Report from Channel News Asia In Brief – Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), the country’s digital and media regulator, has announced that app stores will soon be required to protect children from inappropriate apps through age verification...
EU and German Regulators Testing How Platforms Will Handle Elections
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – The European Commission and German Government are planning to perform a “stress test” on the major digital platforms on January 31 to determine their processes regarding the upcoming German elections. Meta, Microsoft, Google, Snap,...
Meta Wins Temporary Relief in India from WhatsApp Data Sharing Ban
Report from Reuters In Brief – A two-judge panel of the Indian National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) has temporarily halted the Competition Commission of India (CCI) order prohibiting WhatsApp from sharing user data with other services of its parent company,...
DST Act 3 – The Return of Trump and Threats of Tariff and Tax Retaliation
Report from the Financial Times In Brief – President Donald Trump has effectively pulled the United States out of the global corporate tax reform agreement at the OECD negotiated by the Biden Administration in 2021 and backed by 140 countries. That deal tried to...
European Consumer Group Argues Meta Ad-Free Plan Still Violates EU Laws
Report from Reuters In Brief – BEUC, a non-profit organization that represents European consumers, has expressed to EU data protection and competition enforcement authorities that it believes Meta’s latest subscription policy violates consumer and data protection laws...
Trump Blasts EU at Davos on Big Tech Fines
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – US President Donald Trump blasted European Union regulators in his address to attendees of the World Economic Forum annual conference in Davos, Switzerland, which he delivered by video just four days after his inauguration to start his...
CPSC Issues Final Order on Amazon Recall Duties for Marketplace Products in FBA
Report from AboutLawsuits In Brief – The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has announced its final Decision and Order concluding its administrative litigation with Amazon and outlining the steps the company must take regarding some hazardous products sold...
DeepSeek Chatbot Upends AI Investor and Policy Ecosystem
Report from the Washington Post In Brief – DeepSeek’s AI assistant app and paper describing its technical infrastructure, which claims to have used far fewer and less advanced computer chips than the largest AI developers, undermined the core assumption of top AI...
Italian Regulator Blocks Meta’s Plan to Block Chatbots from WhatsApp
Report from TechCrunch In Brief – Italy’s competition authority announced that it has ordered Meta to immediately freeze a policy change that would ban rival generative AI chatbots from operating on WhatsApp. The order applies to WhatsApp in Italy pending the outcome...
Judge Blocks Texas Law Requiring Apple and Google to Verify User Age
Report from MediaPost In Brief – Federal District Judge Robert Pitman has blocked Texas from enforcing a new state law that requires companies that run app stores, like Apple and Google, to verify the age of users and obtain parental consent for users under 18 to...
Apple Urges the European Commission to Roll Back the DMA
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – Apple used the European Commission’s first consultation on the impact and effectiveness of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) to reiterate its long-held concerns with the legislation and urge the EU regulators to make changes. Apple wrote...
India May Tweak Retail FDI Rules to Allow Direct Export Sales
Report from Reuters In Brief – India is considering a change in its novel foreign direct investment (FDI) rules for ecommerce companies to allow foreign-owned companies to operate as retail exporters for products made by Indian suppliers. Indian law prohibits foreign...
Google Appeal of Epic Antitrust Loss Backed by App Developer Group
Report from MediaPost In Brief – With the US Supreme Court considering Google’s final appeal of its loss in the antitrust lawsuit brought by Epic Games, a trade group that represents small and mid-sized app developers urged the court to back Google’s appeal to...
Danish Government to Propose 15-Year-Old Age Limit for Social Media
Report from Politico In Brief – Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said that her government wants to ban children from under the age of 15 from several social media platforms. “Mobile phones and social media are stealing our children’s childhood,” she said in...
Google Search Designated with Strategic Market Status in the UK
Report from MediaPost In Brief – The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has that Google holds “strategic market status” (SMS) in the markets for general internet search and search-based advertising. SMS is a regulatory status under the UK’s Digital Markets,...
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