SFGATE reports on the alarming rise of "Buy Now, Pay Later" services that are being heavily marketed by influencers and brands on TikTok and Instagram. "Gen Z, in particular, has fallen in love with the short-term loans, spending 925% more now through point-of-sale services than in January 2020," notes the report.

"But coupling nearly instantaneous loans with an influencer-addled social media culture that prioritizes exorbitant spending and normalizes debt could be further jeopardizing the financial futures of young people through just four easy payments." Here's an excerpt from the report: Financial experts who spoke with SFGATE expressed significant concerns about the way companies are targeting Gen Z consumers. "They are marketing very heavily to an audience that is younger, that might not just have as much experience on how to use credit and what credit implications are or what it means to have multiple loans at one time," Marisabel Torres, the California policy director of the Center for Responsible Lending, told SFGATE.

Few of the services do significant credit checks, which would help determine whether people will be able to repay the loans. And plenty of people are spending more than they can afford: 43% of Gen Z users have missed at least one payment, according to a survey by the polling site Piplsay. Of Gen Z consumers who used a point-of-sale loan for something they needed, 30% missed at least two payments, according to a survey by Credit Karma.

The companies are fully aware that their services encourage people to spend more. In fact, several of them market it as a benefit to stores that want to partner with them. "We do see larger cart sizes, larger purchases, relative to what they would put onto their debit cards and credit cards," Libor Michalek, the president of technology at Affirm, told SFGATE. Still, high-level staffers at Affirm and Afterpay -- both based in San Francisco -- positioned their services as more responsible, less predatory alternatives to credit cards and personal loans in interviews with SFGATE. They also emphasized the accessibility of these services, especially for younger consumers looking to bolster their credit and consumers working to restore their credit scores, despite the fact that many of the services don't report on-time payments to credit agencies. The report concludes by saying regulation is (probably) on its way. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, for example, signaled his support earlier this year for increasing regulations around point-of-sale loans. We're likely to see other states look into it in the coming months and years as well.

"While these services may be a responsible alternative to credit card debt for a good chunk of consumers, it seems increasingly likely that, without regulations, this kind of debt will burden the most financially vulnerable, just as credit cards, payday loans and layaway have in the past," reports SFGATE.

A judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit by former President Donald Trump seeking to lift his ban from Twitter. But San Francisco federal district court Judge James Donato left the door open for Trump and other plaintiffs to file an amended complaint against Twitter that is consistent with his written decision Friday to toss the lawsuit in its entirety. CNBC reports: The social media giant had banned Trump on Jan. 8, 2021, citing the risk of the incitement of further violence on the heels of the Capitol riot by a mob of supporters of the then-president two days earlier. Trump, the American Conservative Union, and five individuals had sued Twitter and its co-founder Jack Dorsey last year on behalf of themselves and a class of other Twitter users who had been booted from the app. [...] His suit alleged that Twitter violated the plaintiffs' First Amendment rights to free speech, arguing that the bans were due to pressure on the company by Democratic members of Congress.

But in his 17-page ruling, Donato wrote that Trump and the other plaintiffs "are not starting from a position of strength" with their First Amendment claim. The judge noted, citing federal case law, that, "Twitter is a private company, and "the First Amendment applies only to governmental abridgements of speech, and not to alleged abridgements by private companies.'" Donato rejected the notion that Twitter's ban of Trump and the others was attributable to the government's actions, which would be the only way to uphold the claim of a violation of the First Amendment. "Overall, the amended complaint does not plausibly allege that Twitter acted as a government entity when it closed plaintiffs' accounts," Donato wrote.

The suit also asked the judge to rule that the federal Communications Decency Act was unconstitutional. The CDA says online service providers such as Twitter cannot be held responsible for content posted by others. Donato dismissed that claim after finding that the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to challenge the CDA. The judge said the only way they could have such standing was to show that Twitter "would not have de-platformed the plaintiff" or others but for the legal immunity conferred by the CDA when it came to content. [...] Shortly after Twitter announced that it has agreed to be acquired by Elon Musk, Trump told Fox News that he is "not going back to Twitter," adding: "I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on Truth. I hope Elon buys Twitter because he'll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on Truth."

Following up on its earlier move to pull Audible audiobook purchases from its Play Store app, Amazon is also turning off Kindle digital book purchases on Android. Ars Technica reports: The Google Play purchasing crackdown is to blame, of course. Starting on June 1, Google will require all Play Store apps to use Google Play billing for digital purchases or face removal from the marketplace. Google Play billing technically has been in the rules for a while, but Google is ending a hands-off enforcement policy that effectively allowed companies to run their own billing systems. When you visit the Amazon app, you can still buy physical books, but digital purchases now show a "Why can't I buy on the app?" link instead of a purchase button. Amazon's link shows a popup that says, "To remain in compliance with the Google Play Store policies, you will no longer be able to buy new content from the app. You can build a reading list on the app and buy on [the] Amazon website from your browser."

Amazon Music purchases have also been shut down on the Google Play app. The move brings Amazon's Google Play app in line with the iOS app, which also doesn't allow digital purchases. On Android, Amazon is pushing users to the website, where they can still buy digital content or sign up for an unlimited subscription, which avoids the Play Store purchase lockdown. Google Play billing takes a percentage of in-app purchases (usually 30 percent, though media can be as low as 10 percent), and several big companies have responded to the rule change by removing purchases from their Android apps.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Wednesday welcomed the decision by a group of telecom and cable industry associations to abandon their legal challenge of the US state's net neutrality law SB822. "My office has fought for years to ensure that internet service providers can't interfere with or limit what Californians do online," said Bonta in a statement. "Now the case is finally over. Following multiple defeats in court, internet service providers have abandoned this effort to block enforcement of California's net neutrality law. With this victory, we've secured a free and open internet for California's 40 million residents once and for all."

In December 2017, then Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Ajit Pai tossed out the 2015 net neutrality rules put in place during the Obama administration, freeing broadband providers to block, throttle, and prioritize internet traffic, among other things -- all of which were disallowed under the 2015 rules. On September 30, 2018, then California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Senate Bill 822 (SB822), which more or less restored those rules. That same day, the Justice Department under the Trump administration challenged the law, as subsequently did the broadband companies benefiting from what Pai at the time referred to as a "light-touch approach."

The Justice Department, under the Biden administration, ended its opposition to California's net neutrality law back in February, 2021. The industry plaintiffs continued fighting SB822 in court but faced a setback in January, 2022, when the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit refused to block the law's enforcement as litigation progressed. Now those groups -- ACA Connects (America's Communications Association), CTIA (The Wireless Association), NCTA (The Internet & Television Association), and USTelecom (The Broadband Association) -- have withdrawn too. The trade associations, with the agreement of Bonta, filed a joint stipulation of dismissal without prejudice [PDF], which ends the telco legal challenge but allows the claim to be refiled at some later date.

The Federal Trade Commission today said it "has moved to stop Internet service provider Frontier Communications from lying to consumers and charging them for high-speed Internet speeds it fails to deliver." From a report: Frontier was sued by the FTC in May 2021, and on Thursday, it agreed to a settlement with the FTC and district attorneys in Los Angeles County and Riverside County who represented the people of California. Frontier must pay $8.5 million to California "for investigation and litigation costs" and another $250,000 that will be distributed to Frontier customers who were harmed by Frontier's alleged actions. Frontier must also make changes, such as letting customers cancel service at no charge and "discount[ing] the bills of California customers who have not been notified that they are receiving DSL service that is much slower than the highest advertised speed," the FTC said.

The U.S. sanctioned a cryptocurrency swap service on Friday, part of a larger effort to crack down on North Korea's practice of using hackers to steal money for the state. From a report: The sanctions, leveled against the company Blender.io, mark the first time that the U.S. Treasury Department has taken action against what is known in the cryptocurrency industry as a mixer, a for-profit service that allows users to move crypto between accounts without leaving a clear transaction record. Treasury said in a news release that North Korea has used Blender.io to launder more than $20.5 million of cryptocurrency that it allegedly stole from the online game Axie Infinity in March. Hackers stole more than $600 million worth of cryptocurrency from the game's owner. Blender.io did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Its site was inaccessible Friday.

It's looking increasingly likely that Wi-Fi 7 will be an option next year. This week, Qualcomm joined the list of chipmakers detailing Wi-Fi 7 products they expect to be available to homes and businesses soon. From a report: The Wi-Fi Alliance, which makes Wi-Fi standards and includes Qualcomm as a member, has said that Wi-Fi 7 will offer a max throughput of "at least 30Gbps," and on Wednesday, Qualcomm said its Network Pro Series Gen 3 platform will support "up to 33Gbps." These are theoretical speeds that you likely won't reach in your home, and you'll need a premium broadband connection and Wi-Fi 7 devices, which don't exist yet. Still, the speeds represent an impressive jump from Wi-Fi 6 and 6E's 9.6Gbps.

Coinbase's new marketplace for nonfungible tokens is now officially open to all -- and it's getting off to a very slow start. From a Bloomberg report on Wednesday: After letting in a select number of users from its waiting list in the last few weeks, the U.S.'s biggest crypto exchange opened the marketplace to everyone as of noon Wednesday New York time. The site -- which Coinbase says is still in testing -- recorded fewer than 110 transactions as of about 5:15 pm, representing less than $60,000 in sales, according to tracker Dune Analytics. (Update: Fewer than 1,700 transactions at the time of publication, representing less than $700,000 in sales) That compares with $124 million in transaction volume for No. 1 NFT marketplace OpenSea on May 3, the most recent day available, per Dune. The result is hardly the mad rush expected by some on Wall Street after Coinbase's NFT project attracted several million signups to its waiting list when it first announced the marketplace last fall. The new site is part of efforts by Coinbase to diversify its revenue and fuel growth, which is expected to turn negative this year. The NFT project is overseen by Surojit Chatterjee, a former Google employee who joined Coinbase last year at a compensation package of $646 million.

Nick Tomaino of 1confirmation, an investor at Coinbase, tweeted earlier this week, in part: I haven't sold a share of Coinbase but will sell all my shares if the company doesn't make a strong move in NFTs in the next year. The current NFT product is not it. Coinbase built a massive business by being the bridge that connects fiat and crypto and keeping a finger on the pulse of the bleeding edge of crypto. For the first decade of the company the main way people entered the space was cryptocurrency so being laser focused on BTC and later other coins made a lot of sense. NFTs are now the most important onramp to crypto. The data this year is undeniable. Macro enviornment weak, NFTs strong. The fact that Coinbase hasn't yet shipped a fiat > NFT onramp product is very bad for shareholders. There's already been billions of dollars left on the table by not offering a marketplace product.

Their whole approach to NFTs has been off. Months of vaporware to drum up hype and then an Instagram-like feed for NFT influencers feels like an approach from an out of touch Silicon Valley company who knows NFTs are hot but doesn't understand them deeply from user perspective. This is a major divergence from the crypto native company with a finger on the pulse that Coinbase has been historically. Being first to trends and having the will within the company to get meaningful shit done has been the hallmark. As a company grows it's always hard to keep that, but if the finger on the pulse is gone and Coinbase is no longer the leading bridge between fiat and crypto it is no longer a great asset to own imo.

Last year when Facebook blocked news in Australia in response to potential legislation making platforms pay publishers for content, it also took down the pages of Australian hospitals, emergency services and charities. It publicly called the resulting chaos "inadvertent." Internally, the pre-emptive strike was hailed as a strategic masterstroke. From a report: Facebook documents and testimony filed to U.S. and Australian authorities by whistleblowers allege that the social-media giant deliberately created an overly broad and sloppy process to take down pages -- allowing swaths of the Australian government and health services to be caught in its web just as the country was launching Covid vaccinations. The goal, according to the whistleblowers and documents, was to exert maximum negotiating leverage over the Australian Parliament, which was voting on the first law in the world that would require platforms such as Google and Facebook to pay news outlets for content.

Despite saying it was targeting only news outlets, the company deployed an algorithm for deciding what pages to take down that it knew was certain to affect more than publishers, according to the documents and people familiar with the matter. It didn't notify affected pages in advance they would be blocked or provide a system for them to appeal once they were. The documents also show multiple Facebook employees tried to raise alarms about the impact and offer possible solutions, only to receive a minimal or delayed response from the leaders of the team in charge. After five days that caused disorder throughout the country, Australia's Parliament amended the proposed law to the degree that, a year after its passage, its most onerous provisions haven't been applied to Facebook or its parent company, Meta Platforms. "We landed exactly where we wanted to," wrote Campbell Brown, Facebook's head of partnerships, who pressed for the company's aggressive stance, in a congratulatory email to her team minutes after the Australian Senate voted to approve the watered-down bill at the end of February 2021.

Google's cloud unit is forming a team to build services for developers running blockchain applications as the company tries to capitalize on the surging popularity of crypto and related projects. From a report: Amit Zavery, a vice president at Google Cloud, told employees in an email Friday that the idea is to make the Google Cloud Platform the first choice for developers in the field. "While the world is still early in its embrace of Web3, it is a market that is already demonstrating tremendous potential with many customers asking us to increase our support for Web3 and Crypto related technologies," he wrote. "We're not trying to be part of that cryptocurrency wave directly," Zavery told CNBC in an interview. "We're providing technologies for companies to use and take advantage of the distributed nature of Web3 in their current businesses and enterprises."

An anonymous reader shares a report: One of the key selling points of the blockchain is that it's immutable: Once data is processed, once a transaction occurs, it can't be undone. One of the most painful downsides to the blockchain? It's immutable. If human error causes something to be sold for the wrong price or money to be sent to the wrong place, reversing it can be difficult or even impossible. That is the unfortunate place developers of the Juno cryptocurrency find themselves. A community vote had decreed that around 3 million Juno tokens, worth around $36 million, be seized from an investor deemed to have acquired the tokens via malicious means. (This in itself was a big crypto news story.) The funds were to be sent to a wallet controlled by Juno token holders, who could vote on how it would be spent.

But a developer inadvertently copy and pasted the wrong wallet address, as reported by CoinDesk, leading to $36 million in crypto being sent to an inaccessible address. Andrea Di Michele, one of Juno's founding developers, explained to the publication that he sent the correct wallet address to the developer responsible for the transfer, as well as a hash number. Hashes connect blocks to one another in the blockchain, and at a glance hash numbers can look very similar to wallet addresses. The programmer in charge for the transfer accidentally copied and pasted the hash number, rather than the wallet address.

China has ordered central government agencies and state-backed corporations to replace foreign-branded personal computers with domestic alternatives within two years, marking one of Beijing's most aggressive efforts so far to eradicate key overseas technology from within its most sensitive organs. From a report: Staff were asked after the week-long May break to turn in foreign PCs for home-made alternatives that run on operating software developed domestically, people familiar with the plan said. The exercise, which was mandated by central government authorities, is likely to eventually replace at least 50 million PCs on a central-government level alone, they said, asking to remain anonymous discussing a sensitive matter. The decision advances China's decade-long campaign to replace imported technology with local alternatives, a sweeping effort to reduce its dependence on geopolitical rivals such as the U.S. for everything from semiconductors to servers and phones. It's likely to directly affect sales by HP and Dell, the country's biggest PC brands after local champion Lenovo Group.

YouTube Go is shutting down beginning this August, Google has announced this week. From a report: The lightweight Android app first launched in 2016 and features offline viewing and nearby sharing. Like other apps designed for emerging markets, YouTube Go includes a suite of features that take into consideration the high costs of data, poor signal strength and the prevalent use of SD cards on Android devices. YouTube Go first launched in India and later became available in more than 130 countries worldwide. The company notes that since 2016, it has invested in improvements to the main YouTube app that make it perform better in emerging markets, while also delivering a better user experience.

VPN companies are squaring up for a fight with the Indian government over new rules designed to change how they operate in the country. Wired: On April 28, officials announced that virtual private network companies will be required to collect swathes of customer data -- and maintain it for five years or more -- under a new national directive. VPN providers have two months to accede to the rules and start collecting data. The justification from the country's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) is that it needs to be able to investigate potential cybercrime. But that doesn't wash with VPN providers, some of whom have said they may ignore the demands.

"This latest move by the Indian government to require VPN companies to hand over user personal data represents a worrying attempt to infringe on the digital rights of its citizens," says Harold Li, vice president of ExpressVPN. He adds that the company would never log user information or activity and that it will adjust its "operations and infrastructure to preserve this principle if and when necessary." Other VPN providers are also considering their options. Gytis Malinauskas, head of Surfshark's legal department, says the VPN provider couldn't currently comply with India's logging requirements because it uses RAM-only servers, which automatically overwrite user-related data. [...] ProtonVPN is similarly concerned, calling the move an erosion of civil liberties.

Cameo, the celebrity video greetings startup, laid off 87 of staffers Wednesday, a move that CEO Steven Galanis described as "right-sizing." From a report: The layoffs also affected some of Cameo's most senior executives, Protocol has learned. Leadership departures included Cameo CTO Rob Post, top marketing executive Emily Boschwitz, CPO Nundu Janakiram and Chief People Officer Melanie Steinbach, according to a source close to the company. The team in charge of music partnerships saw big cuts, according to a LinkedIn post. Also affected by the layoffs were the company's international operations, including much of its London office, as well as a number of employees in sales and marketing, the source told Protocol. In some other lay off news: On Deck, a tech company that connects founders to each other, capital and advice, has laid off 25% off its staff, TechCrunch reported. The publication also reported that MainStreet, a startup that helps other startups uncover tax credits that was valued at $500 million last year, has laid off about 30% of its staff.

The White House released a memorandum Wednesday that outlines a national effort to promote leadership in quantum computing and calls for security advances to prepare for future cyberthreats from quantum computing before they arise. From a report: "Quantum information science -- we'll call it 'QIS,' for short -- is a rapidly emerging scientific discipline that combines our best understanding of the subatomic world -- quantum mechanics -- with our best understanding of information systems -- information theory -- to generate revolutionary technologies and insights," said a senior administration official during a background press call on Tuesday.

[...] The announcement goes on to note that quantum computers could be a problem for digital communications and security. Quantum research is thought to soon reach a point where a "cryptanalytically relevant quantum computer" is possible. These computers could jeopardize US communications, control systems of critical infrastructure and security protocols used for most internet-based financial transactions, according to the memorandum. "Current research shows that at some point in the not-too-distant future, when quantum information science matures and quantum computers are able reach a sufficient size and level of sophistication, they will be capable of breaking much of the cryptography that currently secures our digital communications," said the senior administration official.

Apple, Google, and Microsoft are launching a "joint effort" to kill the password. The major OS vendors want to "expand support for a common passwordless sign-in standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium." From a report: The standard is being called either a "multi-device FIDO credential" or just a "passkey." Instead of a long string of characters, this new scheme would have the app or website you're logging in to push a request to your phone for authentication. From there, you'd need to unlock the phone, authenticate with some kind of pin or biometric, and then you're on your way. This sounds like a familiar system for anyone with phone-based two-factor authentication set up, but this is a replacement for the password rather than an additional factor.

Some push 2FA systems work over the Internet, but this new FIDO scheme works over Bluetooth. As the whitepaper explains, "Bluetooth requires physical proximity, which means that we now have a phishing-resistant way to leverage the user's phone during authentication." Bluetooth has a terrible reputation for compatibility, and I'm not sure "security" has ever been a real concern, but the FIDO alliance notes that Bluetooth is just "to verify physical proximity" and that the actual sign-in process "does not depend on Bluetooth security properties." Of course, that means both devices will need Bluetooth on board, which is a given for most smartphones and laptops but could be a tough ask for older desktop PCs.

Facebook parent Meta Platforms has announced a sharp slowdown in hiring, ending an extended period in which the tech giant added thousands of jobs a year. From a report: "We regularly re-evaluate our talent pipeline according to our business needs and in light of the expense guidance given for this earnings period, we are slowing its growth accordingly," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. "However, we will continue to grow our workforce to ensure we focus on long term impact." Specifically, Meta will be halting, or in some cases slowing, hiring for more mid- to senior-level positions, according to the company. This follows a recent pause on hiring early-career engineers a few weeks back. Like other tech giants, Meta has been a hiring juggernaut in recent years, more than doubling the size of its workforce since 2018. At the end of the first quarter, Meta counted 77,800 full-time employees, up 28% from a year earlier, according to the company's most recent quarterly report. The company doesn't have any plans for layoffs at this time, it said. Meta overshot some of its hiring goals -- it hired more people in the first quarter of 2022 than it did in all of 2021 -- and it is adjusting accordingly, the company said. The shift in hiring strategy comes after a string of disappointing quarters for the social-media company.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will meet Wednesday with telecom and airline industry officials on a push to retrofit and ultimately replace some airplane radio altimeters that could face interference from C-Band 5G wireless service. Reuters reports: The altimeters give data on a plane's height above the ground and are crucial for bad-weather landings, but airline concerns about wireless interference from a planned 5G rollout led to disruptions at some U.S. airports earlier this year. The FAA wants to use the meeting to establish "an achievable timeframe to retrofit/replace radar altimeters in the U.S. fleet," according to a previously unreported letter from the FAA's top aviation safety official Chris Rocheleau reviewed by Reuters. It also asked aviation representatives "to offer options and commit to actions necessary to meet these objectives."

The planned three-and-a-half hour roundtable meeting will also include a discussion on prioritizing retrofits with antenna filters, which mitigate potential interference from 5G. Antenna filters are currently in production, officials said. A key question is how to determine which planes are most at risk of interference and should therefore get retrofitted first. The meeting will also look at what is set to happen after July 5 and outline "changes to U.S. national airspace operating environment as a result of future 5G C-band deployment in the coming months."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: Volvo will only sell electrified cars in the US beginning with the 2023 model year, the automaker confirmed Tuesday. "Electrified" means that in addition to EVs, Volvo will continue to offer gas-powered cars, but they'll all either have mild-hybrid or plug-in hybrid technology. Volvo will continue to offer plug-in hybrid powertrains, as well. In fact, these T8 Recharge models recently received a power boost, in addition to increased electric-only driving range. The 2023 model year Volvos should arrive at dealers this summer. Meanwhile, Volkswagen says it has "sold out" of battery-powered models in the U.S. and Europe for this year as persistent supply chain bottlenecks hit global production.