Government & Policy

As Australia bans social media for kids under 16, age-assurance tech is in the spotlight

Government & Policy /

Age assurance, an umbrella term that refers to technologies for verifying, estimating, or inferring an internet user’s age, is being thrust into the global spotlight thanks to a blanket ban on social media use for people under 16 in Australia. The law, which is expected to come into force in Australia in November 2025, will […]

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Silicon Valley hitters take over Trump transition team: “a dozen Musk allies”

Government & Policy /

About a “dozen Musk allies” have put a pin in their daily routines to serve as unofficial advisers to the Trump transition effort, says the New York Times.  Among them, reports the outlet: Jared Birchall, the head of Elon Musk’s family office, has interviewed a few candidates for jobs at the State Department; Marc Andreessen

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Meta’s Nick Clegg says Elon Musk has potential to be a political ‘puppet master’

Government & Policy /

On a podcast with BBC’s Nick Robinson, Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, talked about how Elon Musk is “playing an outsized role in both the election and now the formation of the new U.S. administration.”  Clegg said he thinks that Elon Musk has a “choice” when it comes to his political future: to

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Elon Musk donated more than $260 million to elect Donald Trump

Government & Policy /

Fresh campaign financing data shows that Elon Musk poured more than $260 million into political groups in 2024 that helped Donald Trump win the presidential election and, consequently, secured a position for himself as the co-head of government efficiency, according to the Federal Election Commission. The New York Times reported that Musk and the entities he

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Ex-PayPal COO David Sacks is Trump’s new crypto and AI ‘czar’

Government & Policy /

Incoming President Donald Trump has a new crypto and AI “czar”: ex-PayPal COO David Sacks. Trump announced Sacks’ appointment Thursday in a post on Truth Social, Trump’s social networking platform. “[Sacks] will work on a legal framework so the Crypto [sic] industry has the clarity it has been asking for, and can thrive in the

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EU puts TikTok on watch over election security

Government & Policy /

The European Commission has responded to widespread concerns swirling around the impact of TikTok on elections in Romania by announcing it’s stepping up monitoring of the platform’s compliance with the bloc’s online governance framework, the Digital Services Act (DSA). This follows the shock emergence of Călin Georgescu, an independent, far-right, pro-Russian nationalist, as the lead

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Vodafone and Three’s $19B merger cleared by UK regulators — with conditions

Government & Policy /

The U.K.’s antitrust regulator has greenlighted the longstanding planned merger between two of the country’s biggest telecommunication operators. Vodafone and Three constitute two of the U.K.’s four infrastructure-owning mobile network operators (MNOs), alongside O2 and EE. As such, when the duo revealed plans to merge in a $19 billion transaction last June, it was always likely

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says it’d be ‘un-American’ for Elon Musk to wield political influence to harm rivals

Government & Policy /

During an interview at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that it’d be “profoundly un-American” for Elon Musk, the CEO of X and Tesla, to wield political influence to “hurt competitors” and “advantage [his] own businesses.” “I don’t think people would tolerate that,” he said, per Bloomberg. Musk,

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Biden administration races to approve clean energy loans before Trump takes over — here’s who is benefiting

Government & Policy /

The Department of Energy (DOE) appears to be on a loan-approval spree in the lead-up to President-Elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, and the winners are all companies manufacturing clean energy solutions on U.S. soil. Trump has promised to cancel any unspent federal dollars under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, a bipartisan climate law that allocated

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FTC fines online retailer Goat $2M over deceptive ‘Instant’ and ‘Next Day’ orders

Government & Policy /

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has ordered Goat, an online marketplace for sneakers and apparel, to pay more than $2 million to consumers over illegal shipping practices. The FTC also alleges that Goat fails to honor its “Buyer Protection” policies. In a complaint, the agency outlined that Goat has failed to ship many orders

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