "recyclable" in written comments to the Federal Trade Commission as the agency revises the Green Guides -- guidelines for advertising products with sustainable attributes. [...] ProPublica contacted the 51 companies on the association's board of directors to ask if they agreed with the trade group's definition of "recyclable." Most did not respond. None said they disagreed with the definition. Nine companies referred ProPublica back to the association.

The Green Guides are meant to increase consumer trust in sustainable products. Though these guidelines are not laws, they serve as a national reference for companies and other government agencies for how to define terms like "compostable," "nontoxic" and "recyclable." [...] The current Green Guides allow companies to label products and packaging as "recyclable" if at least 60% of Americans have access to facilities that will take the material. As written, the guidelines don't specify whether it's enough for the facilities to simply collect and sort the items or if there needs to be a reasonable expectation that the material will be made into something new. "The Green Guides have long set forth that items labeled as 'recyclable' are those which are capable of being recycled," [Joseph Aquilina, the association's vice president and deputy general counsel] told ProPublica. "Any characterization suggesting Consumer Brands is pushing for a 'looser definition' is false." But the association seemed to disregard what the FTC said in a separate document released alongside the guides, which states that a truthful recyclable claim means that "a substantial majority of consumers or communities have access to facilities that will actually recycle, not accept and ultimately discard, the product."

In its comments to the FTC, the association pushed back on that idea. The U.S. recycling system is decentralized, and manufacturers have no control over economic factors that might lead a recycler to change its mind about how it handles a certain type of plastic, the association wrote, adding that it was unrealistic to force brands to predict which products will be "ultimately recycled." The association represents sellers and will naturally seek more flexibility in its positions, Jef Richards, a professor of advertising and public relations at Michigan State University, said in an email. The "problem with defining 'recyclable' as anything that MIGHT be recycled is that I seriously doubt that's how consumers define it." When consumer expectations fail to match what the advertiser is saying, "consumers are being deceived," he added. That deception has concrete impacts: Plastic bags that mistakenly end up at recycling centers can gum up machinery, start fires and contaminate bales of paper, which then can't be recycled. The problem could get worse if the FTC listens to the Consumer Brands Association and allows companies to market plastic bags as "recyclable."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: For years, Google has faced complaints about how it dominates the online advertising market. Many of the concerns stem from the internet giant's suite of software known as Google Ad Manager, which websites around the world use to sell ads on their sites. The technology conducts split-second auctions to place ads each time a user loads a page. The dominance of that technology has landed Google in federal court. On Monday, Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia will preside over the start of a trial in which the Department of Justice accuses the company of abusing control of its ad technology and violating antitrust law (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source).

It would be Google's second antitrust trial in less than a year. In August, a federal judge ruled in a separate case that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in online search, a major victory for the Justice Department. The new trial is the latest salvo by federal antitrust regulators against Big Tech, testing a century-old competition law against companies that have reshaped the way people shop, communicate and consume information. Federal regulators have also filed antitrust lawsuits against Apple,Amazon and Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, saying those companies have also abused their power. Google's vice president for regulatory affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland, said in a blog post on Sunday that the Justice Department was "picking winners and losers in a highly competitive industry."

"With the cost of ads going down and the number of ads sold going up, the market is working," she said. "The DOJ's case risks inefficiencies and higher prices -- the last thing that America's economy or our small businesses need right now."