Australia’s Federal Court has ruled that eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant cannot impose a messaging-service standard on X simply because the social media platform lets users send direct messages. The 12 August decision blocks the regulator’s attempt to layer a more intrusive set of detection rules on top of the code already governing X. In…
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SUMMARY The RAND corporation receives hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer funding anually via the federal government. RAND has partnered with METR, the well-funded AI safety org that Anthropic wants to embed as government-mandated AI safety evaluators in every company, despite concerns over the organization’s ideological biases. The joint RAND-METR initiative is backed…
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SUMMARY There is growing pressure from the media and industry for sweeping federal AI regulations, including mandatory embedding of third-party “safety evaluators” inside frontier AI companies. Some of the individuals and organizations positioning themselves as AI safety experts are regulatory migrants from the “counter-disinformation” field, including one AI safety researcher who was a fellow of…
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SUMMARY British police forces recorded at least 62,199 arrests under three communications offences between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2025, according to a report from the UK organiation Big Brother Watch. The same research found 18,520 charges, while separate Ministry of Justice data recorded 12,292 convictions in England and Wales; the datasets cannot be…
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SUMMARY A new investigation identifies €56.76 million in contracts and grants linked to implementation of the EU Digital Services Act. The figure is not a pot of DSA fines handed directly to NGOs: it combines multi-year awards to advocacy groups, consultancies, technology suppliers and an EU agency. The DSA separately makes the largest platforms finance…
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SUMMARY Congressman Michael Rulli has introduced the federal GRANITE Act, which would prevent US courts from recognising or enforcing foreign censorship judgments, fines, orders or demands that conflict with the First Amendment. The bill would also allow Americans targeted by foreign censorship measures to seek a declaration in federal court that those measures are unenforceable,…
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SUMMARY California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed AB 2624, extending special state privacy protections to employees and volunteers working for organizations that provide services to immigrants. The legislation originally allowed protected workers to issue demands preventing people from posting their images or personal information online for four years, even without establishing any threatening intent. Democratic…
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SUMMARY The European Commission pressured Meta and TikTok to increase monitoring and cooperate with fact-checkers following the mass crossing of migrants into the Spanish territory of Ceuta. The platforms activated “crisis protocols” and established an ad hoc escalation mechanism involving the Commission, Europol and fact-checkers. Meta placed warnings above searches for “Ceuta,” directing users towards…
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SUMMARY Newly released messages show Anthony Fauci, Vivek Murthy and Rochelle Walensky privately discussing concerns and uncertainties surrounding COVID vaccination during pregnancy in January 2021. At almost the same time, senior Biden White House officials began pressuring Facebook and other technology companies to take increasingly aggressive action against COVID and vaccine-related speech. Jeff Zients, Biden’s…
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SUMMARY British campaign group 5Rights has become one of the leading organizations promoting UK-style online child-safety regulation in the United States. The organization was founded by Baroness Beeban Kidron, a Crossbench peer who helped create Britain’s Age Appropriate Design Code and has separately introduced legislation regulating age-assurance technology. 5Rights has involvement in at least 42…
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