Report from SFiST In Brief – The latest budget proposal from California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) has eliminated funding for the News Transformation Fund, a state initiative to pay millions of dollars to California media companies. The fund was announced in 2024 as...
Spanish PM Announces Social Media Age Threshold Amidst Musk Tussle
Report from AP News In Brief – Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has announced plans for a package of measures to regulate online companies, including banning teens under 16 from social media platforms that he called “a space of addiction, abuse, pornography,...
EU Commission Tells TikTok It Needs to Stop Being So Addictive
Report from Politico In Brief – The European Commission has announced its preliminary finding that TikTok’s design violates the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) by promoting compulsive use and failing to protect users, particularly minors, from harms including...
Amazon Sanctioned for Anticompetitive Price Fixing in Germany
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – Germany’s competition authority has ordered Amazon to stop enforcing retailer price controls on its German marketplace and has penalized the company €59 million, which it argues is excess profits it earned from its anticompetitive...
EU High Court Legal Advisor Rules Publishers Not Liable for VPN Use
Report from Courthouse News In Brief – A senior EU legal adviser to Europe’s top court has issued an advisory opinion that online publishers do not violate national copyright laws simply because users can bypass geographic restrictions using tools like VPNs. Advocate...
Court Overturns Brazilian Regulator’s Block on WhatsApp’s Chatbot Ban
Report from Reuters In Brief – In a surprising and possibly temporary turnabout, a Brazilian court has suspended a recent order imposed by Brazil’s antitrust regulator CADE that blocked Meta from restricting third-party AI chatbots from operating over WhatsApp using...
Supreme Court to Hear Video Privacy Case Bedeviling Online Advertising
Report from MediaPost In Brief – The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could clarify how a federal privacy law enacted in 1988 applies to modern online video services. The dispute centers on the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which was enacted after a...
French National Assembly Supports 15-Year-Old Social Media Age Threshold
Report from Reuters In Brief – France’s National Assembly has approved legislation to ban children under 15 from accessing social media. Lawmakers voted 116–23 in favor of the bill, which is strongly backed by President Emmanuel Macron, and prohibits under-15s from...
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...
View By Monthly
Latest Blog
Microsoft Opposes Immediate Pentagon Blacklisting of Anthropic
Report from Reuters In Brief – Microsoft is backing Anthropic in its legal challenge to the US Department of Defense (DoD) labeling the AI developer a supply-chain risk and blocking the company’s AI services from being used on any defense contracts. The...
White House Kills Some Utah AI Bills but Several Reach Governor Cox
Report from the Transparency Coalition In Brief – Efforts by officials in Republican-dominated Utah to position the state as a leader in regulating AI faced resistance from the Trump White House, which labeled one AI safety proposal “unfixable” and warned that some...
Meta to Add Digital Services Tax Surcharge to Ad Buys in Six Countries
Report from MediaPost In Brief – Meta has announced that it will soon add a “location fee” to advertising purchases targeting users in several countries to offset the cost of national digital services taxes (DSTs). The policy will begin in May, with full billing...
AI Fears are Powering Bills Regulating “Surveillance Pricing” in US States
Report from Gizmodo In Brief – Democratic state lawmakers are increasingly proposing legislation to curb so-called “surveillance pricing,” a practice in which retailers use data and technology to help set prices, claiming that AI will be used to rapidly change prices...
Meta Proposes Allowing AI Chatbots on WhatsApp in Europe for a Fee
Report from the Wall Street Journal In Brief – Meta has announced that it will allow third-party AI chatbots to communicate with users on its WhatsApp messaging platform for a per-message fee in response to pressure from the European Commission. The Commission...
Platform Economy Insights produces a short email four times a week that reviews two top stories with concise analysis. It is the best way to keep on top of the news you should know. Sign up for this free email here.