Lauren Feiner

Washington, D.C., United States

Senior Policy Reporter at The Verge

Covering tech policy @verge | Formerly @CNBC | More updates at 🦋 https://t.co/nygGBMt1EH | she/her | Tips? Find me on Signal @ laurenfeiner.64

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Articles

US will ban foreign officials to punish countries for social media rules

1 week ago | technewstube.com | Lauren Feiner

Tech News Tube is a real time news feed of the latest technology news headlines.Follow all of the top tech sites in one place, on the web or your mobile device.
US will ban foreign officials to punish countries for social media rules

1 week ago | theverge.com | Lauren Feiner

NewsThe State Department will restrict visas for foreign officials that support content moderation ‘censorship’, an apparent response to the DSA and other laws. The State Department will restrict visas for foreign officials that support content moderation ‘censorship’, an apparent response to the DSA and other laws. May 28, 2025, 6:03 PM UTCLauren Feiner is a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill.
People are getting more personal on LinkedIn.

1 week ago | theverge.com | Lauren Feiner

Posted May 27, 2025 at 9:09 PM UTCLLauren FeinerPeople are getting more personal on LinkedIn.“The line between professional and personal is increasingly blurred,” says a LinkedIn document shown in a video deposition.
Facebook’s WhatsApp acquisition was ‘very unusual.’

1 week ago | theverge.com | Lauren Feiner

Posted May 27, 2025 at 8:51 PM UTCLLauren FeinerFacebook’s WhatsApp acquisition was ‘very unusual.’In a video deposition Judge Boasberg watched a few weeks ago and the media is now being shown, former Morgan Stanley investment banker Ali Esfahani describes the whirlwind few days in which the $19 billion deal came together. The deal followed none of the usual steps Morgan Stanley would typically take contacting buyers and negotiating price on the company’s behalf, he says.
The trial concludes.

1 week ago | theverge.com | Lauren Feiner

Posted May 27, 2025 at 7:53 PM UTCLLauren FeinerThe trial concludes. After six weeks, the FTC’s anti-monopoly trial against Meta is finally over. The parties will need to file post-trial briefs, including Meta’s argument to strike FTC expert Hemphill’s testimony, and then it will be up to Judge Boasberg to write his opinion. Boasberg says he plans to “take a welcome respite from thinking about this” until the first brief is due.
Meta wants to get the FTC’s expert testimony thrown out.

1 week ago | theverge.com | Lauren Feiner

Posted May 27, 2025 at 7:36 PM UTCLLauren FeinerMeta wants to get the FTC’s expert testimony thrown out. The company plans to move to strike Hemphill’s testimony, saying he prejudged Meta’s antitrust liability even before he was retained as an expert witness by the FTC. Huff pulls up a more full version of the 2019 presentation that Hemphill and former Biden official Tim Wu gave to the agency urging an investigation into Meta’s potential monopoly power, just a week before it opened its probe.
People who like ads may spend less time on Facebook when they click on them.

1 week ago | theverge.com | Lauren Feiner

Posted May 27, 2025 at 6:30 PM UTCLLauren FeinerPeople who like ads may spend less time on Facebook when they click on them. When lower engagement correlates with users being served more ads, Meta suggests that might actually mean that users like the ads so much that they’re clicking them and spending their time on the advertiser’s site — not that they dislike ads so much that they leave.
Platform outages have led to product changes at Meta.

1 week ago | theverge.com | Lauren Feiner

Posted May 27, 2025 at 5:48 PM UTCLLauren FeinerPlatform outages have led to product changes at Meta. On cross examination, Meta attorney Kevin Huff pushes back on Hemphill’s argument that temporary changes in user behavior around an outage should not get much weight, in part because businesses don’t make decisions based on such a blip.
Zuckerberg’s ‘really smart’ call.

1 week ago | theverge.com | Lauren Feiner

Posted May 27, 2025 at 4:45 PM UTCLLauren FeinerZuckerberg’s ‘really smart’ call. The FTC has argued that Meta paid a premium for WhatsApp beyond its market value, which it was willing to do squelch a potential competitor. But Boasberg asks Hemphill to reconcile how that could be the case for Instagram as well, whose $1 billion price tag now looks quite low given its explosive growth and money-making ability. Hemphill says the price needs to be analyzed within the context of 2012.
Judge wonders if he should bother worrying about ‘amorphous’ quality measures.

1 week ago | theverge.com | Lauren Feiner

Posted May 27, 2025 at 3:59 PM UTCLLauren FeinerJudge wonders if he should bother worrying about ‘amorphous’ quality measures. Hemphill argues that Meta has reduced overall market output for consumers with its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, because consumers believe it’s reduced the quality of the services even if they’ve added users.