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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow is facing mounting legal battlesincluding a lawsuit Tuesday brought by the Federal Trade Commission alleging that Zillow paid rival Redfin $100 million to exit and stop competing in the online apartment rental listings market. The FTC claims the arrangementframed publicly as a partnershipwas in fact an unlawful anticompetitive agreement that eliminated Redfin as a meaningful competitor in the online rental space. According to the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the February 2025 deal required Redfin to terminate its advertising contracts, step away from competing in multifamily property advertising for up to nine years, and act solely as a syndicator of Zillows rental listings. The FTC alleges the arrangement not only harmed Redfin employeeshundreds of whom were laid offbut also renters and property managers, who now face reduced competition, higher costs, and fewer innovations in rental search platforms. Paying off a competitor to stop competing against you is a violation of federal antitrust laws,” wrote Daniel Guarnera, Director of the FTCs Bureau of Competition, in a press release published on September 30. Zillow paid millions of dollars to eliminate Redfin as an independent competitor in an already concentrated advertising marketone thats critical for renters, property managers, and the health of the overall U.S. housing market. The FTC will do our part to ensure that Americans who are looking for safe, affordable rentals receive all the benefits of robust competition between internet listing services like Zillow and Redfin. The suit is the fourth major legal challenge filed against Zillow in just over three months, underscoring growing scrutiny of the companys business practices: June 23, 2025: Compass filed an antitrust lawsuit alleging Zillows ban on private listings was anticompetitive and harmed brokerages. July 30, 2025: Commercial real estate giant CoStar sued Zillow for copyright infringement, seeking more than $1 billion in damages. September 19, 2025: A class-action lawsuit was filed against Zillow, accusing the company of hiding agent fees within its Flex referral program. September 30, 2025: The FTC filed its suit alleging Zillows $100 million agreement with Redfin was designed to suppress competition in rental advertising. The rapid-fire succession of lawsuitsspanning copyright, antitrust, consumer protection, and federal enforcementhas put Zillow under one of the most intense legal spotlights in its corporate history. The outcomes could ripple well beyond Zillow itself, potentially influencing how much choice, transparency, and information consumers have when navigating the housing market. This will be something to watch in 2026 and beyond.
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E-Commerce
TikTok is a one-stop-shop for recipe inspo, viral dance trends, tin-foil-hat conspiracies, and, increasingly, political commentary. Now, its also where one in five Americans are getting their news. Thats according to a Pew Research Center analysis published last week, which has tracked a dramatic uptick in news consumption on the platform, up from just 3% in 2020. During that span, no social media platform weve studied has experienced faster growth in news consumption, Pew noted. In Pews survey, 43% of adults under 30 said they regularly get their news on TikTok, up from 9% five years ago. But it’s not just younger people. A quarter of adults between the ages of 30 and 49 also regularly turn to TikTok as a news source, compared to just 2% in 2020. This analysis is based on Pews survey of 5,153 U.S. adults between August 18 and 24. While the researchers focused only on adult TikTok users, overall more than half of TikTok users (55%) now say they regularly get news on the platform, up from 22% in 2020. TikTok is now on par with several other social media sites including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Truth Social in the share of its adult users who regularly get news there, researchers wrote. The tide on TikTok has been turning for some time, with more and more media outlets and independent journalists adapting to reach new audiences and doubling down on vertical video. These days, snappy, shareable content, delivered in 30 seconds or less, is far more likely to hook audiences shrinking attention spans than long form reporting. The quality of this news content is another story. Since much of this content comes from individual creators, or newsfluencers, rather than established news organizations, fact and opinion can often be presented interchangeably, and misinformation can spread quickly. News delivered directly to the FYP, courtesy of a highly individualized algorithm, has the problem of sinking people further and further into echo chambers of their own creation. It then begs the question: What kind of news are we each consuming?
Category:
E-Commerce
Factory activity shrank in much of the world last month, private surveys showed on Wednesday, as signs of a slowdown in U.S. growth and the anticipated impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs added to pressure from weak Chinese demand. Euro zone manufacturing slipped back into contraction as new orders fell at their fastest rate in six months, with export markets acting as a particular drag, signalling that the recovery in the region’s industrial sector was fragile. The HCOB Eurozone Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), compiled by S&P Global, fell to 49.8 in September from August’s 50.7, which was the first reading above the 50.0-point line denoting growth since mid-2022. “The drop in the PMI is showing up across the board, with respective figures for consumer goods, capital goods and intermediate goods all down on the month,” said Cyrus de la Rubia, chief economist at Hamburg Commercial Bank. Surveys revealed a split across the currency union with the Netherlands leading the expansion with activity at a 38-month high while growth continued in Greece, Ireland and Spain. Meanwhile, the bloc’s three largest economies Germany, France and Italy all registered contractions. In Britain, outside the European Union, activity shrank at the fastest pace in five months, reflecting subdued domestic demand and fewer export orders, painting a more downbeat picture than recent official data. In Asia, the stress on manufacturers highlights the challenge policymakers face in protecting their export-reliant region from higher U.S. levies, a key policy of the Trump administration that has upended the global trade order and put the brakes on economic growth. Export powerhouse Japan and global tech hub Taiwan saw manufacturing activity shrink in September, the surveys showed, leaving businesses in Asia heavily dependent on the U.S. market on a fragile footing. Worryingly, China, a key engine of the global economy, also remained in the doldrums. An official survey released on Monday showed manufacturing activity in the world’s second-biggest economy contracted for a sixth month in September, dragged down by weak consumption and the squeeze from U.S. tariffs. The prolonged slump underlines the twin pressures on China’s economy: Domestic demand has failed to mount a durable recovery in the years since the coronavirus pandemic, while Trump’s tariffs have squeezed Chinese factories as well as overseas firms that buy components. “The September PMI readings for most countries in Asia remained weak and we continue to expect manufacturing activity in the region to struggle in the near term,” said Shivaan Tandon, emerging markets economist at Capital Economics. “With growth set to soften and inflation likely to remain contained, we expect central banks in Asia to loosen policy further.” The S&P Global Japan Manufacturing PMI fell to 48.5 in September from 49.7 in August, staying below the 50.0 threshold. It shrank at the fastest pace in six months due to steep falls in output and new orders, the survey showed. Taiwan’s manufacturing PMI fell to 46.8 last month. Factory activity also shrank in the Philippines and Malaysia, the private surveys showed. By contrast, South Korea’s factory activity expanded for the first time in eight months underpinned by improving overseas demand. The manufacturing PMI in Asia’s fourth-largest economy, released by S&P Global, rose to 50.7 in September, moving above the 50-mark for the first time since January 2025. The outlook for South Korea’s exporters, however, hinges on negotiations to formalise a July deal aimed at reducing U.S. tariffs on Korean goods imports including automobiles to 15% from 25% in return for South Korea’s investment of $350 billion in the U.S. The talks have stalled due to Seoul’s concerns over foreign exchange implications. India’s manufacturing sector expansion lost some momentum and slipped to its weakest pace in four months, suggesting Washington’s punitive 50% tariffs on its goods could be starting to hurt Asia’s third-largest economy. Jonathan Cable and Leika Kihara, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
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