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.

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 FTC should develop policies for protecting minors from “pervasive, sophisticated and data-driven digital marketing practices,” the Center for Digital Democracy wrote the agency Monday with Fairplay, Consumer Federation of America, Public Citizen, U.S. PIRG and more than 20 other groups. They cited manipulative tactics from influencers and fictional characters designed to exploit children’s developmental vulnerabilities. Research on digital advertising is limited but suggests children have less ability than adults to recognize advertising on digital media, the groups said. They suggested an FTC policy statement on digital marketing for minors. The groups filed the comment in response to the FTC's October event on digital advertising. The agency didn't comment.

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.”

TikTok responded to our recent item (see 2207150064) identifying it as a "Chinese social media app," saying TikTok is an "entertainment platform.” The leadership of TikTok, a company owned by Chinese parent ByteDance, "is based in Singapore and the United States,” the company said.

Congress should act quickly to pass chips legislation, TechNet said Monday in response to Tuesday’s expected Senate vote to begin advancing the Chips Act and portions of the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) (see 2207140067). Moving the smaller chips package is a “good step,” but Congress should work to pass other USICA measures like “investing in regional technology hubs across the country, enhancing STEM education programs, and attracting and retaining the world’s best and brightest talent,” said CEO Linda Moore. Democrats and Republicans are “hashing out” final details on a bill so “we can move forward with this week,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate Floor Monday. He urged conference committee members to continue negotiating the “larger jobs and innovation package that both sides have been working on for months” but said in the meantime Congress needs to “get chips done as soon as we can.”

Congress shouldn’t leave for August recess without passing chips legislation and $52 billion in federal investment for semiconductor research and manufacturing, National Governors Association Chair Asa Hutchinson (R) of Arkansas and Vice Chair Phil Murphy (D) of New Jersey said Friday. The U.S. Conference of Mayors and Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger also urged lawmakers to pass the bill. The Senate plans to vote Tuesday to begin advancing a smaller chips package (see 2207140067). The $52 billion Chips Act is “absolutely critical” to national security, the governors said. The mayors urged Congress to include the Chips Act, support for STEM education and an investment tax credit in the final bill. “Do not go home for August recess until you have passed the Chips Act, because I and others in the industry will make investment decisions,” Gelsinger said on CNBC Friday. “Do you want those investments in the U.S. or are we simply not competitive enough to do them here and we need to go to Europe or Asia? Get the job done.”

Amazon’s Prime Day, ended Wednesday, was “the biggest Prime Day event ever,” said Amazon Thursday, not disclosing receipts for the 48-hour event. Prime members in over 20 countries bought more than 300 million items, said Amazon. The first Prime Day, a 24-hour event in July 2015, had 34.4 million items ordered in nine Prime-eligible countries, Amazon said. Prime Day had a positive impact on e-commerce overall. Adobe emailed Thursday that the total U.S. online spend over the two days was $11.98 billion -- $6 billion Tuesday and $5.9 billion Wednesday, 8.5% higher than last year’s $11 billion. Adobe pegged the total online revenue for U.S. retail for the two days at 141% above an average day in June. In the first Prime Day featuring influencer videos, Amazon Live Prime Day streams had over 100 million views, Amazon said.