Nilay Patel

The WSJ has a good piece on Apple’s aggressive efforts to kill a Louisiana bill that would have required age limits for apps to be part of iOS and Android. Apple wasn’t shy about things:

An Apple lobbyist responded with a flurry of text messages, declaring the provision a “poison pill from Meta” and forwarding news stories about allegations that Meta has failed to protect children, Carver said. He described Apple’s outreach as “all day, every day.” In a series of conversations, Apple’s lobbyists and staffers made clear the company would fight any effort at age-gating. [...]

Within days, lobbying records show, Apple hired four additional lobbyists in Baton Rouge. Among them was Alton Ashy, a Baton Rouge heavyweight best known for representing truck-stop casinos in the capital. One of Carver’s legislative colleagues joked that his bill was turning into a full employment act for the state’s lobbyists. 

It’s not the first time: Apple went heavy against a Georgia bill that would have opened up the App Store a few years ago.

(Note to the Journal, though: stop letting tech company spox comment on background! Ick.)

That’s a real quote from our group publisher Chris Grant, who founded Polygon. Enjoy!

Help. Help help help.

But for those of us doomed to remember what the Obama years were like the first time around — the turbo-pop, the undercuts, the novelty Twitter accounts, the Internet Boyfriends, the girlbosses, the hashtags, the precise shades of pink — there is one last bracing thought. For better or worse, these were our ’60s, and we’re all just going to have to come to terms with that.

This post by Obsolete Sony is my favorite thing on the internet right now.

New York has a dive into New York governor Kathy Hochul’s push to ban phones in schools — and this very funny anecdote about how distracted they make kids:

At the time, Bethlehem Central was about four months into a near-total ban on electronics in schools. iPhones, earbuds, smart watches, and the rest — gone. During the prior few years, when a class period would end, students would walk in near-total silence through the halls, heads down, engrossed in their phones. Surveillance cameras would sometimes capture distracted teenagers walking into a wall or even, according to Rounds, falling down stairs.

No bill yet, but Hochul says she wants “to go big on this one.”