HoloLens chief Alex Kipman is leaving Microsoft following allegations of misconduct

Alex Kipman, the lead developer of Microsoft HoloLens, is leaving the company, according to Insider. His departure comes after the same publication reported allegations that he engaged in inappropriate touching and comments towards female employees. He also reportedly fostered a culture that diminished women’s contributions. After Kipman told his team about his resignation, Microsoft cloud and AI VP Scott Guthrie announced a reorganization that would split the HoloLens group. In an email that’s also viewed by GeekWire, Guthrie said that the HoloLens hardware teams are joining the Windows + Devices group under Panos Panay. Meanwhile, the software teams are joining the Experiences + Devices division under Jeff Teper.

Guthrie also wrote that he and Kipman have been talking about the team’s path going forward over the past few months and that they had “mutually decided that this is the right time for him to leave the company to pursue other opportunities.” Kipman will apparently help with the team transitions over the next two months before leaving Microsoft entirely. 

In the previous Insider piece that reported on allegations against Kipman, a source said he watched what was essentially VR porn in the office in front of his employees. A former executive also told the publication that they had witnessed him behave inappropriately towards women more than once. He recalled an incident wherein Kipman allegedly kept massaging a female employee’s shoulders even after she kept shrugging her shoulders to get him to stop. Managers were reportedly telling employees not to leave women alone around him. Eventually, 25 people got together to compile a report about the bad experiences they had with the executive. 

Microsoft didn’t confirm or deny the allegations to Insider, but the company told the publication that “every reported claim [it] receive[s] is investigated, and for every claim found substantiated there is clear action taken.”

Texas AG investigates Twitter over bot counts

Texas’s Attorney General, Ken Paxton, has launched an investigation of Twitter over concerns of “potentially false” reports related to the number of bots and other fake accounts on the social network. In a press release Monday, Paxton claims inauthentic accounts may be helping to “inflate the value” of Twitter — thus he intends to pursue the investigation under the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which protects against misleading advertisers, businesses and everyday users. 

Paxton’s office is pursuing the case just as Tesla CEO Elon Musk is seemingly attempting to scuttle his own bid to purchase Twitter. Musk has, for several weeks, been suggesting the platform’s bot numbers may be far greater than its current leadership are reporting. It’s interesting timing for Musk and Paxton’s interests to align: Tesla just opened a Gigafactory in Texas, and is moving its headquarters to the region. That’s a lot of potential business, and it comes as the state has offered tax breaks to companies building local facilities. For whatever it’s worth, Paxton has previously been accused of abuse of office over allegations of bribery, but was eventually cleared by his own office.

Twitter has been ordered to provide unredacted documents detailing the company’s active user counts since 2017, the volume of “inauthentic” accounts over that period and the methods used to calculate the ratio of fake accounts. It also has to outline its advertising model, including the revenue it generates in Texas.

It’s also notable that Musk’s hopes of boosting free speech on Twitter sync with Republic aims to reverse alleged censorship of conservative viewpoints on the site. Twitter has long rejected claims of ideological bias, and sued Paxton over claims of political retaliation that infringed its First Amendment rights. 

We’ve asked Twitter for comment. The company has previously maintained that fake accounts represent less than five percent of users, but Paxton echoed Musk’s currently unsupported concerns that fakes might represent 20 percent or more of all Twitter accounts.

The Attorney General has sued multiple tech companies over their practices, including Google (for its ad business) and Meta (over facial recognition). It’s not clear yet if Paxton intends to pursue a lawsuit against Twitter as well.

Google settles Photos facial recognition lawsuit for $100 million

Facebook isn’t the only one compensating Illinois residents over alleged privacy violations. The Vergenotes Google has agreed to pay $100 million to settle a class action lawsuit accusing the company of violating Illinois’ Biometric Information Protection Act (BIPA) through Photos’ “Face Grouping” feature. The settlement will let you claim between $200 and $400 if you appeared in a picture on Photos between May 1st, 2015 and April 25th, 2022.

Google supposedly broke the law by collecting and analyzing faces without appropriate notice, asking for “informed” consent or sharing data retention policies with the public. Face Grouping is meant to help you find photos of given people by detecting faces and automatically organizing them into collections.

You have until September 24th to submit a claim, and can object to the settlement terms before August 10th. The final approval hearing is slated for September 28th.

We’ve asked Google for comment. In a statement to The Verge, the company defended Face Grouping by stressing that collections were only visible to you and can be disabled.

The settlement is relatively modest. In 2021, Facebook agreed to pay $650 million to settle a lawsuit over its defunct face-based Tag Suggestions feature. This might not be the last big payout in the near future, though. Snap is dealing with a class action suit over purportedly illegal collection of face and voice data for its augmented reality effects, and it might face a similar expense if the plaintiffs prevail.

Automotive giant Stellantis pleads guilty to diesel emissions fraud

As expected, Stellantis, the parent company of Dodge and Jeep, has pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy charges related to its efforts to conceal the amount of pollution produced by its diesel engines. The world’s fifth-largest automaker agreed this w…

Activision Blizzard faces unfair labor practices complaint over staff unionization efforts

The Communications Workers of America has filed an unfair labor practices complaint against Activision Blizzard, accusing the company of retaliating against workers over their unionization efforts. If you’ll recall, the quality assurance workers at the Activision studio Raven Software announced their plans to unionize in January. That’s after Activision cut 12 of its QA contractors despite, according to a Washington Post report from January, Raven departmental management asking for those workers to be kept on. Workers at the studio went on strike following the event, demanding that all contractors be hired as full-time employees. 

In its complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board, the CWA accused the company of violating federal law by terminating those QA workers. The group also pointed out that Activision reorganized the studio by disbanding the QA team and embedding testers in other departments just mere days after they requested union recognition. In addition, Activision Blizzard allegedly withheld pays and benefits in April in response to the workers’ unionization efforts. 

According to previous reports, the company also actively and strongly discouraged workers from voting to unionize. Union organizer Jessica Gonzalez revealed on Twitter back in January that Activision VP of QA Chris Arends posted a message on a locked Slack channel diminishing the benefits of unionization. “A union doesn’t do anything to help us produce world-class games, and the bargaining process is not typically quick, often reduces flexibility, and can be adversarial and lead to negative publicity,” Arends wrote. 

A piece by The Washington Postalso said that company leadership held town meetings to dissuade workers from organizing and sent out emails with a message that says “Please vote no.” Those efforts had failed, and CWA won the election to unionize at Raven with a vote of 19 to 3. Xbox head Phil Spencer reportedly said before the vote that he would recognize a Raven union once Microsoft’s acquisition of the developer is complete.

Game Workers Alliance/CWA organizing committee members Erin Hall, Lau Nebel-Malone and Marie Carroll said:

“The reorganization and withholding of pay raises and other benefits and the company’s failure to rehire laid off QA testers were clearly attempts by Activision to intimidate us and interfere with our union election in violation of the National Labor Relations Act.”

Meanwhile, an Activision spokesperson disputed the allegations in a statement sent to Bloomberg:

“We respect and believe in the right of all employees to decide whether or not to support or vote for a union, and retaliation of any kind is not tolerated.”

As the news organization notes, complaints filed with the NLRB are investigation by regional offices. In case they’re found to have merit and aren’t settled, they can be prosecuted by the agency’s general counsel.

Update, 6/6/22, 10AM ET: This story has been updated with additional citations for the claim that Activision Blizzard cut 12 QA contractors despite Raven departmental leadership requesting to keep those contractors employed.

Former OpenSea employee charged in first-ever case of digital asset insider trading

Nathaniel Chastain, the former OpenSea product manager who resigned after he was revealed to be using privileged information to sell NFTs, has been indicted for wire fraud and money laundering, the Department of Justice announced today. This marks the first insider trading case involving digital assets, the agency said. It was originally unclear if anything would happen to Chastain, following his resignation, since the sale of NFTs isn’t regulated. His plan wasn’t exactly groundbreaking: He knew what NFTs were going to be featured on OpenSea’s homepage, so he surreptitiously purchased and sold them for a massive profit.

“NFTs might be new, but this type of criminal scheme is not,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “As alleged, Nathaniel Chastain betrayed OpenSea by using its confidential business information to make money for himself.  Today’s charges demonstrate the commitment of this Office to stamping out insider trading – whether it occurs on the stock market or the blockchain.”

Michael J. Driscoll, the FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge, added that the agency would “aggressively pursue” people who attempted to manipulate the market of NFTs using the “age-old scheme” of insider trading. It’ll likely take a while before we see true regulation around digital currencies and NFTs, but it’s clear that government agencies aren’t wasting their time before cracking down on bad actors.

Following the revelation of Chastain’s actions, OpenSea was quick to denounce him, saying that “this behavior does not represent our values as a team.” The company, which is notably the world’s largest NFT marketplace, also said it would prohibit employees from buying or selling NFTs from featured collections, or from using confidential information to do so elsewhere.

Texas’s bizarre social media law suspended by Supreme Court

Texas’s HB20 was put on hold Tuesday by the Supreme Court, five-to-four. As is typical for emergency for emergency requests, the majority did not define its reasoning; Justice Alito wrote a six page dissent joined by fellow conservatives Gorsuch and Thomas, while Kagan, a moderate, wrote she would “would deny the application to vacate stay” without signing onto the dissent.

The bill — which has been tied up in court since it was passed by the state’s Congress and signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott last September — targets “censorship” by online platforms, insofar as conservatives have in recent years been wont to conflate any form of content moderation with censorship. It reframes large social platforms as “common carriers” similar to telecom companies, but uses that logic to restrict the ability of platforms to limit the spread of, ban or demonetize content based on “the viewpoint of the user,” whether or not that view is expressed on the platform. 

Unsurprisingly, the content, users and viewpoints the law’s supporters believe are being unfairly targeted hew rightward: as the Texas Tribunereported last year, Governor Abbott said he believed social platforms were working to “silence conservative ideas [and] religious beliefs.” The aggrievement of the interested parties and their desired outcomes weren’t lost on Judge Robert Pitman of West Texas’s District Court, who wrote that “the record in this case confirms that the Legislature intended to target large social media platforms perceived as being biased against conservative views.” 

An emergency application to the Supreme Court to suspend HB20 was filed earlier this month by two tech industry groups — NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) — after a Fifth Circuit court had lifted an injunction on the law, doing so in a startling 2-1 decision for which no explanation was provided. Netchoice’s members include Airbnb, TikTok, Amazon and Lyft among many other; Apple, Google, eBay, Meta and others count themselves among those associated with CCIA. Counsel for NetChoice at the time told Protocol that the Texas law was “unconstitutional” and would compel “online platforms to host and promote foreign propaganda, pornography, pro-Nazi speech, and spam.”

These same concerns were given new urgency after the Buffalo, New York shooting, in which a gunman with white supremacist beliefs killed 10 people and injured three others in a majority-black neighborhood while live-streaming the carnage. Social media companies worked to remove copies of the footage from their services. Even as they did so, the question remained unsettled as to whether those removals would result in Texas dragging these platforms into court. Confusion as to the law’s application was not limited to interested observers, either: in a Twitter exchange with Techdirt’s Mike Masnick, the sponsor of the bill seemed unsure on how such situations would play out. 

A related law in Florida, using a similar common carrier approach, had most of its major provisions deemed unconstitutional by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month. The question of constitutionality for HB20 will continue to move forward in the Fifth Circuit Court. 

Recent ‘realityOS’ trademarks hint at Apple moving closer to AR/VR headset announcement

At the start of the year, a handful of developers, including Steve Troughton-Smith, found references to “realityOS,” the operating system for Apple’s long-rumored virtual and augmented reality headset. Now, a little more than a week before the start of WWDC 2022, the name has resurfaced in trademark filings seemingly linked to the company.

On Friday, Vox Media product manager Parker Ortolani took to Twitter to share two United States Patent and Trademark Office filings he found registered by a company called Realityo Systems LLC. As Parker and others have pointed out, there’s evidence to suggest Realityo Systems is a shell company created by Apple to obscure its tracks.

First, there’s the June 8th foreign filing deadline for both trademarks, which falls just two days after the start of WWDC 2022. Additionally, as noted by 9to5Mac, Realityo Systems LLC shares the same address as Yosemite Research LLC, the shell company Apple used to secure trademarks for past versions of its macOS operating system, including macOS Monterey. One more interesting tidbit of evidence is that in some countries Realityo Systems submitted trademark filings that include a realityOS logo written in Apple’s signature San Francisco typeface.

The timing of the filings suggests Apple is getting closer to the day it will feel comfortable sharing details about its augmented and virtual reality ambitions. However, we would caution against expecting an announcement as early as next week. In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman predicts the company won’t hold “a full-blown presentation” on its mixed-reality headset at WWDC. In fact, he says he would be “wary of expecting” such an announcement from the company. Gurman previously reported that Apple was considering pushing the device’s debut back to 2023 due to ongoing development problems. Still, the company is clearly moving forward with the project.

Judge rules Cydia’s antitrust case against Apple can move forward

Cydia’s antitrust case against Apple can move forward, according to Reuters. On Thursday, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, the same judge that oversaw the case between Apple and Epic Games, ruled Cydia’s creator, Jay “Saurik” Freeman, could present his claim against the company after rejecting a bid by Apple to dismiss the complaint.

Freeman first sued Apple at the end of 2020, alleging the company had an “illegal monopoly over iOS app distribution.” Judge Gonzalez Rogers dismissed Cydia’s initial complaint against Apple, ruling the suit fell outside the statute of limitations. But she also granted Freeman leave to amend his case, which is what he did. In its latest complaint, Cydia argues that iOS updates Apple released between 2018 and 2021 constituted “overt” acts that harmed distributors like itself. That’s a claim Judge Gonzalez Rogers found credible enough to explore.

“To the extent plaintiff’s claims rely on Apple’s technological updates to exclude Cydia from being able to operate altogether, those claims are timely,” the judge said in her ruling.

Cydia is seeking damages from Apple (the company stopped processing purchases in 2018) and hopes to force the tech giant to open iOS to third-party payments and app distributors. Opening the App Store to more competition is something US lawmakers are considering as well, with the Senate Judiciary Committee recently advancing the Open App Markets Act. If enacted, the law would force Apple to allow sideloading on iOS and prevent the company from locking developers into its payments system.

Twitter investors sue Elon Musk over stock manipulation claims

Elon Musk is facing yet another lawsuit over his planned Twitter acquisition. Reutersreports investors have sued the Tesla CEO for allegedly manipulating stock prices ahead of his $44 billion takeover bid. As in an earlier suit, Musk supposedly saved $156 million by failing to disclose that he’d bought more than a 5 percent stake in Twitter by March 14th, violating SEC rules. The investors said Musk only disclosed his investments in early April, when he revealed that he owned a 9.2 percent slice of the social network.

Musk’s post-announcement statements also amounted to manipulation, the investors said. They were particularly concerned about his claim that the deal was “on hold” until Twitter could prove that bots weren’t a major problem and represented less than 5 percent of accounts.

The plaintiffs in the case are hoping for class action status, and ask for unspecified damages if they’re successful. Twitter has declined comment, and Musk hadn’t responded to Reuters‘ requests for comment.

Musk’s hoped-for purchase has already sparked a flurry of legal action. In addition to the previously mentioned lawsuit from April, a Florida pension fund sued Musk for purportedly violating a Delaware law that would bar the merger until 2025. The SEC, meanwhile, is investigating Musk’s disclosure timing. There’s no certainty any of these actions will succeed, but they still pose serious challenges to Musk’s ambitions.