00:00The U.S. Justice Department sues TikTok, Musk is being taken to court in Ireland, and Google
00:04is branded a monopoly.
00:05Here are the top tech news stories that you need to know about, in case you missed it.
00:09In 2019, TikTok agreed to U.S. court order to not collect personal info from its young
00:13users without parents' consent, and apparently they almost immediately breached that order.
00:18It's a bold strategy, Cotton.
00:19Let's see if it pays off for them.
00:21They say, as of 2020, TikTok banned under 13 users from signing up, but allowed them
00:26to change their birthday to bypass restrictions.
00:29Users allegedly only spent five to seven seconds checking for age violations.
00:32TikTok said that millions of accounts flagged as potentially underage were allegedly not
00:36removed due to a bug in TikTok's tools.
00:39Google is back in the headlines this week as a U.S. judge has ruled that Google violated
00:43antitrust laws.
00:45In 2021 alone, Google paid $26.3 billion to ensure that its search engine is the default
00:51on smartphones and browsers.
00:52Default.
00:53That is some prime real estate.
00:55Nice move.
00:57Google controls about 90% of the online search market and 95% on smartphones.
01:02The published court document states, Google's distribution agreements are exclusive and
01:06of anti-competitive effects, and Google has not offered valid pro-competitive justifications
01:11for those agreements.
01:12Importantly, the court also finds that Google has exercised its monopoly powers by changing
01:17supra-competitive prices for general search text ads.
01:20That conduct has allowed Google to earn monopoly profits.
01:23So, in layman's terms, they were basically charging absurd prices for competitors to show
01:28up in ads.
01:29Or, as the judge put it, Google is a monopolist.
01:31And it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.
01:34And finally, Elon Musk is in the spotlight.
01:36Again.
01:37I mean, for more reasons than one, but for now, we'll focus on his upcoming court case
01:41in Ireland.
01:42He's being taken to court for using Europeans' data to train AI models.
01:45Musk decided last month to process user data to train its Grok AI model without notifying
01:50or asking people if they're okay with that.
01:51At least they didn't ask me about the date personally.
01:53And GDPR requires any processing of people's data to have a valid legal basis.
01:58Breaches can result in penalties of up to 4% of global annual turnover.
02:02The injunction proceedings will return before the high court next week.
02:06That's it for this week, and see you next time.
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