An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Within approximately 12 seconds, two highly educated brothers allegedly stole $25 million by tampering with the ethereum blockchain in a never-before-seen cryptocurrency scheme, according to an indictment that the US Department of Justice unsealed Wednesday. In a DOJ press release, US Attorney Damian Williams said the scheme was so sophisticated that it "calls the very integrity of the blockchain into question." "The brothers, who studied computer science and math at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, allegedly used their specialized skills and education to tamper with and manipulate the protocols relied upon by millions of ethereum users across the globe," Williams said. "And once they put their plan into action, their heist only took 12 seconds to complete." Anton, 24, and James Peraire-Bueno, 28, were arrested Tuesday, charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Each brother faces "a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for each count," the DOJ said. The indictment goes into detail explaining that the scheme allegedly worked by exploiting the ethereum blockchain in the moments after a transaction was conducted but before the transaction was added to the blockchain. To uncover the scheme, the special agent in charge, Thomas Fattorusso of the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) New York Field Office, said that investigators "simply followed the money." "Regardless of the complexity of the case, we continue to lead the effort in financial criminal investigations with cutting-edge technology and good-ol'-fashioned investigative work, on and off the blockchain," Fattorusso said.

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Last month, researchers from the University of Washington started conducting an experiment on a decommissioned naval ship in Alameda to test if spraying salt water into the air could brighten clouds and cool the planet. However, their project was forced to stop this month after the city got word of what was going on. SFGate reports: According to a city press release, scientists were ordered to halt the experiment because it violated Alameda's lease with the USS Hornet, the aircraft carrier from which researchers were spraying saltwater into the air using "a machine resembling a snowmaker." The news was first reported by the Alameda Post. "City staff are working with a team of biological and hazardous materials consultants to independently evaluate the health and environmental safety of this particular experiment," the press release states. Specifically, chemicals present in the experiment's aerosol spray are being evaluated to study whether or not they pose any threats to humans, animals or the environment. So far, there isn't any evidence that they do, the city stated. The prospect of a city-conducted review was not unexpected, the University of Washington said in a statement shared with SFGATE. "In fact, the CAARE (Coastal Aerosol Research and Engagement) facility is designed to help regulators, community members and others engage with the research closely, and we consider the current interactions with the city to be an integral part of that process," the statement reads. "We are happy to support their review and it has been a highly constructive process so far." The marine cloud brightening (MCB) technique involves spraying fine particles of sea salt into the atmosphere from ships or specialized machines. These sea salt particles are chosen because they are a natural source of cloud-forming aerosols and can increase the number of cloud droplets, making the clouds more reflective. The particles sprayed are extremely small, about 1/1000th the width of a human hair, ensuring they remain suspended in the air and interact with cloud droplets effectively. By reflecting more sunlight, these brightened clouds can reduce the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface, leading to localized cooling. If implemented on a large scale, this cooling effect could potentially offset some of the warming caused by greenhouse gases. You can learn more about the experiment here.

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Lauren Forristal writes via TechCrunch: Netflix announced during its Upfronts presentation on Wednesday that it's launching its own advertising technology platform only a year and a half after entering the ads business. This move pits it against other industry heavyweights with ad servers, like Google, Amazon and Comcast. The announcement signifies a significant shake-up in the streaming giant's advertising approach. The company originally partnered with Microsoft to develop its ad tech, letting Netflix enter the ad space quickly and catch up with rivals like Hulu, which has had its own ad server for over a decade. With the launch of its in-house ad tech, Netflix is poised to take full control of its advertising future. This strategic move will empower the company to create targeted and personalized ad experiences that resonate with its massive user base of 270 million subscribers. [...] Netflix didn't say exactly how its in-house solution will change the way ads are delivered, but it's likely it'll move away from generic advertisements. According to the Financial Times, Netflix wants to experiment with "episodic" campaigns, which involve a series of ads that tell a story rather than delivering repetitive ads. During the presentation, Netflix also noted that it'll expand its buying capabilities this summer, which will now include The Trade Desk, Google's Display & Video 360 and Magnite as partners. Notably, competitor Disney+ also has an advertising agreement with The Trade Desk. Netflix also touted the success of its ad-supported tier, reporting that 40 million global monthly active users opt for the plan. The ad tier had around 5 million users within six months of launching.

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Longtime Slashdot reader necro81 writes: The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which controls interstate energy infrastructure, approved a rule Monday that should boost new transmission infrastructure and make it easier to connect renewable energy projects. (More coverage here, here, and here.) Some 11,000 projects totaling 2,600 GW of capacity are in planning, waiting to break ground, or connect to the grid. But they're stymied by the need for costly upgrades, or simply waiting for review. The frustrations are many. Each proposed project undergoes a lengthy grid-impact study and assessed the cost of necessary upgrades. Each project is considered in isolation, regardless of whether similar projects are happening nearby that could share the upgrade costs or auger different improvements. The planning process tends to be reactive -- examining only the applications in front of them -- rather than considering trends over the coming years. It's a first-come, first-served queue: if one project is ready to break ground, it must wait behind another project that's still securing funding or permitting. Two years in development, the dryly-named Improvements to Generator Interconnection Procedures and Agreements directs utility operators to plan infrastructure improvements with a 20-yr forecast of new energy sources and increased demand. Rather than examining each project in isolation, similar projects will be clustered and examined together. Instead of a First-Come, First-Served serial process, operators will instead examine First-Ready, allowing shovel-ready projects to jump the queue. The expectation is that these new rules will speed up and streamline the process of developing and connecting new energy projects through more holistic planning, penalties for delays, sensible cost-sharing for upgrades, and justification for long-term investments.

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Police officers in Britain could be armed with Ghostbusters-style devices that fire electromagnetic rays to shut down the engines of ebikes being used in a crime. From a report: Gavin Stephens, chair of the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC), said the weapon was in development and could be months away from being available, though it is expected to be longer than that. He said it would be housed in a backpack, reminiscent of the equipment used in the Ghostbusters series of movies. It could tackle crime linked to newer vehicles such as electric bikes and electric scooters. The device is being developed with the Defence Science and Technology Lab, which is overseen by the Ministry of Defence, alongside other technological innovations that British police are hoping to use. It would fire an electromagnetic pulse at a vehicle that an officer wants to stop because the rider is suspected of involvement in a crime. The electromagnetic weapon works by tricking the engine into thinking it is overheating, which shuts down the engine and brings the vehicle to a stop. It requires a line of sight to work, Stephens said. Stephens told a media briefing: "Basically, it interferes with the electric motor, to trick the electric motor into thinking it is overheating. It sends a signal to confuse the electric motor. All these electric motors apparently have an inbuilt safety system that if it thinks it's overheating, it shuts down. At the minute, it's like a ginormous backpack." The equipment was demonstrated to police leaders at the Farnborough technology show earlier this year. Stephens said: "They were also telling me it has the potential to be useful with normal combustion engine vehicles."

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Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed two lawsuits Wednesday against the international online retail giant Amazon.com, accusing it of deceptive and unfair business practices. Courthouse News Service: The two lawsuits, filed in state court, say Amazon's Prime cancellation process and the algorithm that decides whether a product is offered through a "buy now" or "add to cart" option violate the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act and the Arizona Uniform State Antitrust Act. Mayes, a Democrat, accuses Amazon of artificially inflating prices and boxing our third-party retailers that rely on the site for business. "Amazon must be held accountable for these violations of our state laws," Mayes said in a statement. "No matter how big and powerful, all businesses must play by the same rules and follow the same laws as everyone else."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: Efforts to build a global quantum internet have received a boost from two developments in quantum information storage that could one day make it possible to communicate securely across hundreds or thousands of kilometers. The internet as it exists today involves sending strings of digital bits, or 0s and 1s, in the form of electrical or optical signals, to transmit information. A quantum internet, which could be used to send unhackable communications or link up quantum computers, would use quantum bits instead. These rely on a quantum property called entanglement, a phenomenon in which particles can be linked and measuring one particle instantly influences the state of another, no matter how far apart they are. Sending these entangled quantum bits, or qubits, over very long distances, requires a quantum repeater, a piece of hardware that can store the entangled state in memory and reproduce it to transmit it further down the line. These would have to be placed at various points on a long-distance network to ensure a signal gets from A to B without being degraded. Quantum repeaters don't yet exist, but two groups of researchers have now demonstrated long-lasting entanglement memory in quantum networks over tens of kilometers, which are the key characteristics needed for such a device. Can Knaut at Harvard University and his colleagues set up a quantum network consisting of two nodes separated by a loop of optical fibre that spans 35 kilometers across the city of Boston. Each node contains both a communication qubit, used to transmit information, and a memory qubit, which can store the quantum state for up to a second. "Our experiment really put us in a position where we're really close to working on a quantum repeater demonstration," says Knaut. To set up the link, Knaut and his team entangled their first node, which contains a type of diamond with an atom-sized hole in it, with a photon that they sent to their second node, which contains a similar diamond. When the photon arrives at the second diamond, it becomes entangled with both nodes. The diamonds are able to store this state for a second. A fully functioning quantum repeater using similar technology could be demonstrated in the next couple of years, says Knaut, which would enable quantum networks connecting cities or countries. In separate work, Xiao-Hui Bao at the University of Science and Technology of China and his colleagues entangled three nodes together, each separated by around 10 kilometers in the city of Hefei. Bao and his team's nodes use supercooled clouds of hundreds of millions of rubidium atoms to generate entangled photons, which they then sent across the three nodes. The central of the three nodes is able to coordinate these photons to link the atom clouds, which act as a form of memory. The key advance for Bao and his team's network is to match the frequency of the photons meeting at the central node, which will be crucial for quantum repeaters connecting different nodes. While the storage time was less than Knaut's team, at 100 microseconds, it is still long enough to perform useful operations on the transmitted information.

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Google is opening up API access to its Google Home smart home platform, allowing app developers to access over 600 million connected devices and tap into the Google Home automation engine. In addition, Google announced that it'll be turning Google TVs into Google Home hubs and Matter controllers. The Verge reports: The Home APIs can access any Matter device or Works with Google Home device, and allows developers to build their own experiences using Google Home devices and automations into their apps on both iOS and Android. This is a significant move for Google in opening up its smart home platform, following shutting down its Works with Nest program back in 2019. [...] The Home APIs are already available to Google's early access partners, and Google is opening up a waitlist for any developer to sign up today. "We are opening up access on a rolling basis so they can begin building and testing within their apps," Anish Kattukaran, head of product at Google Home and Nest, told The Verge. "The first apps using the home APIs will be able to publish to the Play and App stores in the fall." The access is not just limited to smart home developers. In the blog post, Matt Van Der Staay, engineering director at Google Home, said the Home APIs could be used to connect smart home devices to fitness or delivery apps. "You can build a complex app to manage any aspect of a smart home, or simply integrate with a smart device to solve pain points -- like turning on the lights automatically before the food delivery driver arrives." The APIs allow access to most devices connected to Google Home and to the Google Home structure, letting apps control and manage devices such as Matter light bulbs or the Nest Learning Thermostat. They also leverage Google Home's automation signals, such as motion from sensors, an appliance's mode changing, or Google's Home and Away mode, which uses various signals to determine if a home is occupied. [...] What's also interesting here is that developers will be able to use the APIs to access and control any device that works with the new smart home standard Matter and even let people set up Matter devices directly in their app. This should make it easier for them to implement Matter into their apps, as it will add devices to the Google Home fabric, so they won't have to develop their own. In addition, Google announced that it's vastly expanding its Matter infrastructure by turning Google TVs into Google Home hubs and Matter controllers. Any app using the APIs would need a Google hub in a customer's home in order to control Matter devices locally. Later this year, Chromecast with Google TV, select panel TVs with Google TV running Android 14 or higher, and some LG TVs will be upgraded to become Google Home hubs. Additionally, Kattukaran said Google will upgrade all of its existing home hubs -- which include Nest Hub (second-gen), Nest Hub Max, and Google Wifi -- with a new ability called Home runtime. "With this update, all hubs for Google Home will be able to directly route commands from any app built with Home APIs (such as the Google Home app) to a customer's Matter device locally, when the phone is on the same Wi-Fi network as the hub," said Kattukaran. This means you should see "significant latency improvements using local control via a hub for Google Home," he added.

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This week, in celebration of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Apple is introducing several new accessibility features. Noteworthy additions include eye-tracking support for recent iPhone and iPad models, customizable vocal shortcuts, music haptics, and vehicle motion cues. Engadget reports: The most intriguing feature of the set is the ability to use the front-facing camera on iPhones or iPads (at least those with the A12 chip or later) to navigate the software without additional hardware or accessories. With this enabled, people can look at their screen to move through elements like apps and menus, then linger on an item to select it. That pause to select is something Apple calls Dwell Control, which has already been available elsewhere in the company's ecosystem like in Mac's accessibility settings. The setup and calibration process should only take a few seconds, and on-device AI is at work to understand your gaze. It'll also work with third-party apps from launch, since it's a layer in the OS like Assistive Touch. Since Apple already supported eye-tracking in iOS and iPadOS with eye-detection devices connected, the news today is the ability to do so without extra hardware. [...] There are plenty more features coming to the company's suite of products, including Live Captions in VisionOS, a new Reader mode in Magnifier, support for multi-line braille and a virtual trackpad for those who use Assistive Touch. It's not yet clear when all of these announced updates will roll out, though Apple has historically made these features available in upcoming versions of iOS. With its developer conference WWDC just a few weeks away, it's likely many of today's tools get officially released with the next iOS. Apple detailed all the new features in a press release.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google's I/O conference is still happening, and while the big keynote was yesterday, major Android beta releases have apparently been downgraded to Day 2 of the show. Google really seems to want to be primarily an AI company now. Android already had some AI news yesterday, but now that the code-red requirements have been met, we have actual OS news. One of the big features in this release is "Private Space," which Google says is a place where users can "keep sensitive apps away from prying eyes, under an additional layer of authentication." First, there's a new hidden-by-default portion of the app drawer that can hold these sensitive apps, and revealing that part of the app drawer requires a second round of lock-screen authentication, which can be different from the main phone lock screen. Just like "Work" apps, the apps in this section run on a separate profile. To the system, they are run by a separate "user" with separate data, which your non-private apps won't be able to see. Interestingly, Google says, "When private space is locked by the user, the profile is paused, i.e., the apps are no longer active," so apps in a locked Private Space won't be able to show notifications unless you go through the second lock screen. Another new Android 15 feature is "Theft Detection Lock," though it's not in today's beta and will be out "later this year." The feature uses accelerometers and "Google AI" to "sense if someone snatches your phone from your hand and tries to run, bike, or drive away with it." Any of those theft-like shock motions will make the phone auto-lock. Of course, Android's other great theft prevention feature is "being an Android phone." Android 12L added a desktop-like taskbar to the tablet UI, showing recent and favorite apps at the bottom of the screen, but it was only available on the home screen and recent apps. Third-party OEMs immediately realized that this bar should be on all the time and tweaked Android to allow it. In Android 15, an always-on taskbar will be a normal option, allowing for better multitasking on tablets and (presumably) open foldable phones. You can also save split-screen-view shortcuts to the taskbar now. An Android 13 developer feature, predictive back, will finally be turned on by default. When performing the back gesture, this feature shows what screen will show up behind the current screen you're swiping away. This gives a smoother transition and a bit of a preview, allowing you to cancel the back gesture if you don't like where it's going. [...] Because this is a developer release, there are tons of under-the-hood changes. Google is a big fan of its own next-generation AV1 video codec, and AV1 support has arrived on various devices thanks to hardware decoding being embedded in many flagship SoCs. If you can't do hardware AV1 decoding, though, Android 15 has a solution for you: software AV1 decoding.

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With Amazon on its heels, the nation's biggest company by revenue is hunting for ways to continue growing. From a report: For a decade, Walmart has reigned as the nation's biggest company by revenue. Its sales last year added up to $648 billion -- more than $1.2 million a minute. That status comes with benefits. It gives Walmart power in negotiations with product manufacturers and in dealing with government officials over policy issues. It's also a point of pride: Job postings often tout working at the "Fortune 1" company as a perk. Its reign is looking shaky lately [non-paywalled link]. If current sales trends persist, Amazon is likely to overtake Walmart soon. Amazon reported $575 billion in total revenue last year, up 12% from the previous year, compared with Walmart's revenue growth of 6%. Walmart's behemoth size means that to meet its own sales target of around 4% growth each year, the company has to find an additional $26 billion in sales this year. That's no easy task. About 90% of Americans already shop at the retailer. The pandemic and rising inflation boosted Walmart's revenue by $100 billion since 2019. It faces continued uncertainty in consumer confidence and while it's spending in some areas, it's pulling back in others. Earlier this week, Walmart told workers it would cut hundreds of corporate jobs and ask most remote workers to move to offices. While Amazon's and Walmart's businesses compete head on, there are big differences. Amazon earns much of its profit from non-retail operations such as cloud computing and advertising, while grabbing retail market share with fast shipping. Walmart gets the bulk of its sales and profits from U.S. stores, while growing side businesses like advertising and digital sales. Walmart executives are most wary of Amazon's ability to keep increasing profits through its non-retail business, while eating more of the retail landscape with ever-faster shipping and a bigger product selection, people familiar with the company said. Internally some executives are highlighting Walmart's role as a good corporate citizen and emphasizing that it's important to be the best at serving customers and workers, not just the biggest, say some of those people. Its scale can also have downsides, say some, like outsize attention on every misstep.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: There are concerning reports on Reddit that Apple's latest iOS 17.5 update has introduced a bug that causes old photos that were deleted -- in some cases years ago -- to reappear in users' photo libraries. After updating their iPhone, one user said they were shocked to find old NSFW photos that they deleted in 2021 suddenly showing up in photos marked as recently uploaded to iCloud. Other users have also chimed in with similar stories. "Same here," said one Redditor. "I have four pics from 2010 that keep reappearing as the latest pics uploaded to iCloud. I have deleted them repeatedly." "Same thing happened to me," replied another user. "Six photos from different times, all I have deleted. Some I had deleted in 2023." More reports have been trickling in overnight. One said: "I had a random photo from a concert taken on my Canon camera reappear in my phone library, and it showed up as if it was added today."

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A bipartisan group of four senators led by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is recommending that Congress spend at least $32 billion over the next three years to develop AI and place safeguards around it, writing in a report released Wednesday that the U.S. needs to "harness the opportunities and address the risks" of the quickly developing technology. AP: The group of two Democrats and two Republicans said in an interview Tuesday that while they sometimes disagreed on the best paths forward, it was imperative to find consensus with the technology taking off and other countries like China investing heavily in its development. They settled on a raft of broad policy recommendations that were included in their 33-page report. While any legislation related to AI will be difficult to pass, especially in an election year and in a divided Congress, the senators said that regulation and incentives for innovation are urgently needed.

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Intel unveiled Thunderbolt Share on Wednesday with which it promises to streamline screen and file sharing between two PCs. Tom's Hardware: Thunderbolt Share will allow PC owners to connect their two computers with a wired connection that leverages Thunderbolt's speed (40Gbps or higher), low latency, and built-in security. It allows PC-to-PC access that shares the screen, keyboard, mouse, and storage. The software also enables folder synchronization or easy drag-and-drop file transfer between the computers. [...] Thunderbolt Share also provides uncompressed screen sharing between two PCs in the original resolution of the source computer. It also claims low latency for a smooth, responsive experience that includes the screen, keyboard, and mouse with full HD screen mirroring at up to 60 frames per second (fps). Higher resolutions could result in fewer frames per second, but Ziller said it would still be a "great experience."

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The FBI has seized the notorious BreachForums hacking forum that leaked and sold stolen corporate data to other cybercriminals. From a report: The seizure occurred on Wednesday morning, soon after the site was used last week to leak data stolen from a Europol law enforcement portal. The website is now displaying a message stating that the FBI has taken control over it and the backend data, indicating that law enforcement seized both the site's servers and domains. [...] The seizure message also shows the two forum profile pictures of the site's administrators, Baphomet and ShinyHunters, overlaid with prison bars.

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Tech columnist and venture investor MG Siegler, commenting on the new iPad Pro: I love the iPad for the things it's good at. And I love the MacBook for the things it's good at. What I want is less a completely combined device and more a single device that can run both macOS and iPadOS. And this new iPad Pro, again equipped with a chip faster than any MacBook, can do that if Apple allowed it to. At first, maybe it's dual boot. That is, just let the iPad Pro load up macOS if it's attached to the Magic Keyboard and use the screen as a regular (but beautiful) monitor -- no touch. Over time, maybe macOS is just a "mode" inside of iPadOS -- complete with some elements updated to be touch-friendly, but not touch-first. Steven Sinofsky, the former head of Microsoft's Windows division, chiming in: It is not unusual for customers to want the best of all worlds. It is why Detroit invented convertibles and el caminos. But the idea of a "dual boot" device is just nuts. It is guaranteed the only reality is it is running the wrong OS all the time for whatever you want to do. It is a toaster-refrigerator. Only techies like devices that "presto-change" into something else. Regular humans never flocked to El Caminos, and even today SUVs just became station wagons and almost none actually go off road :-) Two things that keep going unanswered if you really want macOS on an iPad device: 1. What software on Mac do you want for an iPad device experience? What software will get rewritten for touch? If you want "touch-enabled" check out what happened on the Windows desktop. Nearly everything people say they want isn't features as much as the mouse interaction model. People want overlapping windows, a desktop of folders, infinitely resizable windows, and so on. These don't work on touch very well and certainly not for people who don't want to futz. 2. Will you be happy with battery life? The physics of an iPad mean the battery is 2/3rds the size of a Mac battery. Do you really want that? I don't. The reason the iPad is the 5.x mm device is because the default doesn't have a keyboard holding the battery. This is about the realities. The metaphors that people like on a desktop, heck that they love, just don't work with the blunt instrument of touch. It might be possible to build all new metaphors that use only tough and thus would be great on an iPad but that isn't what they tried. The device grew out of a phone. It's only their incredible work on iPhone that led to Mx silicon and their tireless work on the Mac-centric frameworks that delivered a big chunk (but not all) the privacy, reliability, battery life, security, etc. of the phone on Mac. [...]

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schwit1 shares a report: Fake studies have flooded the publishers of top scientific journals, leading to thousands of retractions and millions of dollars in lost revenue. The biggest hit has come to Wiley, a 217-year-old publisher based in Hoboken, N.J., which Tuesday announced that it was closing 19 journals, some of which were infected by large-scale research fraud. In the past two years, Wiley has retracted more than 11,300 papers that appeared compromised, according to a spokesperson, and closed four journals. It isn't alone: At least two other publishers have retracted hundreds of suspect papers each. Several others have pulled smaller clusters of bad papers. Although this large-scale fraud represents a small percentage of submissions to journals, it threatens the legitimacy of the nearly $30 billion academic publishing industry and the credibility of science as a whole. The discovery of nearly 900 fraudulent papers in 2022 at IOP Publishing, a physical sciences publisher, was a turning point for the nonprofit. "That really crystallized for us, everybody internally, everybody involved with the business," said Kim Eggleton, head of peer review and research integrity at the publisher. "This is a real threat." The sources of the fake science are "paper mills" -- businesses or individuals that, for a price, will list a scientist as an author of a wholly or partially fabricated paper. The mill then submits the work, generally avoiding the most prestigious journals in favor of publications such as one-off special editions that might not undergo as thorough a review and where they have a better chance of getting bogus work published.

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The Department of Justice says it is considering whether to prosecute Boeing over two deadly crashes involving its 737 Max aircraft. From a report: The aviation giant breached the terms of an agreement made in 2021 that shielded the firm from criminal charges linked to the incidents, the DOJ said. Boeing has denied that it violated the agreement. The crashes - one in Indonesia in 2018, and another in Ethiopia in 2019 - killed a total of 346 people. The plane maker failed to "design, implement, and enforce a compliance and ethics program to prevent and detect violations of the US fraud laws throughout its operations," the DOJ said. Boeing said it was looking forward to the opportunity to respond to the Justice Department and "believes it honoured the terms of that agreement." Under the deal, Boeing paid a $2.5bn settlement, while prosecutors agreed to ask the court to drop a criminal charge after a period of three years. The DOJ said Boeing has until 13 June to respond to the allegations and that what it said would be taken into consideration as it decides what to do next.

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In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Representatives Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Frank Pallone Jr (D-N.J.) made their case for why Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act has "outlived its usefulness." Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects online platforms from liability for user-generated content, allowing them to moderate content without being treated as publishers. "Unfortunately, Section 230 is now poisoning the healthy online ecosystem it once fostered. Big Tech companies are exploiting the law to shield them from any responsibility or accountability as their platforms inflict immense harm on Americans, especially children. Congress's failure to revisit this law is irresponsible and untenable," the lawmakers wrote. The Hill reports: Rodgers and Pallone argued that rolling back the protections on Big Tech companies would hold them accountable for the material posted on their platforms. "These blanket protections have resulted in tech firms operating without transparency or accountability for how they manage their platforms. This means that a social-media company, for example, can't easily be held responsible if it promotes, amplifies or makes money from posts selling drugs, illegal weapons or other illicit content," they wrote. The lawmakers said they were unveiling legislation (PDF) to sunset Section 230. It would require Big Tech companies to work with Congress for 18 months to "evaluate and enact a new legal framework that will allow for free speech and innovation while also encouraging these companies to be good stewards of their platforms." "Our bill gives Big Tech a choice: Work with Congress to ensure the internet is a safe, healthy place for good, or lose Section 230 protections entirely," the lawmakers wrote.

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