Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is attempting an “illegal acquisition” to expand his “virtual reality empire,” the FTC said Tuesday in a lawsuit seeking to block the company’s purchase of Within Unlimited and its virtual reality fitness app Supernatural. The commission recorded a 3-2 party line vote to authorize staff to seek a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Meta’s “virtual reality empire includes the top-selling device, a leading app store, seven of the most successful developers, and one of the best-selling apps of all time,” the FTC said. The agency alleges Meta is attempting to acquire a “dedicated fitness app that proves the value of virtual reality to users.” The company is trying to buy its way to the top instead of competing on the merits, said FTC Competition Bureau Deputy Director John Newman. The case is “based on ideology and speculation, not evidence,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. “The idea that this acquisition would lead to anticompetitive outcomes in a dynamic space with as much entry and growth as online and connected fitness is simply not credible.” The commission’s party-line vote sends a “chilling message to anyone who wishes to innovate in VR. We are confident that our acquisition of Within will be good for people, developers and the VR space.” The FTC claims the deal violates Section 7 of the Clayton Act, which prohibits transactions that may “substantially” decrease competition, “or tend to create a monopoly,” or Section 5 of the FTC Act.

Connectivity accessories supplier Covid announced an 8K HDMI cable for integrators that supports 8K@60 Hz, Deep Color and x.v.Color, HDR10, enhanced Audio Return Channel for Dolby Atmos and DTS-X, lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD surround sound. The 15-foot 48-Gbps cable also supports Consumer Electronics Control extension commands and functions and HDMI Ethernet channel, the company said Wednesday.

The Software and Information Industry Association named Senior Vice President-Intellectual Property and General Counsel Chris Mohr interim president, the board of directors announced Monday. Mohr will replace President Jeff Joseph, who is leaving at the end of July to join a global communications company. Mohr joined SIIA in 2015 as vice president-IP and general counsel.

Comments are due Sept. 26 on the FTC’s proposed revisions for ad endorsement guidelines (see 2205190058), said a notice for Tuesday's Federal Register. The agency said it plans to expand definitions for online influencers and set clear rules for prohibiting manipulation of consumer reviews, omission of bad reviews and buying fake reviews. The updated guidelines will reflect the “extent to which advertisers have turned increasingly to the use of social media and product reviews to market their products,” said the FTC.

Google Global Head-Product Security Strategy Camille Stewart Gloster will be deputy national cyber director-technology and ecosystem security, the White House announced Monday. She will lead the Office of National Cyber Director’s efforts to “strengthen the security and development of our Nation’s cyber ecosystem -- across people, processes, and technology,” the White House said. Gloster previously worked for the Obama administration as a senior cybersecurity policy adviser at the Department of Homeland Security.

President Joe Biden, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and senior administration officials met with industry and labor representatives Monday to push for passage of chips legislation (see 2207200063). Biden, who spoke virtually due to his isolation for COVID-19, said the legislation will help U.S. semiconductor fabs stay on the “leading edge,” according to White House pool reports. DOD Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and Assistant to the President-National Security Affairs Jake Sullivan joined in person to discuss national security needs. Communications Workers of America President Christopher Shelton, Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet, Cummins CEO Tom Linebarger, Medtronic CEO Geoff Martha and Mack McManus, general president-United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry of the U.S. and Canada spoke virtually.

Silicon Labs' virtual Works With Conference, Sept. 13-15, will focus on the Matter standard and other trends driving the future of the IoT, the company said Thursday. Works With will offer developers and engineers insights needed to build, deploy and connect solutions, said Silicon Labs, the primary semiconductor code contributor to Matter. In a keynote, Silicon Labs CEO Matt Johnson will discuss opportunities for smart connected devices in home, cities, commercial and industrial applications, along with executives from Google Smart Home Ecosystem, Amazon Sidewalk and Alexa Smart Home. The event is free.

Amazon filed legal action in King County Superior Court in Seattle against the administrators of over 10,000 Facebook groups that it says attempt to orchestrate fake reviews on Amazon in exchange for money or free products, the company said Tuesday, citing car stereos and camera tripods as examples. One of the groups identified in the lawsuit is Amazon Product Review, which Amazon claimed had more than 43,000 members until Meta took down the group this year. The groups are allegedly set up to recruit individuals willing to post “incentivized and misleading reviews” on Amazon e-commerce sites in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan, the company said. Amazon will use information discovered in the legal action to identify bad actors and remove fake reviews commissioned by the fraudsters that haven’t been detected by its technology, investigators and monitoring, it said. “Our teams stop millions of suspicious reviews before they’re ever seen by customers, and this lawsuit goes a step further to uncover perpetrators operating on social media,” said Dharmesh Mehta, Amazon vice president-selling partner services. Amazon’s investigations showed the group’s administrators attempted to hide their activity and evade Facebook’s detection, in part by “obfuscating letters from problematic phrases.” Amazon “strictly prohibits fake reviews and has more than 12,000 employees around the world dedicated to protecting its stores from fraud and abuse," the company said. A dedicated team investigates fake reviews on social media sites, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, and regularly reports abusive groups to those companies, it said. Of the more than 10,000 fake review groups Amazon has reported to Meta since 2020, Meta has taken down more than half of the groups for policy violations and continues to investigate others, Amazon said. It called fake reviews an “industry-wide problem,” saying civil litigation “is only one step.” Amazon advocated public-private collaboration among affected companies, social media sites and law enforcement focused on greater consumer protection.

Shopify and YouTube are partnering to give merchants and creators a new avenue for reaching consumers, said the companies Tuesday. The launch of YouTube Shopping on Shopify enables Shopify merchants to integrate their online stores with YouTube’s reach of more than 2 billion monthly logged-in users, they said. Shopify merchants can sell their full range of products on YouTube via livestreams, curated videos or store tabs, they said. "Commerce today is multichannel, and YouTube is one of the most influential channels on the planet," said Kaz Nejatian, Shopify vice president-product. "Shopify's new YouTube integration will fundamentally change what opportunity looks like for independent brands in the creator economy.” E-commerce via YouTube is an “additional layer of opportunity” for Google, said Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on an earnings call in February (see 2202020001).

The metaverse has the potential to become a nearly $750 billion market opportunity by 2030, reported Frost & Sullivan Monday. As the metaverse becomes “an interconnected network of virtual worlds that will eventually become an extension of the real-world economy,” it will enable organizations “to participate in economic activities as they do in the physical world,” it said. Big tech sees huge potential in the metaverse, “deeming it the next level of the internet,” said analyst Kiran Kumar. Gaming, media and entertainment and retail are among sectors that experienced significant metaverse adoption “and promise high growth potential over the next 12 months,” said Kumar. “Interoperability is the defining property of the metaverse. The success of the metaverse would rely on the ability to unify systems, platforms, and economies in terms of incentives and benefits tied to the physical world, which remains a critical challenge to be addressed.”