Potential damages in Meta’s youth safety lawsuit have grown so large that it’s hard to pay attention to any of the other details. The company is now potentially on the hook for $1.4 trillion — that’s trillion with a T.

To put that in context, the company’s current market capitalization is barely higher than that figure, at $1.5 trillion.

The plaintiffs in the case are the states of California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey. They allege that Facebook and Instagram were designed to turn young users into addicts and that the company misled the public about the safety of its platforms. Continue reading “Meta’s $1.4 Trillion Teen Safety Case Puts Facebook and Instagram on Trial” →

The AI boom has turned the Internet into a battleground with data as the prize. Publishers, creators, AI tech giants, and data brokers are now fighting over what counts as public information, who has a right to collect it, and what uses of that information require the consent of its creator.

Data scraping isn’t new, but the scale of it is. A decade ago, the average person wouldn’t have foreseen a world in which every publicly available web page is raw material for bots that can write, summarize, code, search, and answer questions.

But here we are, and few companies sit closer to the epicenter of that fight than Bright Data. The company operates one of the world’s largest public web data platforms and helps customers scrape publicly available information for market research, cybersecurity, price comparison, and AI.

Continue reading “Freedom of Access vs. Freedom of Use — Inside the Battle Over Artificial Intelligence and Data Scraping” →

Meta has found a new way to squeeze more money out of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses customers. The company is adding monthly usage limits to Conversation Focus, a feature that helps users hear speech more clearly in noisy places.

Starting this week, users will only get three hours of free access to Conversation Focus. If they want to keep using it after that, they’ll have to cough up $19.99/month for a Meta One Premium subscription. Even then, Meta caps usage at 15 hours, making it a pricey subscription with a poor return on investment.

It’s obviously a good deal for Meta because it allows the tech giant to keep generating revenue from its smart glasses after the initial sale. Continue reading “Meta’s Smart Glasses Paywall Is a Warning for Anyone Buying AI Gadgets” →

The European Union and Apple are still trying to resolve their dispute over Siri AI after the tech giant announced in June that the upgraded assistant wouldn’t launch in the bloc with iOS 27 and iPadOS 27.

On Wednesday, Reuters reported that European technology chief Henna Virkkunen held “constructive” talks with Apple CEO Tim Cook this week. Those talks follow the two sides clashing over the rollout.

Apple says the Digital Markets Act is preventing it from bringing Siri AI to iPhone and iPad users in the EU with iOS 27 and iPadOS 27. For its part, the European Commission blames Apple for not developing an interoperability plan that meets the law’s requirements. Apple Watch owners will also be affected because Siri AI on watchOS 27 requires a paired iPhone with Siri AI. Continue reading “European Union Delays Make Siri AI Ground Zero for Apple’s Next Legal Struggle” →

Starting July 1, ads on streaming services will have to turn the volume down in California as a new state law comes into effect. The legislation addresses a complaint that’s older than streaming itself. Since the dawn of television, viewers have griped that commercials tend to be louder than the shows they accompany.

The promise of streaming was that it could fix much of what was wrong with TV. It gave us on-demand libraries so we could watch what we wanted, when we wanted, and it was a welcome escape from bloated cable bundles that didn’t seem worth their price.

Continue reading “Streaming Ads Are About to Get Quieter in California as New Law Takes Effect” →