Two years after launching in the U.S., TikTok Shop has a reported $19 billion in quarterly sales, rivaling the sales performance of eBay, which still leads by about a billion dollars, according to third-part TikTok analytics tool EchoTik. After getting off to what seemed to be a rocky start, the fact that it took only 24 months for TikTok Shop to became competitive with the 30-year-old eBay is drawing notice. A TikTok representative said TikTok Shop’s live-stream shopping segments were up 72 percent year-over-year as of September, with sales up by 120 percent as of June. Live-stream shopping is only one aspect of TikTok Shop. Others include shoppable videos, a marketplace and creator storefronts.  Continue reading TikTok Shop Reports $19 Billion Sales Quarter, Rivaling eBay

U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) Chair Alexander Hoehn-Saric spoke with CTA Senior Director of Regulatory Affairs Rachel Nemeth during CES 2024 about the challenges of extending safety to products that are constantly evolving and incorporating new technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. Nemeth pointed out that the agency’s authorizing statute was enacted in 1972 and was last amended in 2008. “We’re doing a lot of good work with the statute we have,” Hoehn-Saric responded. “But we’re changing the way we operate. We talk a lot about machine learning and AI.” Continue reading CES: Championing Consumer Product Safety in the Age of AI

Bipartisan support is growing in the Senate for changes to Section 230, the part of the Communications Decency Act that grants federal immunity to social media platforms and other tech giants for content users post on their sites. At a combative Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday, lawmakers from both parties called for gutting major provisions of the legal liability shield, on which Big Tech has come to rely. Senators accused tech firms of putting profits over user safety and slammed the U.S. Supreme Court, which appeared to approach the matter with caution last month in Gonzalez v. Google. Continue reading Senate Message to Big Tech Is Expect Reform to Section 230