Report from the >New York Times In Brief – The Supreme Court denied an emergency request by digital company trade group NetChoice to halt a Mississippi law that requires social media platforms to verify all users’ ages, prohibits minors from creating social media...
Federal Appeals Court Rejects Maryland Digital Tax Ban on Bill Line-Item
Report from the Reuters In Brief – A three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit of the US Court of Appeals has unanimously blocked a provision in Maryland’s landmark 2021 digital advertising services tax that barred companies from using a line-item on bills to inform...
Florida’s Online Content Moderation Law has Problems in Court (Again)
Report from the Miami Times In Brief – Federal District Judge Robert Hinkle has rejected the State of Florida’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit challenging its 2021 law that regulates how social media companies engage in content moderation. Hinkle has overseen First...
Indonesian Antitrust Regulator Rules on TikTok Shopping Acquisition
Report from Reuters In Brief – Indonesia’s antitrust authority has determined that TikTok’s acquisition of leading local ecommerce platform Tokopedia could lead to monopolistic practices and is imposing two years of behavioral remedies to protect competition....
European Commission Opens DSA Investigations of Porn VLOPs
Report from Euractiv In Brief – The European Commission has announced that it has launched a formal investigation of four major pornographic websites over concerns that they are violating the Digital Services Act (DSA) by failing to provide adequate protection for...
Washington Post Tech Workers Vote to Unionize
Report from the Hill Rag In Brief – More than two hundred of the over three hundred tech workers at the Washington Post, including engineers, product designers, and data analysts, have voted to establish the Washington Post Tech Guild (WPTG). The final vote was...
Italian Consumer Protection Authority Targets DeepSeek for Hallucinations
Report from Reuters In Brief – Italy’s joint antitrust and consumer rights regulator has opened a probe into Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek for allegedly failing to sufficiently warn users about the danger of false information arising from so-called “hallucinations” in...
Federal Judge Puts a Hold on Florida Law Regulating Teens on Social Media
Report from MediaPost In Brief – Federal District Judge Mark Walker has blocked enforcement of Florida law HB 3 that prohibits social media platforms that have so-called “addictive features”, such as showing “like” counts and automatically playing videos, from...
French President Macron Wants a Social Media Age Threshold of 15
Report from Politico In Brief – French President Emmanuel Macron has said that he supports setting an age limit of 15 for social media platforms in the European Union, and if the EU doesn’t follow through, his government will set that age standard in France. The...
X Sues to Block New York Content Moderation Transparency Law
Report from The Hill In Brief – X has sued the state of New York to block its law requiring social media companies to explain how they moderate some content. The platform successfully challenged a similar law in California on First Amendment grounds last year. New...
Amazon Settles Gig Delivery Labor Investigation in Italy
Report from Reuters In Brief – Amazon’s Italian logistics business unit has resolved a major investigation brought by the Milan public prosecutor’s office into alleged tax evasion and unlawful labor practices by paying roughly €180 million ($210 million) to Italy’s...
Google Testing Paid Media Relationships Related to AI Answers
Report from TechCrunch In Brief – Google has announced a pilot program with news publishers to test AI-powered article overviews as part of the Google News pages. Participating outlets, including The Guardian, Der Spiegel, El País, and the Washington Post, will work...
India Withdraws Mandate for Smartphones to Include State Security App
Report from Guardian In Brief – India’s government has withdrawn a controversial directive requiring all smartphone manufacturers to pre-install the state-run Sanchar Saathi security app after intense public and political backlash. The Department of Telecommunications...
EU Parliament Backs Social Media and Chatbot Age Threshold of 16 Years
Report from Reuters In Brief – The European Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution calling for a harmonized minimum age of 16 across the EU for access to social media platforms, video-sharing sites, and AI-driven tools such as chatbots. EU member states currently...
Macron and Mertz Lead EU Digital Sovereignty Summit
Report from Courthouse News In Brief – German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron headlined the Summit on European Digital Sovereignty in Berlin, signaling the commitment of the two largest EU member states to advance European digital and AI...
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