Wednesday’s top tech news: Section 230 on trial
Image: GettyPlus yet more Twitter layoffs, and Nvidia partners with Microsoft as it fights to acquire Activision Blizzard. Continue reading…
Koichiko
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Yesterday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google, which is a case with potentially huge ramifications for Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (aka, “The Twenty-Six words that Created the Internet”). My colleague Adi Robertson has a great writeup of the day’s proceedings, which centers around whether YouTube’s video recommendation algorithm represents a form of speech that shouldn’t have Section 230 protections.
Next up, Elon Musk is continuing to lay off dozens of employees at Twitter, despite claiming last November that the bulk of the firings were over. He’s also set a week’s deadline to overhaul the platform’s ad targeting to work more like Google’s.
And finally, Microsoft has announced a partnership with Nvidia as it attempts to lobby regulators to allow its acquisition of Activision Blizzard to proceed. As with Nintendo, the deal centers around offering Xbox games on Nvidia’s platform for 10 years. Note that the “platform” in this case is Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service rather than a specific piece of hardware.
Now, here’s a silly tweet to start your day:
Stay tuned, as we continue to update this list with the most important news of today: Wednesday, February 22nd, 2023.
Bill Gates snags a 3.76 percent stake in Heineken’s parent company.
His shares are reportedly worth about 880 million euros ($936 million). Despite being “not a big beer drinker,” it’s a 2007 investment in another brewery, Femsa, that has brought Heineken into the Gates investment fold.
It’s an interesting arrangement, considering the Melinda & Bill Gates Foundation-sponsored study released last year laying out both potential health risks (particularly for people under 40) and benefits from alcohol consumption:
These findings highlight the need for tailored guidelines that discourage alcohol consumption among young people, as well as alcohol control policies and interventions that are targeted especially towards young males.
