Report from Korea JoongAng Daily In Brief – The Chairman of the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC), South Korea’s antitrust regulator, has said that the government would maintain close dialogue with their US counterparts regarding its proposals to police giant digital...
Apple Pulls Strong iCloud Encryption from the UK Market
Report from the BBC In Brief – Apple has begun blocking users in the UK from using the company’s highest level of encryption to protect the security and privacy of photos, documents, and other content stored on the company’s iCloud backup system. The move is likely in...
Trump Tariff Threats Against Digital Taxes Expanded to All Big Tech Penalties
Report from Reuters In Brief – Following up on two executive orders from the first day of his second term that signaled he will again aggressively challenge foreign governments that institute a digital services tax (DST), President Donald Trump has ordered his top...
DeepSeek Downloads Suspended in South Korea Due to Data Practices
Report from the New York Times In Brief – South Korea’s data protection authority, the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC), has suspended downloads of the DeepSeek app after investigating the data policies and practices of the Chinese AI startup and...
EU Commission to Announce DMA Decisions for Apple and Meta in March
Report from Reuters In Brief – European Commissioner Teresa Ribera of Spain, the Executive Vice-President leading key economic priorities including competition policy, has said that decisions are expected to be announced in March in the Digital Markets Act (DMA)...
Mexico Threatens to Sue Google Over How Maps Names the Gulf
Report from the Washington Post In Brief – Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum continues to call on Google to reverse changes it has made to its Maps service following the executive order from US President Donald Trump changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the...
iPhone Dictation Temporarily Displays “Trump” When User Says “Racist”
Report from the New York Times In Brief – Apple has acknowledged a bug with the iPhone’s dictation feature that sometimes surfaces when a user says the word “racist”, with the phone briefly displaying “Trump” before landing on the correct word. The company claimed...
Amazon Must Face Price-Parity Antitrust Lawsuit from Zulily
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – US District Judge John Chun, who is overseeing a collection of federal antitrust cases targeting Amazon’s marketplace practices, has rejected the company’s bid to have a lawsuit from now-defunct online apparel marketplace Zulily fully...
Polish Comparison-Shopping Site Sues Google for Years of Damages
Report from Reuters In Brief – Google has been sued by Ceneo, a Poland-based comparison-shopping unit of European ecommerce platform Allegro, seeking 2.33 billion zlotys (about $568 million) for damages suffered at the hands of the digital giant from 2013 through...
Mexico Enacts Gig Worker Legislation Classifying Top Earners as Employees
Report from Mexico News Daily In Brief – Mexico has enacted “Gig Worker” legislation that aims to provide hundreds of thousands of platform-enabled workers with traditional employment benefits and protections. The new law, which goes into effect in June, establishes...
EU Commission Opens Formal Digital Services Act Investigation of Shein
Report from EuroNews In Brief – The European Commission has announced a formal investigation of Chinese ecommerce platform Shein under the Digital Services Act (DSA), 2022 legislation regulating how digital platforms address illegal and objectional content. Platforms...
Judge Allowing California AG Lawsuit Targeting TikTok’s Addictive Design
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – A California judge has tentatively ruled that TikTok must face the state’s lawsuit alleging the platform’s design is addictive and harmful to children. Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Beth McGowen rejected the company’s attempt...
Federal Judge Allows School District Social Media Lawsuit to Proceed
Google Faces Heightened EU Scrutiny of Search Ad Market Conduct
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – Google is the target of heightened scrutiny by the European Commission antitrust officials over concerns that the digital giant may be illegally rigging the cost of advertising on its search engine. A February 9 letter and request for...
Brazil Orders Grok to Stop Sexualized Images
Report from DigWatch In Brief – Brazil has ordered X to stop AI chatbot Grok from generating sexualized images, adding to the global regulatory pressure on Elon Musk’s social media platform and AI chatbot. The directive, issued by Brazil’s National Data Protection...
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