SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California will make it illegal for social media platforms to knowingly provide addictive feeds to children without parental consent beginning in 2027 under a new law Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Friday. California follows New York state, which passed a law earlier this year allowing parents to block their kids from […]

A federal judge in Utah has temporarily blocked a social media access law that leaders said was meant to protect the personal privacy of children and limit their use of such platforms, saying it is unconstitutional. U.S. District Court Judge Robert Shelby on Tuesday issued the preliminary injunction against a law that would have required […]

PARIS (AP) — French authorities handed preliminary charges to Telegram CEO Pavel Durov on Wednesday for allowing alleged criminal activity on his messaging app, and barred him from leaving France pending further investigation. Both free-speech advocates and authoritarian governments have spoken out in Durov’s defense since his weekend arrest. The case has also called attention to the […]

PARIS (AP) — French prosecutors on Wednesday freed Telegram CEO Pavel Durov from police custody after four days of questioning over allegations that the messaging app is being used for illegal activities. Durov was detained on Saturday at Le Bourget airport outside Paris as part of a judicial inquiry opened last month involving 12 alleged […]

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Over more than a decade, the founder and CEO of the messaging app Telegram has amassed various different citizenships, something that’s only added to the mystery surrounding his detention in France. Those passports provided Pavel Durov protection after he created and ran Telegram as a self-proclaimed free-speech absolutist. The […]

It could be a weekend teenage runaway. An elderly loved one, lost and disoriented. Or it could be the first indication of murder. The first call to a police department to report a missing person sets in motion a series of investigative and public actions to find them, then, once found, protect their identity from […]

Residents of small communities across Canada are finding creative ways of getting around Facebook’s news blackout to share updates about dangerous weather events, but they say it’s still tough to get information to people quickly on the platform. One year after Meta, Facebook’s parent company, banned all links to Canadian news on its platforms — […]

The last time Congress passed a law to protect children on the internet was in 1998 — before Facebook, before the iPhone and long before today’s oldest teenagers were born. Now, a bill aiming to protect kids from the harms of social media, gaming sites and other online platforms has passed in the Senate with […]

The last time Congress passed a law to protect children on the internet was in 1998 — before Facebook, before the iPhone and long before today’s oldest teenagers were born. Now, a bill aiming to protect kids from the harms of social media, gaming sites and other online platforms appears to have enough bipartisan support […]

LONDON (AP) — The European Union said Friday that blue checkmarks from Elon Musk’s X are deceptive and that the online platform falls short on transparency and accountability requirements, the first charges against a tech company since the bloc’s new social media regulations took effect.  The European Commission outlined the preliminary findings from its investigation […]

LONDON (AP) — European Union regulators accused social media company Meta Platforms on Monday of breaching the bloc’s new digital competition rulebook by forcing Facebook and Instagram users to choose between seeing ads or paying to avoid them.  Meta began giving European users the option in November of paying for ad-free versions of Facebook and […]

The Federal Trade Commission has referred a complaint against TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, to the Department of Justice.  The FTC said in a statement Tuesday that it investigated the two companies and “uncovered reason to believe” they are “violating or are about to violate” the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a federal law […]