President Trump and Melania Launch Meme Coins
President Donald Trump launched a new cryptocurrency as he began his second term. The value of the new $Trump meme coin has soared to billions of dollars ($12bn/ÂŁ9.8bn) within days of its launch.
First Lady Melania Trump also launched a crypto offering this week. The $Melania meme coin is worth around $1.7 billion, according to the website CoinMarketCap.
Trump has previously called crypto a “scam,” but during the 2024 presidential election campaign, his family launched a cryptocurrency company called World Liberty Financial.
The new Trump coin was launched by CIC Digital LLC, a subsidiary of the Trump Organization, which is linked to previous sales of collectible crypto NFTs launched in 2022 that raised millions of dollars but have since dropped significantly in value for their owners .
Google invests $1 billion in Anthropic
Google has increased its stake in OpenAI rival Anthropic by investing an additional $1 billion in the AI ​​company.
The search engine giant has already invested $2 billion in Anthropic, but reports from the Financial Times claim the Alphabet-owned company has taken an even larger stake in the company behind the Claude family of AI models.
Other investors, including venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, are also expected to invest up to $2 billion in Anthropic, bringing the company’s valuation to more than $60 billion.
Other backers of Anthropic include Amazon, which has invested more than $8 billion in the AI ​​startup.
General Motors hit with five-year data ban
General Motors has reached an agreement with US regulators that will prevent the American auto manufacturing giant from selling customer information without their knowledge for the next twenty years.
The Federal Trade Commission imposed a five-year total data ban on GM, even with customer consent, after finding it shared driver behavior data with insurance companies without consent. of the customer.
GM’s Smart Driver program was an optional service that collected data on aspects such as driving routes chosen. However, a New York Times investigation found that the automaker also collects data on acceleration rate, cornering speed and other driver behaviors, which are particularly useful to insurers in assessing the risk posed by the insured.
“With this action, the FTC is protecting Americans’ privacy and protecting people from unchecked surveillance,” outgoing FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement Thursday.
GM was found to have been collecting driver data for sale through Smart Driver every three seconds, which was not disclosed to GM customers. GM discontinued this feature last year.
“Respecting our customers’ privacy and earning their trust is extremely important to us,” GM said in a statement Thursday. “We are more determined than ever to make our policies and controls clear and accessible. »
Meta accused of political bias after Instagram hid content from ‘Democrats’
Meta acknowledged an error in its social media app Instagram that caused a “hidden results” message to appear when users searched for the terms “Democrat” or “Democrats.”
Social media users, especially in the United States, found that they could not access content after searching for “Democrats”, but no such errors appeared when searching for “Republicans”, which led to accusations against the platform.
The problem arose when Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg appeared alongside other tech moguls at President Trump’s inauguration.
Meta denied the issue was politically motivated, instead saying it was a technical issue affecting multiple hashtags. The social media giant said it was working to resolve the issues urgently.