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Apple executive chairman Tim Cook met with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly to discuss the proposed EU Kids Act. Von der Leyen said on X that the two agreed on the importance of privacy, safety and security for children online, part of a wider push by the bloc on child safety regulation.
TikTok's newly spun-off U.S. entity, TikTok USDS Joint Venture, has joined Lantern, an industry-wide program that lets tech firms share signals about child exploitation across platforms. The company also pledged $2 million toward a three-year, $10 million effort by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to upgrade its CyberTipline reporting system with automation and advanced search tools.
Court exhibits from lawsuits against Meta reveal that in 2021, while publicly defending Facebook against whistleblower claims of harming children, Mark Zuckerberg privately told a contact on WhatsApp that child safety was not his 'personal main focus.' He said he was more focused on building the metaverse, and weeks later announced Facebook's rebrand to Meta.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation requiring AI companies to build crisis protocols for suicidal ideation, parental controls, and alerts when children disable safety settings. One measure, dubbed 'Adam's Law' after 16-year-old Adam Raine who died by suicide following prolonged ChatGPT conversations, is part of a broader package that also bars social media platforms from using addictive features like autoplay and algorithmic feeds for users under 16.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed more than a dozen bills into law on Thursday aimed at protecting minors online. The measures target addictive design features on social media platforms and impose new restrictions on AI-driven chatbots that interact with children.
Microsoft is introducing new APIs in Windows 11 that let third-party apps check whether a user falls into a child, teen, or adult age category, without revealing the person's actual birthdate. Developers can use this signal to tailor content, features, or restrictions based on age group rather than requesting precise personal data.
The UK government says Apple and Google failed to meet a three-month deadline to make it impossible to capture, view, or share child nudity images on their devices. In response, officials are introducing what they call world-first legislation that would impose fines and potential criminal liability on executives at companies that don't build these protections into phones and tablets sold in the UK.
House Select Committee on China Chair John Moolenaar says TikTok backed out of a planned public roundtable meant to address Chinese government access to US user data and its algorithm. Moolenaar said TikTok withdrew on August 27th, a day after Meta settled with state attorneys general over child safety claims, and cited concerns about facing child safety questions despite that not being the meeting's focus.
MIT Technology Review's latest coverage highlights two issues: digital child-safety tools that have prevented harms like suicide and predation but also caused false alarms and anxiety, with researchers proposing better alternatives. Separately, the outlet examines how agriculture's reliance on natural gas for fertilizer production has driven price volatility, worsened by the Iran conflict's impact on trade through the Strait of Hormuz.
Meta has settled a child safety lawsuit brought by more than 40 states plus DC and several territories, agreeing to pay up to $17 billion over a decade. As part of the deal it will roll out teen-specific product changes, including a default two-hour daily usage cap, overnight app blocks from midnight to 6 a.m., muted notifications during school hours, hidden likes, disabled cosmetic filters, and an option for a non-algorithmic feed.
Meta has agreed to detailed commitments requiring more robust methods for identifying underage users, including AI tools and facial analysis, as part of a legal settlement over child safety. The company faces the technical challenge of accurately distinguishing minors from adults without overreaching into the privacy of all users, since safety protections only work if kids are correctly identified in the first place.
Meta has reached a settlement with attorneys general from 52 states and territories that ends a years-long lawsuit accusing the company of failing to protect children on its platforms. The deal requires Meta to pay a capped amount of roughly $16.68 billion and to roll out a series of new safety features, while also pledging to push YouTube and TikTok to adopt similar measures, even though that would raise Meta's own payout under the settlement's terms.