(Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)

Meta wins in FTC antitrust trial

The five-year long case results in another big win for Big Tech as companies evade aging antitrust laws.

Meta has successfully defended itself from a five-year long Federal Trade Commission antitrust lawsuit, which alleged that the company’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp gave it a monopoly on social media.

The fast-moving tech product development cycle was an issue in the case. Started in the first Trump administration, the landscape and the apps themselves have changed significantly since the lawsuit was filed. Years later, Meta finds itself in fierce competition with TikTok, which was not part of the case.

In his bench trial decision, judge James Boasberg wrote:

With apps surging and receding, chasing one craze and moving on from others, and adding new features with each passing year, the FTC has understandably struggled to fix the boundaries of Meta’s product market. Even so, it continues to insist that Meta competes with the same old rivals it has for the last decade, that the company holds a monopoly among that small set, and that it maintained that monopoly through anticompetitive acquisitions. Whether or not Meta enjoyed monopoly power in the past, though, the agency must show that it continues to hold such power now. The Court’s verdict today determines that the FTC has not done so.

Meta’s stock pared some of its losses for the day on the news.

The win for Meta comes just months after Google’s antitrust victory. The FTC still has a pending antitrust suit against Amazon.

Congress votes to end shutdown

The over 40-day government shutdown came to an end without a guarantee that the ACA tax credits will be extended.

J. Edward Moreno11/12/25

Jon Keegan11/12/25

OpenAI: The New York Times is forcing us to turn over 20 million ChatGPT conversations

A judge in the The New York Times’ copyright lawsuit against OpenAI (and Microsoft) has ordered that the ChatGPT maker hand over the conversations of 20 million users to the Times’ lawyers, in an effort to find examples of copyright violations.

Today, OpenAI is lobbying the public in a last-ditch effort to prevent the release, which is due Friday:

“The New York Times is demanding that we turn over 20 million of your private ChatGPT conversations. They claim they might find examples of you using ChatGPT to try to get around their paywall. This demand disregards long-standing privacy protections, breaks with common-sense security practices, and would force us to turn over tens of millions of highly personal conversations from people who have no connection to the Times’ baseless lawsuit against OpenAI.”

If the company’s final appeals to the court do not succeed, OpenAI explains that it will de-identify the chat logs, scrub any personally identifying information from the chats, and that technical experts hired by The New York Times’ legal team will be the only ones who can examine the data, which will be tightly controlled.

Fighting the New York Times’ invasion of user privacy

Today, OpenAI is lobbying the public in a last-ditch effort to prevent the release, which is due Friday:

“The New York Times is demanding that we turn over 20 million of your private ChatGPT conversations. They claim they might find examples of you using ChatGPT to try to get around their paywall. This demand disregards long-standing privacy protections, breaks with common-sense security practices, and would force us to turn over tens of millions of highly personal conversations from people who have no connection to the Times’ baseless lawsuit against OpenAI.”

Millie Giles

THE BILL, PLEASE

11/10/25

The Senate just advanced a deal that could end the government shutdown

Prediction markets have done a U-turn as Washington looks to end the longest government shutdown in US history.

USA government shutdown, political crisis concept illustration

Max Knoblauch11/4/25

Big four airlines sink as Transportation Secretary Duffy says parts of US airspace could close if shutdown continues

The US may close parts of its airspace as early as next week if the government shutdown continues, according to comments made by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Tuesday.

“If you bring us to a week from today, Democrats, you will see mass chaos. You will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it,” Duffy said at a news briefing on Tuesday.

The shutdown, which entered its 35th day on Tuesday, has fueled already problematic shortages of air traffic controllers. This week, airlines said 3.2 million passengers have faced delays or cancellations because of the shortages. Last week, about 13,000 air traffic controllers and 50,000 TSA agents received their first $0 paycheck amid the shutdown.

Shares of the big four US airlines all sank on Duffy’s comments, with United Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta Air Lines all down more than 5%.

Jon Keegan11/3/25

Trump’s deal offering top Nvidia chips to China was nixed at last minute, the WSJ reports

Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, really wants to sell the chipmaker’s most powerful Blackwell GPUs to China. He almost had his way.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, President Trump was ready to put Blackwell chips on the negotiating table for his meeting with Chinese President Xi to seek relief from China’s decision to block crucial rare earth exports to the US.

But according to the report, Trump advisers presented a unified front and were able to dissuade him from giving up the most powerful chips to China at the last minute. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were among those opposed to the chip deal. After the meeting, Trump said he did not talk with Xi about Nvidia’s “super duper” chips.

Reportedly those opposed to the deal cited national security concerns, as well as wanting to keep a competitive edge as China seeks to challenge the US’s current dominance of the AI industry.

Exclusive | Trump Officials Torpedoed Nvidia’s Push to Export AI Chips to China