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Welcome and Happy Friday! Follow our cyber reporter, Maggie Miller (@magmill95), and tech team, Chris Mills Rodrigo (@chrisismills) and Rebecca Klar (@rebeccaklar_), for more coverage.
There’s more trouble for Amazon and Google across the pond, with the United Kingdom’s competition watchdog announcing an investigation into fake reviews on the platforms.
Meanwhile, Google on Friday announced a change to its search engine with a feature that will notify users about potentially unreliable information during breaking news, and two senators rolled out another bill to address some of the mounting cybersecurity threats.
KEEP IT REAL: The United Kingdom’s competition watchdog is launching an investigation into fake reviews on Amazon and Google, it said Friday.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will probe whether the two U.S.-based tech giants are breaking consumer laws by taking insufficient action to protect consumers from fake reviews.
The CMA’s latest probe follows an investigation launched last year into several platforms’ internal systems and processes for identifying and dealing with fake reviews.
The watchdog said the investigation has raised specific concerns about how Google and Amazon are detecting fake and misleading reviews or suspicious patterns of behavior.
Both companies defended their policies toward preventing fake reviews and committed to working with the CMA during its investigation.
CHECK BACK LATER: Google will start warning users about potentially unreliable information for search results during breaking news or emerging topics, the company said Friday.
The search engine said its systems have been trained to now detect when a topic is rapidly evolving and a “range of sources hasn’t yet weighed in,” according to a blog post.
In those cases, Google will show users a notice indicating to check back later when more information may be available.
“While Google Search will always be there with the most useful results we can provide, sometimes the reliable information you’re searching for just isn’t online yet. This can be particularly true for breaking news or emerging topics, when the information that’s published first may not be the most reliable,” Danny Sullivan, Google’s public liaison for search, said in a blog post.
Read more about the announcement.
NEW WORKFORCE BILL: Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) on Friday introduced legislation meant to tackle parts of the government’s cyber workforce shortage.
The Federal Cybersecurity Workforce Expansion Act would establish a cybersecurity apprenticeship program at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, along with creating a program at the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide veterans with cybersecurity training.
The bill was introduced in the wake of months of escalating cyberattacks aimed at critical U.S. organizations.
Hassan pointed to the escalating attacks on Friday in stressing that “our national cybersecurity infrastructure is woefully lacking.”
Cornyn said in a separate statement that “cyber threats are evolving each day, and we must have a workforce prepared to respond.”
Read more about the bill here.
ICYMI: DEMS CLASH OVER TECH BILLS: California Democrats are clashing with other members of their party over a package of antitrust bills targeting the top tech companies in the country.
Democratic lawmakers from California on the House Judiciary Committee, particularly those representing tech-heavy Bay Area districts, voted against the majority of their colleagues over the past two days on five antitrust bills that seek to rein in the market power of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google.
The stiff opposition from the California delegation may cause further hurdles as the legislation heads to the House floor, with moderate and progressive Democrats, as well as prominent Republicans, voicing concern over the bills.
Democratic Reps. Zoe Lofgren, Eric Swalwell and Lou Correa — all from California — voted against advancing nearly every bill the committee marked up Wednesday and Thursday.
Read more about the markup here.
On tap next week:
-A House Armed Service Committee subcommittee is holding a hearing June 29 on the Department of Defense’s information technology and cybersecurity outlook over the upcoming year.
-The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing June 30 on securing wireless networks and supply chains, during which lawmakers will consider multiple pieces of legislation
-A House Oversight and Reform Committee panel will hold a hearing June 30 on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on state and local information technology.
An op-ed to chew on: The Innovation and Competition Act is progressive policy
Lighter click: My pal jackpack
NOTABLE LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB:
Are Black Creators Really on ‘Strike’ From TikTok? (The New York Times / Taylor Lorenz)
Tech giants are staying silent on California’s anti-NDA bill (Protocol / Issie Lapowsky)
At a summer camp, juice boxes and bitcoin mining (NBC / David Ingram)