Report from MPR News In Brief – A three-judge panel of the US 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has declined to block a Minnesota law enacted in 2023 that bans the use of deepfake technology to influence elections, siding with the lower court that the two plaintiffs lacked...
Google and Apple Make App Store Competition Commitments in the UK
Report from The Guardian In Brief – Apple and Google have made commitments to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to implement practices to prevent discrimination against third-party apps that compete with their own services. Last year, the CMA found that...
Dutch Regulator Opens Digital Services Act Investigation of Roblox
Report from NL Times In Brief – The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) has launched a formal Digital Services Act (DSA) investigation of Roblox over concerns that the online gaming platform may not be doing enough to protect children. The DSA...
EU Commission Moves to Stop Meta from Banning Chatbots on WhatsApp
Report from Wall Street Journal In Brief – The European Commission has informed Meta that it plans to block the company’s ban on third-party AI chatbots from operating over WhatsApp. The antitrust regulator has reached a preliminary finding that Meta’s policy could...
Department of Justice and State AGs Appeal Google Search Remedies Order
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – The US Department of Justice has announced that it notified the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that it will appeal US District Judge Amit Mehta’s remedies order in the federal antitrust lawsuit that found Google...
France Pushing Digital Sovereignty Directing Ministries Off Zoom and Teams
Report from ZDNET In Brief – French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has directed all French government officials and civil servants to stop using American-owned video conference software such as Teams and Zoom by 2027 in favor of a new French-made application called...
Governor Newsome Drops Funding for Media from California State Budget
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...
Google Faces New Antitrust Lawsuit from Old Android App Store Rival
Report from Reuters In Brief – Aptoide, a Portuguese company that specializes in mobile games and claims the world's third-largest Android app store, filed an antitrust lawsuit in US federal court accusing Google of shutting out rival app stores by monopolizing app...
European Commission Rejects WhatsApp Plan to Charge Chatbots
Report from Politico In Brief – The European Commission announced that it has sent a charge sheet to Meta rejecting its plan to introduce fees for rival AI assistants on WhatsApp, arguing that the proposal effectively mirrors the company’s earlier outright exclusion....
Swedish Court Delays Ruling in PriceRunner v Google Damages Case
Report from Crowdfund Insider In Brief – Sweden’s Patent and Market Court has delayed until June 10th its decision in a major antitrust damages case between comparison shopping site PriceRunner, which is owned by Sweden-based fintech company Klarna, and Google, citing...
Appeals Court Rejects Bid to Reinstate Virginia Social Media Time Limits
Report from MediaPost In Brief – A federal appeals court has denied Virginia’s request to enforce SB 854, its new law requiring social media platforms to verify users’ ages and limit minors under 16 to one hour of daily use unless they receive parental consent to use...
Indonesia Warns YouTube Over Not Complying with Age Limit Rules
Report from Business Today In Brief – Indonesia has issued a formal reprimand to Google over noncompliance by its YouTube service with the country’s new child-protection rules for social media platforms that took effect March 28. The regulations require “high-risk”...
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