The US is Contesting Nvidia Acquisition of Semiconductor Creator Arm

According to the FTC, the planned investment would give Nvidia too much influence over computer technologies used by competitors. Apple, Qualcomm, Sony, and Samsung are among the businesses that licensed Arm’s designs and technologies.

“We will seek to demonstrate that this purchase will benefit the industry,” Nvidia stated. The firm creates high-performance gaming graphics cards, mobile computing devices, and software and artificial intelligence systems. The Arm was indeed a British firm acquired by SoftBank in Japan in 2016.

Nvidia revealed its intended acquisition in September 2020, but the transaction has been met with regulatory scrutiny and legal concerns, including probes in the United Kingdom and Europe.

“The proposed merger would give Nvidia the capacity and motivation to utilize its dominance of this technology to harm its competitors, limiting competition and eventually resulting in lower product quality, lower innovation, higher pricing, and fewer choices,” the US watchdog warned.

Nvidia agreed to uphold Arm’s open-licensing strategy, keep the brand, keep the firm in the United Kingdom, and recruit additional people.

The UK Competition Commission has ordered Meta to sell Giphy:

The Antitrust watchdog of the United Kingdom has ordered Meta, Facebook’s corporate company, to sell Giphy. Last year, the business, which was known as Facebook, paid $315 million (£236 million) for the Gif-sharing search engine.

It wanted to link Giphy’s massive collection of looping short video animations to Instagram, one of its other social media services. On the other hand, the CMA found the acquisition to be unfair to rival social networking companies.

In October, Facebook changed its name to Meta, but its various platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, kept their previous names. After Facebook announced its takeover of Giphy in May 2020, it claimed that Facebook networks accounted for half of the Gif search engine’s traffic, with Instagram responsible for the other half. Giphy, on the other hand, provides Gifs to TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitter, among others. The Visuals Interchange Format (GIF) was developed in the 1980s to display both static and dynamic graphics.

They’ve also started to appear in social media posts and comments. “After talking with prospective firms and organizations and considering numerous alternatives given by Facebook, the CMA has determined that selling Giphy in its entirety to an approved buyer is the best approach to meet its competition concerns,” the CMA said.

Without action, according to Stuart McIntosh, who led the independent probe into the purchase, “Facebook would be able to further expand its substantial market position in social media by limiting competitors’ access to Giphy Gifs.”

“By compelling Facebook to sell Giphy, we are safeguarding numbers of Facebook profiles while also boosting digital advertising innovation and competition,” he stated. The regulator’s decision, according to experts, was necessary.

“This is the very first time the CMA has ever vetoed a big digital tech merger and reflects the direction of travel for the UK regulator’s scrutiny of such deals going forward,” said Peter Broadhurst, a partner at law firm Crowell & Moring.

Giphy’s ad solutions, according to the CMA, have the “potential” to compete with Facebook’s. “This will create a lot of uncertainty for firms attempting to negotiate partnerships where the parties don’t now compete but may do in the future – especially when one of them is a large player in its industry,” Mr. Broadhurst said.

“This decision offends us,” Meta told The Media. “We’re considering our alternatives, which also include lodging an appeal, while we study the verdict.” “Our infrastructure, skills, and resources will help both our clients and Giphy.”

“By working together, Meta and Giphy will be able to strengthen Giphy’s offering for the millions of consumers, companies, developers, and API partners that use Giphy daily in the UK and around the world, giving everyone more options.”

Facebook reveals the Chinese network behind the phone expert:

Meta Platforms, the company that owns Facebook, has taken down more than 500 accounts related to a Chinese-based internet misinformation network.

The reports promoted the allegations of a fictitious Swiss researcher named “Wilson Edwards,” who claimed that the US was interfering with efforts to determine where Covid-19 originated. China’s state-run media widely carried Edwards’ statements.

On the other hand, the Swiss embassy said that this individual did not exist. According to Meta’s study, the social media campaign targeted English-speaking persons in the US and the UK and was “largely unsuccessful.”

A Twitter and Facebook account masquerading as a Switzerland biologist named Wilson Edwards claimed in July that the US was exerting pressure on WHO experts investigating the origins of Covid-19 in an attempt to put the virus on China.

On his Facebook page, they mentioned the so-called scientist by CGTN, Shanghai Daily, and Global Times.

On the other hand, the Swiss embassy stated in August that the individual did not exist because the Facebook account was only two weeks old at the time of the initial post and had just three friends.

“There has been no registry of a Swiss citizen with the name “Wilson Edwards” and no scientific articles under that name,” according to the story, and they told Chinese news outlets to erase any mention of him.

“Links to persons in mainland China, including workers of Sichuan Silence Information Technology Co Ltd and individuals affiliated with Chinese state infrastructure enterprises headquartered across the world,” Meta Platforms claimed in a November study.

After evaluating public accusations about the bogus Swiss scientist, Facebook said it has erased 524 Facebook profiles, 20 pages, four groups, and 86 Instagram accounts.

According to Meta, the original post of the persona was shared and liked by phone Facebook accounts before being forwarded by legitimate users, the bulk of which were Chinese state infrastructure employees in over 20 countries.

As per the investigation, the operation employed VPN infrastructure to hide its origins and provide Edwards with a more established persona. It went on to say that his profile photo looked to be developed utilizing machine-learning skills as well.

Covid-19’s origins have been a subject of contention between the US, China, and other countries, as the virus’s source remained unknown over two years after they initially found it.

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