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xAI’s last-minute scramble to stop Minnesota’s anti-nudification app law

2026-07-29T17:24:53-04:00

xAI is suing Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison over a law passed back in May that broadly targets "nudification" apps, claiming that the statute's punitive provisions leave the company with "no practical choice but to restrict Grok Imagine's image-editing features in various ways." The law, the company argues, violates the First Amendment.

Back in January, Grok flooded the internet with millions of sexually explicit deepfakes, including images of minors. In another era, a content moderation disaster of this magnitude would have had the CEO flipping the kill switch on the product within hours. But in Elon Musk's brave new world, the …

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New Yorkers will soon need to verify their age to access algorithmic feeds

2026-07-28T19:46:49-04:00

New Yorkers who want to see their Instagram or TikTok feed curated by an algorithm, or receive notifications after midnight, will soon have to verify their ages to access those features.

New York Attorney General Letitia James released a set of final rules on how to implement the SAFE for Kids Act, signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul in June 2024. The rules lay out in more detail what social media platforms subject to the law will need to do in order to comply, including standards for understanding users' ages and how to go about obtaining parental consent for kids to use walled-off features. The law will officially go into effect on Janua …

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Brendan Carr plans to let broadcast giants dominate the airwaves

2026-07-16T09:04:05-04:00

Federal Communications Commission. | Image: Kristen Radtke / The Verge

The Federal Communications Commission will vote next month on whether a single company can own broadcast stations that reach more than 39 percent of US TV households.

In a Breitbart op-ed on Wednesday, Republican FCC Chair Brendan Carr announced an August 6th vote to end the national ownership cap rule, which was intended to prevent one company from dominating the media landscape and incentivize serving local communities. Carr argued the rise of social media and streaming platforms renders the rule obsolete, because national programmers can reach "100 percent of the country" without the need to access public airwaves. Under this reasoning, …

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ICE agents are making house calls for online critics

2026-07-09T10:06:59-04:00

A few hours after checking into a hotel in New York City, David Streever woke up to a call from the front desk saying someone was looking for him.

Streever had just landed on a return trip from Finland, where he'd vacationed with his daughter. Though Streever didn't know it yet, while he'd been away, agents with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had shown up to his home in Rochester and spoken to his wife. They dropped off a "WARNING NOTICE," which informed Streever that ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is "responsible for enforcing crimes against the United States," including "threats made against ICE personnel." …

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ABC tells the government to get out of its newsrooms

2026-07-07T13:47:38-04:00

ABC is firing back at the Federal Communications Commission after the agency opened an investigation into The View's airtime of political candidates. In a letter to the FCC on Tuesday, ABC argues that the agency's actions pose a risk to editorial independence by targeting programs "perceived as unfriendly to the current administration," as reported earlier by The Wrap.

In February, the FCC Chair Brendan Carr confirmed that he's reexamining The View's classification as a "bona fide" news program after the talk show held an interview with Rep. James Talarico (D-TX), who is running for a spot in the Senate. The View's classification exempts it …

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The midterms are going to be a data security nightmare

2026-06-18T10:49:51-04:00

One messy database is threatening to disenfranchise thousands or even millions of registered voters, while leaving even more at risk of intimidation or data breaches, in the name of solving a problem that barely exists.

As the 2026 midterm elections approach, election and privacy experts are sounding alarms about the Department of Homeland Security's Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program, which President Donald Trump's administration has expanded to ostensibly catch noncitizens voting. Experts say that amounts to a dangerous, error-prone effort to centralize voter data. "The federal government doesn't have the author …

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The bill that would let Jimmy Kimmel sue Brendan Carr is here

2026-06-12T05:55:49-04:00

Under a new bipartisan bill, Americans could sue for damages if a government official illegally tries to coerce a social media, AI, or broadcasting company to remove their post - regardless of whether the platform actually does it.

Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced the JAWBONE Act on Thursday, which, in addition to letting individuals sue for these kinds of damages, would create new transparency requirements for government communications with social media, AI, and broadcast companies.

That could empower someone like Jimmy Kimmel to sue Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr …

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Apple’s new parental controls are for keeping Apple out of trouble

2026-06-08T17:48:08-04:00

When Apple put child safety front and center at WWDC on Monday, its stated goal was helping parents fine-tune their kids' online experiences and avoid excessive screen time. But amid a global debate over internet regulation, its latest updates also looked like a defensive move in a brewing fight against Meta and other app developers.

Apple announced an expanded toolkit for parents through its child accounts at WWDC, including a greater ability to customize kids' allotted screen time and the ability to block gory or violent images in messages before kids see them. Raja Bose, Apple's director of trust, safety, and values product marketing, to …

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One of Meta’s big legal reckonings just ended in a settlement

2026-05-22T07:47:06-04:00

After back-to-back losses in trials grappling with its impact on teens' mental health, Meta just settled what was supposed to be its next legal battle with Kentucky's Breathitt County School District. Google's YouTube, Snap, and TikTok all recently settled similar claims brought by the school district, which was seeking payment from the companies to cover the cost of combatting social media-related mental health harms.

The trial had been set to begin in June as the first bellwether trial of the federal multidistrict litigation (MDL) cases, which include claims from school districts, state attorneys general, and individuals against the soci …

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America’s dangerous, messy deepfakes crackdown is here

2026-05-19T11:32:09-04:00

A law requiring social networks to quickly remove sexual deepfakes and other nonconsensual imagery is now fully in force. But experts warn the policy could do little to help victims - and at worst could facilitate censorship online.

Last May, President Donald Trump signed the Take It Down Act, a law addressing nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII). The law immediately criminalized distributing NCII, whether in the form of real or AI-generated material, something many states at least partially do already. But its namesake takedown provision is more sweeping. Taking effect a year after the law's passage - on May 19th of 2026 - it requires on …

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