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Image: Laura Normand / The Verge

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed imposing multimillion-dollar fines on the political consultant responsible for the robocall campaign that used an AI-generated deepfake of President Joe Biden’s voice — and on the telecom company that facilitated the calls.
Longtime Democratic operator Steve Kramer faces a $6 million fine from the FCC, while Lingo Telecom could be fined $2 million. The FCC announced the proposed penalties on Thursday, calling the Lingo fine a “first-of-its-kind enforcement action.”
“We will act swiftly and decisively to ensure that bad actors cannot use U.S. telecommunications networks to facilitate the misuse of generative AI technology to interfere with elections, defraud consumers, or compromise sensitive data,” Loyaan Egal, chief of the enforcement bureau and chair of the FCC’s Privacy and Data Protection Task Force, said in a statement.

In February, Kramer — who had been working for Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips’ campaign — told NBC News he was behind the robocalls sent two days ahead of the New Hampshire primary election, in which a voice that sounded like Biden’s told voters not to show up to the polls. “Save your vote for the November election,” the Biden spoof told prospective voters. NBC News found no evidence that Phillips’ campaign was involved in the calls. Kramer — who paid a New Orleans magician $150 to create the message — claimed he made the deepfake to send a message about the use of AI in elections. (The magician told reporters he was unaware of Kramer’s plans for the audio.)
Kramer also faces criminal penalties in New Hampshire, where grand juries in four counties indicted him on 26 counts, including impersonating a candidate and voter suppression, according to The New York Times.
The FCC issued a cease-and-desist order to Lingo Telecom in February and also outlawed the use of AI-generated voices in robocalls that month. In a press release, the FCC said the $2 million fine is due to Lingo’s violation of “know your customer” principles regarding the calls.

Image: Laura Normand / The Verge

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed imposing multimillion-dollar fines on the political consultant responsible for the robocall campaign that used an AI-generated deepfake of President Joe Biden’s voice — and on the telecom company that facilitated the calls.

Longtime Democratic operator Steve Kramer faces a $6 million fine from the FCC, while Lingo Telecom could be fined $2 million. The FCC announced the proposed penalties on Thursday, calling the Lingo fine a “first-of-its-kind enforcement action.”

“We will act swiftly and decisively to ensure that bad actors cannot use U.S. telecommunications networks to facilitate the misuse of generative AI technology to interfere with elections, defraud consumers, or compromise sensitive data,” Loyaan Egal, chief of the enforcement bureau and chair of the FCC’s Privacy and Data Protection Task Force, said in a statement.

In February, Kramer — who had been working for Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips’ campaign — told NBC News he was behind the robocalls sent two days ahead of the New Hampshire primary election, in which a voice that sounded like Biden’s told voters not to show up to the polls. “Save your vote for the November election,” the Biden spoof told prospective voters. NBC News found no evidence that Phillips’ campaign was involved in the calls. Kramer — who paid a New Orleans magician $150 to create the message — claimed he made the deepfake to send a message about the use of AI in elections. (The magician told reporters he was unaware of Kramer’s plans for the audio.)

Kramer also faces criminal penalties in New Hampshire, where grand juries in four counties indicted him on 26 counts, including impersonating a candidate and voter suppression, according to The New York Times.

The FCC issued a cease-and-desist order to Lingo Telecom in February and also outlawed the use of AI-generated voices in robocalls that month. In a press release, the FCC said the $2 million fine is due to Lingo’s violation of “know your customer” principles regarding the calls.

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Canva is introducing a plethora of updates that aim to make its design ecosystem more attractive to professional teams and workspaces. The company has redesigned the platform to make new and existing editing tools easier to find and announced a specialized tier for Enterprises that provides more control over collaboration, brand management, and security for larger organizations.
“We are excited to introduce a revamped Canva experience and a suite of new products to empower every organization to design,” said Canva co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins in the press release. “We democratized the design ecosystem in our first decade and now look forward to unifying the fragmented ecosystems of design, AI, and workflow tools for every organization in our second decade.”
The redesigned homepage and editing experience will be available today but, strangely, only for the “first one million users who discover the secret portal” hidden on the Canva homepage. Otherwise, the updated Canva experience will be generally available in August.

Images: Canva
You can soon arrange your designs, folders, and projects on the Canva homepage so they’re easier to find.

Most of the updates are business-focused, such as AI-powered style matching for brands, allowing users to customize what folders are displayed on their Canva homepage workspace, and adding the ability for teams to “star” designs, folders, and brand templates to provide easier access to specific projects. Canva Docs — the company’s equivalent of Google Docs or Microsoft Word — now has a “suggestion” mode for editors to leave recommended edits and colorful new highlight blocks to emphasize specific areas of text.

Image: Canva
The new Suggestions feature for Canva Docs is similar to Google Docs “Suggesting” editing mode.

There are a lot of new capabilities and improvements included in this update, so you can check out all of Canva’s new features over on its website, but here are a few that stuck out:
The refreshed editing panel now automatically collapses when not in use to prevent it from obstructing in-process design projects, while a new “quick action” toolbar along the top of the page adds more of Canva’s most popular design tools — such as the color selection wheel and background removal feature.
There are also new “Magic Studio” AI tools, such as automatic clip highlighting and background noise reduction for video editing, and a new text-to-graphic image generator for producing icons, graphics, and illustration-style designs.

Image: Canva
Canva’s latest text-to-image generator specifically focuses on producing illustration-like graphics.

Canva co-founder Cameron Adams says these updates (and future ones) are focused on reducing organizational complexity and “app sprawl” — effectively offering companies a one-stop creative shop to replace all the dedicated design, AI, and workflow tools they currently pay for, like Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite, Figma, and Google Workspace. “The next decade for Canva is about integrating all these solutions into one platform,” Adams told The Verge.

Canva is introducing a plethora of updates that aim to make its design ecosystem more attractive to professional teams and workspaces. The company has redesigned the platform to make new and existing editing tools easier to find and announced a specialized tier for Enterprises that provides more control over collaboration, brand management, and security for larger organizations.

“We are excited to introduce a revamped Canva experience and a suite of new products to empower every organization to design,” said Canva co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins in the press release. “We democratized the design ecosystem in our first decade and now look forward to unifying the fragmented ecosystems of design, AI, and workflow tools for every organization in our second decade.”

The redesigned homepage and editing experience will be available today but, strangely, only for the “first one million users who discover the secret portal” hidden on the Canva homepage. Otherwise, the updated Canva experience will be generally available in August.

Images: Canva
You can soon arrange your designs, folders, and projects on the Canva homepage so they’re easier to find.

Most of the updates are business-focused, such as AI-powered style matching for brands, allowing users to customize what folders are displayed on their Canva homepage workspace, and adding the ability for teams to “star” designs, folders, and brand templates to provide easier access to specific projects. Canva Docs — the company’s equivalent of Google Docs or Microsoft Word — now has a “suggestion” mode for editors to leave recommended edits and colorful new highlight blocks to emphasize specific areas of text.

Image: Canva
The new Suggestions feature for Canva Docs is similar to Google Docs “Suggesting” editing mode.

There are a lot of new capabilities and improvements included in this update, so you can check out all of Canva’s new features over on its website, but here are a few that stuck out:

The refreshed editing panel now automatically collapses when not in use to prevent it from obstructing in-process design projects, while a new “quick action” toolbar along the top of the page adds more of Canva’s most popular design tools — such as the color selection wheel and background removal feature.

There are also new “Magic Studio” AI tools, such as automatic clip highlighting and background noise reduction for video editing, and a new text-to-graphic image generator for producing icons, graphics, and illustration-style designs.

Image: Canva
Canva’s latest text-to-image generator specifically focuses on producing illustration-like graphics.

Canva co-founder Cameron Adams says these updates (and future ones) are focused on reducing organizational complexity and “app sprawl” — effectively offering companies a one-stop creative shop to replace all the dedicated design, AI, and workflow tools they currently pay for, like Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite, Figma, and Google Workspace. “The next decade for Canva is about integrating all these solutions into one platform,” Adams told The Verge.

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There’s something charmingly retro-futuristic about Daylight’s whole vision. | Image: Daylight Computer

There’s a new company in the race to make a less distracting, more minimalist, and generally sanity-saving kind of computer. It’s called Daylight Computer, and it’s launching its first device today: the DC1, a 10.5-inch tablet with some interesting ideas about gadget design.
The DC1’s main hook is its display. Daylight calls it a “LivePaper” screen and says it looks like E Ink but is smooth and responsive like a traditional LCD. This is… not otherwise a thing that exists, at least not yet, and in general, anyone that promises an “E Ink-like” LCD screen is seriously overselling their product. But Daylight believes it has invented something genuinely new and better. If so, it would be a pretty exciting combination of iPad and Kindle. We’ll see!

The tablet also has a backlight with no blue, which means the DC1 will glow an amber color. Daylight is jumping on the blue-blocker bandwagon here, based on the popular notion that exposure to blue light can be harmful to your sleep and cause eyestrain. (There’s some evidence for the sleep part of that, though eliminating blue light is only part of the tech and sleep dilemma; there’s much less real connection between blue light and eyestrain.)
The device otherwise sounds like a fairly normal Android tablet. Well, not exactly Android: it runs an operating system called SolOS, which Daylight describes as “a custom Android-based operating system designed to facilitate deep focus.” (It’s based on Android 13.) It has a MediaTek Helio G99 processor, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, comes with a passive Wacom stylus, and has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The whole thing weighs 1.2 pounds It appears to have all the standard Android apps and services; Daylight’s bet seems to be that just changing the hardware can change your experience of the software, too.
Daylight CEO Anjan Katta has said he started the company to both help himself combat eyestrain and distraction as well as to try to redefine our relationship with gadgets altogether. In recent months, he’s been waxing poetic a lot — particularly on crypto-friendly podcasts; Katta is evidently a big Bitcoin fan — about the problems with modern devices. “The thing I like to think about is,” he said on the Healthier Technology podcast last year, “what would have happened to, like, Tolstoy if he grew up like this. What would have happened to Maya Angelou if she had a distracting, blue light-emitting phone? Would she have still been able to write the poetry she did?”

Image: Daylight
It’s sort of Kindle-ish, at least from this angle.

It’s all a little cringe-inducing at times, but Daylight is poking at a really interesting question: are smartphones really the right idea? Companies like Light and Humane are asking the same thing in different ways, but all are trying to find tech answers to tech problems rather than just encouraging everyone to throw their phone in the sea and move to the woods. “It’s impossible to escape technology. It’s not even realistic,” Katta said on that podcast. Instead, he argued, we should rethink the computer.
Listening to Katta’s podcast tour, it sounds like Daylight is a display company more than a tablet company. He has mentioned wanting to make monitors, laptops, watches, alarm clocks, and other devices but said he believes that a LivePaper-equipped foldable phone is ultimately “how we change the world.”
The DC1 is still in the preorder phase — the company says it already sold out the first batch, which required a $100 deposit to reserve — and costs $799. It’s supposed to ship for real in June, which is when we’ll get to see whether it’s possible to build a screen that is both easy to use and easy to put down.

There’s something charmingly retro-futuristic about Daylight’s whole vision. | Image: Daylight Computer

There’s a new company in the race to make a less distracting, more minimalist, and generally sanity-saving kind of computer. It’s called Daylight Computer, and it’s launching its first device today: the DC1, a 10.5-inch tablet with some interesting ideas about gadget design.

The DC1’s main hook is its display. Daylight calls it a “LivePaper” screen and says it looks like E Ink but is smooth and responsive like a traditional LCD. This is… not otherwise a thing that exists, at least not yet, and in general, anyone that promises an “E Ink-like” LCD screen is seriously overselling their product. But Daylight believes it has invented something genuinely new and better. If so, it would be a pretty exciting combination of iPad and Kindle. We’ll see!

The tablet also has a backlight with no blue, which means the DC1 will glow an amber color. Daylight is jumping on the blue-blocker bandwagon here, based on the popular notion that exposure to blue light can be harmful to your sleep and cause eyestrain. (There’s some evidence for the sleep part of that, though eliminating blue light is only part of the tech and sleep dilemma; there’s much less real connection between blue light and eyestrain.)

The device otherwise sounds like a fairly normal Android tablet. Well, not exactly Android: it runs an operating system called SolOS, which Daylight describes as “a custom Android-based operating system designed to facilitate deep focus.” (It’s based on Android 13.) It has a MediaTek Helio G99 processor, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, comes with a passive Wacom stylus, and has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The whole thing weighs 1.2 pounds It appears to have all the standard Android apps and services; Daylight’s bet seems to be that just changing the hardware can change your experience of the software, too.

Daylight CEO Anjan Katta has said he started the company to both help himself combat eyestrain and distraction as well as to try to redefine our relationship with gadgets altogether. In recent months, he’s been waxing poetic a lot — particularly on crypto-friendly podcasts; Katta is evidently a big Bitcoin fan — about the problems with modern devices. “The thing I like to think about is,” he said on the Healthier Technology podcast last year, “what would have happened to, like, Tolstoy if he grew up like this. What would have happened to Maya Angelou if she had a distracting, blue light-emitting phone? Would she have still been able to write the poetry she did?”

Image: Daylight
It’s sort of Kindle-ish, at least from this angle.

It’s all a little cringe-inducing at times, but Daylight is poking at a really interesting question: are smartphones really the right idea? Companies like Light and Humane are asking the same thing in different ways, but all are trying to find tech answers to tech problems rather than just encouraging everyone to throw their phone in the sea and move to the woods. “It’s impossible to escape technology. It’s not even realistic,” Katta said on that podcast. Instead, he argued, we should rethink the computer.

Listening to Katta’s podcast tour, it sounds like Daylight is a display company more than a tablet company. He has mentioned wanting to make monitors, laptops, watches, alarm clocks, and other devices but said he believes that a LivePaper-equipped foldable phone is ultimately “how we change the world.”

The DC1 is still in the preorder phase — the company says it already sold out the first batch, which required a $100 deposit to reserve — and costs $799. It’s supposed to ship for real in June, which is when we’ll get to see whether it’s possible to build a screen that is both easy to use and easy to put down.

Read More 

Image: Netflix

Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit, from Spry Fox games, will soon be added to Netflix’s ever-expanding lineup of games. Camp Spirit is the follow-up to Cozy Grove, an Animal Crossing-inspired crafting and survival game, but with ghosts instead of dog musicians and tanuki low-interest home loan providers.

In Camp Spirit, you’ll fulfill the wishes of dearly departed bears. (For a studio called Spry Fox, it’s kinda hilarious that nearly all of its games focus on bears.) You’ll also work on improving your haunted island, turning it into a lively community for the deceased.
Netflix began its gaming initiative in 2021 and hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down. In addition to becoming the exclusive mobile publisher for highly popular console games like Sonic Mania Plus, Hades, and Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, the company also started working on developing its own games. To date, Netflix has a total of six internal studios, acquiring Night School Studio, Spry Fox, Next Games, and Boss Fight Entertainment while starting up two new studios in Helsinki and Southern California.
Camp Spirit’s forthcoming release makes it the newest of several Netflix-developed games, which include Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales, Money Heist: Ultimate Choice, Oxenfree II, and more. Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit launches on Netflix on June 25th, and players can preregister for it on iOS and Android.

Image: Netflix

Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit, from Spry Fox games, will soon be added to Netflix’s ever-expanding lineup of games. Camp Spirit is the follow-up to Cozy Grove, an Animal Crossing-inspired crafting and survival game, but with ghosts instead of dog musicians and tanuki low-interest home loan providers.

In Camp Spirit, you’ll fulfill the wishes of dearly departed bears. (For a studio called Spry Fox, it’s kinda hilarious that nearly all of its games focus on bears.) You’ll also work on improving your haunted island, turning it into a lively community for the deceased.

Netflix began its gaming initiative in 2021 and hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down. In addition to becoming the exclusive mobile publisher for highly popular console games like Sonic Mania Plus, Hades, and Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, the company also started working on developing its own games. To date, Netflix has a total of six internal studios, acquiring Night School Studio, Spry Fox, Next Games, and Boss Fight Entertainment while starting up two new studios in Helsinki and Southern California.

Camp Spirit’s forthcoming release makes it the newest of several Netflix-developed games, which include Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales, Money Heist: Ultimate Choice, Oxenfree II, and more. Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit launches on Netflix on June 25th, and players can preregister for it on iOS and Android.

Read More 

Photo by Oliver Morin / AFP via Getty Images

On today’s episode of Decoder, I sat down with Joseph Cox, one of the best cybersecurity reporters around. Joseph spent a long time working at Vice’s tech vertical Motherboard, but last year, after Vice imploded, he and three other journalists co-founded a new site, called 404 Media, where they’re doing some really great work.
Somehow, on top of all that, Joseph also found time to write a new book coming out in June called Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever, and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s basically a caper, but with the FBI running a phone network. For real.

Criminals like drug traffickers represent a market for encrypted, secure communications away from the eyes of law enforcement. In the early mobile era, that gave rise to a niche industry of specialized, secured phones criminals used to conduct their business.
Joseph’s done a ton of reporting on this over the years, and the book ends up telling a truly extraordinary story: After breaking into a few of these encrypted smartphone companies, the FBI ended up running one of these secure phone services itself so it could spy on criminals around the world. And that means the FBI had to actually run a company, with all the problems of any other tech startup: cloud services, manufacturing and shipping issues, customer service, expansion, and scale.
The company was called Anom, and for about three years, it gave law enforcement agencies around the world a crystal-clear window into the criminal underworld. In the end, the feds shut it down in large part because it was too successful — again, a truly wild story. Now, with the rise of apps like Signal, most criminals no longer need specialized hardware, but that, of course, raises a whole new set of issues.
The book is a great read, but it also touches on a lot of things we talk about a lot here on Decoder. There really are bad people out there using tech to help them do bad things, but the same tools that keep their communications private help give everyone else their privacy, too — whistleblowers, dissenters, ordinary people like you and me.
There’s a deep tension between privacy and security that constantly runs through tech, and you’ll hear us really dig into the way tech companies and governments are forever going back and forth on it. There’s a lot here, and it’s a fun one.

Photo by Oliver Morin / AFP via Getty Images

On today’s episode of Decoder, I sat down with Joseph Cox, one of the best cybersecurity reporters around. Joseph spent a long time working at Vice’s tech vertical Motherboard, but last year, after Vice imploded, he and three other journalists co-founded a new site, called 404 Media, where they’re doing some really great work.

Somehow, on top of all that, Joseph also found time to write a new book coming out in June called Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever, and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s basically a caper, but with the FBI running a phone network. For real.

Criminals like drug traffickers represent a market for encrypted, secure communications away from the eyes of law enforcement. In the early mobile era, that gave rise to a niche industry of specialized, secured phones criminals used to conduct their business.

Joseph’s done a ton of reporting on this over the years, and the book ends up telling a truly extraordinary story: After breaking into a few of these encrypted smartphone companies, the FBI ended up running one of these secure phone services itself so it could spy on criminals around the world. And that means the FBI had to actually run a company, with all the problems of any other tech startup: cloud services, manufacturing and shipping issues, customer service, expansion, and scale.

The company was called Anom, and for about three years, it gave law enforcement agencies around the world a crystal-clear window into the criminal underworld. In the end, the feds shut it down in large part because it was too successful — again, a truly wild story. Now, with the rise of apps like Signal, most criminals no longer need specialized hardware, but that, of course, raises a whole new set of issues.

The book is a great read, but it also touches on a lot of things we talk about a lot here on Decoder. There really are bad people out there using tech to help them do bad things, but the same tools that keep their communications private help give everyone else their privacy, too — whistleblowers, dissenters, ordinary people like you and me.

There’s a deep tension between privacy and security that constantly runs through tech, and you’ll hear us really dig into the way tech companies and governments are forever going back and forth on it. There’s a lot here, and it’s a fun one.

Read More 

Illustration: The Verge

TikTok says it disrupted more than a dozen covert influence campaigns on the platform since January, including one originating from China.
In a blog post, the company announced it would begin publicly reporting on influence campaigns, where networks of accounts engage in coordinated efforts to sway political discourse. TikTok will share details of campaigns it detects and removes, saying it hopes it will “increase transparency about our work to aggressively counter influence attempts.”
The first report of its kind outlines 15 influence operations that spanned 3,000 accounts that had a combined millions of followers. In February, for example, TikTok claims it took down a network of 16 accounts operated from China that were targeting US users. The network used inauthentic accounts to “artificially amplify positive narratives of China,” including support for government policy and “general promotion of Chinese culture.” The network had around 110,000 followers.
In March, TikTok said it removed a network of 52 accounts operated from Ukraine, with a combined 2.6 million followers. The accounts targeted Ukrainians and posted pro-Ukraine clickbait content in an attempt to “manipulate discourse about the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine,” according to the report. The company also details influence campaigns in Indonesia, Venezuela, Germany, and Iran, among others, that attempted to manipulate politics. TikTok says it will also detail campaigns that it has previously removed that attempt to rejoin the platform.
TikTok also announced it would further restrict the reach of state-affiliated media accounts on the platform that try to reach international audiences on topics like global events and affairs. These accounts will be blocked from appearing in the For You feed, the powerful recommendations page that drives reach and engagement on TikTok. They’ll also be prohibited from advertising outside the country they’re based in.
The disclosure of influence campaigns on TikTok comes as the company faces being shut out of the US. The TikTok “ban” bill — which would force Chinese owner ByteDance to divest the video app — has become a flashpoint for US-China relations in recent months. Proponents of the bill say TikTok could be used to brainwash Americans and that the Chinese government has control over TikTok’s recommendation algorithm, though lawmakers have not provided evidence to support this claim.
TikTok is far from the only platform that governments use to try to shape political opinion. Companies like Meta periodically report shutting down influence operations, and Google issues quarterly reports on influence operations it detects. In 2018, Facebook said it had identified and shut down “coordinated authentic behavior” that could be an effort to influence midterm elections; Russian organizations had previously used Facebook to push misinformation around the 2016 elections.
Influence campaigns also aren’t limited to foreign interests: in 2022, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp found and removed a campaign that promoted US interests to audiences abroad while also attacking US adversaries like Russia, China, and Iran.

Illustration: The Verge

TikTok says it disrupted more than a dozen covert influence campaigns on the platform since January, including one originating from China.

In a blog post, the company announced it would begin publicly reporting on influence campaigns, where networks of accounts engage in coordinated efforts to sway political discourse. TikTok will share details of campaigns it detects and removes, saying it hopes it will “increase transparency about our work to aggressively counter influence attempts.”

The first report of its kind outlines 15 influence operations that spanned 3,000 accounts that had a combined millions of followers. In February, for example, TikTok claims it took down a network of 16 accounts operated from China that were targeting US users. The network used inauthentic accounts to “artificially amplify positive narratives of China,” including support for government policy and “general promotion of Chinese culture.” The network had around 110,000 followers.

In March, TikTok said it removed a network of 52 accounts operated from Ukraine, with a combined 2.6 million followers. The accounts targeted Ukrainians and posted pro-Ukraine clickbait content in an attempt to “manipulate discourse about the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine,” according to the report. The company also details influence campaigns in Indonesia, Venezuela, Germany, and Iran, among others, that attempted to manipulate politics. TikTok says it will also detail campaigns that it has previously removed that attempt to rejoin the platform.

TikTok also announced it would further restrict the reach of state-affiliated media accounts on the platform that try to reach international audiences on topics like global events and affairs. These accounts will be blocked from appearing in the For You feed, the powerful recommendations page that drives reach and engagement on TikTok. They’ll also be prohibited from advertising outside the country they’re based in.

The disclosure of influence campaigns on TikTok comes as the company faces being shut out of the US. The TikTok “ban” bill — which would force Chinese owner ByteDance to divest the video app — has become a flashpoint for US-China relations in recent months. Proponents of the bill say TikTok could be used to brainwash Americans and that the Chinese government has control over TikTok’s recommendation algorithm, though lawmakers have not provided evidence to support this claim.

TikTok is far from the only platform that governments use to try to shape political opinion. Companies like Meta periodically report shutting down influence operations, and Google issues quarterly reports on influence operations it detects. In 2018, Facebook said it had identified and shut down “coordinated authentic behavior” that could be an effort to influence midterm elections; Russian organizations had previously used Facebook to push misinformation around the 2016 elections.

Influence campaigns also aren’t limited to foreign interests: in 2022, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp found and removed a campaign that promoted US interests to audiences abroad while also attacking US adversaries like Russia, China, and Iran.

Read More 

A notification on my Samsung Family Hub smart fridge told me my favorite feature was going away. Apparently, it was wrong. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Yesterday morning, I woke up to a notice on my fridge alerting me that one of my favorite features was going away. No, it wasn’t about to stop making ice. Instead, my Samsung Family Hub smart fridge told me I would no longer be able to watch Samsung TV Plus on its built-in screen. And while that turned out not to be the case — the confusion highlights how precarious smart appliance features can be.
Here’s the message I was greeted with over my morning coffee:
Thank you for using Samsung TV Plus service. After the SW update scheduled for June 2024, Samsung TV Plus will only be available within Mexican territories. Please note that this is Samsung TV Plus’ policy, and use of the service may be restricted if you wish to use it outside of Mexican territories. Thank you.
I was not the only one who received this message. The Samsung Community forum was full of people crying foul over this possible bait and switch, with many wondering — as I did — whether this was the end of Samsung TV Plus everywhere or just on older fridges (my Family Hub is from 2019). But the notice said the service “will only be available within Mexican territories,” which made me think this might be a licensing issue more than a software one.
It turns out that the notification was sent out by mistake. “Samsung will not be removing Samsung TV Plus from the US Market,” Samsung spokesperson Chris Langlois confirmed to The Verge. “The notification was sent in error, and a correction will be released.” I also asked Langlois if he could explain why this happened and how many fridges sent out this message. I’ll provide an update if I hear back.

Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
The notification on my Samsung Family Hub smart fridge.

Samsung’s TV Plus is Samsung’s FAST service that has gotten better and better since it launched in 2015. It’s available on Samsung smart TVs (released after 2016), Family Hub fridges, smart monitors, Galaxy devices, and the web. It offers hundreds of live TV channels with news, sports, and plenty of classic TV (there’s an entire channel dedicated to Baywatch reruns and another to Degrassi Junior High), alongside movies on demand. And it’s all free.
I’m still waiting for that pop-up telling me all is good, but I’m definitely relieved I’m not losing the option to watch TV Plus on my fridge. It’s not like I stand in front of it and watch a whole movie in my kitchen. But I like to have the T2 Tennis Channel on while I scramble eggs or pop on a news show while cooking dinner. Plus, it’s nice to have a kitchen screen that doesn’t take up counter space.
However, while this feature isn’t going away — this is another warning that internet-connected devices can and will break your heart. Yes, a big benefit of smart home devices is that they can get smarter with over-the-air updates. I didn’t have Samsung TV Plus on the fridge when I first got it — it arrived with a software update in 2022. But they can also get dumber. And there’s not a thing you can do about it.

A notification on my Samsung Family Hub smart fridge told me my favorite feature was going away. Apparently, it was wrong. | Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge

Yesterday morning, I woke up to a notice on my fridge alerting me that one of my favorite features was going away. No, it wasn’t about to stop making ice. Instead, my Samsung Family Hub smart fridge told me I would no longer be able to watch Samsung TV Plus on its built-in screen. And while that turned out not to be the case — the confusion highlights how precarious smart appliance features can be.

Here’s the message I was greeted with over my morning coffee:

Thank you for using Samsung TV Plus service. After the SW update scheduled for June 2024, Samsung TV Plus will only be available within Mexican territories. Please note that this is Samsung TV Plus’ policy, and use of the service may be restricted if you wish to use it outside of Mexican territories. Thank you.

I was not the only one who received this message. The Samsung Community forum was full of people crying foul over this possible bait and switch, with many wondering — as I did — whether this was the end of Samsung TV Plus everywhere or just on older fridges (my Family Hub is from 2019). But the notice said the service “will only be available within Mexican territories,” which made me think this might be a licensing issue more than a software one.

It turns out that the notification was sent out by mistake. “Samsung will not be removing Samsung TV Plus from the US Market,” Samsung spokesperson Chris Langlois confirmed to The Verge. “The notification was sent in error, and a correction will be released.” I also asked Langlois if he could explain why this happened and how many fridges sent out this message. I’ll provide an update if I hear back.

Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge
The notification on my Samsung Family Hub smart fridge.

Samsung’s TV Plus is Samsung’s FAST service that has gotten better and better since it launched in 2015. It’s available on Samsung smart TVs (released after 2016), Family Hub fridges, smart monitors, Galaxy devices, and the web. It offers hundreds of live TV channels with news, sports, and plenty of classic TV (there’s an entire channel dedicated to Baywatch reruns and another to Degrassi Junior High), alongside movies on demand. And it’s all free.

I’m still waiting for that pop-up telling me all is good, but I’m definitely relieved I’m not losing the option to watch TV Plus on my fridge. It’s not like I stand in front of it and watch a whole movie in my kitchen. But I like to have the T2 Tennis Channel on while I scramble eggs or pop on a news show while cooking dinner. Plus, it’s nice to have a kitchen screen that doesn’t take up counter space.

However, while this feature isn’t going away — this is another warning that internet-connected devices can and will break your heart. Yes, a big benefit of smart home devices is that they can get smarter with over-the-air updates. I didn’t have Samsung TV Plus on the fridge when I first got it — it arrived with a software update in 2022. But they can also get dumber. And there’s not a thing you can do about it.

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Paper Mario: The Thousand-year Door. | Image: Nintendo

When it comes to Mario’s traditional platforming adventures, the story is mostly set dressing. There’s an intro about Peach being captured or Bowser turning into a sentient castle, and then you get on with the jumping and exploring. But there’s a rich and interesting world that goes underexplored — which is where Mario’s roleplaying spinoffs come in. Since the original Super Mario RPG on the SNES, these games have not only given more stories and character to the Mario universe but they’re also somehow even weirder than the already quite weird mainline games.
And with the addition of the new remaster of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the Nintendo Switch (and its subscription service) has slowly turned into a great starting point for getting started with the Mario RPG universe.

The obvious place to start with the franchise is Super Mario RPG. For a while, that was easier said than done. Unlike most Nintendo games, Mario RPG hasn’t been ported all that much; there’s the original SNES version, rereleases on the Wii / Wii U virtual console, and its inclusion in the SNES Classic Edition. But last year, the Switch got a full-on remake, which doesn’t change much aside from introducing proper 3D graphics and some quality-of-life tweaks.
But it didn’t need to change much: this game is a delight. Created in collaboration with Final Fantasy maker Square Enix (then SquareSoft), it’s a fairly traditional RPG — which means turn-based battles, gear upgrades, and magic — that turns the Mushroom Kingdom into a fever dream of a fantasy realm. It somehow manages to marry slapstick humor with an epic quest, stuff it with Mario references, and still feel cohesive.

From there, Mario RPGs went on two diverging paths. One of them is only lightly represented on the Switch. As part of Nintendo Switch Online’s library of Game Boy Advance titles, you can play Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, which, as the name implies, has players controlling both brothers on a goofy journey to rescue Peach’s voice from an evil bean. To give a sense of how odd Superstar Saga can get: the game opens with a scene where you see Luigi doing laundry and Mario in the shower. It only gets sillier from there. But its playful approach to combat and storytelling makes it stand up even now.
The other spinoff series is Paper Mario. It kicked off on the N64, and the original game is available as part of Switch Online. What defines this series — aside from the distinct lack of playable Luigi — is its papercraft aesthetic. Not only does it give the games a playful look but it also creates all kinds of opportunities for great jokes and fun gameplay. Depending on the game, Mario can turn into a paper airplane or travel around the world using a fax machine.
The series arguably peaked with Thousand-Year Door, which originally launched on the GameCube in 2004. It maintains the lighthearted charms and solid yet accessible gameplay of its predecessors, but it builds on them with a surprisingly deep and interesting story and an extremely odd and lovable cast of characters. The remaster on the Switch mostly adds some welcome quality-of-life-tweaks, so that personality remains intact. Unfortunately, from there, the Paper Mario series slowly drifted away from its RPG roots, with subsequent releases shifting more into action territory.
That said, I have to give a special shoutout to 2020’s The Origami King on the Switch. While it’s not as pure of an RPG as Thousand-Year Door, it is still absolutely hilarious and has some of the most memorable — and heartbreaking — character moments in the entire series. Bobby the Bob-omb has forever changed how I view Super Mario enemies.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-year Door. | Image: Nintendo

When it comes to Mario’s traditional platforming adventures, the story is mostly set dressing. There’s an intro about Peach being captured or Bowser turning into a sentient castle, and then you get on with the jumping and exploring. But there’s a rich and interesting world that goes underexplored — which is where Mario’s roleplaying spinoffs come in. Since the original Super Mario RPG on the SNES, these games have not only given more stories and character to the Mario universe but they’re also somehow even weirder than the already quite weird mainline games.

And with the addition of the new remaster of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, the Nintendo Switch (and its subscription service) has slowly turned into a great starting point for getting started with the Mario RPG universe.

The obvious place to start with the franchise is Super Mario RPG. For a while, that was easier said than done. Unlike most Nintendo games, Mario RPG hasn’t been ported all that much; there’s the original SNES version, rereleases on the Wii / Wii U virtual console, and its inclusion in the SNES Classic Edition. But last year, the Switch got a full-on remake, which doesn’t change much aside from introducing proper 3D graphics and some quality-of-life tweaks.

But it didn’t need to change much: this game is a delight. Created in collaboration with Final Fantasy maker Square Enix (then SquareSoft), it’s a fairly traditional RPG — which means turn-based battles, gear upgrades, and magic — that turns the Mushroom Kingdom into a fever dream of a fantasy realm. It somehow manages to marry slapstick humor with an epic quest, stuff it with Mario references, and still feel cohesive.

From there, Mario RPGs went on two diverging paths. One of them is only lightly represented on the Switch. As part of Nintendo Switch Online’s library of Game Boy Advance titles, you can play Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, which, as the name implies, has players controlling both brothers on a goofy journey to rescue Peach’s voice from an evil bean. To give a sense of how odd Superstar Saga can get: the game opens with a scene where you see Luigi doing laundry and Mario in the shower. It only gets sillier from there. But its playful approach to combat and storytelling makes it stand up even now.

The other spinoff series is Paper Mario. It kicked off on the N64, and the original game is available as part of Switch Online. What defines this series — aside from the distinct lack of playable Luigi — is its papercraft aesthetic. Not only does it give the games a playful look but it also creates all kinds of opportunities for great jokes and fun gameplay. Depending on the game, Mario can turn into a paper airplane or travel around the world using a fax machine.

The series arguably peaked with Thousand-Year Door, which originally launched on the GameCube in 2004. It maintains the lighthearted charms and solid yet accessible gameplay of its predecessors, but it builds on them with a surprisingly deep and interesting story and an extremely odd and lovable cast of characters. The remaster on the Switch mostly adds some welcome quality-of-life-tweaks, so that personality remains intact. Unfortunately, from there, the Paper Mario series slowly drifted away from its RPG roots, with subsequent releases shifting more into action territory.

That said, I have to give a special shoutout to 2020’s The Origami King on the Switch. While it’s not as pure of an RPG as Thousand-Year Door, it is still absolutely hilarious and has some of the most memorable — and heartbreaking — character moments in the entire series. Bobby the Bob-omb has forever changed how I view Super Mario enemies.

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Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

From Taylor Swift fans crashing Ticketmaster to the federal lawsuit that threatens to break up Live Nation’s alleged monopoly. Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation is facing an antitrust lawsuit from the US Department of Justice and 30 state and district attorneys general accusing the company of having a monopoly in the live ticketing industry.
Live Nation and Ticketmaster had been under regulatory scrutiny when the two companies merged in 2010, but criticisms of the company reached a breaking point when Ticketmaster crashed under the weight of millions of Taylor Swift fans trying to buy tickets for the Eras Tour in 2022. The incident set off a monthslong investigation and a bill that would force ticket sellers to show total prices upfront.

The lawsuit against Live Nation (PDF) claims that its control over ticket sales, promotions, management, and venue ownership gives the company an unfair advantage over competitors. In addition to driving up ticket prices, the DOJ alleges that Live Nation’s dominance allows it to “lock up artists to exclusive promotion deals” and “sign venues into long term exclusive ticketing deals.”
Read on for more updates about the US government’s antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation-Ticketmaster.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

From Taylor Swift fans crashing Ticketmaster to the federal lawsuit that threatens to break up Live Nation’s alleged monopoly.

Ticketmaster parent company Live Nation is facing an antitrust lawsuit from the US Department of Justice and 30 state and district attorneys general accusing the company of having a monopoly in the live ticketing industry.

Live Nation and Ticketmaster had been under regulatory scrutiny when the two companies merged in 2010, but criticisms of the company reached a breaking point when Ticketmaster crashed under the weight of millions of Taylor Swift fans trying to buy tickets for the Eras Tour in 2022. The incident set off a monthslong investigation and a bill that would force ticket sellers to show total prices upfront.

The lawsuit against Live Nation (PDF) claims that its control over ticket sales, promotions, management, and venue ownership gives the company an unfair advantage over competitors. In addition to driving up ticket prices, the DOJ alleges that Live Nation’s dominance allows it to “lock up artists to exclusive promotion deals” and “sign venues into long term exclusive ticketing deals.”

Read on for more updates about the US government’s antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation-Ticketmaster.

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In this NOAA image taken by the GOES satellite, Hurricane Lee crosses the Atlantic Ocean as it moves west on September 8th, 2023. | Image: Getty Images

The Atlantic Hurricane season starts on June 1st, and it’s forecast to be rough. A record number of strong storms could form with a shift from El Niño to La Niña this summer and unusually warm waters churning in the Atlantic Ocean.
There’s an 85 percent chance of an “above normal” season, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It forecasts between 17 to 25 storms strong enough to earn a name (reaching wind speeds of at least 39 miles per hour). It also predicts eight to 13 hurricanes and four to seven major hurricanes.
Those are big numbers — the most named storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes NOAA has ever predicted in its May outlook. For comparison, there was an average of 14.4 named storms, 7.2 hurricanes, and 3.2 major hurricanes per season between 1991 and 2020.
“This season is looking to be an extraordinary one in a number of ways.”
“This season is looking to be an extraordinary one in a number of ways,” NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad said in a press briefing. “The key this year as in any year is to get prepared and stay prepared.”
An El Niño climate pattern is currently in play, which can usually tamp down the Atlantic hurricane season because it usually means increased vertical wind shear that can tear a storm apart as it tries to gain strength. But the current El Niño is weakening and is expected to come to a close in the next couple months.
There’s now a 77 percent chance of a La Niña pattern forming sometime between August and October. La Niña tends to have the opposite effect on the Atlantic hurricane season, reducing vertical wind shear and allowing storms to strengthen uninterrupted.
Rising temperatures with climate change are another risk factor. Hurricanes have grown more intense with global warming since storms draw strength from heat energy at the sea surface. Record high water temperatures have already been recorded across the tropical Atlantic recently, and that heat is expected to persist into the peak months of the Atlantic hurricane season between August and October.
Those high temperatures also allow storms to intensify rapidly, which gives communities less time to prepare for their impact. All of the strongest storms, Category 5 hurricanes, to make landfall in the US over the past 100 years in the US were much weaker tropical storms or less just three days prior, with an average lead time of just 50 hours.
“Big ones are fast,” Ken Graham, director of NOAA’s National Weather Service, said on the press call. “That’s why I’m saying this time they don’t care about our timelines. Preparedness is absolutely everything.”
Other forecasters have made similarly worrisome predictions for the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season. Penn State scientists forecast a record-breaking 33 named storms for the Atlantic. Colorado State University’s Tropical Weather and Climate Research group anticipates an “extremely active” season with 23 named storms, 11 hurricanes, and five major hurricanes.
NOAA also estimates the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) for the season, a measure of overall storm activity. This year, it’s forecasting the second-highest ACE score it’s ever announced during its May outlook.
“In past years, when we’ve seen high ACE numbers, those have historically been the years with the most destructive hurricanes,” Spinrad said.

In this NOAA image taken by the GOES satellite, Hurricane Lee crosses the Atlantic Ocean as it moves west on September 8th, 2023. | Image: Getty Images

The Atlantic Hurricane season starts on June 1st, and it’s forecast to be rough. A record number of strong storms could form with a shift from El Niño to La Niña this summer and unusually warm waters churning in the Atlantic Ocean.

There’s an 85 percent chance of an “above normal” season, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It forecasts between 17 to 25 storms strong enough to earn a name (reaching wind speeds of at least 39 miles per hour). It also predicts eight to 13 hurricanes and four to seven major hurricanes.

Those are big numbers — the most named storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes NOAA has ever predicted in its May outlook. For comparison, there was an average of 14.4 named storms, 7.2 hurricanes, and 3.2 major hurricanes per season between 1991 and 2020.

“This season is looking to be an extraordinary one in a number of ways,” NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad said in a press briefing. “The key this year as in any year is to get prepared and stay prepared.”

An El Niño climate pattern is currently in play, which can usually tamp down the Atlantic hurricane season because it usually means increased vertical wind shear that can tear a storm apart as it tries to gain strength. But the current El Niño is weakening and is expected to come to a close in the next couple months.

There’s now a 77 percent chance of a La Niña pattern forming sometime between August and October. La Niña tends to have the opposite effect on the Atlantic hurricane season, reducing vertical wind shear and allowing storms to strengthen uninterrupted.

Rising temperatures with climate change are another risk factor. Hurricanes have grown more intense with global warming since storms draw strength from heat energy at the sea surface. Record high water temperatures have already been recorded across the tropical Atlantic recently, and that heat is expected to persist into the peak months of the Atlantic hurricane season between August and October.

Those high temperatures also allow storms to intensify rapidly, which gives communities less time to prepare for their impact. All of the strongest storms, Category 5 hurricanes, to make landfall in the US over the past 100 years in the US were much weaker tropical storms or less just three days prior, with an average lead time of just 50 hours.

“Big ones are fast,” Ken Graham, director of NOAA’s National Weather Service, said on the press call. “That’s why I’m saying this time they don’t care about our timelines. Preparedness is absolutely everything.”

Other forecasters have made similarly worrisome predictions for the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season. Penn State scientists forecast a record-breaking 33 named storms for the Atlantic. Colorado State University’s Tropical Weather and Climate Research group anticipates an “extremely active” season with 23 named storms, 11 hurricanes, and five major hurricanes.

NOAA also estimates the Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) for the season, a measure of overall storm activity. This year, it’s forecasting the second-highest ACE score it’s ever announced during its May outlook.

“In past years, when we’ve seen high ACE numbers, those have historically been the years with the most destructive hurricanes,” Spinrad said.

Read More