Report from Reuters In Brief – The Government of Norway has announced that it will a submit a bill in parliament by year-end to ban teens from using social media until January 1 of the year they turn 16. Access to social media won’t be based strictly on birthdays, but...
FTC Settles Ad Agencies to End Group Online “Brand Safety” Standards
Report from MediaPost In Brief – The Federal Trade Commission announced antitrust settlement agreements with major advertising holding companies Dentsu, Publicis, and WPP to end what the regulator alleges was unlawful collusion in setting industry-wide “brand safety”...
US Department of Justice Won’t Help French Prosecutors Probe Musk’s X
Report from the Wall Street Journal In Brief – The US Justice Department is declining to assist French authorities investigating X, describing the effort as a politically motivated misuse of the criminal justice system to regulate online speech in a way that conflicts...
Another Arkansas Social Media Law Blocked by Federal Judge
Report from the Arkansas Advocate In Brief – US District Judge Timothy Brooks has issued a temporary injunction blocking Arkansas Act 900 that was set to restrict minors from accessing social media with certain features. The 2025 law, challenged by the tech industry...
EU President Releases an EU-Wide Online Age Verification App
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has introduced a new age-verification app developed by the commission to confirm users’ ages online in a way that also protects their personal data. The app is intended to be a...
EU Commission Tells Google How to Open Android to AI and Chatbots
Report from the Wall Street Journal In Brief – EU antitrust regulators have announced extensive directives they plan to impose on Google to give AI developers full access to Android on phones and tablets in the same manner as Google’s own AI models and services such...
California Judge Rules That Jury Will Hear AG’s Amazon Antitrust Complaint
Report from Redheaded Blackbelt In Brief – San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman has ruled that there is sufficient evidence backing the state’s antitrust lawsuit targeting Amazon’s price-parity regime that a jury will hear the case. The...
EU Regulators Tell Google How to Share Search Data with AI Competitors
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – The European Commission announced that it sent preliminary findings to Google outlining measures the digital giant should take to allow third party search engines, including some AI chatbots, to access its store of search data to...
Telegram Investigated by UK Ofcom Over Child Sexual Abuse Material
Report from The Guardian In Brief – Ofcom, the UK online content moderation regulator under the Online Safety Act (OSA), has announced that it is investigating whether Telegram has failed to prevent the sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The probe follows...
Colorado House Passes Bill Banning Online “Surveillance” Pricing
Report from Colorado Newsline In Brief – The Colorado House of Representatives has passed House Bill 26-1210, a measure prohibiting companies from using personalized data and algorithms to offer individualized prices and wages. Approved 39 – 24, with all support...
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X Commits to Strengthen Anti-Terror Content Moderation in the UK
Report from The Guardian In Brief – Ofcom, the UK regulator enforcing the Online Safety Act (OSA), has announced that X has agreed to strengthen its moderation of terrorist and hate-related content. The commitments stem from Ofcom’s discussions with the top social...
Meta Joins Snap, TikTok and YouTube to Settle School District Lawsuit
Report from the New York Times In Brief – Meta has reached reached a settlement agreement in the first lawsuit headed to trial in federal court over claims that addiction to social media platforms has pushed public schools to spend massive sums fighting a youth mental...
UK Antitrust Authority Investigating Microsoft Business Software Dominance
Report from Reuters In Brief – The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the country’s antitrust regulator, has announced that it will investigate Microsoft's dominance in business software using its powers to oversee big tech. The CMA is opening a "strategic...
AI Hallucination Stories Grab Bag
Context - Within weeks of Chat-GPT’s public release, the fact that chatbots make plausible and realistic sounding stuff up emerged. The AI scientists knew about the phenomenon, which they called “hallucinations”. It appears to be baked into the technology. LLMs don’t...
Texas Supreme Court Facing Online Legal Jurisdiction Question in Yelp Case
Report from MediaPost In Brief – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), with a long track record of aggressive legal action against big online companies, is urging the Texas Supreme Court to reject Yelp’s attempt to block a lawsuit he filed in 2023 alleging that...
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