FTC Refers Complaint Against TikTok for Violating Children's Privacy Act

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said it had referred a complaint against the social media platform TikTok and its parent company ByteDance over potential violations children's privacy to the Justice Department. In March, a source told Reuters the FTC could resolve a probe into TikTok over allegedly faulty privacy and data security practices by either filing suit or reaching a settlement.

Surgeon General Wants Warning Label on Social Media Platforms

The United States Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, announced that he would push for a warning label on social media platforms advising parents that using the platforms might damage adolescents’ mental health. Warning labels — like those that appear on tobacco and alcohol products — are one of the most powerful tools available to the nation’s top health official, but Dr. Murthy cannot unilaterally require them; the action requires approval by Congress.

Google Lays Off Members of Its Legal Investigations Support Team

Google cut a group of workers from the team responsible for making sure government requests for its users’ private information are legitimate and legal, raising concerns among workers and privacy experts that the company is weakening its ability to protect customer data. Google laid off about 10 members of its Legal Investigations Support team late last month and told another group of about 10 that they would have to move cities or leave the company, effectively leading them to resign, according to a person familiar with the team’s operations and the firings.

Canada's Largest School District Investigating Ransomware Attack

Canada’s largest school district is investigating a cyber incident, adding to a series of ransomware attacks that have caused disruptions to companies and public institutions in the country. The Toronto District School Board alerted parents in an emailed letter, noting that the attack happened when an unauthorized party gained access to the board’s technology testing environment.

Justice Department Asked to Investigate YouTube's 'Living Room Dominance'

Tech and competition watchdog groups have called on the U.S. Department of Justice to probe YouTube, saying the video-streaming platform could enable Google and its parent company, Alphabet, to dominate home entertainment. In a letter, to Justice Department antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter, the American Economic Liberties Project, Demand Progress and nine other groups expressed concern about YouTube's growth as a competitor to cable and streaming services and its pre-installation on smartphones and TVs sold in the U.S.

New York Passes Bill Banning Social Media Algorithms for Children

New York’s Legislature passed a bill that would ban social media platforms from using "addictive" recommendation algorithms for child users. The Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids act will prohibit social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram from serving content to users under the age of 18 based on recommendation algorithms, meaning that, instead, social media companies will have to provide reverse-chronological feeds for child users.

European Group Targets Meta's Plan to Use Personal Data for AI Training

A Meta plan to use personal data to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models without seeking consent came under fire from advocacy group NOYB, which called on privacy enforcers across Europe to stop such use. NOYB (none of your business) urged national privacy watchdogs to act immediately, saying recent changes in Meta's privacy policy, which come into force on June 26, would allow it to use years of personal posts, private images or online tracking data for the Facebook owner's AI technology.

Federal Regulators Agree on AI Probes of Microsoft, OpenAI, Nvidia

Federal regulators have reached a deal that allows them to proceed with antitrust investigations into the dominant roles that Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia play in the artificial intelligence industry, in the strongest sign of how regulatory scrutiny into the powerful technology has escalated. The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission struck the deal over the past week, and it is expected to be completed in the coming days, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the confidential discussions.

FTC Investigating How Microsoft Structured Deal with Inflection AI

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Microsoft structured one of its latest deals with an artificial-intelligence startup to avoid a government antitrust review of the transaction. Microsoft in March hired Inflection AI’s co-founder and almost all of its employees and agreed to pay the startup around $650 million as part of a licensing fee to resell its technology.

OpenAI Disrupts Campaigns Using AI to Influence Political Discourse

OpenAI said that it had identified and disrupted five online campaigns that used its generative artificial intelligence technologies to deceptively manipulate public opinion around the world and influence geopolitics.The efforts were run by state actors and private companies in Russia, China, Iran and Israel, OpenAI said in a report about covert influence campaigns.

U.S. Seizes Millions in Raid on Chinese Botnet Operator in Singapore

A 35-year-old Chinese man has been arrested in Singapore, and millions of dollars in cars, watches and real estate have been seized as part of a blockbuster raid on a global cybercriminal network that defrauded the U.S. government of billions of dollars, the Justice Department said. The Chinese man, YunHe Wang, is accused of helping assemble a vast network of infected computers, known as a botnet, that was used to carry out bomb threats, send child exploitation materials online and conduct financial fraud, among other schemes, the department alleges.

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'RansomHub' Hacker Group Claims Responsibility for Attack on Christie's

A hacker group called RansomHub said it was behind the cyberattack that hit the Christie’s website just days before its marquee spring sales began, forcing the auction house to resort to alternatives to online bidding. In a post on the dark web, the group claimed that it had gained access to sensitive information about the world’s wealthiest art collectors, posting only a few examples of names and birthdays.

U.S. Appeals Court Creates Fast-Track Schedule for Challenges to TikTok Ban

A U.S. appeals court set a fast-track schedule to consider the legal challenges to a new law requiring China-based ByteDance to divest TikTok's U.S. assets by Jan. 19 or face a ban. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the case set for oral arguments in September after TikTok, ByteDance and a group of TikTok content creators joined with the Justice Department earlier this month in asking the court for a quick schedule.

Report Finds Proliferation of Fake Accounts on X Posting About Election

Fake accounts posting about the U.S. presidential election are proliferating on the social media platform X, according to a social media analysis company's report shared with Reuters exclusively ahead of its release. Analysts from Israeli tech company Cyabra, which uses a subset of artificial intelligence called machine learning to identify fake accounts, found that 15% of X accounts praising former President Donald Trump and criticizing President Joe Biden are fake.

Relatives of Uvalde School Shooting Victims Sue Video Game Publisher, Meta

The lawyer who won a record-setting settlement for Sandy Hook families announced two lawsuits on behalf of the relatives of Uvalde school shooting victims against the manufacturer of the AR-15-style weapon used in the attack, as well as the publisher of Call of Duty video games and the social media giant Meta. The lawsuits against Daniel Defense, known for its high-end rifles; Activision, the manufacturer of the Call of Duty first- ­person-shooter series, and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, may be the first of their kind to connect aggressive firearms marketing tactics on social media and gaming platforms to the actions of a mass shooter.

TikTok Says It Removed Thousands of Accounts for Covert Influence Operators

Dominant short-video platform TikTok said that it had taken down thousands of accounts that belonged to 15 covert influence operations in the first four months of this year, including the second-largest such network detected from China. The company, which is under threat in the United States because of its Chinese ownership, said that in February it removed 16 accounts based in China that promoted the policies of the ruling Chinese Communist Party as well as Chinese culture.

The GigaLaw Firm helps companies of all sizes protect their brands online, using domain name dispute policies – such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) – and other legal tools available to copyright and trademark owners on the Internet.