Regulation

The formal investigation opened by the European Commission will focus on five areas: age assurance, default account settings, reporting of illegal content, dissemination of prohibited products, and the grooming and recruitment of children for criminal activities. These DSA probes can take a while, and no timeline has been provided.

After initially hitting 4Chan with a paltry £20,000 (about $26,500) penalty for hindering its investigation, Ofcom has now fined the website £520,000 ($690,000) for failing to comply with age assurance obligations. Should non-compliance continue, 4Chan risks facing additional daily fines of up to £800 (about $1,060).

He was commenting on deepfakes about Iran war being used to create online chaos. It’s quite the turn from a man who’s been aggressively deregulating the AI industry, blocking states from implementing their own safety guardrails, and personally using AI to spread political disinformation, smear opponents, and fabricate endorsements.

We have no reason to believe that Live Nation is about to bankroll a Broadway spectacular based on the First Lady just because it managed to settle with the DoJ. We’re just saying, it feels like there’s a precedent.

I’ve been updating it for hours with bits from court documents, blog posts, email fact-checks, even a quick interview with Google Android boss Sameer Samat and Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney. I’m about done, but I still need to parse the new Games Level Up Program and Apps Experience Program...

“The parties expect to submit a revised proposal to the Court by March 4, 2026.” That’s today.

While Trump’s federal regulators are seemingly in the bag for Larry Ellison’s big dumb gift to his large adult son, The New York Times notes that state attorneys general can sue to block mergers in the US, and EU regulators will have a say since properties like HBO Max and CNN are offered globally.

The $34.5 billion deal to combine two of the biggest US cable providers can now go ahead after appeasing Brendan Carr by pledging to drop DEI policies.

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office dished out a £14.47 million (about $19.5 million) penalty for Reddit’s previous lack of robust age verification and failure to assess risks to children before January 2025. That’s just a smidge higher than the £247,590 (about $335,000) fine Imgur was hit with for similar reasons earlier this month.

California regulators killed a proposal that would have imposed fees on gas-burning furnaces and water heaters that release smog-forming pollutants. More than 20,000 comments they received opposing the proposal were generated by a single AI platform, some addressed from people with no idea their names had been used.

A coalition including the American Public Health Association, American Lung Association, and Sierra Club have filed suit against the Trump administration for repealing the landmark ‘endangerment finding.’ The repeal — if successful — could strip away the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to to regulate planet-heating pollution.

Europe’s privacy watchdog has opened yet another investigation into the millions of sexualized images, some of children, produced and shared on the platform last month. It joins the EU’s DSA effort already underway, whatever France is doing, and a few more in the UK.

There are plenty of good reasons to have your doubts about Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, but he’s right — if understandably self-serving — in criticizing Russia’s “authoritarian” restrictions on both Telegram and WhatsApp.

The European Commission has weighed in on the November decision to block the likes of ChatGPT and Copilot from WhatsApp, and thinks it violates EU antitrust laws. It’s surprisingly fast for the organization, which called the issue “urgent” because of the risk of “irreparable” damage to competition in the nascent AI industry.

The fine, a measly £247,590 (about $335,000), is because Imgur owner MediaLab wasn’t checking users ages, and so handled young kids’ data without proper consent measures. After the ICO warned a fine was coming last September, Imgur started blocking UK users entirely — a ban which is still in effect.

There are many important safety reasons to support China’s move to ban hidden, electric door handles from EVs, but also a pettier one: they’re just bad, unintuitive, and inconvenient handles.

The Trump administration ordered five major offshore wind projects to pause construction in December, suddenly citing national security risks even though developers had previously secured approvals to start building. After the companies filed suit, federal courts have now allowed all five projects to start construction again.

The Trump administration is quietly weakening regulations meant to protect groundwater and limit radiation exposure to workers at new nuclear reactors, NPR reports. Trump has worked to speed up the deployment of new nuclear reactor designs to power AI data centers.

At least in the UK, where the walkback comes after the country’s CMA opened a consultation on forcing Google to do just that, having given the company “strategic market status” last year. Ron Eden, Google’s principal for product management, says:

That’s how many Australian social media accounts were removed in just the first few days after the country’s under-16 social media ban took effect in December, according to the Australian internet regulator. We already knew 550,000 of them were from Meta, but TikTok, Reddit, Snapchat and more were also covered by the ban.

”Did you decide in the middle of the hearing to officially abandon the FCC’s independence? Or had that decision already been made by you and President Trump prior to the hearing?” Rep. Rob Menendez (D-NJ) asked. Carr said he’s “pleased that the FCC website reflects my views.”

Ofcom says the probe will establish whether X has failed to comply with Online Safety Act obligations, over concerns its Grok AI chatbot is generating sexualized deepfakes of adults and minors. The investigation is “a matter of the highest priority,” and may result in hefty fines or even X being banned in the UK.

The European Commission extended an order requiring X to keep documents related to Grok through the end of the year so that it can evaluate compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA), Reuters reports. X is facing international scrutiny as its AI chatbot continues virtually undressing images without consent.