Report from the Miami Times In Brief – Federal District Judge Robert Hinkle has rejected the State of Florida’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit challenging its 2021 law that regulates how social media companies engage in content moderation. Hinkle has overseen First...
Indonesian Antitrust Regulator Rules on TikTok Shopping Acquisition
Report from Reuters In Brief – Indonesia’s antitrust authority has determined that TikTok’s acquisition of leading local ecommerce platform Tokopedia could lead to monopolistic practices and is imposing two years of behavioral remedies to protect competition....
European Commission Opens DSA Investigations of Porn VLOPs
Report from Euractiv In Brief – The European Commission has announced that it has launched a formal investigation of four major pornographic websites over concerns that they are violating the Digital Services Act (DSA) by failing to provide adequate protection for...
Washington Post Tech Workers Vote to Unionize
Report from the Hill Rag In Brief – More than two hundred of the over three hundred tech workers at the Washington Post, including engineers, product designers, and data analysts, have voted to establish the Washington Post Tech Guild (WPTG). The final vote was...
Italian Consumer Protection Authority Targets DeepSeek for Hallucinations
Report from Reuters In Brief – Italy’s joint antitrust and consumer rights regulator has opened a probe into Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek for allegedly failing to sufficiently warn users about the danger of false information arising from so-called “hallucinations” in...
Federal Judge Puts a Hold on Florida Law Regulating Teens on Social Media
Report from MediaPost In Brief – Federal District Judge Mark Walker has blocked enforcement of Florida law HB 3 that prohibits social media platforms that have so-called “addictive features”, such as showing “like” counts and automatically playing videos, from...
French President Macron Wants a Social Media Age Threshold of 15
Report from Politico In Brief – French President Emmanuel Macron has said that he supports setting an age limit of 15 for social media platforms in the European Union, and if the EU doesn’t follow through, his government will set that age standard in France. The...
X Sues to Block New York Content Moderation Transparency Law
Report from The Hill In Brief – X has sued the state of New York to block its law requiring social media companies to explain how they moderate some content. The platform successfully challenged a similar law in California on First Amendment grounds last year. New...
Trump Administration Walks Back Revenge Tax After Minimum Tax Deal
Report from the New York Times In Brief – The Trump Administration has called on Republicans in Congress to drop a controversial tax provision dubbed the “Revenge Tax” from the massive budget reconciliation bill. Referred to as Sec. 899, the measure would impose a new...
Second Circuit Panel Rejects Meta Pixel Tracking Tech as a VPPA Violation
Report from MediaPost In Brief – A panel of the Second Circuit Federal Court of Appeals has ruled that web companies don’t violate the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), a 1980’s law designed to keep private the names of videos that customers rented, when a...
Sen. Blackburn Proposes Combining AI Regulation with Anti-Internet Priorities
Report from Roll Call In Brief – Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), a leading Republican critic of Big Tech companies, has released a nearly 300-page draft of federal AI regulation. Titled the “TRUMP AMERICA AI Act”, it preempts state AI laws in place of federal...
US Supreme Court Soundly Rejects Broad ISP Liability for User Piracy
Report from the New York Times In Brief – The Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that Cox Communications cannot be held liable for copyright infringement committed by its users, even if the company knows some customers engage in piracy and yet it does not cut them...
Tech Trade Group Challenges Chicago’s Social Media Tax
Report from the Chicago Sun-Times In Brief – NetChoice, a digital company trade group, is suing to block the City of Chicago’s new social media tax, arguing it violates the First Amendment and the federal Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act (PITFA). The new tax extends...
Big Trial Losses for Social Media Giants in New Mexico and Los Angeles
Reports from CNBC and the Wall Street Journal In Brief – A New Mexico state court jury has found Meta liable for $375 million in civil damages in a lawsuit brought by the Attorney General of New Mexico for misleading users about the safety of its platforms and...
4chan Fined by UK Ofcom for Failing to Protect Children From Pornography
Report from Sky News In Brief – Ofcom, the UK online safety regulator, has fined 4chan £450,000 for failing to prevent children from accessing pornography. The regulator also ordered the platform to introduce effective age checks by April 2 or face additional fines of...
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