Report from Platform Economy Insights In Brief – The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments earlier today on the constitutional challenges filed by TikTok and a group of content creators against the federal law that requires the business to be sold by China-based...
Meta Trials eBay Listings in Facebook Marketplace to Address EU Concerns
Report from the Wall Street Journal In Brief – Meta and eBay have each announced that the social media giant would run a test in Germany, France, and the US enabling people to browse listings from eBay on Facebook Marketplace and complete transactions on eBay. The...
Federal Judge Rejects Blocking Some Aspects of California’s Social Media Law
Report from Courthouse News Service In Brief – US District Judge Edward Davila responded to a motion to enjoin California’s Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act by blocking some provisions, rejecting the motion to block some sections, and granting...
UK PM Keir Starmer Continues to Pitch AI Investment as a Top Tech Priority
Report from CNBC In Brief – UK Prime Minister Kein Starmer continued to press forward on initiatives he argues will make the UK “the best state partner” in the world for “anyone working at the AI frontier”, releasing an AI Opportunities Action Plan focused on building...
Zuckerberg Wants Trump to Protect US Tech Giants from EU Regulators
Report from Euractiv In Brief – In a major one-on-one interview with leading podcaster Joe Rogan, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg framed the company’s public policy battles in Europe in the context of “censorship” and argued that incoming President Donald Trump should step...
UK CMA Open Probe of Google Search Under New Competition Law
Report from CNBC In Brief – The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has opened an investigation of Google under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer’s Act (DMCC) to determine if the digital giant has “strategic market status” (SMS) under the new law...
TikTok Reported to be Planning Full Shutdown on Sunday Absent Reprieve
Report from Reuters In Brief – TikTok is reported to be planning to shutdown their US app on Sunday, January 19th if the US Supreme Court or Biden Administration does not issue an order delaying the effective date of the federal law requiring the company’s US...
OpenAI Removes Political Bias Landmine from AI Policy Document
Report from TechCrunch In Brief – OpenAI quietly edited its “Economic Blueprint” soon after release to remove language in the section on “the proper rules” for AI that called for AI models to be “politically unbiased by default”. The report is part of a public policy...
Supreme Court Justices Sound Amenable to Age Checks for Online Porn
Report from the New York Times In Brief – Several members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appear willing to overturn a 2004 decision that prohibited requiring online pornography sites to use age verification techniques to keep underage users off their...
Supreme Court Upholds TikTok Law
Report from Platform Economy Insights In Brief – The US Supreme Court decisively ruled against the First Amendment challenges of TikTok and a group of content creators against the federal law that requires the business to be sold by China-based ByteDance to a new...
India Adds Deepfakes to Tightened Social Media Takedown Regime
Report from MediaNews4U In Brief – India has amended its rules requiring social media platforms such as Meta, YouTube and X to remove unlawful material, adding AI-generated “deepfakes” to the regime. The new rules, which go into effect on February 20, bring...
French Retailers and Government Backers Resisting Online Marketplaces
Report from Reuters In Brief – France’s Minister of Small and Medium Businesses says Shein and other online retail platforms will face a “year of resistance" from traditional storefront retailers and their backers in the government. Serge Papin argued that retail...
Federal Jury Finds Uber Financially Liable for Driver Sexual Assault
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – A federal court jury in Arizona has ordered Uber to pay $8.5 million in damages to a young woman who was allegedly raped by her driver in 2023. The decision marks the first time Uber, which has been fighting such claims for a decade,...
France Considering VPN Regulation to Follow Social Media Age Threshold
Report from TechRadar In Brief – As France continues forward with legislation to impose an age threshold of 15 for social media use in the country, Anne Le Hénanff, the Minister Delegate for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Affairs, said that the government is...
EU Commission Directs Google to Play Nice with Chatbot Competitors
Report from Courthouse News In Brief – The European Commission has announced two “specification proceedings” to direct Google in setting policies related to third-party AI chatbot competitors that comply with its Digital Markets Act (DMA) obligations. One process...
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