Politics

Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) introduced a bill to sunset the law that shields social media platforms from being held liable for content moderation, and their users’ posts. Section 230 has long been a target of bipartisan tech critics, but reforming it has proved complicated.

Boy, the creative choices here for the Melania doc... They feel familiar somehow. Even, and maybe especially, the music.

Following mounting pressure, European officials have recommended the bloc drop its 2035 ban on new gas cars, instead aiming for a 90 percent reduction in emissions from new vehicles, leaving room for a few hybrids to still hit the market. The change will still have to pass the EU parliament.

President Donald Trump, who was reelected despite the events of January 6th, 2021, has filed a defamation lawsuit against the BBC in his home state of Florida. He’s seeking $10 billion to repair reputational harm allegedly suffered after a misleading edit of his actions prior to the attack on the US Capitol building was broadcast to people living 4,000 miles away.

Someone at the Trump administration probably hates it, too.

Europe wants to tax the flood of cheap packages from Chinese retailers like Shein and Temu, just like Trump did. From next July, a €3 charge will apply per item type to parcels below €150, a temporary fix while the bloc works on removing the exemption altogether.

As lawmakers consider a slate of bills focused on protecting children on the internet, Apple CEO Tim Cook had a closed-door meeting today to push for his preferred solutions, as reported by Bloomberg:

Back in the mists of time, in ancient 2009, the European Union fined Intel €1.06 billion ($1.2 billion) for anticompetitive behaviors. The two have been in court ever since, and after Intel got the fine cut to €376 million, it’s now dropped again to €237.1 million ($275 million). How low can it go?

A key committee scheduled a markup of 18 bills, including the revised Kids Online Safety Act, for Thursday. That’s just over a week since holding a hearing to first consider the package. After killing KOSA last year, the House may be trying to leave its mark before the holiday break.

As Ted Sarandos and David Ellison play out a public spat over whose turn it is to play with Warner Bros., while trying to impress Trump and the regulators along the way, just remember that the real winners at the end will be HBO Max subscribers.

There’s some kind of news coming from the White House this week about AI regulations, after a post from the president to Truth Social saying, “You can’t expect a company to get 50 Approvals every time they want to do something. THAT WILL NEVER WORK!”

The White House is planning to give Nvidia the green light to begin exporting its H200 AI GPU chips to China, according to reports from Semafor and the WSJ. As noted by the WSJ, the H200 chip is more powerful than the scaled-down H20 GPU that China has cracked down on, but it still doesn’t rival Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs.

Draft text of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes funding through 2028 for the Protect Our Children Act. The 2008 bill created a nationwide task force of law enforcement agencies skilled in investigating crimes against children facilitated by the internet. Tech industry group NetChoice applauded the provision.

The court is hearing arguments in a case where it could overturn decades of precedent over the president’s firing of a Federal Trade Commissioner. While conservative justices worry about letting Congress’ authority run wild, liberal justices like Elena Kagan warn of creating “a president with control over everything.”

Despite Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos’ efforts to woo the president last month, Trump said on Sunday that plans to combine the streamer with Warner Bros. “could be a problem.” Trump said that Netflix already has a “very big market share,” which will “go up by a lot” if the $83 billion buyout goes ahead.

After the Trump administration used Carpenter’s song “Juno” in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) propaganda video, the pop star responded, calling it “evil and disgusting.” The White House account has since deleted the post — but they’ve picked this fight with musicians before.

On Friday, the handpicked CDC advisory group, containing several known vaccine critics, scrapped the three-decade-old recommendation to vaccinate all babies for hepatitis B at birth, instead delaying the recommended schedule to 2 months, if at all, for babies whose mothers test negative for the disease.