YouTube is preparing to introduce a new artificial intelligence system that can detect if a user is under 18 years old, even if they lie about their age while creating an account. Starting August 13, the platform will begin testing this AI age estimation feature in the United States, with plans to gradually expand it to more users later.
An internet trade group that represents social media giants, including Meta, TikTok, and X, filed an emergency application to the U.S. Supreme Court to block a Mississippi law that requires age verification for social media users.
NetChoice urged the high court to reinstate a preliminary injunction against Mississippi’s I.D.-for-Speech law, HB 1126.
“This law violates First Amendment rights while manufacturing a cybersecurity nightmare for families that want to use social media. It will force every Mississippian—adults and minors alike—to surrender their personal information to access fully protected online speech and expose families to unprecedented risks,” NetChoice said in a release.
“Indeed, Americans are increasingly using social media to find basic information and news, but this law would burden that access and violate our rights,” it continued.
“Free speech is under attack, and NetChoice is fighting back. Social media is the modern printing press—it allows all Americans to share their thoughts and perspectives. And, until now, Mississippians could do the same free from government interference. But Mississippi’s censorship regime would upend the status quo by forcing people to provide their sensitive, personal information just to access fully protected speech online. That is a massive First Amendment violation,” said Paul Taske, Co-Director of the NetChoice Litigation Center.
To appreciate the complexities of policing online hate speech that underlie an April summary decision by Meta’s Oversight Board, let’s start with a musical detour through a 2017 US Supreme Court opinion called Matal v. Tam. The Court faced the First Amendment question in Matal of whether the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) could lawfully deny a band’s request to register its name––The Slants––as a trademark. The PTO claimed denial was okay because “slants” disparages Asians.
The wrinkle was that the band’s members are Asian and their frontman, Simon Tam, wanted “to ‘reclaim’ and ‘take ownership’ of stereotypes about people of Asian ethnicity.” As Tam explained:
We grew up and the notion of having slanted eyes was always considered a negative thing. Kids would pull their eyes back in a slant-eyed gesture to make fun of us . . . I wanted to change it to something that was powerful, something that was considered beautiful or a point of pride instead.
Via Shutterstock.
This relates to “reappropriation by self-labeling” or “reclamation.” It involves marginalized groups seeking “to redefine the negative connotations” of a label and reclaiming “social power, as they become in charge of the word’s meaning.”
The Supreme Court sided with Tam, reasoning that the PTO’s denial of registration for The Slants because it disparages Asians “offends a bedrock First Amendment principle: Speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend.” Rejecting the stance that speech isn’t constitutionally protected simply because it’s hateful, the Court asserted that:
Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express “the thought that we hate.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared in federal court in Washington, D.C., for a second day on Tuesday, testifying about his intentions for acquiring Instagram in 2012.
In 2020, the Federal Trade Commission sued Facebook, which is now under the umbrella of parent company Meta, alleging it was in violation of antitrust laws by buying both Instagram and WhatsApp.
FTC lawyer Daniel Matheson pressed Zuckerberg on Tuesday over his internal message exchanges from 2012 with then-Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman regarding the $1 billion bid for Instagram.
Daniel Matheson, a lawyer for the Federal Trade Commission, departs following the first day of a historic antitrust trial about Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s intentions in acquiring Instagram, at Barrett Prettyman U.S. Court House in Washington, Monday, April 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
“[What] I’ve been thinking about recently is how much we should be willing to pay to acquire mobile app companies like Instagram and Path that are building networks that are competitive with our own,” Zuckerberg wrote to Ebersman, then agreeing with the chief financial officer when he said the purchase of Instagram would be a way to “neutralize a potential competitor.”
Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand on Monday at a high-stakes trial in Washington over U.S. antitrust enforcers’ claims that the company spent billions of dollars to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp to fend off Facebook competitors.
The FTC is seeking to force Meta to restructure or sell Instagram and WhatsApp, testing President Donald Trump’s promises to take on Big Tech while posing an existential threat to a company that by some estimates earns about half of its U.S. advertising revenue from Instagram.
The FTC and social media giant Meta make their opening statements as the first big antitrust trial of Trump’s second term gets underway in Judge James E. Boasberg’s courtroom.
Meta Platforms (META) is going to federal court today for a long-awaited antitrust trial that will force the tech giant to defend its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta stock was ahead slightly in early trading.
The $1.4 trillion market cap social media titan is accused by the Federal Trade Commission of abusing monopoly power to acquire photo-sharing app Instagram and messaging platform WhatsApp more than a decade ago. The FTC filed the original antitrust lawsuit in 2020 before it spent nearly five years winding through appeals and other motions in the courts.
Bill to regulate social media scales second reading in Senate – The Nation Newspaper Source Link Excerpt:
A Bill seeking to make it compulsory for social media platforms to have physical offices as well as formalise the registration and regulation of bloggers in Nigeria scaled the second read reading yesterday at the Senate.
It was the Senate’s second attempt to regulate the social media in the country.
Its first attempt during the Ninth National Assembly fizzled out after widespread criticisms and outcry by stakeholders who regarded it as an attempt to gag the media and contravene Section 39 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to freedom of expression provides.