TikTok banned on government devices under spending bill passed by Congress

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3 years ago

December 23, 2022

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Researchers at the University of Vermont analyzed 1,000 TikTok videos under the most popular hashtags related to body image and eating

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Under the bipartisan spending bill that passed both chambers of Congress as of Friday, TikTok will be banned from government devices, underscoring the growing concern about the popular video-sharing app owned by China’s ByteDance.

The bill, which still has to be signed into law by President Joe Biden, also calls on e-commerce platforms to do more vetting to help deter counterfeit goods from being sold online, and forces companies pursuing large mergers to pay more to file with federal antitrust agencies.

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Congress failed to pass many of the most aggressive bills targeting tech, including antitrust legislation that would require app stores developed by Apple and Google to give developers more payment options, and a measure mandating new guardrails to protect kids online. And though Congress made more headway this year than in the past toward a compromise bill on national privacy standards, there remains only a patchwork of state laws determining how consumer data is protected.

Center-left tech industry group Chamber of Progress cheered the exclusion of several antitrust bills that would have targeted its backers, which include Apple, Amazon, Google and Meta.

“What you don’t see in this year’s omnibus are the more controversial measures that have raised red flags on issues like content moderation,” Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich said in a statement following the release of the package text earlier this week. The group earlier raised concerns with a prominent antitrust measure, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act.

Another industry group, NetChoice, also applauded Congress for “refusing to include radical and unchecked progressive proposals to overhaul American antitrust law in this omnibus.”

But the bills lawmakers passed in the spending package will still make their mark on the tech industry in other ways.

TikTok ban on government devices

The banning of TikTok on government devices could benefit rival platforms like Snap and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram that also fight for young consumers’ attention. The bill includes an exception for law enforcement, national security and research purposes.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, as well as Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray, have voiced fear that TikTok’s ownership structure could make U.S. user data vulnerable, since companies based in China may be required by law to hand over user information. TikTok has repeatedly said its U.S. user data is not based in China, though those assurances have done little to alleviate concern.

The company has been working toward a deal with the administration to assuage national security fears through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.

“We’re disappointed that Congress has moved to ban TikTok on government devices — a political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests — rather than encouraging the Administration to conclude its national security review,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement following the release of the package text. “The agreement under review by CFIUS will meaningfully address any security concerns that have been raised at both the federal and state level. These plans have been developed under the oversight of our country’s top national security agencies — plans that we are well underway in implementing — to further secure our platform in the United States, and we will continue to brief lawmakers on them.”

Deterring online counterfeit sales

The spending package also includes the INFORM Consumers Act, which seeks to deter counterfeit, stolen or harmful products from being sold online. The bill requires online marketplaces like Amazon to promptly collect information like bank and contact details from “any high-volume third party seller” and to verify that data.

Though Amazon initially opposed the bill last year, writing that it was “pushed by some big-box retailers” and claiming it would punish small businesses that sell online, the company ended up supporting a version of the bill, saying it was important to have a federal standard rather than a patchwork of state laws. Etsy and eBay had earlier supported the bill.

“Passing the bipartisan INFORM Act would be a major victory for consumers, who deserve to know who they’re buying from when they visit an online marketplace,” Kovacevich said in a statement. “This legislation has been through years of hearings and markups and has earned the support of both parties as well as brick and mortar stores and online marketplaces.”

Etsy’s head of Americas advocacy and public policy Jeffrey Zubricki said in a statement the bill “will achieve our shared goal of protecting consumers from bad actors while avoiding overly broad disclosure requirements that would harm our sellers’ privacy and hinder their ability to run their creative businesses.”

Higher fees for big mergers

While more ambitious antitrust measures targeting digital platforms didn’t make it into the end-of-year legislation, there is one bill to help raise money for the antitrust agencies that scrutinize mergers. The Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act will raise the cost companies pursuing large mergers must pay to file with the antitrust agencies, as they’re required to do under the law. The bill also lowers the cost for smaller deals and allows the fees to be adjusted each year based on the Consumer Price Index.

The measure is meant to help fund the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division, which have seen a large uptick in merger filings over the past few years without adequate budget increases.

While it fell short of antitrust advocates’ hopes, the inclusion of the merger filing fee bill still gained praise.

“This is a major milestone for the anti-monopoly movement,” said Sarah Miller, executive director of the anti-monopoly group the American Economic Liberties Project, backed in part by the Omidyar Network. Miller said the bill will “significantly strengthen antitrust law for the first time since 1976.”

“Big Tech, Big Ag, and Big Pharma spent extraordinary sums in an unprecedented effort to keep Congress from delivering on antitrust reform and undermine the ability of state and federal enforcers to uphold the law — and they lost,” Miller added.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., who sponsored the bill, said in a statement earlier this week its inclusion “is an important step to restructure merger fees after decades of the status quo so we can provide our antitrust enforcers with the resources they need to do their jobs.”

“This is clearly the beginning of this fight and not the end,” she said. “I will continue to work across the aisle to protect consumers and strengthen competition.”

Empowering state AGs in antitrust cases

Another antitrust bill included in the package was a version of the State Antitrust Enforcement Venue Act. The bill gives state AGs the same power as federal enforcers in antitrust cases to choose the district in which they bring their cases and prevent them from being consolidated in a different district.

Under the legislation, companies defending against claims of antitrust violations won’t be able to pick what they perceive to be a more favorable venue to fight the case.

That’s what happened in an antitrust case against Google brought by a group of state AGs accusing the company of illegally monopolizing the digital advertising market. The company transferred the case from Texas to New York, to be heard alongside private antitrust complaints against the company in the pretrial proceedings.

Last year, attorneys general from 52 states and territories wrote Congress in support of the legislation.

Transparency on ransomware attacks

The bipartisan RANSOMWARE Act also made it into the spending bill, requiring the FTC to report to Congress on the number and types of foreign ransomware or other cyberattack complaints it receives.

The FTC also must report to Congress trends in numbers it sees in these complaints, including those that come from individuals, companies or governments of foreign adversaries like China, North Korea, Iran and Russia. And it must share information on its litigation actions related to these cases and their results.

The FTC can also share recommendations for new laws to strengthen resilience against these attacks as well as best practices for businesses to follow to protect themselves.

Research into tech impacts on kids

A version of the Children and Media Research Advancement (CAMRA) Act is included in the package, directing the Department of Health and Human Services to conduct or support research on the effects of media and technology on infants, kids and adolescents.

Those effects could include impacts on cognitive, mental and physical health by technologies like social media, artificial intelligence, video games or virtual reality, according to the legislation. The director of the National Institutes of Health must deliver a report to Congress on its work within two years of the law’s enactment.

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Technology

Tech investor Prosus bets on India to produce a $100 billion company

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2 hours ago

June 23, 2025

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Tech investor Prosus bets on India to produce a 0 billion company

Fabricio Bloisi, chief executive officer of Prosus NV, during an interview in London, UK, on Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. Bloisi took the reins of South Africa’s Naspers Ltd. and its investment arm Prosus NV in July with a plan to double the value of the 110-year-old group within the next four years.

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India will produce a $100 billion tech company in the coming years, the CEO of Prosus told CNBC on Monday, as the firm bets on the country for its next big investment win.

Prosus, which is majority owned by South African company Naspers, is one of the biggest tech investors in the world.

The company is hoping it can replicate the success it saw with its return on Chinese social media and gaming giant Tencent. Prosus’ parent company Naspers bought a near 50% holding in Tencent back in 2001 for around $32 million. That early stake in Tencent is now worth billions of dollars, with the WeChat operator valued at nearly $600 billion as of Monday.

“The companies there [in India] are still small, our investment there is around $10 billion, as it was in China 14 years ago,” Prosus CEO Fabricio Bloisi told CNBC.

“What’s the learning? We believe it’s going to be, not a $20 billion company, but a $100 billion company, maybe [a] half a trillion dollar company in India. So we are not investing there to sell next month.”

Prosus has invested in some of the buzziest tech firms in India, including payments service PayU and e-commerce company Meesho. Prosus also owns just under 25% of food delivery firm Swiggy, which went public in November.

Bloisi said listing Prosus’ India investments are a key part of its strategy. He added that he expects five Indian companies that Prosus is invested in to carry out an initial public offering this year.

“I think this is very good for India, because we have the local markets here investing in the local companies. This was critical for U.S., this was critical for China. I think if India can greater strong local markets investing in tech, it’s going to be amazing for India,” Bloisi said.

Prosus has also been targeting big investments in Europe and the Latin America.

The company’s playbook revolves around the idea of ecosystems surrounding services, which Tencent managed to execute in China. Tencent runs China’s biggest messaging app called WeChat, which integrates features like payments and the ability to hail taxis or order food.

“We believe that we have ecosystems, just like we have in China in the U.S., like Microsoft or Uber or Google or Meta. They’re not just one product. They have one product that enables cross-sell and technology shared between many other adjacencies. That’s what we are doing,” Bloisi said.

In Latin America, Prosus has stakes in Brazilian food delivery firm iFood, online travel firm Despegar and online marketplace OLX Brasil.

Bloisi said food delivery and payments are the foundation of their investments, followed by areas like e-commerce and experiences such as travel.

“That’s the kind of ecosystem we believe. We learned that from China, we are doing that in that in Latin America right now, very, very successfully,” Bloisi said.

In the meantime, Prosus this year made a proposal to acquire European food delivery giant Just Eat Takeaway.com in an all-cash deal worth around 4.1 billion euros ($4.7 billion).

Bloisi said Prosus on Monday officially began proceedings to seek permission from the European Commission to approve the deal. The Prosus CEO said he was “optimistic” that the European regulators will “approve it quickly.”

Technology

Easy returns cause big trouble for Amazon sellers, but return rates show signs of slowing

Published

2 days ago

June 21, 2025

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Easy returns cause big trouble for Amazon sellers, but return rates show signs of slowing

Returns on Amazon are free and easy for shoppers, but they’re risky and expensive for the small businesses that sell a majority of the goods on the world’s biggest e-commerce site. Returns have driven some sellers to exit the popular Fulfillment by Amazon program, while others told CNBC they’d like to leave the platform altogether.

At the heart of the problem is a big rise in returns fraud, which has led to customers mistakenly receiving used products when they ordered something new. In two particularly egregious examples involving baby products described to CNBC, Amazon sent customers used diapers and a chiller with someone else’s rotten breastmilk inside.

“I really don’t think that consumers understand how many small businesses are on Amazon and how their return habits affect small businesses and families like mine,” said Rachelle Baron, owner of Beau and Belle Littles, which sells reusable swim diapers on Amazon.

Baron said her business tanked after a return incident with Amazon. The e-commerce platform shipped soiled swim diapers to customers after the used baby products had been returned to Amazon, Baron said.

“There was actually two diapers that were sent out that were poopy,” she said.

In 2024, nearly 14% of all U.S. retail returns were fraudulent, up from 5% in 2018, according to a report by the National Retail Federation. In total, the report found that returns cost retailers $890 billion in 2024.

Amazon started charging sellers in its fulfillment program (FBA) a new fee in June 2024 for items that exceed certain return rate thresholds. Sellers who sign up for FBA rely on Amazon for logistics, including shipping, packing and returns.

In September, a couple months after the fee went into effect, e-commerce group Helium 10 saw return rates for U.S. Amazon sellers drop nearly 5%.

“It’s forcing the seller to have higher quality listings and higher quality products,” said Helium 10 General Manager Zoe Lu.

Amazon has also started adding a warning label to some “frequently returned items,” which could be contributing to the dip.

Rising prices

However, the new fee may also be leading to rising prices.

One survey by e-commerce analysis company SmartScout found that 65% of sellers said they raised prices in 2024 directly because of Amazon fee changes. Other sellers told CNBC returns fraud is the reason they’ve raised prices.

In total, CNBC talked to seven Amazon sellers to find out how they’re handling the rising cost of returns.

“We’re running at about just over 1% net profit on Amazon, totally due to fraud and return abuse,” said Lorie Corlett, who sells Sterling Spectrum protective cases for hot wheels. She said her return rate is 4% on Amazon and only 1% on other marketplaces like Walmart. “It’s really Amazon that’s accountable at the end of the day. People would stop doing it if Amazon held them accountable.”

Amazon told CNBC it has no tolerance for fraudulent returns and that it takes action against some scammers. Those measures include denying refunds and requiring customer identity verification.

Mike Jelliff sells professional music gear through his GeekStands brand on Amazon and eight other marketplaces. He said his return rate on Amazon is three times higher than the average he sees elsewhere.

“On eBay, we’re allowed to block specific customers out,” Jelliff said. “But on Amazon, that customer is still allowed to repurchase from us.”

Jelliff showed CNBC the system of about 40 cameras he’s installed in his Tyler, Texas, warehouse to track every outgoing item, incoming return and unboxing. He uses the images when filing appeals with Amazon, including when customers request refunds claiming they never receive an item. He keeps a blacklist of repeat offenders who commit this kind of fraud and those who return used and damaged items, which become a total loss for him.

Amazon has made some improvements to its returns process, said Jelliff, who doesn’t rely on FBA. This includes Amazon allowing small businesses to make multiple appeals when fighting a fraudulent return. Amazon has also let Jelliff opt-out of automatic return labels for items above $100 starting in 2023, and his return rate has been dropping since.

Mike Jelliff at his GeekStands warehouse in Tyler, Texas, on June 6, 2025. Jelliff sees three times more returns of his professional music gear on Amazon, compared to the average on other marketplaces like eBay and Walmart.

Jacob Schatz

Why returns are destroyed

Figuring out which returns are fraudulent and which are ready for re-sale is labor-intensive and item specific, experts said. That creates plenty of room for error.

“Because it’s such a large operation, things are missed,” said Lu of Helium 10. “I think they’re probably missed on the margins, but these stories are very impactful because it is such a reckoning for the brand.”

Ceres Chill founder Lisa Myers, who once relied on Amazon to handle returns for her business as part of FBA, has one of these stories.

In 2023, Amazon sent one of Ceres Chill’s products to a customer with someone else’s rotten breastmilk inside, said Myers, adding that the customer wrote a review saying, “she will never forget that smell.”

“To have something, and I don’t mean to be dramatic, but dangerous, somebody else’s bodily fluids in your kitchen rotting in something that you had intended to use for your child is unacceptable,” Myers said. “That’s the moment I broke down crying and just sat down and thought, I have no idea how this could have happened.”

Myers said she left FBA after the incident, leaving behind benefits like having her products labeled with Amazon’s Prime badge.

“It hurts our business to not participate in Fulfilled by Amazon,” Myers said. “It’s just we’re not willing to, we will never put profit over the safety and, frankly, mental health of our customers.”

Instead, Myers outsources all her returns to baby resell specialist Goodbuy Gear, which is on track to re-sell 200,000 returned baby products this year.

Re-selling responsibly

Kristin Langenfeld started GoodBuy Gear when she was a new mom struggling to find a good quality, used jogging stroller.

“We’ve spent the last nine years building out a database that has all of the products and the variations, the common issues, the recalls,” Langenfeld said. “For some of these, there’s 40 points that we inspect on the item itself, and it’s really complicated.”

Langenfeld showed CNBC the process at her warehouse in Malvern, Pennsylvania, where each item is inspected for about 15 minutes and is typically handled by at least four employees. The resource intensive process is paying off. She says 33 new sellers signed up in 2024, three times more than the previous year. And with business growing 50% year-over-year, she’s upgrading to a bigger warehouse in Columbus, Ohio.

She was inspired to handle returns after visiting a major retailer’s returns warehouse five years ago.

“Taped on the floor were signs that said ‘incinerate,’ ‘destroy,'” she said.

Returns generated an estimated 29 million metric tons of carbon emissions in 2024, and 9.8 billion pounds of returns ended up in landfills, according to reverse logistics software provider Optoro.

Amazon has faced criticism for destroying millions of pounds of unused products. In 2022, Amazon told CNBC it was “working towards a goal of zero product disposal,” but wouldn’t give a timeline for that ambition. Three years later, that goal is still in the works, with Amazon telling CNBC in a statement, “The vast majority of returns are resold as new or used, returned to selling partners, liquidated, or donated.”

In 2020, Amazon added two new options for sellers to re-home returns. “Grade and Resell” allows all U.S. FBA sellers to have Amazon rate the return and mark it as “used” before re-selling it. FBA Liquidation allows sellers to recoup some losses by offloading palettes of goods for re-sale on the secondary market through liquidation partners like Liquidity Services.

There’s also an FBA Donations program that’s been around since 2019, allowing sellers to automatically offer eligible overstock and returns to charity groups through the non-profit Good360. Amazon told CNBC these seller programs give a second life to more than 300 million items a year.

For shoppers wanting to keep returns from incineration or landfills, Amazon also has options.

Amazon Resale has used and open-box goods, Amazon Renewed sells refurbished items and Amazon Outlet sells overstock. Daily deal site Woot!, bought by Amazon for $110 million in 2010, also sells scratched and dented items. Customers can also trade in certain electronics, like Amazon devices, phones and tablets, for Amazon gift cards or send them to the company’s certified recycler.

“I hope the change that we’re able to make as a country is that we stop making crap,” Langenfeld said. “We should make high quality products that are meant for resale.”

Technology

Meta approached Perplexity before massive Scale AI deal

Published

3 days ago

June 20, 2025

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Meta approached Perplexity before massive Scale AI deal

Meta approached artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI about a potential takeover bid before ultimately investing $14.3 billion into Scale AI, CNBC confirmed on Friday.

The two companies did not finalize a deal, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because of the confidential nature of the negotiations.

One person familiar with the talks said it was “mutually dissolved,” while another person familiar with the matter said Perplexity walked away from a potential deal.

Bloomberg earlier reported the talks between Meta and Perplexity. Perplexity declined to comment. Meta did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Meta’s attempt to purchase Perplexity serves as the latest example of Mark Zuckerberg‘s aggressive push to bolster his company’s AI efforts amid fierce competition from OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet. Zuckerberg has grown agitated that rivals like OpenAI appear to be ahead in both underlying AI models and consumer-facing apps, and he is going to extreme lengths to hire top AI talent, as CNBC has previously reported.