Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Long before the Supreme Court took up one of the last remaining cases it will decide this session—the 303 Creative v. Elenis case, concerning a Colorado web designer named Lorie Smith who refuses to make websites for same-sex weddings and seeks an exemption from anti-discrimination laws—there was a couple named Stewart and Mike. According…
WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court found it unconstitutional to consider race in university admissions, eliminating the principal tool the nation’s most exclusive schools have used to diversify their campuses. Thursday’s decision will force a reworking of admissions criteria throughout American higher education, where for decades the pursuit of diversity has been an article of faith. University officials…
Some people who sought jobs at billionaire Bill Gates’s private office described going through an extensive screening process that included being questioned by a security firm about their sexual histories, past drug use and other parts of their private lives that might indicate they were vulnerable to blackmail. Some female job candidates were asked whether…
The European Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation on Tuesday into whether Google has abused its market position by favoring its own online display advertising technology. Why it matters: The probe will target parts of Google’s massive $147 billion annual ads business that have never been investigated formally by regulators, including ways its advertising practices…
The European Union hit Google with a formal antitrust complaint Wednesday, two years after regulators first opened an investigation into whether Google abused its market dominance to favor its own ad tech. Why it matters: The complaint puts even more pressure on Google parent Alphabet to possibly divest parts of its lucrative ad business. In…
Google violated its promised standards when placing video ads on other websites, according to new research that raises questions about the transparency of the tech giant’s online-ad business. Google’s YouTube runs ads on its own site and app. But the company also brokers the placement of video ads on other sites across the web through…
As marketers from around the world spend the week in the south of France, the country’s privacy watchdog just sent a strong signal that it’s not taking a laissez-faire approach to digital advertising. On Thursday, the National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL) said it’s issued a €40 million fine against Paris-based ad tech giant…
The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina that relied in part on racial considerations, saying they violate the Constitution. The votes split along ideological grounds, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts writing for the conservative members in the majority, and the liberals dissenting. “The student…
Advertising industry figures are demanding significant refunds from YouTube following new research that suggests millions of adverts on the video platform are hidden away from users in ways that breach the Google-owned group’s policies. Adalytics, a digital ads analysis group, has conducted research into YouTube’s “TrueView” system, through which the platform’s more than 2bn users…
The Metaverse, the once-buzzy technology that promised to allow users to hang out awkwardly in a disorientating video-game-like world, has died after being abandoned by the business world. It was three years old. The capital-M Metaverse, a descendant of the 1982 movie “Tron” and the 2003 video game “Second Life,” was born in 2021 when…