Meta Faces First State Trial Over Teen Social Media Harms
In a federal courtroom in Oakland, prospective jurors were asked on Wednesday about their own scrolling habits, their children’s use of social media, and whether they could set aside strong…
EU Fines Google About $1 Billion Under Digital Markets Act
The European Union fined Google approximately $1 billion on July 28 for violating the Digital Markets Act, the bloc’s flagship competition law, in its Google Play app store and search…
Justice Department Lifts TikTok Ban on Federal Workers’ Devices
The memo was short, and its effect was immediate. The Justice Department has formally revoked the ban on using TikTok on government devices, saying its national security risk assessment is…
Facebook and Instagram Go Dark for Two Hours in Meta’s Worst Outage of the Year
Just after midnight on Sunday, the feeds stopped. Facebook users trying to refresh saw error screens; Instagram opened to blank timelines. Within minutes, complaints were flooding DownDetector, and on X,…
Netflix Adds Short-Form Video From Variety and Other Publishers
Netflix is going short. The streaming company said it has struck licensing deals with a slate of major publishers, including Variety, to bring shorter-form video to its platform, a first…
Bending Spoons Surges 40% in Nasdaq Debut
The ticker was unfamiliar to most traders, but the opening print was not: shares of Bending Spoons, an Italian software company that few Americans had heard of a year ago,…
Qualcomm in Talks With ByteDance on Custom AI Chip Design
The chip inside the phone is no longer the whole business. Qualcomm is in discussions with ByteDance to design custom artificial intelligence chips for the Chinese company’s data centers, according…
Meta Tests AI Assistant for Facebook Creators
Meta has begun testing an AI assistant built for Facebook creators, according to MediaPost, a tool that can generate content ideas, analyze follower engagement and suggest posting strategies. The test…
Britain Passes Under-16 Social Media Ban, With Fines Up to 10% of Global Revenue
The vote came late in the parliamentary session, after a debate that ran longer than the bill’s supporters expected. When it passed, the UK became one of the first major…
Threads Passes 500 Million Users, Lets Them Tune Its Algorithm
The feature Meta rolled out for Threads this week reads like an answer to a question users have asked since the app’s early days: why am I seeing this? The…
