British online safety regulator Ofcom says it has accepted new commitments from X that aim to better protect UK users from seeing illegal hate and terror content on the platform. Under the agreement announced today, X says it will withhold access in the UK to accounts reported posting illegal terrorist content and determined to be […]
In January, Colorado lawmakers introduced a proposal to make operating systems collect users’ ages and pass them to app developers. The bill, SB26-051, had clearly been designed for commercial platforms like iOS and Android – one of numerous plans to age-gate the internet through users’ devices. It was intended to provide information that would let […]
When Oregon resident Isabelle Reksopuro heard Google was gobbling up public land to fuel its data centers in her home state, she didn’t initially know what to believe. “There’s a lot of misinformation about data centers,” she said. “Google has denied taking that land.” Technically, she explains, The Dalles, a city near the Washington state […]
Over 70 percent of Americans oppose AI data center construction in their area, according to a new Gallup survey. Just 7 percent said they were “strongly” in favor of new data centers. According to Gallup, data centers are so strongly disliked that Americans would prefer to live near a nuclear power plant than a data […]
Today, I’m talking with Brendan Ballou, founder of the Public Integrity Project and author of a new book, called When Companies Run the Courts, about the rise of forced arbitration. Brendan’s actually been on the show before — his previous book, Plunder, was about private equity taking over huge swaths of American life, and that conversation […]
The Trump administration is fighting for the right to keep some social media moderation advocates out of the US. On Wednesday, US District Court Judge James Boasberg heard arguments in a lawsuit between the nonprofit Coalition for Independent Technology Research (CITR) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other Trump administration officials. The suit concerns […]
Hello and welcome to Regulator, the newsletter for Verge subscribers that goes into tech shenanigans that take place in the backrooms of Washington. Really, it sometimes does feel like the online series The Backrooms: a parallel universe with no internal logic, evil corporations lurking in the background, and mind-rending eldritch horrors around every corner. (Not […]
A week ago, newly appointed Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro was busy regaling investors with plans to turn Disney Plus into the company’s “digital centerpiece.” By last Friday, though, his attention had presumably shifted to a fight with the Trump administration over free speech. Disney-owned ABC has now accused the administration of violating its First Amendment […]
No one paid attention to the gunshots that echoed through the convention center. They were real enough, and so were the screams that accompanied them, in the sense that they were recordings of real people who, like guest stars on Law and Order, reenacted scenarios that had clearly been plucked from the headlines: a kidnapping, […]
The Trump phone may finally be here: Trump Mobile’s CEO told USA Today that the phone will begin shipping to buyers this week. The announcement comes as reports have gone viral this week alleging that preorders for the phone have been canceled. Trump Mobile CEO Pat O’Brien confirmed the release plans to USA Today over […]