Happy Thursday! A quick heads up: The newsletter will be off Friday but back Monday. We'll miss you, too. 🚨 Breaking this morning: Tesla CEO Elon Musk is offering to to buy Twitter in a hostile takeover attempt.
Below: A lawyer accuses California's governor of interfering in the Activision Blizzard case, and YouTube removes an account linked to the Brooklyn subway shooting. First: | Apple's Cook, Microsoft's Smith lay out dueling visions for how to handle Washington | Apple CEO Tim Cook delivers remarks during the Global Privacy Summit in Washington on April 12. (Shawn Thew/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) | | Two of the tech industry's most prominent executives offered competing visions this week for how Silicon Valley should respond to efforts to regulate the sector, with Apple CEO Tim Cook preaching resistance and Microsoft President Brad Smith urging acceptance. The remarks, delivered in a pair of rare Washington speeches, showcase how some of the world's most powerful tech companies are embracing divergent political tactics in the face of mounting global scrutiny. And they arrive as other high-profile tech moguls, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg chief among them, opt instead to step back from the spotlight and deploy other leaders to Washington. While delivering a keynote address at the Global Privacy Summit on Wednesday, Smith reiterated a longstanding refrain from the company, which famously sought to make peace with regulators in Washington after its massive antitrust bout at the turn of the century. "I think it's time to recognize reality. The tech sector needs to mature and we need to lean in to help make a new era of regulation work," he said. "We need to recognize that the need to serve the common good vastly outweighs the regulatory opportunities for competitive advantage." The comments offered a sharp contrast to the speech given a day prior by Cook, who struck a more combative tone in criticizing efforts to regulate app stores and urged people to push back against proposals he argued would "undermine" privacy. | In Apple's highest-profile volley yet against legislation that targets its app store, Cook warned of "regulations that could put our privacy and security at risk" and enable "data-hungry companies" to track users and collect their information against their will. "We are deeply concerned about regulations that would undermine privacy and security in service of some other aim," he said at the D.C. privacy summit. He later urged those watching to "join our efforts to make sure that regulations are crafted, interpreted, and implemented in a manner that protects people's fundamental rights." The two companies' differing messages highlight another crucial dynamic: Not all the tech giants are facing the same level of political heat. While Apple has been a central focus of efforts in the United States and Europe to rein in app stores and dominant digital platforms, Microsoft has largely flown under the radar in recent years, instead serving as an unlikely ally to lawmakers on Capitol Hill looking to craft new Internet regulations. Smith has played a key role in that, serving as the company's public face in Washington as it endorses bills, appears at hearings and offers briefings to U.S. lawmakers and their staffs. The one time Cook testified on Capitol Hill, by contrast, came after months of wrangling with congressional investigators and after the company initially declined to make him available. While Smith and Cook struck different tones in their latest speeches, some of their underlying messaging is the same. Both said they backed certain Internet regulation, including new federal data privacy standards. Cook said Apple supports the European Union's landmark General Data Protection Regulation and called for "a strong comprehensive privacy law in the United States." They also both pushed for proposals that critics argue would fail to adequately rein in abuses by the tech giants. While Cook railed against what he described as privacy loopholes in antitrust legislation, Smith floated a separate proposal: creating a digitally focused regulator. | Smith questioned whether that might be "a better future then asking a Congress or a legislature or a parliament to go on a piecemeal basis and change each and every law separately." Critics have argued that a digital regulator could be more susceptible to influence from the tech industry, which it would likely rely on for expertise and potential recruits. The fact that the executives chose to give public addresses on regulation at all is also telling, given how some of their peers are opting instead to recede from the spotlight. NPR tech reporter Bobby Allyn: | Most notably, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has made an effort to dial back his public engagement on the policy front, even as the company faces perhaps the most regulatory scrutiny of any of the tech giants. The company recently promoted former British politician Nick Clegg to the role of president of global affairs, effectively making him its face to policymakers. It's quite a role reversal for Facebook, which as recently as 2019 dispatched Zuckerberg to Washington for a high-profile speech at Georgetown where he defended the company's commitment to "free expression" and made his own case for what regulation should look like. Now, it's other companies and executives out in front of the industry's bid to shape regulation. | | | Our top tabs | | Lawyer resigns, accuses California governor of interfering in Activision Blizzard case | The lawyer accused California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) of interfering in the case, an allegation Newsom's communications director denied. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News) | | It's the latest development in a discrimination lawsuit that alleged the video game giant failed to address a "pervasive 'frat boy' workplace culture" that led women to quit and may have contributed to a worker's suicide. Melanie Proctor, the assistant chief counsel for California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing, said in an e-mail to her colleagues that she was resigning to protest the firing of her boss, Chief Counsel Janette Wipper. In the e-mail, Proctor also wrote that California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in recent weeks "began to interfere" with the Activision suit, and has "repeatedly demanded advance notice of litigation strategy and of next steps in the litigation," Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reports. "As we continued to win in state court, this interference increased, mimicking the interests of Activision's counsel," Proctor wrote. She wrote that Wipper "attempted to protect" the agency's independence but was "abruptly terminated." Wipper is "evaluating all avenues of legal recourse including a claim under the California Whistleblower Protection Act," her spokeswoman Alexis Ronickher told Bloomberg. Newsom's communications director, Erin Mellon, said "claims of interference by our office are categorically false" and that Newsom's office "will continue to support DFEH in their efforts to fight all forms of discrimination and protect Californians." | YouTube removes account linked to Brooklyn shooting suspect | The company took the account down on Wednesday, a day after the attack. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) | | The company deleted an account that Frank R. James appeared to use, Mark Bergen and Shelly Banjo report. James, who was arrested Wednesday, is suspected of opening fire on the subway in Brooklyn and shooting 10 people on Tuesday. While it's not clear who the YouTube account belonged to, two law enforcement officials told the New York Times that James was featured on the channel. YouTube confirmed that it was "associated with" James. "Following the tragic event in New York City, our Trust and Safety team identified and terminated a YouTube channel associated with the suspect, in accordance with our creator responsibility guidelines," YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon told Bloomberg. "Additionally, our systems are prominently surfacing videos from authoritative sources in search and recommendations, including by surfacing our Top News shelf above related search results." | Russian regulator monitored online dissent, leaked documents indicate | Russian regulators shared reports with the country's government, according to the leaked documents. (Yuri Kochetkov/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) | | The regulator known as Roskomnadzor monitored social media, blogs and other Internet postings to identify "hotbeds of tension" and shared reports with the Russian government about "the destabilization of Russian society," the Latvia-based Russian news site Meduza reports. Information about the programs came from documents published by Distributed Denial of Secrets. The transparency collective's source "urgently felt the Russian people should have access to information about their government" and "also expressed their opposition to the Russian people being cut off from independent media and the outside world," the group wrote. | | | Rant and rave | | A non-fungible token of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's first tweet was listed for $48 million after its owner, who bought it for $2.9 million last year, said he was thinking about selling it. But the top bid was just $277, CoinDesk's Sandali Handagama reports. Twitter had fun with the episode. Comedian Jenny Yang: | The New York Times's Ryan Mac: | | | Inside the industry | | | | Workforce report | | | | Trending | | | | Daybook | | - NTIA chief Alan Davidson discusses broadband at a Brookings Institution event on April 21 at 10 a.m.
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