Category: congress

Sen. Wyden proposes limits on exportation of American’s personal data

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has proposed a draft bill that would limit the types of information that could be bought and sold by tech companies abroad, and the countries it could be legally sold in. The legislation is imaginative and not highly specific, but it indicates growing concern at the…

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Lawmakers press Instagram for details on its plans for kids

A group of Democratic lawmakers wrote to Mark Zuckerberg this week to press the CEO on his plans to curate a version of Instagram for children. In a hearing last month, Zuckerberg confirmed reporting by BuzzFeed that the company was exploring an age-gated version of its app designed for young…

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These House hearings on tech are a waste of time and everyone knows it

If Congress wants to write laws that effectively regulate companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter, it needs to change the ways it interacts with those companies, because these hearings ain’t it. They’re a waste of everyone’s time, and no one is even pretending otherwise. To truly put Big Tech on…

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SESO Labor is providing a way for migrant farmworkers to get legally protected work status in the US

As the Biden administration works to bring legislation to Congress to address the endemic problem of immigration reform in America, on the other side of the nation a small California startup called SESO Labor has raised $4.5 million to ensure that farms can have access to legal migrant labor. SESO’s…

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House punishes Republican lawmaker who promoted violent conspiracy theories

Democrats in the House voted to strip freshman Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of some of her responsibilities Thursday, citing her penchant for violent, anti-democratic and at times anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Greene has expressed support for a range of alarming conspiracies, including the belief that the 2018 Parkland school shooting…

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The somewhat boring reason it appears that Robinhood yanked trading on some securities

After enduring a day’s worth of taking a beating across social media, government, and the various app stores of the mobile world, Robinhood took to its own blog and CEO’s Twitter account to explain why it had halted trading of some stocks earlier today. That Robinhood had restricted trading in a…

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