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 requires platforms to take appropriate measures to safeguard minors’ privacy, safety, and security. The regulator said it has received multiple reports about risks faced by minors on the platform, including allegations that it has been used for child sexual grooming and that the platform employs “dark patterns” that may improperly encourage children to make in-game purchases. The ACM investigation is being undertaken under its authority as the country’s Digital Services Coordinator (DSC) which has lead DSA enforcement authority for digital platforms based in the Netherlands.

Context – The DSA regulates how digital platforms address objectionable material, imposing the strictest duties on the largest platforms, those with 45 million monthly active users in the EU, which are designated as Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs). The European Commission is the lead DSA enforcer for the VLOPs, which now number 25, with six active investigations covering 13 platforms, including X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Temu. DSA oversight of other platforms is led by the Digital Services Coordinator where a platform is based. Roblox claims 38 million monthly active users in Europe and its EU establishment is in the Netherlands. In the face of harsh criticism, Roblox launched several safety measures last year, including barring users under the age of 13 from sending direct messages and announcing technical age verification to back up their age-based rules. The Roblox age verification processes reportedly have had a somewhat rocky roll-out. Several US State Attorneys General have filed civil lawsuits against the company for harming young users, while online safety regulators in Australia and the UK have directed the company to employ technical age verification in those countries.

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 unlawfully leverage its dominant position in messaging apps to gain an unfair advantage in emerging AI chatbot markets. Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera said swift action is needed because AI markets are evolving rapidly and the WhatsApp policy could cause lasting harm to AI chatbot competition in Europe. The interim measures would require Meta to maintain third-party AI assistants’ access to WhatsApp’s Business API under the terms that existed before the company announced changes to the WhatsApp Business Solution Terms in October that effectively banned general-purpose third-party AI chatbots assistants starting in January. Meta has repeatedly rejected arguments that WhatsApp’s Business API is a key distribution channel for AI chatbots, noting that consumers have many alternative ways to access them.

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 engaged in illegal anti-competitive conduct to maintain and grow their monopoly in internet search and search-related online ads. Judge Mehta’s initial 2024 ruling, which focused on Google’s payments to device giants Apple and Samsung, was a win in the Big Tech antitrust litigation campaign that began in 2020. However, the judge’s remedies order, which eschewed the harshest requests from the plaintiffs, including the call to force Google to divest its Chrome browser, was seen as a result in Google’s favor. Mehta, who said that in his ruling that “courts must approach the task of crafting remedies with a healthy dose of humility,” barred Google from entering exclusive distribution agreements for Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and its Gemini app for six years, and requires the company to share certain search data and syndicated search results and ads with qualified competitors. Google has also appealed Mehta’s order.

Context – Judge Mehta’s remedies order was the first decent result for Google in an antitrust case in a couple of years. The rapid pace of technological change, particularly the rise of generative AI, was called out by Mehta who said that the new technologies “give the court hope that Google will not simply outbid competitors for distribution if superior products emerge.” Similarly, two months after Mehta’s remedies order, District Judge James Boasberg ruled that the Federal Trade Commission and State AGs failed to show that Meta currently holds a social media monopoly in the face of emergent giants including YouTube and TikTok. That decision is also being appealed. Finally, a remedies ruling is expected soon from District Judge Leonie Brinkema following Google’s AdTech antitrust trial loss, and in the EU and UK, Google is simply facing direct government regulation of their search business.  

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 Visio. The policy is part of France’s “digital sovereignty” strategy to reduce reliance on foreign software providers and gain greater control over critical digital infrastructure. Visio, in testing for a year and currently with about 40,000 users, is part of France’s “Suite Numérique,” a sovereign digital ecosystem designed to replace tools such as Gmail and Slack for civil servants. The video conference application includes AI-powered meeting transcription and speaker identification developed by a French startup and is hosted on Outscale’s sovereign cloud infrastructure. Officials claim the switch could save up to €1 million annually per 100,000 users, while improving security, confidentiality, and resilience. Last July, the French Government instructed its officials to start using a government-designed messaging app, called “Tchap,” instead of foreign-owned messaging apps.

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 part of a deal to withdraw legislation aiming to force the largest online companies, especially Google and Meta, to pay California media companies when their content appeared on the platforms. Instead, Newsome, state legislators, and Google announced backing for a five-year plan that would provide $250 million to media companies. However, budget pressures quickly plagued the effort, with the state dropping its 2025 contribution to just $10 million, leading Google to do the same. Google responded to the latest state budget news that the company remains willing to match state funding.

Context – Media companies have been appealing to governments for nearly a decade to force Google and Meta to pay them when their content appears on the platforms. Australia, France, Spain and Canada have been especially responsive. California’s media funding plan was developed in response to the policy divergence of Google and Meta. When Canada enacted legislation in 2023 requiring the largest digital platforms to pay Canadian media companies, Google eventually complied while Meta refused to join the regime and instead blocked news uploads to their platforms in the country. The companies brought this divergence to the debate in California, with Google apparently in line to pay while Meta was prepared to block news media content. Accordingly, the deal for a public-private fund rather than a legal regime included Google but not Meta. In Australia, where both companies have made media payments since 2021, Meta announced plans to stop payments and the government responded with a new tax on large social media companies that won’t voluntarily pay Australian media companies. Lately, media company concerns over digital threats are far more focused on the implications of generative AI and both Google and Meta are exploring payments to publishers when their content is used in chatbot answers.

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, manipulation and violence.” Other proposals include making platform executives criminally liable for failing to remove illegal or hateful content, creating a new criminal offense for algorithmic manipulation and amplification of illegal material, and introducing a “hate and polarization footprint” system to measure how platforms fuel division. Sanchez called out Elon Musk’s platform X by name, claiming it “amplified disinformation” over his administration’s recent decision last week to grant legal status to 500,000 undocumented migrants. Musk responded saying, “Dirty Sanchez is a tyrant and a traitor to the people of Spain.”

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 excessive screen time. The regulator identified several problematic features that would need to be addressed by TikTok, including infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and its highly personalized recommender system, saying that they encourage habitual viewing by shifting the brain of users into “autopilot mode.” A senior Commission official said that this will be the first time a legal standard on addictive design has been set globally. TikTok said that the Commission’s findings were based on a “false” and “meritless” depiction of the platform.

Context – The charge that social media platforms are “addictive” is all the rage globally. In the US, it is part of a strategy of social media critics to circumvent the platforms’ legal protections under Sec. 230. Many states have enacted laws in recent years regulating the same platform features targeted by the EU in this case. Most have been blocked by federal judges for violating the First Amendment, although that trend is wavering. Civil lawsuits in the US targeting the same platforms for faulty, “addictive” design are having better luck getting past initial court hurdles. In Europe, there is no First Amendment protecting the social media platforms and the big ones are now directly regulated by the European Commission. TikTok is one of 13 facing DSA enforcement actions, including fellow social media giants Facebook, Instagram and X. The DSA defines online risks and platform duties at a very high level, such as “negative effects” to “minors” and user “well-being”. That leaves the Commission with seemingly broad license to use cases like this to define for Europe what an addictive online service is compared to one subject to “habitual use”, or just being very popular, but not too popular. All the social media platforms will be watching closely, as should gaming, chatbot and other platforms that could be deemed too popular. 

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 pricing policies. The Federal Cartel Office (FCO) determined that Amazon’s price policies violate Germany’s digital economy competition rules because the company demotes products it considers overpriced, despite competing directly with retailers on its own platform. The regulator argues that Amazon could encourage sellers to lower prices on its platform by offering incentives such as discounted fees, and that enforcing price rules is only permitted in exceptional cases like price gouging and then must follow regulatory guidelines. Amazon said it will appeal the “unprecedented” ruling.

Paris Prosecutors Continue to Investigate X for Criminal Law Violations

Report from Reuters

In Brief – French authorities have raided X’s Paris offices as part of an expanded criminal investigation into the social media platform over its handling of unlawful content. The probe, which began last year as an investigation of the platform’s recommendation algorithms and data practices, now covers seven alleged offenses, including the dissemination of Holocaust denial material, involvement in the distribution of child sexual abuse content, and most recently the use of the platform’s AI tool, Grok, to generate sexualized images. The raid was conducted by the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office. The French authorities have also summoned current and former X executives, including owner Elon Musk and former chief executive Linda Yaccarino, to voluntary interviews scheduled in Paris in April.

Context – The criminal investigation of X by the Paris prosecutors began a year ago amid intense criticism of Elon Musk by European leaders angered by his personal engagement on contentious political topics in numerous countries, often aggressively attacking progressive officials and backing populist conservatives. French President Emmanuelle Macron called for him to face personal sanctions for “election interference” and a centrist legislator backing Macron called for the Paris prosecutors to get involved. They did. The Digital Services Act (DSA) is the EU law that regulates how digital platforms police illegal and objectionable content online, and the European Commission is the lead regulator for the largest platforms, which includes X. The Commission is engaged in several investigations of X, including over how its algorithms handle politically sensitive content, and most recently, on issues related to Grok. The DSA’s backers say that the law protects free expression, but they also argue that law’s regulation of “recommender systems” is different from regulating the content itself. Of course, critics disagree. Along with directly poking the Trump Administration, the Paris prosecutor’s office increasingly appears to be a French Government tool to press Brussels on digital regulation, as X, Telegram, and Shein know.

UK Antitrust Regulator Proposes Google Search Rules Including AI Opt-Outs

Report from Euractiv

In Brief – The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced proposed rules to govern how Google operates its search engine, including requiring that the company allow website publishers to opt out of having their content used in AI-generated search summaries or to train Google’s AI models. The proposed rules were developed under regulatory authority created by UK’s digital markets competition law that took effect in early 2025. Online publishers globally have been critical of generative AI services for undermining their business models by directly answering user queries with content informed by content scraped from their websites, allegedly reducing click-through traffic and related revenues. Many are especially critical of Google because its search engine generates the most traffic. Beyond AI opt-outs, the CMA is proposing other requirements including clearly attributing publisher content in AI search results, demonstrating that search rankings are fair and transparent, and creating effective processes for handling complaints. Google responded with a statement cautioning against forcing changes that could fragment or confuse search. Public consultation is underway through 25 February.

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 Superior Court. The trial centers on a single plaintiff, identified as K.G.M., who alleges that a lack of sufficient guardrails and warnings on social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Snap led to compulsive use and mental health concerns such as depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, self-harm and risk of suicide. The trail is the first of a massive, consolidated proceeding known as JCCP 5255, which includes thousands of similar claims nationwide. The trial is expected to focus on whether social media features such as infinite scrolling and algorithmic recommendations constitute addictive product design rather than protected speech, as well as whether alleged harm to users was actually caused by harmful content posted by some users rather than product features. Snap and TikTok settled with the plaintiff in the days leading up to the trial, leaving Meta and Google to carry the defense.

Context – Social media critics have been pursuing strategies to circumvent Sec. 230 for years, including arguing that platform designs encourage “addictive” use. While most of the state laws regulating social media have been blocked over First Amendment concerns, the trend is increasingly mixed in the wake of indecisive Supreme Court decisions in internet-related cases, including when just five justices agreed that social media platforms engage in expressive activity strongly protected by First Amendment in Moody v NetChoice, including Justice Barrett who questioned whether algorithms are speech. Civil lawsuits targeting platforms for faulty design are having better luck getting past initial court hurdles, although a few judges have noted the distinct lack of evidence that teens are generally and consistently harmed by social media use.

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 February 16. Meta says that the pricing for non-template chatbot responses will be $0.0691/ €0.0572 / £0.0498 per message. WhatsApp charges companies for using its API for various template responses to customers, such as for marketing, payment reminders, shipping updates and authentication. Creating a new chatbot message charge follows some regulatory pushback against changes made to the WhatsApp business terms of service last October that effectively banned third-party chatbots from interacting with users over the platform. The Italian competition watchdog, AGCM, ordered Meta to suspend the ban in Italy while it investigated whether the company abused its market power by implementing a policy that would lock-in customers to Meta’s chatbot offerings, which still operate over WhatsApp, and harm AI chatbot competitors. Meta, who argued that the growth of AI chatbots was straining WhatsApp Business API systems, then exempted Italian users from the ban.

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 social networks and social networking features embedded within other platforms. The proposal requires online platforms to use EU-compliant age-verification systems and extends France’s current student smartphone ban in middle schools to include high schools. The bill now moves to the Senate before returning to the lower house for a final vote. Macron has argued for months that social media contributes to a wide range of social, physical and mental illnesses and is especially harmful to young people and wants the new regime in place by the start of the next school year. Polling indicates that 73% of the French public supports restrictions and there is backing from across the political spectrum, although teenagers appear divided.

Context – Online age limits and checks are on the march and gaining steam. Australia’s 16-year-old threshold for social media accounts is the highest profile example and is now months into the implementation phase. Officials in many jurisdictions besides France are interested in some form of a social media age threshold, including the EU and UK, while similar calls are emerging in developing countries like India and Egypt which have younger populations and more authoritarian regimes. US states continue to legislate social media rules that would likely lead to age verification. While social media captures the most attention and requires systems aimed at identifying teens under 15 or 16, porn is an online age verification use case focused on adults. Porn age checks were the first step for online age checks in France, was the focus of a key US Supreme Court ruling and is a core part of the current UK regime. In Australia, age checks are now also being done by Google because search can lead to porn. It’s worth noting that face scans are far less reliable for young teens than for adults, and teens generally don’t have government IDs or credit cards.

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 video store disclosed the rental history of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and bars video rental companies from sharing consumers’ identifiable viewing information without consent. Although courts have generally agreed that the VPPA applies to online video services, they remain divided over key definitions, including who qualifies as a “consumer” and what accounts for “personally identifiable information”. The case before the Court stems from a 2022 lawsuit by Michael Salazar, who alleged that Paramount’s 247Sports.com violated the VPPA by sending his video-viewing data to Meta through the Meta Pixel. Both a federal district court and a divided Sixth Circuit panel ruled that VPPA protections apply only to people who subscribe to goods or services primarily involving audiovisual material, not newsletters. Other courts, however, have taken a broader view.

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 the WhatsApp Business API tools. CADE instituted the order while they investigated complaints from AI chatbot providers who alleged that Meta’s policy was anticompetitive. WhatsApp Business, the commercial version of the messaging app that Meta says is designed to allow companies to engage in customer support using WhataApp messaging threads, updated its terms of service last October blocking new AI chatbot providers immediately and closing the messaging service to existing chatbot providers in January. Following the CADE order, WhatsApp announced that they would pause their AI chatbot policy in Brazil for 90 days while appealing the regulator’s action. Following the court reversal, a Meta spokesperson said, “We welcome the court decision suspending CADE’s preventive measure. The facts do not justify intervention in Brazil or anywhere else.”

Context – Italy’s competition regulator, the AGCM, was the first to respond to chatbot company complaints and order Meta to suspend its chatbot ban while it began an antitrust investigation. Meta eventually exempted Italian users from the policy. The European Commission competition authority is also investigating the WhatsApp chatbot policy, although the Brussels investigation does not currently block Meta’s policy from going into effect. Regulators who are sympathetic to chatbot operators highlight Meta’s strong position in the market for messaging apps, while Meta argues that the growth of AI chatbots has strained WhatsApp Business systems that were not designed to support them. Furthermore, Meta argues that while its messaging services are popular, its chatbots enjoy very small shares of the AI chatbot market. For example, while Chat-GPT has a nearly 80% market share in the EU an even higher in Brazil, Meta’s chatbots barely register at all.

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 General Athanasios Rantos argued that copyright liability should depend on a publisher’s overall conduct, not on the possibility that geo-blocking measures put in place to protect copyright in some jurisdictions can be circumvented by users employing technology to appear to be in a jurisdiction where the copyright has expired. The case involves a dispute between the Dutch foundation that holds the copyright to Anne Frank’s diary, where certain versions remain protected in the until 2037, while copyright protection fully expired in several EU countries in 2016. Academic institutions that published a free online edition and used geo-blocking to restrict access in jurisdictions where copyright still applies, were sued by the copyright holder who argued that the prospect of VPN-based access made the publication of the free version unlawful in the Netherlands. Rantos rejected that view, warning that holding publishers responsible for every successful workaround would make territorial copyright impossible.