Supreme Court Rejects Meta's Appeal in Social Media Addiction Case

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a bid by Meta Platforms to avoid a lawsuit brought ​by Vermont's attorney general accusing the company of designing its Instagram social media app to be addictive to young users, as big ‌technology companies face mounting legal risks over child and teen safety. The justices turned away Meta's appeal of a lower court's ruling that let the lawsuit proceed, rejecting the company's argument that courts in Vermont lack jurisdiction over the dispute.

AI-Generated Legal Filings Creating Burdens for Court System

Federal judges and legal experts said they are increasingly seeing filings flooding court dockets and clogging an already overburdened system as AI supercharges pro se litigation — even as it opens up the legal system to people who might not otherwise be able to afford to bring a case. Many judges emphasized the seriousness of the immediate workload problem created by AI-enabled pro se filings, including one who characterized the overall problem as “an existential threat to the federal courts.”

Law Enforcement Focusing on New Threats from Anti-Tech Extremists

In the wake of attacks on CEOs, a nationwide protest movement targeting data centers, and increasing concerns about AI job replacement, federal intelligence agencies and domestic law enforcement are circulating reports with a new domestic target in mind: anti-technology extremists. More than 1,000 pages of unpublished reports from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and fusion centers obtained by Wired show a national shift taking place to surveil this new and worryingly broad category of people and activities deemed an emerging threat.

Pope Issues Encyclical Urging Caution About AI Development

Pope Leo XIV set out a sweeping vision for corporate executives, politicians and individuals who will shape and be shaped by the future of artificial intelligence, warning leaders to safeguard humanity from AI’s most disruptive effects. Leo’s declaration came in the form of a papal encyclical, an open letter to “all people of good will” that ran to roughly 42,300 words in its English version.

California's Governor Signs Executive Order on Labor Policies, AI

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, issued an executive order to explore a broad overhaul of labor policies, an attempt to front run a potential mass job displacement caused by artificial intelligence. Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, signed the order mandating state agencies work with academics, labor groups and the AI industry to study how to subsidize companies that keep employees rather than replace them with the technology.

Bluesky Accounts Hacked, Post Fake Russian News Articles

Hundreds of accouns on Bluesky have been hijacked and used to post fake news articles, according to the company and researchers at Clemson University working with a collective of internet monitors who track Russian influence operations and call themselves the dTeam. The campaign, which the researchers at Clemson linked to the Social Design Agency, a company in Moscow, shows how Russia continues to seek new ways to erode public support for Ukraine, which Russian forces invaded in 2022.

Trump Delays Signing of Executive Order on AI Regulation

President Donald Trump abruptly delayed the signing of a landmark executive order on AI afternoon, telling reporters that he had pulled the order at the last minute because it could interfere with American competitiveness on AI. “We’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that lead,” Trump, answering reporters’ questions in the Oval Office during an unrelated event, said about America’s AI industry.

Texas Suit Accuses Meta of Lying About Encrypted WhatsApp Messages

WhatsApp is able to access user’s encrypted messages, Texas said in a lawsuit that accuses Meta Platforms Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg of lying to the U.S. Senate in 2018 about the company’s steps to make them inaccessible. The lawsuit brought in Texas state court says WhatsApp, the chat service Meta has owned since 2014, maintains access to communications from 3 billion users that it purports to be private.

Meta Settles Addiction Trial with Kentucky School District

Meta Platforms reached a settlement with a Kentucky school district over accusations that social-media companies intentionally designed their platforms to addict young people, becoming the last major platform to resolve the case and avert a coming trial. The settlement spares the companies from a June jury trial that was poised to be the first among more than 1,200 lawsuits brought by school districts alleging student mental-health harms caused by Meta, TikTok, Snap and Alphabet’s YouTube.

Bill Would Increase U.S. Specialists Combating Child Sex Abuse Online

Senate Republicans included in their reconciliation bill a significant increase in funding to fight child sexual trafficking and exploitation, adding to a drumbeat in Congress to better protect children online. The measure, championed by Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, would increase the number of specialists combating child sexual abuse material and child trafficking at the Department of Homeland Security’s investigations division to 200 from seven.

Hacking Fears Created by Anthropic's Mythos Appear Overstated

Early fears that Anthropic’s new AI model, Mythos, could dramatically turbocharge hacking are looking overstated a month after its release. The company warned at launch in April that Mythos had uncovered thousands of software ​vulnerabilities — including flaws across every major operating system and browser — and said the fallout from its spread could be severe.

Appeals Court Hears Pentagon's Case Against Anthropic

Anthropic and the Pentagon squared off in a federal appeals court, where the artificial intelligence firm faced an uphill battle in convincing three Republican-appointed judges that Secretary Pete Hegseth’s supply chain risk label violated the law. Lawyers for the Defense Department and Anthropic faced intense questioning from a three-judge panel in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously rejected the AI firm’s bid to temporarily halt the supply chain risk designation.

Law Requiring Removal of Some Intimate Images Goes Into Effect

Online platforms are now required by law to remove non-consensual intimate images within 48 hours of reporting, as a federal law criminalizing the sharing of such content goes into full effect. President Donald Trump signed the Take It Down Act into law last year, which makes it illegal to publish online nonconsensual intimate visual depictions, real or artificially generated.

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Security Researcher Finds Exposed Credentials for Government Access

U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA may have escaped a sizable security breach, thanks to a good-faith security researcher who identified publicly exposed credentials that allowed access to government cloud and internal agency systems. As first reported by independent security reporter Brian Krebs, GitGuardian security researcher Guillaume Valadon found reams of exposed plaintext credentials listed in spreadsheets, which had been made publicly accessible in a GitHub repository by an employee working for a CISA contractor.

Children's Advocacy Groups Ask FTC to ​Investigate Roblox

Two children's advocacy groups asked the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to ​investigate gaming platform Roblox, according to a letter ‌shared with Reuters saying its design features and marketing techniques are “unfair and deceptive.” The groups Fairplay and the National Center ​on Sexual Exploitation asked the FTC to ​investigate whether Roblox violated the Federal Trade Act’s ⁠section 5, according to the letter.

Snap, Google, TikTok Settle Lawsuit Over School Disruptions

Snap Inc., Google’s YouTube and ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok reached agreements to settle the first lawsuit headed to trial over claims that addiction to top social media platforms has disrupted learning and pushed public schools to spend massive sums fighting a mental health crisis, according to court filings. The trio of settlements announced leaves only Meta Platforms Inc. to face off with a rural Kentucky school district in a trial set to begin June 12 in federal court in Oakland, California.

Maker of Canvas School Software Reaches Deal with Hackers

The maker of Canvas, the software used by thousands of schools and universities around the world, said that it had reached a deal with the hackers that recently breached its systems for the return of stolen data and the destruction of any copies. The agreement, Instructure said in a statement, involved the return of the stolen data and confirmation that the data had been destroyed at the hackers’ end.

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