breakfastmtn

Members of Brazil’s supreme court have unanimously voted to uphold the ban on X, after Elon Musk’s refusal to comply with local laws led to the social network being blocked in one of its biggest markets.

On Monday, five of the court’s justices were asked to consider Friday’s decision to temporarily banish X from Brazil, where the platform has more than 21 million users. By lunchtime all five had voted in favour of the ban.

Casting his vote in favour of X’s continued suspension, Flávio Dino said the company’s decision to “deliberately” ignore a court order to name a legal representative in Brazil suggested it “considered itself above the rule of law”.

Is Google signaling the end of the open web? That’s some of the concern raised by its new embrace of AI. While most of the fears about AI may be overblown, this one could be legit. But it doesn’t mean that we need to accept it.

These days, there is certainly a lot of hype and nonsense about artificial intelligence and the ways that it can impact all kinds of industries and businesses. Last week at Google IO, Google made it clear that they’re moving forward with what it calls “AI overviews,” in which Google’s own Gemini AI tech will try to generate answers at the top of search pages.

MBFC
Archive

Is Google signaling the end of the open web? That’s some of the concern raised by its new embrace of AI. While most of the fears about AI may be overblown, this one could be legit. But it doesn’t mean that we need to accept it.

These days, there is certainly a lot of hype and nonsense about artificial intelligence and the ways that it can impact all kinds of industries and businesses. Last week at Google IO, Google made it clear that they’re moving forward with what it calls “AI overviews,” in which Google’s own Gemini AI tech will try to generate answers at the top of search pages.

MBFC
Archive

The possibility of a TikTok ban is inching closer to becoming a reality at this point. On Tuesday, the Senate passed the bill that would bar the social media platform from operating in the U.S. unless ByteDance, its Chinese parent company, sells its stake.

. . .

t begs the question: In today’s social landscape, do brands ever own their audiences?

The answer is no, according to three agency executives who say it’s time to start exploring contingency plans that don’t hinge on any of the walled gardens of social media titans like Meta, X or TikTok. Looking for the next frontier, some are pointing toward the fediverse.

Archive

The possibility of a TikTok ban is inching closer to becoming a reality at this point. On Tuesday, the Senate passed the bill that would bar the social media platform from operating in the U.S. unless ByteDance, its Chinese parent company, sells its stake.

. . .

It begs the question: In today’s social landscape, do brands ever own their audiences?

The answer is no, according to three agency executives who say it’s time to start exploring contingency plans that don’t hinge on any of the walled gardens of social media titans like Meta, X or TikTok. Looking for the next frontier, some are pointing toward the fediverse.

Archive

Post News, a Twitter alternative that emerged in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover, is shutting down. Noam Bardin, the platform’s founder and former CEO of Waze, writes that Post News “is not growing fast enough to become a real business or a significant platform.”

The Andreessen Horowitz-backed platform launched in a closed beta in November 2022, but now it’s set to shutter “within the next few weeks.” It serves as a social platform that also offers users ad-free access to paywalled content from publishers such as Fortune, Business Insider, Wired, The Boston Globe, and others. All users have to do is pay a “few cents” per article instead of signing up for a subscription to each publication.

It’s become yet another subsidiary of Trump Inc.

When historians chronicle the end of the Grand Old Party, they may mark 2024 as the turning point. Something called the Republican Party will surely exist for years to come, like a legacy brand subsumed by a competitor, but it appears to be coming to its end as a functional party. Instead, the Republican Party has become just another subsidiary of Donald Trump Inc.

Yesterday, Trump announced his effective takeover of the Republican National Committee, endorsing Michael Whatley, the chair of the North Carolina GOP, as chair; his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair; and one of his top campaign advisers, Chris LaCivita, as chief operating officer. LaCivita will reportedly also remain with the Trump presidential campaign, splitting time. The current chair of the party, Ronna McDaniel, is stepping down because of pressure from Trump.

Officially, these are only recommendations, but they seem nearly certain to become reality.

Archive
MBFC

If anyone gets a thank-you note from President Biden for helping get him out of a jam in recent days, it should probably be former President Donald J. Trump.

Just when Mr. Biden was swamped by unwelcome questions about his age, his predecessor and challenger stepped in, rescuing him with an ill-timed diatribe vowing to “encourage” Russia to attack NATO allies that do not spend enough on their militaries.

The stunner from Mr. Trump over the weekend not only drew attention away from the president’s memory problems, as detailed in a special counsel report, but also provided a convenient way for Mr. Biden’s defenders to reframe the issue: Yes, they could now say, the incumbent may be an old man who sometimes forgets things, but his challenger is both aging and dangerously reckless.

Archive

The idea was to isolate him, to make him a pariah, to put him in a box as punishment for brazen violations of international law. They kicked him out of their world leaders’ clubhouse, cut off his country’s economy, even issued an arrest warrant against him for war crimes.

But Vladimir V. Putin does not look all that isolated these days. Mr. Putin, the Russian president with czar envy who invaded neighboring Ukraine without provocation, killing or injuring hundreds of thousands, is having something of a moment in the United States.

With the help of a populist former Fox News star and America’s richest man, Mr. Putin has gained a platform to justify his actions even as Russian and American journalists languish in his prisons. His favored candidate is poised to win the Republican presidential nomination while Congress weighs abandoning Ukraine to the tender mercies of Russian invaders.

Archive

Fraud. Hush money. Election subversion. Mar-a-Lago documents. One place to keep track of the presidential candidate’s legal troubles.

In all, Trump faces 91 felony counts across two state courts and two different federal districts, any of which could potentially produce a prison sentence. He’s also dealing with a civil suit in New York that could force drastic changes to his business empire, including closing down its operations in his home state. Meanwhile, he is the leading Republican candidate in the race to become the next president—though the Supreme Court has now heard a case seeking to disqualify him. If the criminal and civil cases unfold with any reasonable timeliness, he could be in the heat of the campaign at the same time that his legal fate is being decided.

Here’s a summary of the major legal cases against Trump, including key dates, an assessment of the gravity of the charges, and expectations about how they could turn out. This guide will be updated regularly as the cases proceed.

Archive

Senate Republicans and Democrats on Sunday cemented a compromise plan to crack down on unlawful migration across the U.S. border with Mexico and cleared a critical hurdle to an aid package for Ukraine, but the deal faces long odds in a Congress deeply divided over both issues.

The release of the agreement, struck after more than three months of near-daily talks among senators and Biden administration officials, counted as an improbable breakthrough on a policy matter that has bedeviled presidents of both parties and defied efforts at compromise for decades on Capitol Hill. President Biden implored Congress late last month to pass it, promising to shut down the border immediately once it became law.

But Speaker Mike Johnson has pronounced it “dead on arrival” in the Republican-controlled House. And with former President Donald J. Trump actively campaigning against the deal, it was not clear whether the measure could even make it out of the Democratic-led Senate, where it needs bipartisan backing to move forward.

Archive

US airstrikes on Iranian-backed militias in the Middle East were just the beginning of a sustained response, the White House national security adviser warned on Sunday, as he refused to rule out strikes on Iranian soil.

Jake Sullivan said the strikes on Friday night against 85 targets in Iraq and Syria, designed as retaliation for the killing of three US soldiers, “were the beginning, not the end of our response, and … there will be more steps, some seen, some perhaps unseen, all in an effort to send a very clear message that when American forces are attacked, when Americans are killed, we will respond and we will respond forcefully”.

Speaking on NBC the day after separate overnight US and UK airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, Sullivan three times rejected a chance to rule out strikes on Iran itself, which would be a major escalation that the US has so far been determined to avoid.

Archive