Report from MediaPost In Brief – NetChoice, a digital company trade group that has had significant success challenging state laws regulating social media, has again asked a federal judge to block a Mississippi law requiring that digital services verify users’ ages and...
The Kids Online Safety Act is Back, This Time with Apple’s Backing
Report from the Washington Post In Brief – The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), legislation pressing social media platforms to shield teens from objectionable content, including promotion of self-harm, substance abuse, and sexual exploitation, has again been introduced...
Microsoft’s Teams Offer Likely to Forestall a Big European Commission Fine
Report from Reuters In Brief – Microsoft is likely to escape a major antitrust fine as the European Commission’s antitrust regulators are expected to accept the software giant’s improved offer to address complaints about the bundling of chat and video app Teams into...
EU Commission Finds TikTok in Violation of DSA Over Ads Repository
Report from Politico In Brief – The European Commission has made a preliminary determination that TikTok has failed to comply with provisions of the Digital Services Act (DSA) requiring advertising transparency. Among the many requirements that the DSA imposes on...
Texas Legislature Passes Bill Putting Age Verification Duties on App Stores
Report from MediaPost In Brief – Texas became the second state to pass a bill that would require app store operators like Apple and Google to verify all users’ ages and then block minors from downloading apps without parental permission. SB 2420, the App Store...
Google Faces Follow-on Shopping “Vertical” Antitrust Lawsuits in Europe
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – Google is facing at least €12 billion in damages claims from dozens of price comparison websites across Europe who allege that the search giant harmed them through years of anticompetitive treatment. The so-called “follow-on” civil...
Anthropic Lawyers Admit Filing a Brief with a Hallucinated Case Citation
Report from Reuters In Brief – Lawyers for the AI company Anthropic submitted a court filing that included a citation “hallucination” created by the company’s AI chatbot Clause. The filing was part of expert testimony from one of the company’s data scientists in...
Japan’s Antitrust Authority Releases Draft App Store Regulations
Report from Kyodo News In Brief – The Japan Fair Trade Commission, the country’s antitrust authority, has unveiled draft guidelines for the new law that will regulate how Google and Apple operate their smartphone app stores and compete with third-party app developers....
Apple Finally Restores Epic Game’s Fortnite to the US App Store
Report from the New York Times In Brief – More than four-and-half years after blocking Epic Games’ highly popular Fortnite gaming app from its app stores in a massive antitrust dispute, Apple has allowed the app to again be in the US App Store. The move came after...
OpenAI Wins Dismissal of AI Hallucination Defamation Lawsuit
Report from Reuters In Brief – OpenAI has won the dismissal of a defamation lawsuit filed by a conservative radio host in Georgia who alleged that the ChatGPT chatbot made false claims that he embezzled money from a gun-rights organization. Judge Tracie Cason of the...
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Meta Proposes New Per-Message WhatsApp Fee for Chatbots in Italy
Report from TechCrunch In Brief – Meta has announced that it will charge AI companies a per message fee for running their chatbots on WhatsApp in regions where regulators force the company to allow chatbots on the platform. The policy will go into effect in Italy on...
Landmark Social Media Addiction Trial Underway in California State Court
Report from PBS In Brief – The initial “bellwether” trial testing claims that major social media platforms are liable for a wide range of mental health injuries because they intentionally designed their products to be addictive to children is underway in Los Angeles...
UK Antitrust Regulator Proposes Google Search Rules Including AI Opt-Outs
Report from Euractiv In Brief – The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced proposed rules to govern how Google operates its search engine, including requiring that the company allow website publishers to opt out of having their content used in...
Paris Prosecutors Continue to Investigate X for Criminal Law Violations
Report from Reuters In Brief – French authorities have raided X’s Paris offices as part of an expanded criminal investigation into the social media platform over its handling of unlawful content. The probe, which began last year as an investigation of the platform’s...
Grok Chatbot Faces Regulatory Criticism for Sexualizing Photo Images
Report from Australian Broadcasting Corporation In Brief – Grok, the AI chatbot integrated into X, is facing growing backlash for being capable of digitally altering photos posted on X to depict women, and in some cases apparent children, in revealing clothing,...
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