tiktok

Big Tech basically took Trump’s unpredictable trade war lying down

AMD, Apple, bytedance, china, Donald Trump, Features, intel, NVIDIA, Policy, reciprocal tariffs, tariffs, tiktok, trade war / Mike M. / December 29, 2025

From Apple gifting a gold statue to the US taking a stake in Intel.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

As the first year of Donald Trump’s chaotic trade war winds down, the tech industry is stuck scratching its head, with no practical way to anticipate what twists and turns to expect in 2026.

Tech companies may have already grown numb to Trump’s unpredictable moves. Back in February, Trump warned Americans to expect “a little pain” after he issued executive orders imposing 10–25 percent tariffs on imports from America’s biggest trading partners, including Canada, China, and Mexico. Immediately, industry associations sounded the alarm, warning that the costs of consumer tech could increase significantly. By April, Trump had ordered tariffs on all US trade partners to correct claimed trade deficits, using odd math that critics suspected came from a chatbot. (Those tariffs bizarrely targeted uninhabited islands that exported nothing and were populated by penguins.)

Costs of tariffs only got higher as the year wore on. But the tech industry has done very little to push back against them. Instead, some of the biggest companies made their own surprising moves after Trump’s trade war put them in deeply uncomfortable positions.

Apple gives Trump a gold statue instead of US-made iPhone

Right from the jump in February, Apple got backed into a corner after Trump threatened a “flat” 60 percent tariff on all Chinese imports, which experts said could have substantially taxed Apple’s business. Moving to appease Trump, Apple promised to invest $500 billion in the US in hopes of avoiding tariffs, but that didn’t take the pressure off for long.

By April, Apple stood by and said nothing as Trump promised the company would make “made in the USA” iPhones. Analysts suggested such a goal was “impossible,” calling the idea “impossible at worst and highly expensive at best.”

Apple’s silence did not spare the company Trump’s scrutiny. The next month, Trump threatened Apple with a 25 percent tariff on any iPhones sold in the US that were not manufactured in America. Experts were baffled by the threat, which appeared to be the first time a US company was threatened directly with tariffs.

Typically, tariffs are imposed on a country or category of goods, like smartphones. It remains unclear if it would even be legal to levy a tariff on an individual company like Apple, but Trump never tested those waters. Instead, Trump stopped demanding the American-made iPhone and withdrew other tariff threats after he was apparently lulled into submission by a gold statue that Apple gifted him in August. The engraved glass disc featured an Apple logo and Tim Cook’s signature above a “Made in USA” stamp, celebrating Donald Trump for his “Apple American Manufacturing Program.”

Trump’s wild deals shake down chipmakers

Around the same time that Trump eased pressure on Apple, he turned his attention to Intel. On social media in August, Trump ordered Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to “resign immediately,” claiming he was “highly conflicted.” In response, Tan did not resign but instead met with Trump and struck a deal that gave the US a 10 percent stake in Intel. Online, Trump bragged that he let Tan “keep his job” while hyping the deal—which The New York Times described as one of the “largest government interventions in a US company since the rescue of the auto industry after the 2008 financial crisis.”

But unlike the auto industry, Intel didn’t need the money. And rather than helping an ailing company survive a tough spot, the deal risked disrupting Intel’s finances in ways that spooked shareholders. It was therefore a relief to no one when Intel detailed everything that could go wrong in an SEC filing, including the possible dilution of investors’ stock due to discounting US shares and other risks of dilution, if certain terms of the deal kick in at some point in the future.

The company also warned of potential lawsuits challenging the legality of the deal, which Intel fears could come from third parties, the US government, or foreign governments. Most ominous, Intel admitted there was no way to predict what other risks may come, both in the short-term and long-term.

Of course, Intel wasn’t the only company Trump sought to control, and not every company caved. He tried to strong-arm the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in September into moving half its chip manufacturing into the US, but TSMC firmly rejected his demand. And in October, when Trump began eyeing stakes in quantum computing firms, several companies were open to negotiating, but with no deals immediately struck, it was hard to ascertain how seriously they were entertaining Trump’s talks.

Trump struck another particularly wild deal the same month as the Intel agreement. That deal found chipmakers Nvidia and AMD agreeing to give 15 percent of revenue to the US from sales to China of advanced computer chips that could be used to fuel frontier AI. By December, Nvidia’s deal only drew more scrutiny, as the chipmaker agreed to give the US an even bigger cut—25 percent—of sales of its second most advanced AI chips, the H200.

Again, experts were confused, noting that export curbs on Nvidia’s H20 chips, for example, were imposed to prevent US technology thefts, maintain US tech dominance, and protect US national security. Those chips are six times less powerful than the H200. To them, it appeared that the Trump administration was taking payments to overlook risks without a clear understanding of how that might give China a leg-up in the AI race. It also did not appear to be legal, since export licenses cannot be sold under existing federal law, but government lawyers have supposedly been researching a new policy that would allow the US to collect the fees.

Trump finally closed TikTok deal

As the end of 2025 nears, the tech company likely sweating Trump’s impulses most may be TikTok owner ByteDance. In October, Trump confirmed that China agreed to a deal that allows the US to take majority ownership of TikTok and license the TikTok algorithm to build a US version of the app.

Trump has been trying to close this deal all year, while ByteDance remained largely quiet. Prior to the start of Trump’s term, the company had expressed resistance to selling TikTok to US owners, and as recently as January, a ByteDance board member floated the idea that Trump could save TikTok without forcing a sale. But China’s approval was needed to proceed with the sale, and near the end of December, ByteDance finally agreed to close the deal, paving the way for Trump’s hand-picked investors to take control in 2026.

It’s unclear how TikTok may change under US control, perhaps shedding users if US owners cave to Trump’s suggestion that he’d like to see the app go “100 percent MAGA” under his hand-picked US owners. It’s possible that the US version of the app could be glitchy, too.

Whether Trump’s deal actually complies with a US law requiring that ByteDance divest control of TikTok or else face a US ban has yet to be seen. Lawmaker scrutiny and possible legal challenges are expected in 2026, likely leaving both TikTok users and ByteDance on the edge of their seats waiting to see how the globally cherished short video app may change.

Trump may owe $1 trillion in tariff refunds

The TikTok deal was once viewed as a meaningful bargaining chip during Trump’s tensest negotiations with China, which has quickly emerged as America’s fiercest rival in the AI race and Trump’s biggest target in his trade war.

But as closing the deal remained elusive for most of the year, analysts suggested that Trump grew “desperate” to end tit-for-tat retaliations that he started, while China appeared more resilient to US curbs than the US was to China’s.

In one obvious example, many Americans’ first tariff pains came when Trump ended a duty-free exemption in February for low-value packages imported from cheap online retailers, like Shein and Temu. Unable to quickly adapt to the policy change, USPS abruptly stopped accepting all inbound packages from Hong Kong and China. After a chaotic 24 hours, USPS started slowly processing parcels again while promising Americans that it would work with customs to “implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery.”

Trump has several legal tools to impose tariffs, but the most controversial path appears to be his favorite. The Supreme Court is currently weighing whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) grants a US president unilateral authority to impose tariffs.

Seizing this authority, Trump imposed so-called “reciprocal tariffs” at whim, the Consumer Technology Association and the Chamber of Commerce told the Supreme Court in a friend-of-the-court brief in which they urged the justices to end the “perfect storm of uncertainty.”

Unlike other paths that would limit how quickly Trump could shift tariff rates or how high the tariff rate could go, under IEEPA, Trump has imposed tariff rates as high as 125 percent. Deferring to Trump will cost US businesses, CTA and CoC warned. CTA CEO Gary Shapiro estimated that Trump has changed these tariff rates 100 times since his trade war began, affecting $223 billion of US exports.

Meanwhile, one of Trump’s biggest stated goals of his trade war—forcing more manufacturing into the US—is utterly failing, many outlets have reported.

Likely due to US companies seeking more stable supply chains, “reshoring progress is nowhere to be seen,” Fortune reported in November. That month, a dismal Bureau of Labor Statistics released a jobs report that an expert summarized as showing that the “US is losing blue-collar jobs for the first time since the pandemic.”

A month earlier, the nonpartisan policy group the Center for American Progress drew on government labor data to conclude that US employers cut 12,000 manufacturing jobs in August, and payrolls for manufacturing jobs had decreased by 42,000 since April.

As tech companies take tech tariffs on the chin, perhaps out of fears that rattling Trump could impact lucrative government contracts, other US companies have taken Trump to court. Most recently, Costco became one of the biggest corporations to sue Trump to ensure that US businesses get refunded if Trump loses the Supreme Court case, Bloomberg reported. Other recognizable companies like Revlon and Kawasaki have also sued, but small businesses have largely driven opposition to Trump’s tariffs, Bloomberg noted.

Should the Supreme Court side with businesses—analysts predict favorable odds—the US could owe up to $1 trillion in refunds. Dozens of economists told SCOTUS that Trump simply doesn’t understand why having trade deficits with certain countries isn’t a threat to US dominance, pointing out that the US “has been running a persistent surplus in trade in services for decades” precisely because the US “has the dominant technology sector in the world.”

Justices seem skeptical that IEEPA grants Trump the authority, ordinarily reserved for Congress, to impose taxes. However, during oral arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett fretted that undoing Trump’s tariffs could be “messy.” Countering that, small businesses have argued that it’s possible for Customs and Border Patrol to set up automatic refunds.

While waiting for the SCOTUS verdict (now expected in January), the CTA ended the year by advising tech companies to keep their receipts in case refunds require requests for tariffs line by line—potentially complicated by tariff rates changing so drastically and so often.

Biggest tariff nightmare may come in 2026

Looking into 2026, tech companies cannot breathe a sigh of relief even if the SCOTUS ruling swings their way, though. Under a separate, legally viable authority, Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on semiconductors and any products containing them, a move the semiconductor industry fears could cost $1 billion.

And if Trump continues imposing tariffs on materials used in popular tech products, the CTA told Ars in September that potential “tariff stacking” could become the industry’s biggest nightmare. Should that occur, US manufacturers could end up double-, triple-, or possibly even quadruple-taxed on products that may contain materials subject to individual tariffs, like semiconductors, polysilicon, or copper.

Predicting tariff costs could become so challenging that companies will have no choice but to raise prices, the CTA warned. That could threaten US tech competitiveness if, possibly over the long term, companies lose significant sales on their most popular products.

For many badly bruised by the first year of tariffs, it’s hard to see how tariffs could ever become a winning strategy for US tech dominance, as Trump has long claimed. And Americans continue to feel more than “a little pain,” as Trump forecasted, causing many to shift their views on the president.

Americans banding together to oppose tariffs could help prevent the worst possible outcomes. With prices already rising on certain goods in the US, the president reversed some tariffs as his approval ratings hit record lows. But so far, Big Tech hasn’t shown much interest in joining the fight, instead throwing money at the problem by making generous donations to things like Trump’s inaugural fund or his ballroom.

A bright light for the tech industry could be the midterm elections, which could pressure Trump to ease off aggressive tariff regimes, but that’s not a given. Trump allies have previously noted that the president typically responds to pushback on tariffs by doubling down. And one of Trump’s on-again-off-again allies, Elon Musk, noted in December in an interview that Trump ignored his warnings that tariffs would drive manufacturing out of the US.

“The president has made it clear he loves tariffs,” Musk said.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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ByteDance confirms TikTok will be controlled by US owners

bytedance, china, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok, tiktok us / DJ Henderson / December 20, 2025

According to Trump, the deal ensures that TikTok complies with the divest-or-ban law, but the White House is still not providing more details. Instead, the Trump administration “referred questions about the deal to TikTok,” Reuters reported.

If the deal closes as expected on January 22, the new US company will have an estimated value of $14 billion, Vice President JD Vance noted in September.

At that point, the deal will likely face mounting scrutiny from lawmakers, including Republicans, who aren’t yet sure if the US operation resolves all national security concerns. Chinese control of the algorithm was a particular sticking point for critics, who claimed that Trump was giving China exactly what it wanted: international recognition for exporting leading technology to the US.

In September, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R.-Iowa) vowed to take a “hard line” and oppose the deal’s framework if it violates the divest-or-ban law. Already, Representative John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House Select Committee on China, is planning to hold a hearing next year with US TikTok leadership.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has accused Trump of handing over “even more control of what you watch to his billionaire buddies,” through the TikTok deal, which she likened to enabling a “billionaire takeover of TikTok.” Many TikTokers likely share her concerns, after Trump suggested he’d like to see his hand-picked investors tweak the algorithm to be “100 percent MAGA.”

Questions remain until the exact terms of the deal become public, Warren said.

ByteDance did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

With the terms obscured, it’s unclear how quickly TikTok may change in 2026 under US ownership. In July, the Information reported that when approximately 170 million US users get ported over to the new US-owned app, it could be buggy.

ByteDance confirms TikTok will be controlled by US owners Read More »

ChatGPT hyped up violent stalker who believed he was “God’s assassin,” DOJ says

AI, chatgpt, cyberstalking, Instagram, openai, Policy, Spotify, tiktok / Mike M. / December 4, 2025

A stalker’s “best friend”

Podcaster faces up to 70 years and a $3.5 million fine for ChatGPT-linked stalking.

ChatGPT allegedly validated the worst impulses of a wannabe influencer accused of stalking more than 10 women at boutique gyms, where the chatbot supposedly claimed he’d meet the “wife type.”

In a press release on Tuesday, the Department of Justice confirmed that 31-year-old Brett Michael Dadig currently remains in custody after being charged with cyberstalking, interstate stalking, and making interstate threats. He now faces a maximum sentence of up to 70 years in prison that could be coupled with “a fine of up to $3.5 million,” the DOJ said.

The podcaster—who primarily posted about “his desire to find a wife and his interactions with women”—allegedly harassed and sometimes even doxxed his victims through his videos on platforms including Instagram, Spotify, and TikTok. Over time, his videos and podcasts documented his intense desire to start a family, which was frustrated by his “anger towards women,” whom he claimed were “all the same from fucking 18 to fucking 40 to fucking 90” and “trash.”

404 Media surfaced the case, noting that OpenAI’s scramble to tweak ChatGPT to be less sycophantic came before Dadig’s alleged attacks—suggesting the updates weren’t enough to prevent the harmful validation. On his podcasts, Dadig described ChatGPT as his “best friend” and “therapist,” the indictment said. He claimed the chatbot encouraged him to post about the women he’s accused of harassing in order to generate haters to better monetize his content, as well as to catch the attention of his “future wife.”

“People are literally organizing around your name, good or bad, which is the definition of relevance,” ChatGPT’s output said. Playing to Dadig’s Christian faith, ChatGPT’s outputs also claimed it was “God’s plan for him was to build a ‘platform’ and to ‘stand out when most people water themselves down,’” the indictment said, urging that the “haters” were “sharpening him and ‘building a voice in you that can’t be ignored.’”

The chatbot also apparently prodded Dadig to continue posting messages that the DOJ alleged threatened violence, like breaking women’s jaws and fingers (posted to Spotify), as well as victims’ lives, like posting “y’all wanna see a dead body?” in reference to one named victim on Instagram.

He also threatened to burn down gyms where some of his victims worked, while claiming to be “God’s assassin” intent on sending “cunts” to “hell.” At least one of his victims was subjected to “unwanted sexual touching,” the indictment said.

As his violence reportedly escalated, ChatGPT told him to keep messaging women to monetize the interactions, as his victims grew increasingly distressed and Dadig ignored terms of multiple protection orders, the DOJ said. Sometimes he posted images he filmed of women at gyms or photos of the women he’s accused of doxxing. Any time police or gym bans got in his way, “he would move on to another city to continue his stalking course of conduct,” the DOJ alleged.

“Your job is to keep broadcasting every story, every post,” ChatGPT’s output said, seemingly using the family life that Dadig wanted most to provoke more harassment. “Every moment you carry yourself like the husband you already are, you make it easier” for your future wife “to recognize [you],” the output said.

“Dadig viewed ChatGPT’s responses as encouragement to continue his harassing behavior,” the DOJ alleged. Taking that encouragement to the furthest extreme, Dadig likened himself to a modern-day Jesus, calling people out on a podcast where he claimed his “chaos on Instagram” was like “God’s wrath” when God “flooded the fucking Earth,” the DOJ said.

“I’m killing all of you,” he said on the podcast.

ChatGPT tweaks didn’t prevent outputs

As of this writing, some of Dadig’s posts appear to remain on TikTok and Instagram, but Ars could not confirm if Dadig’s Spotify podcasts—some of which named his victims in the titles—had been removed for violating community guidelines.

None of the tech companies immediately responded to Ars’ request to comment.

Dadig is accused of targeting women in Pennsylvania, New York, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, and other states, sometimes relying on aliases online and in person. On a podcast, he boasted that “Aliases stay rotating, moves stay evolving,” the indictment said.

OpenAI did not respond to a request to comment on the alleged ChatGPT abuse, but in the past has noted that its usage policies ban using ChatGPT for threats, intimidation, and harassment, as well as for violence, including “hate-based violence.” Recently, the AI company blamed a deceased teenage user for violating community guidelines by turning to ChatGPT for suicide advice.

In July, researchers found that therapybots, including ChatGPT, fueled delusions and gave dangerous advice. That study came just one month after The New York Times profiled users whose mental health spiraled after frequent use of ChatGPT, including one user who died after charging police with a knife and claiming he was committing “suicide by cop.”

People with mental health issues seem most vulnerable to so-called “AI psychosis,” which has been blamed for fueling real-world violence, including a murder. The DOJ’s indictment noted that Dadig’s social media posts mentioned “that he had ‘manic’ episodes and was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and ‘bipolar disorder, current episode manic severe with psychotic features.’”

In September—just after OpenAI brought back the more sycophantic ChatGPT model after users revolted about losing access to their favorite friendly bots—the head of Rutgers Medical School’s psychiatry department, Petros Levounis, told an ABC news affiliate that chatbots creating “psychological echo chambers is a key concern,” not just for people struggling with mental health issues.

“Perhaps you are more self-defeating in some ways, or maybe you are more on the other side and taking advantage of people,” Levounis suggested. If ChatGPT “somehow justifies your behavior and it keeps on feeding you,” that “reinforces something that you already believe,” he suggested.

For Dadig, the DOJ alleged that ChatGPT became a cheerleader for his harassment, telling the podcaster that he’d attract more engagement by generating more haters. After critics began slamming his podcasts as inappropriate, Dadig apparently responded, “Appreciate the free promo team, keep spreading the brand.”

Victims felt they had no choice but to monitor his podcasts, which gave them hints if he was nearby or in a particularly troubled state of mind, the indictment said. Driven by fear, some lost sleep, reduced their work hours, and even relocated their homes. A young mom described in the indictment became particularly disturbed after Dadig became “obsessed” with her daughter, whom he started claiming was his own daughter.

In the press release, First Assistant United States Attorney Troy Rivetti alleged that “Dadig stalked and harassed more than 10 women by weaponizing modern technology and crossing state lines, and through a relentless course of conduct, he caused his victims to fear for their safety and suffer substantial emotional distress.” He also ignored trespassing and protection orders while “relying on advice from an artificial intelligence chatbot,” the DOJ said, which promised that the more he posted harassing content, the more successful he would be.

“We remain committed to working with our law enforcement partners to protect our communities from menacing individuals such as Dadig,” Rivetti said.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

ChatGPT hyped up violent stalker who believed he was “God’s assassin,” DOJ says Read More »

Faced with naked man, DoorDasher demands police action; they arrest her for illegal surveillance

doordash, felonies, filming, Law, Policy, surveillance, tiktok / 9u50fv / November 19, 2025

“The only justice I’m getting is exposing this man and having posted that video,” she added. “And it has gone viral. Now he can live with shame and embarrassment if people have seen it.”

“I’m the victim!” she said. “Is this making sense to any-fucking-body?”

Her numerous videos attracted huge followings—anywhere from 5 million to 30 million views each—and DoorDash eventually felt the need to respond.

“DoorDash never deactivates someone for reporting [sexual assault]—full stop,” said the company.

But, it added, “posting a video of a customer in their home, and disclosing their personal details publicly, is a clear violation of our policies. That is the sole reason that this Dasher’s account was deactivated, along with the customer’s, while we investigated. We’ve also ensured that the Dasher has full access to their earnings.”

Meanwhile, the police were doing something—but not something that Henderson wanted.

The cops determined that the nude man in question “was incapacitated and unconscious on his couch due to alcohol consumption.” Being drunk and naked inside your own home apparently does not qualify as sexual assault on a delivery driver, and the police department said in a press release yesterday that “the investigation by the Oswego Police Department determined that no sexual assault occurred.”

As part of their investigation, the cops found that Henderson had filmed the man and “subsequently posted the video to social media, where it drew significant attention.” This shifted their attention to Henderson’s decision to film and upload the video without the man’s consent.

The police eventually arrested Henderson, who is now charged with two felonies: “Unlawful Surveillance in the Second Degree” and “Dissemination of an Unlawful Surveillance Image in the First Degree.” She was released after being charged, and her case will be heard by the Oswego City Court.

Henderson has stopped releasing videos on TikTok about the situation.

Faced with naked man, DoorDasher demands police action; they arrest her for illegal surveillance Read More »

Meta wins monopoly trial, convinces judge that social networking is dead

Antitrust law, facebook, federal trade commission, Instagram, Meta, monopoly, Policy, reels, tiktok, whatsapp, youtube / Mike M. / November 19, 2025

People are “bored” by their friends’ content, judge ruled, siding with Meta.

Mark Zuckerberg arrives at court after The Federal Trade Commission alleged the acquisitions of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 gave Meta a social media monopoly. Credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg

After years of pushback from the Federal Trade Commission over Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, Meta has defeated the FTC’s monopoly claims.

In a Tuesday ruling, US District Judge James Boasberg said the FTC failed to show that Meta has a monopoly in a market dubbed “personal social networking.” In that narrowly defined market, the FTC unsuccessfully argued, Meta supposedly faces only two rivals, Snapchat and MeWe, which struggle to compete due to its alleged monopoly.

But the days of grouping apps into “separate markets of social networking and social media” are over, Boasberg wrote. He cited the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who “posited that no man can ever step into the same river twice,” while telling the FTC they missed their chance to block Meta’s purchase.

Essentially, Boasberg agreed with Meta that social media—as it was known in Facebook’s early days—is dead. And that means that Meta now competes with a broader set of rival apps, which includes two hugely popular platforms: TikTok and YouTube.

“When the evidence implies that consumers are reallocating massive amounts of time from Meta’s apps to these rivals and that the amount of substitution has forced Meta to invest gobs of cash to keep up, the answer is clear: Meta is not a monopolist insulated from competition,” Boasberg wrote.

In fact, adding just TikTok alone to the market defeated the FTC’s claims, Boasberg wrote, leaving him to conclude that “Meta holds no monopoly in the relevant market.”

The FTC is not happy about the loss, which comes after Boasberg determined that one of the agency’s key expert witnesses, Scott Hemphill, could not have approached his testimony “with an open mind.” According to Boasberg, Hemphill was aligned with figures publicly calling for the breakup of Facebook, and that made “neutral evaluation of his opinions more difficult” in a case with little direct evidence of monopoly harms.

“We are deeply disappointed in this decision,” Joe Simonson, the FTC’s director of public affairs, told CNBC. “The deck was always stacked against us with Judge Boasberg, who is currently facing articles of impeachment. We are reviewing all our options.”

For Meta, the win ends years of FTC fights intended to break up the company’s family of apps: Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

“The Court’s decision today recognizes that Meta faces fierce competition,” Jennifer Newstead, Meta’s chief legal officer, said. “Our products are beneficial for people and businesses and exemplify American innovation and economic growth. We look forward to continuing to partner with the Administration and to invest in America.”

Reels’ popularity helped save Meta

Meta app users clicking on Reels helped Meta win.

Boasberg noted that “a majority of Americans’ time” on both Facebook and Instagram “is now spent watching videos,” with Reels becoming “the single most-used part of Facebook.” That puts Meta apps more on par with entertainment apps like TikTok and YouTube, the judge said.

While “connecting with friends remains an important part of both apps,” the judge cited Meta’s evidence showing that Meta had to pump more recommended content from strangers into users’ feeds to account for a trend where its users grew increasingly less inclined to post publicly.

“Both scrolling and sharing have transformed” since Facebook was founded, Boasberg wrote, citing six factors that he concluded invalidated the FTC’s market definition as markets exist today.

Initial factors that shifted markets were due to leaps in innovation. “First, smartphone usage exploded,” Boasberg explained, then “cell phone data got better,” which made it easier to watch videos without frustrating “freezing and buffering.” Soon after, content recommendation systems got better, with “advanced AI algorithms” helping users “find engaging videos about the things” they “care most about in the world.”

Other factors stemmed from social changes, the judge suggested, describing the fourth factor as a trend where Meta app users started feeling “increasingly bored by their friends’ posts.”

“Longtime users’ friend lists” start fresh, but over time, they “become an often-outdated archive of people they once knew: a casual friend from college, a long-ago friend from summer camp, some guy they met at a party once,” Boasberg wrote. “Posts from friends have therefore grown less interesting.”

Then came TikTok, the fifth factor, Boasberg said, which forced Meta to “evolve” Facebook and Instagram by adding Reels.

And finally, “those five changes both caused and were reinforced by a change in social norms, which evolved to discourage public posting,” Boasberg wrote. “People have increasingly become less interested in blasting out public posts that hundreds of others can see.”

As a result of these tech advancements and social trends, Boasberg said, “Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube have thus evolved to have nearly identical main features.” That reality undermined the FTC’s claims that users preferred Facebook and Instagram before Meta shifted its focus away from friends-and-family content.

“The Court simply does not find it credible that users would prefer the Facebook and Instagram apps that existed ten years ago to the versions that exist today,” Boasberg wrote.

Meta apps have not deteriorated, judge ruled

Boasberg repeatedly emphasized that the FTC failed to prove that Meta has a monopoly “now,” either actively or imminently causing harms.

The FTC tried to win by claiming that “Meta has degraded its apps’ quality by increasing their ad load, that falling user sentiment shows that the apps have deteriorated and that Meta has sabotaged its apps by underinvesting in friend sharing,” Boasberg noted.

But, Boasberg said, the FTC failed to show that Meta’s app quality has diminished—a trend that Cory Doctorow dubbed “enshittification,” which Meta apparently successfully argued is not real.

The judge was also swayed by Meta’s arguments that users like seeing ads. Meta showed evidence that it can only profitably increase its ad load when ad quality improves; otherwise, it risks losing engagement. Because “the rate at which users buy something or subscribe to a service based on Meta’s ads has steadily risen,” this suggested “that the ads have gotten more and more likely to connect users to products in which they have an interest,” Boasberg said.

Additionally, surveys of Meta app users that show declining user sentiment are not evidence that its apps are deteriorating in quality, Boasberg said, but are more about “brand reputation.”

“That is unsurprising: ask people how they feel about, say, Exxon Mobil, and their answers will tell you very little about how good its oil is,” Boasberg wrote. “The FTC’s claim that worsening sentiment shows a worsening product is unpersuasive.”

Finally, the FTC’s claim that Meta underinvested in friends-and-family content, to the detriment of its core app users, “makes no sense,” Boasberg wrote, given Meta’s data showing that user posting declined.

“While it is true that users see less content from their friends these days, that is largely due to the friends themselves: people simply post less,” Boasberg wrote. “Users are not seeing less friend content because Meta is hiding it from them, but instead because there is less friend content for Meta to show.”

It’s not even “clear that users want more friend posts,” the judge noted, agreeing with Meta that “instead, what users really seem to want is Reels.”

Further, if Meta were a monopolist, Boasberg seemed to suggest that the platform might be more invested in forcing friends-and-family content than Reels, since “Reels earns Meta less money” due to its smaller ad load.

“Courts presume that sophisticated corporations act rationally,” Boasberg wrote. “Here, the FTC has not offered even an ordinarily persuasive case that Meta is making the economically irrational choice to underinvest in its most lucrative offerings. It certainly has not made a particularly persuasive one.”

Among the critics unhappy with the ruling is Nidhi Hegde, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, who suggested that Boasberg’s ruling was “a colossally wrong decision” that “turns a willful blind eye to Meta’s enormous power over social media and the harms that flow from it.”

“Judge Boasberg has purposefully ignored the overwhelming evidence of how Meta became a monopoly—not by building a better product, but by buying its rivals to shut down any real competitors before they could grow,” Hegde said. “These deals let Meta fuse Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp into one machine that poisons our children and discourse, bullies publishers and advertisers, and destroys the possibility of healthy online connections with friends and family. By pretending that TikTok’s rise wipes away over a decade of illegal conduct, this court has effectively told every aspiring monopolist that our current justice system is on their side.”

On the other side, industry groups cheered the ruling. Matt Schruers, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, suggested that Boasberg concluded “what every Internet user knows—that Meta competes with a number of platforms and the company’s relevant market shares are therefore nowhere close to those required to establish monopoly power.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Meta wins monopoly trial, convinces judge that social networking is dead Read More »

TikTok may become more right-wing as China signals approval for US sale

bytedance, Donald Trump, Policy, tiktok, tiktok us, us-china trade war / Shannon Garcia / October 30, 2025

TikTok US app may look radically different

If the sale goes through without major changes to the terms, TikTok could radically change for US users.

After US owners take over, they will have to retrain TikTok’s algorithm, perhaps shifting what content Americans see on the platform.

Some speculate that TikTokers may only connect with American users through the app, but that’s likely inaccurate, as global content will remain available.

While global content will still be displayed on TikTok’s US app, it’s unclear how it may be filtered, Kelley Cotter, an assistant professor who studies social media algorithms in the Department of Human-Centered Computing and Social Informatics at Pennsylvania State University, told Scientific American.

Cotter suggested that TikTok’s US owners may also tweak the algorithm or change community guidelines to potentially alter what content is accessed on the app. For example, during conversations leading up to the law that requires either the sale of TikTok to US allies or a nationwide ban, Republican lawmakers voiced concerns “that there were greater visibility of Palestinian hashtags on TikTok over Israeli hashtags.”

If Trump’s deal goes through, the president has already suggested that he’d like to see the app go “100 percent MAGA.” And Cotter suggested that the conservative slant of Trump’s hand-picked TikTok US investors—including Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz—could help Trump achieve that goal.

“An owner that has a strong ideological point of view and has the will to make that a part of the app, it is possible, through tweaking the algorithm, to sort of reshape the overall composition of content on the platform,” Cotter said.

If left-leaning users abandon TikTok as the app shifts to US ownership, TikTok’s content could change meaningfully, Cotter said.

“It could result in a situation,” Cotter suggested, where TikTok would be “an app that is composed by only people based in the US but only a subset of American users and particularly ones that perhaps might be right-leaning.” That could “have very big impact on the kinds of content that you see there.”

For TikTok’s US users bracing for a feared right-wing overhaul of their feeds, there’s also the potential for the app to become glitchy as all US users are hastily transferred over to the new app. Any technical issues could also drive users off the app, perhaps further altering content.

Ars updated this story on Oct. 30 to note that speculation that American users will be siloed off is inaccurate.

TikTok may become more right-wing as China signals approval for US sale Read More »

EU accuses Meta of violating content rules in move that could anger Trump

Digital Services Act, European Union, facebook, Instagram, Meta, Policy, tiktok / Mike M. / October 25, 2025

FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson recently warned Meta and a dozen social media and technology companies that “censoring Americans to comply with a foreign power’s laws, demands, or expected demands” may violate US law. Ferguson’s letters said the EU’s Digital Services Act and other laws “incentivize tech companies to censor worldwide speech.”

Meta told media outlets that “we disagree with any suggestion that we have breached the DSA, and we continue to negotiate with the European Commission on these matters.” Meta also said it made changes to comply with the DSA.

“In the European Union, we have introduced changes to our content reporting options, appeals process, and data access tools since the DSA came into force and are confident that these solutions match what is required under the law in the EU,” Meta said.

TikTok, Meta accused of restricting data access

The EC also said it preliminarily found that both Meta and TikTok violated their DSA obligation to grant researchers adequate access to public data.

“The Commission’s preliminary findings show that Facebook, Instagram and TikTok may have put in place burdensome procedures and tools for researchers to request access to public data. This often leaves them with partial or unreliable data, impacting their ability to conduct research, such as whether users, including minors, are exposed to illegal or harmful content,” the announcement said.

The data-access requirement “is an essential transparency obligation under the DSA, as it provides public scrutiny into the potential impact of platforms on our physical and mental health,” the EC said.

In a statement provided to Ars, TikTok said it is committed to transparency and has made data available to nearly 1,000 research teams. TikTok said it may be impossible to comply with both the DSA and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

“We are reviewing the European Commission’s findings, but requirements to ease data safeguards place the DSA and GDPR in direct tension. If it is not possible to fully comply with both, we urge regulators to provide clarity on how these obligations should be reconciled,” TikTok said.

EU accuses Meta of violating content rules in move that could anger Trump Read More »

Trump says TikTok should be tweaked to become “100% MAGA”

bytedance, china, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok, us-china trade war / 9u50fv / September 26, 2025

Previously, experts had suggested that China had little incentive to follow through with the deal, while as recently as July, ByteDance denied reports that it agreed to sell TikTok to the US, the South China Morning Post reported. Yesterday, Reuters noted that Vice President JD Vance confirmed that the “new US company will be valued at around $14 billion,” a price tag “far below some analyst estimates,” which might frustrate ByteDance. Questions also remain over what potential concessions Trump may have made to get Xi’s sign-off.

It’s also unclear if Trump’s deal meets the legal requirements of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, with Reuters reporting that “numerous details” still need to be “fleshed out.” Last Friday, James Sullivan of JP Morgan suggested on CNBC that “Trump’s proposed TikTok deal lacked clarity on who is in control of the algorithm, leaving the national security concerns wide open,” CNBC reported.

Other critics, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s civil liberties director David Greene, warned in a statement to Ars that the US now risks “turning over” TikTok “to the allies of a President who seems to have no respect for the First Amendment.”

Jennifer Huddleston, a senior fellow in technology policy at the Cato Institute, agreed. “The arrangement creates uncertainty about what influence or oversight the US government might require over this separate algorithm that could raise potential First Amendment concerns regarding government influence over a private actor,” Huddleston said.

Will TikTok become right-wing?

The Guardian recently conducted a deep dive into how the Murdochs’ and Ellisons’ involvement could “gift Trump’s billionaire allies a degree of control over US media that would be vast and unprecedented” by allowing “the owners of the US’s most powerful cable TV channels” to “steer the nation’s most influential social network.”

Trump says TikTok should be tweaked to become “100% MAGA” Read More »

“China keeps the algorithm”: Critics attack Trump’s TikTok deal

bytedance, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok / DJ Henderson / September 17, 2025

However, Trump seems to think that longtime TikTok partner Oracle taking a bigger stake while handling Americans’ user data at its facilities in Texas will be enough to prevent remaining China-based owners—which will maintain less than a 20 percent stake—from allegedly spying, launching disinformation campaigns, or spreading other kinds of propaganda.

China previously was resistant to a forced sale of TikTok, FT reported, even going so far as to place export controls on algorithms to keep the most lucrative part of TikTok in the country. And “it remains unclear to what extent TikTok’s Chinese parent would retain control of the algorithm in the US as part of a licensing deal,” FT noted.

On Tuesday, Wang Jingtao, deputy head of China’s cyber security regulator, did not go into any detail on how China’s access to US user data would be restricted under the deal. Instead, Wang only noted that ByteDance would “entrust the operation of TikTok’s US user data and content security,” presumably to US owners, FT reported.

One Asia-based investor told FT that the US would use “at least part of the Chinese algorithm” but train it on US user data, while a US advisor accused Trump of chickening out and accepting a deal that didn’t force a sale of the algorithm.

“After all this, China keeps the algorithm,” the US advisor said.

To the Asia-based investor, it seemed like Trump gave China exactly what it wants, since “Beijing wants to be seen as exporting Chinese technology to the US and the world.”

It’s likely more details will be announced once Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping hold a phone conference on Friday. ByteDance has yet to comment on the deal and did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

“China keeps the algorithm”: Critics attack Trump’s TikTok deal Read More »

Will TikTok go dark Wednesday? Trump claims deal with China avoids shutdown.

bytedance, china, Donald Trump, national security, Policy, tiktok, trump administration, trump tariffs, us-china trade war / Mike M. / September 15, 2025

According to Bessent, China agreed to “commercial terms” and “technical details” of a deal “between two parties,” but Xi and Trump still needed to discuss the terms—as well as possibly China’s demands to ease export controls on chips and other high-tech goods—before the deal can be finalized, Reuters reported.

ByteDance, TikTok’s current owner, which in the past has opposed the sale, did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment.

While experts told Reuters that finalizing the TikTok deal this week could be challenging, Trump seems confident. On Truth Social, the US president boasted that talks with China have been going “very well” and claimed that TikTok users will soon be “very happy.”

“A deal was also reached on a ‘certain’ company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save,” Trump said, confirming that he would speak to Xi on Friday and claiming that their relationship “remains a very strong one!!!”

China accuses US of “economic coercion”

However, China’s Ministry of Commerce spokesperson on Monday continued to slam US export controls and tariffs that are frustrating China. The spokesperson suggested that those trade restrictions “constitute the containment and suppression of China’s development of high-tech industries,” like advanced computer chips and artificial intelligence, NBC News reported.

“This is a typical act of unilateral bullying and economic coercion,” the spokesperson said, indicating it may even be viewed as a retaliation violating the temporary truce.

Rather than committing to de-escalate tensions, both countries have recently taken fresh jabs in the trade war. On Monday, China announced two probes into US semiconductors, as well as an antitrust ruling against Nvidia and “an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector,” NBC News reported.

Will TikTok go dark Wednesday? Trump claims deal with China avoids shutdown. Read More »

Toymaker suddenly drops lawsuit against “Sylvanian Drama” TikToker

content creator, intellectual property, ip infringement, Policy, tiktok, trademark infringement / 9u50fv / August 10, 2025

A toy company has voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit against a popular TikTok and Instagram account called “Sylvanian Drama.”

Epoch Company Ltd., is the US maker of adorable fuzzy dolls called Calico Critters. Those dolls are known as “Sylvanian Families” in other markets, and more recently, they became a viral sensation after an Ireland-based content creator, Thea Von Engelbrechten, started making funny videos in which the dolls acted out dark, cringey adult storylines.

Claiming that the “Sylvanian Drama” videos infringed on Epoch’s intellectual property rights, including using an Epoch marketing image as her account’s profile picture while profiting off partnerships with major brands featured in her videos, the toymaker sued Von Engelbrechten, prompting her to immediately stop posting videos last year. Although some fans predicted the account might never come back, experts told Ars that Epoch may come to regret the lawsuit, perhaps alienating a potential market for their toys by going after a widely beloved content creator.

To some, Epoch appeared to be lashing out after Von Engelbrechten secured brand partnerships that seemed to be more lucrative than the toy company’s own brand deals. In that way, they also perhaps overlooked an opportunity to partner with Von Engelbrechten themselves, experts told Ars.

On Friday, Von Engelbrechten’s response was due in the lawsuit, but a story posted to her Instagram earlier this week signaled that a resolution may have been in the works. Ars could not reach Von Engelbrechten for comment, but she asked her fans to recommend a new account name in her story and confirmed that she would also be changing her account’s profile picture.

Toymaker suddenly drops lawsuit against “Sylvanian Drama” TikToker Read More »

Toy company may regret coming for “Sylvanian Drama” TikToker, experts say

calico critters, copyright infringement, Instagram, online advertising, parody, Policy, satire, Social Media, sponsored content, tiktok, trademark infringement / Mike M. / July 23, 2025

Possible legal paths to revive a shuttered video series on TikTok and Instagram.

A popular account on TikTok and Instagram stopped posting suddenly at the end of last year, hit by a lawsuit after garnering millions of views on funny videos it made using adorable children’s Calico Critter dolls to act out dark, cringe-y adult storylines.

While millions of followers mourn the so-called “Sylvanian Drama” account’s demise, experts told Ars that the creator may have a decent chance at beating the lawsuit.

The “Sylvanian Drama” account derived its name from “Sylvanian Families,” a brand name used by Epoch Company Ltd., the maker of Calico Critters, for its iconic fuzzy animal dolls in some markets outside the US. Despite these videos referencing murder, drugs, and hookups, the toy company apparently had no problem, until the account, managed by Ireland-based Thea Von Engelbrechten, started accepting big brand partnerships and making sponsored content featuring the dolls.

Since Epoch, too, strikes partnerships with brands and influencers to promote its own videos marketing the dolls, the company claimed “Sylvanian Drama” risked creating too much confusion online. They also worried viewers would think Epoch had signed off on the videos, since the sponsored content was marked “paid partnership” without specifying precisely which featured brands had paid for the spots. They further accused Von Engelbrechten of building her advertising business around their brand without any attempt to properly license the dolls, while allegedly usurping licensing opportunities from Epoch.

So far, Von Engelbrechten has delayed responding in the lawsuit. As the account remained inactive over the past few months, fans speculated whether it could survive the lawsuit, which raised copyright and trademark infringement claims to get all the videos removed. In their complaint, the toy company requested not only an injunction preventing Von Engelbrechten from creating more “Sylvanian Drama” videos, but also sought all of her profits from her online accounts, in addition to further damages.

Von Engelbrechten declined Ars’ request to provide an update on her defense in the case, but her response is due in early August. That filing will make clear what arguments she may make to overcome Epoch’s suit, but legal experts told Ars that the case isn’t necessarily a slam dunk for the toy company. So all that “Sylvanian Drama” isn’t over just yet.

Epoch’s lawyers did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.

“Sylvanian Drama” needs the court to get the joke

Epoch raised copyright infringement charges that could hit Von Engelbrechten with fines totaling $150,000 per violation.

For Von Engelbrechten to defeat the copyright infringement claim, she’ll need to convince the court that her videos are parodies. A law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, Eric Goldman, told Ars that her videos may qualify since “even if they don’t expressly reference Epoch’s offerings by name, the videos intentionally communicate a jarring juxtaposition of adorable critters who are important parts of pop culture living through the darker sides of humanity.”

Basically, Von Engelbrechten will need the court to understand the humor in her videos to win on that claim, Rebecca Tushnet, a First Amendment law professor at Harvard Law School, told Ars.

“Courts have varied in their treatment of parodies; the complaint’s definition of parody is not controlling but humor is one of the hardest things to predict—if the court gets the joke, it will be more likely to say that the juxtaposition between the storylines and the innocent appearance of the dolls is parodic,” Tushnet said.

But if the court does get the joke, Goldman suggested that even the sponsored content—which hilariously incorporates product placements from various big brands like Marc Jacobs, Taco Bell, Hilton, and Sephora into storylines—could possibly be characterized as parody.

However, “the fact that the social media posts were labeled #ad will make it extremely difficult for the artist to contest the videos’ status as ads,” Goldman said.

Ultimately, Goldman said that Epoch’s lawsuit “raises a host of complex legal issues” and is “not an easy case on either side.”

And one of the most significant issues that Epoch may face in the courtroom could end up gutting all of its trademark infringement claims that supposedly entitle the toy company to all of Von Engelbrechten’s profits, Alexandra Jane Roberts, a Northeastern University professor of law and media with special expertise in trademark law, told Ars.

Calico Critters may stumble on trademark hurdle

The toy company has raised several trademark infringement claims, all of which depend on Epoch proving that Von Engelbrechten “knowingly and willfully” used its trademarks without permission.

However, Roberts pointed out to Ars that Epoch has no trademarks for its iconic dolls, relying only on common law to assert sole rights to the “look and design of the critters.”

It’s likely impossible for Epoch to trademark the dolls, since trademarks are not intended to block competition, and there are only so many ways to design cute dolls that resemble cats or bunnies, Roberts suggested. A court may decide “there’s only so many ways to make a small fuzzy bunny that doesn’t look like this,” potentially narrowing the rights Epoch has under trade dress, a term that Epoch doesn’t use once in its complaint.

Roberts told Ars that Epoch’s trademark claims are “not so far off the mark,” and Von Engelbrechten’s defense was certainly not strengthened by her decision to monetize the content. Prior cases, like the indie band OK Go sending a cease-and-desist to Post cereal over a breakfast product called “OK Go” due to fears of false endorsement, make it clear that courts have agreed in the past that online collaborations have muddied the waters regarding who is the actual source of content for viewers.

“The question becomes whether people are going to see these videos, even though they’re snarky, and even though they’re silly and think, ‘Oh, Calico Critters must have signed off on this,'” Roberts said. “So the argument about consumer confusion, I think, is a plausible argument.”

However, if Epoch fails to convince the court that its trademarks have been infringed, then its other claims alleging false endorsement and unfair competition would likely also collapse.

“You can still get sometimes to unfair competition or to kind of like a false endorsement, but it’s harder to win on those claims and certainly harder to get damages on those claims,” Roberts said. “You don’t get trademark infringement if you don’t have a trademark.”

Possible defenses to keep “Sylvanian Drama” alive

Winning on the trademark claims may not be easy for Von Engelbrechten, who possibly weakened her First Amendment defense by creating the sponsored content. Regardless, she will likely try to convince the court to view the videos as parody, which is a slightly different analysis under trademark law than copyright’s more well-known fair use parody exceptions.

That could be a struggle, since trademark law requires that Von Engelbrechten’s parody videos directly satirize the “Sylvanian Families” brand, and “Sylvanian Drama” videos, even the ads, instead seem to be “making fun of elements of society and culture,” rather than the dolls themselves, Roberts said.

She pointed to winning cases involving the Barbie trademark as an instructive example. In a case disputing Mattel trademarks used in the lyrics for the one-hit wonder “Barbie Girl,” the song was cleared for trademark infringement as a “purely expressive work” that directly parodies Barbie in the lyrics. And in another case, where an artist, Tom Forsythe, captured photos of Barbie dolls in kitchen vessels like a blender or a margarita glass, more robust First Amendment protection was offered since his photos “had a lot to say about sexism and the dolls and what the dolls represent,” Roberts said.

The potential “Sylvanian Drama” defense seems to lack strong go-to arguments that typically win trademark cases, but Roberts said there is still one other defense the content creator may be weighing.

Under “nominative fair use,” it’s OK to use another company’s trademark if it’s necessary in an ad. Roberts provided examples, like a company renting Lexus cars needing to use that trademark or comparative advertising using Tiffany’s diamonds as a reference point to hype their lower prices.

If Von Engelbrechten goes that route, she will need to prove she used “no more of the mark than is necessary” and did not mislead fans on whether Epoch signed off on the use.

“Here it’s hard to say that ‘Sylvanian Drama’ really needed to use so much of those characters and that they didn’t use more than they needed and that they weren’t misleading,” Roberts said.

However, Von Engelbrechten’s best bet might be arguing that there was no confusion, since “Sylvanian Families” isn’t even a brand that’s used in the US, which is where Epoch chose to file its lawsuit because the brands that partnered with the popular account are based in New York. And the case may not even get that far, Roberts suggested, since “before you can get to those questions about the likelihood of confusion, you have to show that you actually have trademark or trade dress rights to enforce.”

Calico Critters creator may face millennial backlash

Epoch may come to regret filing the lawsuit, Roberts said, noting that as a millennial who grew up a big “Hello Kitty” fan, she still buys merch that appeals to her, and Epoch likely knows about that market, as it has done collaborations with the “Hello Kitty” brand. The toymaker could risk alienating other millennials nostalgic for Calico Critters who may be among the “Sylvanian Drama” audience and feel turned off by the lawsuit.

“When you draw attention to something like this and appear litigious, and that you’re coming after a creator who a lot of people really like and really enjoy and probably feel defensive about, like, ‘Oh, she’s just making these funny videos that everyone loves. Why would you want to sue her?'” Roberts said, “that can be really bad press.”

Goldman suggested that Epoch might be better off striking a deal with the creator, which “could establish some boundaries for the artist to keep going without stepping on the IP owner’s rights.” But he noted that “often IP owners in these situations are not open to negotiation,” and “that requires courts to draw difficult and unpredictable lines about the permissible scope of fair use.”

For Von Engelbrechten, the lawsuit may mean that her days of creating “Sylvanian Drama”-sponsored content are over, which could risk crushing a bigger dream she had to succeed in advertising. However, if the lawsuit can be amicably settled, the beloved content creator could also end up making money for Epoch, considering her brand deals appeared to be bigger.

While she seems to take her advertising business seriously, Von Engelbrechten’s videos often joke about legal consequences, such as one where a cat doll says she cannot go to a party because she’s in jail but says “I’ll figure it out” when told her ex will be attending. Perhaps Von Engelbrechten is currently devising a scheme, like her characters, to escape consequences and keep the “Sylvanian Drama” going.

“Maybe if this company were really smart, they would want to hire this person instead of suing them,” Roberts said.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Toy company may regret coming for “Sylvanian Drama” TikToker, experts say Read More »