News of the Cyber World

[kyonides]

TINDER

Tinder to pay $60.5M in Calif. in age discrimination suit — here’s how to apply for a payout

Tinder has agreed to pay $60.5 million in California to settle a class action lawsuit that accused the popular dating app of age discrimination.

The lawsuit alleged that Tinder violated state law by charging older users more than younger users when they signed up for premium subscriptions. It was originally filed in 2015 on behalf of Tinder user Allan Candelore.

More than 260,000 users are expected to be eligible for payouts.

The settlement terms apply to California residents aged 29 or older who bought Tinder Plus or Tinder Gold subscriptions at any time on or after March 2, 2015, or any time after March 2, 2016 if they were 28 or over.

“Tinder has brazenly announced and employed a multi-tiered pricing plan that treats consumers unequally based solely on their age,” the original lawsuit said.

Under the settlement’s terms, Tinder did not admit to any wrongdoing.

Affected users have until April 8 to opt out or object to the settlement terms and until Aug. 18 to specify how they’d like to receive their money.

“Each class member will also receive a share based on how much the class member paid for Tinder Plus and Tinder Gold,” according to the settlement notice.

A court hearing for final approval of the settlement is scheduled for May 20 in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

ALLSTATE

Allstate ordered to face privacy lawsuit alleging drivers were tracked through cellphones

Allstate must face a privacy lawsuit accusing the home and auto insurer of illegally tracking drivers through their cellphones without consent, using their data to raise premiums or deny coverage, and selling the data to other insurers.

In a decision on Tuesday, US District Judge Jeremy Daniel in Chicago said drivers in the proposed class action can try to prove that Allstate violated the Federal Wiretap Act by monitoring their travel locations, trip distances, speed, acceleration, braking, phone usage and attention to the road, and tried to monetize that data to boost profit.

Drivers can also try to show that Allstate’s data analytics unit Arity violated the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act by inaccurately reporting their driving behavior, including when they rode as passengers.

According to the complaint, Arity’s tracking software was integrated into apps such as Fuel Rewards, GasBuddy, Life360 and Allstate-owned Routely.

The judge also let drivers pursue claims under the laws of 20 states.

He dismissed three of the drivers’ 38 claims.
Insurers such as Allstate, Progressive and Berkshire Hathaway’s Geico use so-called telematics in monitoring drivers’ habits.

They say the technology rewards good driving through lower premiums.

Allstate argued that drivers never alleged it actually captured their data, or that their insurance rates went up. It also said its privacy policies disclosed the possibility of data collection.

Allstate said in a statement on Wednesday: “Consumers who choose to share driving data through Arity-powered apps can access emergency assistance, track fuel efficiency and unlock personalized insurance rates after a clear notice and explicit opt-in process.”

Lawyers for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

MUSK & TWITTER

Elon Musk discusses past tweets, bots as he testifies at Twitter shareholder trial

Elon Musk took the stand in a shareholder trial on Wednesday in San Francisco, where he’s accused of making false and misleading statements that drove down Twitter’s stock price before he bought the social media platform for $44 billion in 2022.

The lawsuit was filed in October 2022 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of Twitter shareholders who sold the stock between May 13 and Oct. 4, 2022, a few weeks before Musk’s purchase of Twitter was finalized. It claims Musk violated federal securities laws by making false, public statements that “were carefully calculated to drive down the price of Twitter stock.”

The billionaire Tesla CEO reached a deal to buy Twitter and take it private in April 2022. On May 13, however, he declared his plan “temporarily on hold” and said he needs to pinpoint the number of spam and fake accounts on the platform.

Twitter’s stock tumbled as a result. A few days later, he tweeted that the deal “cannot go forward” and claimed that almost 20% of Twitter accounts were “fake,” according to the lawsuit.

The plaintiff’s lawyer, Aaron P. Arnzen, began with questioning Musk about his tweets — or lack of tweets — about his decision to buy Twitter and his purchases of Twitter stock prior to deciding to take the company private.

Wearing a black suit and tie, Musk said he didn’t think it was “material” when, in early 2022, he began amassing Twitter stock and did not tweet about it or disclose to the Securities and Exchange Commission. He said he’s bought stock in “many companies” and did not post about it.

Once he did, Twitter’s stock jumped 27% in one day.

“That sounds high,” Musk said.

Musk’s May 13 tweet — “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users” — was “false because the buyout was not, in fact, ‘temporarily on hold,’” the lawsuit says. That’s because Twitter did not agree to put the deal on hold, and there was nothing in the merger agreement the two parties signed that allowed Musk to put it on hold, according to the lawsuit.

Arnzen questioned Musk about the tweet at length, asking if he thought whether it would have a “material impact” on Twitter’s stock. Musk said he made it explicit at the time that he was committed to the deal and that saying the deal was temporarily on hold was “like saying you’re going to be late for a meeting. (It doesn’t) mean you are not going to be at the meeting.”

Twitter’s stock fell nearly 10% on May 13.

GOOGLE VS EPIC GAMES

Google lowering fees on Android app store following settlement with Epic Games

Google will lower the lucrative fees imposed on its Android app store and offer a way for rival options to gain its stamp of approval, ending a bruising legal battle that led to one of several rulings condemning its tactics as an illegal monopoly.

The proposed changes filed Wednesday with a federal court in San Francisco mark the latest twist in a case that began in August 2020 when video game maker Epic Games filed an antitrust case seeking make it easier for alternative payment options to compete against Google’s Play Store system, which charges 15% to 30% commissions on a wide variety of in-app transactions.

Google’s concessions come five months after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of the company’s attempt to overturn a federal judge’s order requiring a far more extensive overhaul of the Play Store following a 2023 trial that culminated in a jury declaring the setup an illegal monopoly.

Backed into a legal corner, Google is now prepared to decrease its baseline commissions for subscriptions and e-commerce transactions into the 10% to 20% range while creating a new option that would charge 5% for payment processing.

App developers could still choose to rely on another payment processing system besides Google’s and consumers will be able to download apps from alternative stores that go through a certification process.

Although not required, alternative app stores that go through the Google’s registration process are less likely to provoke warnings about security risks.

U.S. James Donato still must approve the proposed changes as an alternative to a more dramatic shakeup that he ordered in October 2024.

Google is seeking an April 9 hearing before the judge to answer any questions about the revisions, which are being backed by Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, whose North Carolina company is best known for making the Fortnite video game.

“Epic has been advocating for open platforms for a long time and this really brings Android up to the status of a truly open platform,” Sweeney told The Associated Press during an interview that also included Sameer Samat, the Google executive in charge of Android.

ANTHROPIC

Anthropic back in talks with Pentagon — days after CEO said he refused to give Trump ‘dictator-style praise’

Anthropic is back in “last-ditch” talks with the Pentagon to resolve a bitter dispute over AI safeguards — days after CEO Dario Amodei claimed the clash stemmed partly from its refusal to give “dictator-style praise” to President Trump, according to reports.

Amodei has been holding discussions with Emil Michael, the War Department’s undersecretary for research and engineering as part of a “last-ditch effort” to reach a contract governing the military’s use of the company’s AI models, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

Talks have reportedly resumed just days after Amodei circulated a 1,600-word memo to staff that accused rival OpenAI of concocting “just straight up lies” about its disputes with the Pentagon over surveillance and autonomous weapons.

The Anthropic boss also told employees in the Friday memo he believes the administration’s animus stems from the fact that he declined to “donate to Trump,” tech news site The Information reported earlier.

“The real reasons DoW and the Trump admin do not like us is that we haven’t donated to Trump (while OpenAI/Greg have donated a lot)…” Amodei wrote, referencing Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president and co-founder.

A deal would allow the Pentagon to continue using Anthropic’s technology and could help the company avoid being formally designated a “supply chain risk,” a step threatened by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that would force firms in the military supply chain to cut ties with the startup.

Hegseth has yet to make the designation.

Amodei, who donated to failed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, blasted what he described as dishonest messaging from OpenAI and the Pentagon, writing in the memo: “I want to be very clear on the messaging that is coming from OpenAI, and the mendacious nature of it.”

He added that “a lot of OpenAI and DoW messaging just straight up lies about these issues or tries to confuse them,” and insisted that “it is false that ‘OpenAI’s terms were offered to us and we rejected them.’”

ORACLE

Larry Ellison’s Oracle slashing thousands of jobs due to AI cash crunch: report

Enterprise software company Oracle is planning thousands of job cuts as it faces a cash crunch from a massive AI data center expansion effort, Bloomberg News reported Thursday.

Long a smaller contender in the cloud market, over the past year Oracle has emerged as a major player in the business of renting computing power thanks, in part, to its $300 billion deal with OpenAI.

But investors have grown worried about how it would fund the data center expansion needed to serve OpenAI and other customers, including Elon Musk’s xAI and Meta.

The software company, chaired by billionaire Larry Ellison, in February outlined plans to raise $45 billion to $50 billion this year in order to expand its cloud infrastructure, fueling investor concerns about its rising debt load.

In December, the company said it expects capital expenditures for fiscal 2026 to be $15 billion higher than the $35 billion figure the company estimated during its first-quarter earnings call.

The layoffs will impact divisions across Oracle and may be implemented as soon as this month, the Bloomberg report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Some cuts will be aimed at job categories that the company expects will shrink due to AI.

The planned reductions are expected to be wider-reaching than Oracle’s typical rolling job cuts, according to Bloomberg.

This week, Oracle announced internally that it would be reviewing many of the open job listings in its cloud division, effectively slowing down or freezing the hiring process, the report added.
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The company had about 162,000 full-time employees as of May 31, 2025, according to its annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Oracle will report third-quarter results on Tuesday. Its shares fell more than 15% last year, with its December results showing about $10 billion in cash burn for the first half of the fiscal year.