Federal Trade Commission

Instacart to pay US$60 million to settle FTC claims it deceived shoppers

INSTACART has agreed to pay US$60 million in refunds to settle the US Federal Trade Commission’s allegations that the online grocery delivery platform deceived consumers about its Instacart+ membershi...

The FTC is taking on the issue of Instacart’s use of technology to set prices at a time when the high cost of living in the US has been a top daily concern for Americans.

US FTC probes Instacart’s AI pricing tool, source says; shares drop

Shoppers viewing Instacart prices saw wildly different prices for the same items sourced at the same stores

The US Federal Trade Commission’s complaint alleges that Amazon knowingly used designs known as “dark patterns” to trick consumers into signing up for the US$139-per-year Prime service during checkouts.

Amazon faces US trial over alleged Prime subscription tricks

JURY selection began on Monday in a US government lawsuit accusing e-commerce giant Amazon of using tricks to enroll millions of customers into its Prime subscription service and then making it nearly...

The complaint alleges Ticketmaster, which controls about 80 per cent of major concert venue ticketing in the United States, turned “a blind eye” to brokers who routinely exceeded ticket limits using thousands of fake accounts.

US regulator sues Ticketmaster over ‘illegal’ ticket schemes

A TOP US regulator on Thursday sued Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation, alleging the ticketing giant conspired with brokers to inflate concert ticket prices and deceive consumers with hid...

Ticketmaster has decried the proliferation of bots and large-scale resale operations on its platform and across the industry.

FTC scrutinises Ticketmaster efforts to stop resale bots

The company’s industry dominance has long been targeted by fans, artists, regulators and lawmakers, dating back to the 1990s

SoftBank is already the majority owner of Arm Holdings, whose technology is used across the electronics industry and increasingly as the basis of server chips.

SoftBank’s Ampere deal faces in-depth US probe in threat to AI ambitions

The semiconductor designer company makes server processors that are one of the main components of data centre computers

The US Federal Trade Commission has sought to show that Meta, then known as Facebook, illegally dominated the market for social media platforms used to share updates with friends and family through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

Meta asks judge to rule that FTC failed to prove its monopoly case

FACEBOOK parent company Meta Platforms asked a federal judge on Thursday to throw out the US Federal Trade Commission’s case accusing it of an illegal social media monopoly, saying the agency failed t...

The trade commission says Microsoft's deal with OpenAI raises the risk that AI developers could be "fully acquired" by tech giants in the future.

Microsoft-OpenAI partnership raises antitrust concerns, FTC says

MICROSOFT’S US$13 billion investment in OpenAI raises concerns that the tech giant could extend its dominance in cloud computing into the nascent artificial intelligence (AI) market, the Federal Trade...

Genshin Impact is a role-playing game involving collectible characters with unique fighting skills.

Video game maker pays US$20 million in US FTC kid-privacy case

THE maker of the popular video game Genshin Impact will pay US$20 million to settle claims it violated kids’ privacy and deceived players about the cost of winning sought-after prizes, the US Federal ...

Tech companies that compete with Microsoft in renting out cloud servers, such as Google and Amazon, also want to host OpenAI’s models so that their cloud customers don’t need to access Microsoft servers to get access to the startup’s technology, the report said.

Google asks FTC to break up Microsoft’s cloud deal with OpenAI, the Information says

GOOGLE has asked the US government to break up Microsoft’s exclusive agreement to host OpenAI’s technology on its cloud servers, the Information reported on Tuesday.