Beyond Cupertino

The Senate has passed two major child protection bills that could have a dramatic impact on how social media apps operate. Update: Congress went into recess before the KOSA Act could reach a vote in the House, and a Wired report suggests the House Republican leadership may not prioritize it when lawmakers return.

If the bills make it through the House to become law, then social media apps would have to make it possible for users to disable algorithmic feeds – with other changes also required …

Ah, the saga of X’s blue checkmarks! Originally a sign that someone was who they claimed to be, and later sold so that cryptocurrency scammers could see their posts boosted, the company is now coming full circle with some journalists.

Update: After a number of journalist accounts got unwanted blue checkmarks, Twitter has now made it impossible to hide it – see update at end …

Redditors who took advantage of their privileged access to stock ahead of the IPO have seen Reddit share value rocket from $34 to $59.80 by yesterday’s close – an 86% increase.

Update: Subsequent share sales by the company’s CEO and COO – coupled to a report describing the stock as “grossly overvalued” – saw the price fall to $49.32, below the closing price on the day of the IPO …

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is reportedly holding a series of closed-door briefings intended to persuade senators to force the sale of TikTok to a US company, rather than ban it outright.

This follows Congress voting overwhelmingly in favor of either a ban or forced sale, while passage through the Senate is less certain …

We don’t yet know the exact cost of Reddit shares when they go on sale, but the company has indicated that the initial public offering (IPO) price will be between $31 and $34 per share.

Selected Redditors will get priority access ahead of the IPO, and unlike most preferential access deals, they will be free to sell their shares immediately if they wish to …

The OpenAI mess was all but over as of last November, but there was one outstanding item: an official review into the actions of CEO Sam Altman. Update: The internal review is now complete, Altman has now been officially appointed to the board, with three new directors.

The board expressed full confidence in the leadership of Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, but the mystery of what led to his removal in the first place remains unsolved – more at the end …

The first invitations to participate in the Reddit Directed Share Program (DSP) – in which moderators and very active users will get preferential access to shares – have now been issued.

Some moderators and other users with high Reddit karma have been invited to register, but so far vocal users seem unimpressed …

A new industry group known as the AI Alliance believes that artificial intelligence models should be open-source, in contrast to the proprietary models developed by OpenAI and Google.

Meta, IBM, Intel, and NASA are just some of the organizations to sign up, believing that the approach offers three key benefits …

The US, UK, and 16 other countries have signed an agreement pledging to take steps to make AI “secure by design.”

Although acknowledged to be a basic statement of principles, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has said that it’s an important first step …

The mystery of what led the OpenAI board to take the precipitous step of firing CEO Sam Altman may now have been solved. A new report says a number of researchers warned them of a new breakthrough which they said could threaten humanity – after Altman seemingly failed to inform them.

In a letter to the board, the researchers suggested that the breakthrough – dubbed Q* and pronounced Q-Star – could let AI “surpass humans in most economically valuable tasks” …

While not exactly our normal beat, it’s hard to ignore the biggest tech news of the day: the OpenAI drama which saw CEO Sam Altman abruptly fired from the ChatGPT developer. This happened without notice, and for reasons we can guess but which were not stated.

Latest updates: Almost all of the company’s 770 staff have now threatened to quit unless the board resigns and reinstates Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, and it appears that their return to the company is now a strong possibility – more at the bottom …

A new report says that personal information sold by data brokers is even more sensitive and detailed than previously thought, making so-called anonymized data even easier to tie back to specific individuals.

The report says that those buying data are able to target people working in extremely sensitive professions, including military personnel and “decision makers” working in national security roles …