social media – Page 15 – Hellbound and Down

Supreme Court rejects Meta’s appeal in Vermont social media addiction case

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a push to avoid a lawsuit alleging that Facebook and Instagram harmed young users, a decision that comes as social media companies increasingly face legal scrutiny.

Parent company Meta Platforms Inc. appealed after Vermont’s highest court allowed a suit filed by its attorney general in 2023 to move forward. The company is facing similar lawsuits from states across the country, accusing it of knowingly designing addictive features.

Meta had argued that it can’t be sued in Vermont court because neither the company nor the app design has specific ties to the state. Vermont countered that the sites’ large number of teen users gives its courts jurisdiction.

The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal in a brief, unexplained order, as is typical. The procedural decision comes after court losses for Meta and YouTube in social media addiction lawsuits in California and New Mexico.

Vermont’s lawsuit was filed after an investigation by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general in several states. Newspaper reports based on Meta’s own research also found that the company knew about the harms Instagram can cause teenagers — especially teen girls — when it comes to mental health and body image issues. One internal study cited 13.5% of teen girls saying Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse and 17% of teen girls saying it makes eating disorders worse.

Almost all teens ages 13 to 17 in the U.S. report using a social media platform, with about a third saying they use social media “almost constantly,” according to the Pew Research Center.

Meta, for its part, has said that it has already introduced dozens of tools to support teens and their families and suggested it would have worked with the states on standards for youth social media use.

Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark applauded the decision, saying it affirms “that companies that choose to do business in Vermont, like Meta, can be held accountable when they harm kids.”

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Germany Moves to Control Social Media: ‘Trusted’ News Sources To Be Algorithmically Boosted By Law

Germany is moving toward what critics are calling a sweeping new form of state influence over online speech, after plans surfaced to force social media platforms to prioritize content from government-approved outlets—raising serious concerns about censorship, narrative control, and the future of free expression in Europe.

According to documents obtained by Apollo News, regulators are preparing a system that would require platforms such as X, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to give preferential treatment to content from so-called “reliable” media.

What makes the proposal particularly controversial is not just the intent, but the mechanism. For the first time, state-linked authorities would directly shape the algorithms that determine what information citizens see—effectively inserting government priorities into the digital public square.

At the center of the plan is the concept of “public value” media. In theory, these are outlets that provide socially beneficial information, but in practice, critics argue, they are media organizations vetted and approved by the same political system they are meant to scrutinize.

That distinction is crucial. The power to define what is “reliable” would rest with regulatory bodies tied to the state, not with citizens, readers, or independent market forces.

Once granted this status, approved outlets would receive algorithmic advantages. Their content would be pushed higher in feeds, made easier to discover, and given preferential visibility over competing voices.

The proposal does not stop there. Individual articles and videos could also be labeled as “public value,” creating a two-tier information system where some content is actively promoted while other viewpoints are quietly deprioritized.

Platforms would then be required to adjust their recommendation systems accordingly. In some cases, regulators are even discussing quotas to guarantee exposure for approved content, effectively turning private platforms into vehicles for state-guided messaging.

For many critics, this crosses a fundamental line. It transforms social media from an open marketplace of ideas into a managed information ecosystem shaped by political authorities.

Supporters of the initiative claim it is necessary to combat “disinformation” and preserve democratic discourse.

But that justification is precisely what alarms opponents. They argue that “fighting disinformation” has increasingly become a catch-all rationale for restricting dissent and controlling narratives.

“This is not about removing illegal content,” one observer noted. “This is about deciding which legal speech deserves to be seen—and which does not.”

Critics describe the system as a form of “soft censorship.” Instead of banning opposing views outright, it ensures they are drowned out by state-preferred content.
“It is reverse censorship,” analysts warn. “You don’t delete the message—you just make sure nobody sees it.”

The consequences for independent and alternative media could be severe. Outlets that challenge government policy or question mainstream narratives may find their reach quietly throttled, without any formal accusation or legal recourse.

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Merkel Urges EU to Keep Regulating Social Media Speech

Angela Merkel used her first major European platform since leaving office to tell the EU exactly what it wanted to hear: keep regulating speech online, and don’t worry too much about getting it wrong.

The former German chancellor, speaking Tuesday at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, urged the bloc to “continue regulating the social media” and artificial intelligence. “To believe that responsibility for spreading information is no longer necessary, that accountability – there should be no accountability for lies, then that would undermine democracy,” she told the chamber.

Lies. Who decides what counts as a lie? In the EU’s model, that question gets answered by the European Commission, by government-appointed regulators, by “trusted flaggers” that platforms are legally required to obey. Not by courts. Not through anything resembling due process.

Merkel knows this system well. Her government built the prototype. Germany’s NetzDG law, passed under her chancellorship in 2017, required platforms to delete “clearly illegal” content within 24 hours or face fines up to €50 million.

The people whose speech got censored under it included a satirical magazine, a political street artist, and an opposition party leader. NetzDG became an export product, copied by governments in Russia, Turkey, and across Southeast Asia, each adapting it to their own definition of “illegal.”

The EU took the concept continent-wide with the Digital Services Act, which requires major platforms to assess and reduce “systemic risks,” a category broad enough to cover “civic discourse,” “electoral processes,” and “public security.”

The Commission writes the rules, decides whether platforms comply, and levies fines of up to 6% of global revenue when they don’t. No independent prosecutor. X is currently challenging the first DSA fine ever imposed, a €120 million penalty from December 2025, arguing the process involved “grave procedural errors” and “systematic breaches of rights of defence and basic due process.”

More than 50 European NGOs have warned that the DSA’s vague terms could violate the EU Charter’s own free expression protections. The Commission’s response was to declare the law “content-agnostic” and move on.

Merkel acknowledged none of this. She told parliamentarians that “perhaps mistakes will be made, but we learn through mistakes.” That’s cold comfort when the mistakes involve censoring legal speech and silencing political opposition through systems with no judicial oversight and no meaningful appeal.

Her remarks came at the inaugural ceremony for the European Order of Merit, where she was honored alongside 19 other laureates, including Lech Wałęsa, Moldovan President Maia Sandu, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. She framed regulation as essential to democracy. “We’ve had 75 years of European thought,” she said. “Peace, prosperity, and democracy.”

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South Carolina’s New Social Media Law Puts Every User Under Age Surveillance

South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster signed H.B. 4591 on May 19, turning the Stop Harm from Addictive Social Media Act into a law that will reshape how every resident of the state uses major social media platforms.

The bill passed with almost no opposition, clearing the House 115-0 and the Senate 42-1. It takes effect January 1, 2027, and it brings with it a surveillance apparatus aimed at all users.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The law, sponsored by Rep. Brandon Guffey (R-York), requires covered platforms to repeatedly estimate and verify the age of every South Carolina account holder.

The stated goal is child protection. The way it claims to do that is continuous behavioral analysis of anyone who spends enough time on a platform, combined with escalating confidence thresholds and penalties of ten thousand dollars per violation if platforms get it wrong.

Here’s how the age estimation system works. Once an account holder hits 25 cumulative hours on a platform within six months (the “first trigger date”), the platform has 14 days to estimate whether that person is over 15, with 80% confidence.

At 50 hours (the “second trigger date”), the confidence requirement jumps to 90%. After that, the platform must update its estimate every 100 hours of use, or whenever it runs data analytics on the user for any other reason, whichever comes sooner.

That last clause is easy to miss and it means any time a platform runs its profiling algorithms on you for ad targeting, content recommendations, or anything else, it also has to re-evaluate your estimated age. The law essentially piggybacks mandatory age surveillance onto whatever commercial surveillance platforms already conduct, expanding the scope of both.

Because platforms face significant liability if they can’t meet these confidence thresholds, the law creates powerful incentives to harvest far more sensitive data about users than they do today, including about minors.

A platform that guesses wrong faces $10,000 per violation. A platform that overinvests in behavioral profiling to avoid those fines faces no penalty at all. The incentive structure points in one direction.

The bill claims it “does not create any duty on the part of a covered social media platform to request, collect, or retain any information from or about any account holder” and that age estimates must be “derived based on information collected and retained by the covered social media platform in the ordinary course of operation.”

This is the bill’s central fiction. Platforms that can’t achieve 80% or 90% confidence from existing data will need to collect more data, or face financial ruin from accumulated violations. The law doesn’t mandate new data collection in the same way that holding a knife to your wallet doesn’t mandate you hand over cash.

For users classified as children (under 16), the restrictions are extensive. Accounts require verifiable parental consent, with privacy settings locked to the most restrictive levels by default.

Platforms cannot show children profile-based feeds, profile-based advertising, or any “addictive interface features,” a category that includes infinite scrolling, auto-play video, push notifications, and display of personal metrics like reaction counts.

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You can now legally request revenge and deepfake porn to be taken down. Here’s how

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 Tuesday.

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. But the act gave online platforms one year to create a process for removing such imagery within 48 hours of notification from users. If online platforms fail to do so, they could face civil penalties of $53,088 per violation. That one year deadline expired on Tuesday.

The provisions now going into effect ensure that tech companies “can no longer turn a blind eye to these horrifying abuses on social media,” Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who co-wrote the bill with Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, said in a statement.

The Federal Trade Commission, which will enforce the law, sent letters to major online platforms last week warning them about compliance. That includes popular social platforms such as Meta, Snapchat, TikTok and X, along with gaming platforms and dating apps Bumble and Match Group, Reddit, Discord, Pinterest and tech giants Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft.

Any business that “primarily provides a forum for user-generated content or regularly publishes, curates, hosts, or furnishes intimate content shared without consent,” is subject to the law, according to the FTC.

The other provision of the law applying to individuals who post non-consensual intimate imagery is already in effect. Violators can face fines and up to two years in prison.

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Fresh wave of UFO files to be released after Trump sparked chaos with alien picture

The second phase of the Trump Administration’s UFO disclosure is underway, with officials saying the next batch of files is expected to be released ‘very soon.’

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced Monday on X that the materials are currently ‘actively being processed’ for publication.

The first release, published on May 8, included never-before-seen photos, videos and government documents tied to unidentified anomalous phenomena, also known as UAPs.

Lawmakers previously noted that the initial disclosure was only the beginning, teasing that far more explosive material remained hidden from the public.

Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett, one of Congress’ most outspoken advocates for UFO transparency, fueled speculation after the May 8 release by claiming: ‘The 1st drop will be big, but in comparison to what is coming, they will be a drop in the bucket.’

‘I would say “Holy Crap” is coming,’ Burchett added.

The latest update arrived just one day after President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself standing beside a handcuffed alien at a US military base, further intensifying online discussion surrounding the administration’s disclosure campaign.

The surreal image, shared on Trump’s Truth Social account, showed the president and his security detail escorting the extraterrestrial figure across the tarmac while armed military personnel looked on.

News of the second release flooded social media, where one user said: ‘Finally! The government’s processing UFOs faster than my laptop processes a software update.

‘Either we’re getting disclosure or the world’s longest episode of coming soon. Either way, grab your tinfoil hat, things are getting interesting.’

Others, however, are not sold on the notion that the files will be released soon.

One X use posted: ‘The phrase “actively being processed” is classic government doublespeak, suggesting momentum while committing to absolutely nothing, keeping the UFO hype alive without releasing a single page.

‘It’s the perfect way to acknowledge public curiosity without ever having to deliver, turning transparency into an endless process rather than an event.’

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X Agrees to Review Illegal “Hate” Within 48 Hours Under UK Online Safety Act

X has agreed to process the vast majority of content flagged as illegal “hate” under the UK’s Online Safety Act within 48 hours, giving Ofcom, Britain’s speech regulator, a significant new enforcement win.

The platform committed to “review and assess UK suspected illegal terrorist and “hate” content reported through its dedicated UK illegal content reporting tool on average within 24 hours of it being reported, to be calculated as a mean” and to “review and assess at least 85% of UK suspected illegal terrorist and hate content reported through its dedicated UK illegal content reporting tool within a maximum of 48 hours.”

The deal is a notable reversal for a platform that, less than a year ago, publicly accused Ofcom of taking a “heavy-handed approach” and warned that the Online Safety Act was “seriously infringing” on free expression.

X’s August 2025 statement, titled “What Happens When Oversight Becomes Overreach,” called out regulators by name and argued that the law amounted to a “conscientious decision to increase censorship in the name of ‘online safety.’” That language is gone now. What’s left is a compliance agreement with specific performance targets and a 12-month reporting obligation.

The commitments go beyond speed of review. X also agreed to block access to accounts in the UK if they are reported for “posting UK illegal terrorist content” and deemed to be “operated by or on behalf of a terrorist organisation proscribed in the UK.”

The platform will share quarterly performance data with Ofcom so the regulator can audit compliance. And following complaints from organizations that couldn’t tell whether X had received or acted on their reports, X agreed to “engage with experts regarding reporting systems for illegal hate and terror content.”

Who those experts are tells you something about the direction of travel. Ofcom’s own press release names the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) as one of the organizations it worked with to “gather evidence about suspected illegal terrorist content and illegal hate speech online.”

The CCDH is a pro-censorship campaign group co-founded in 2018 by Imran Ahmed and Morgan McSweeney, who went on to become UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.

McSweeney stepped down from CCDH’s board two days after Starmer became Labour leader. The organization maintains close ties to the current government and has stated that its goal was to “kill Musk’s Twitter,” according to leaked internal documents reported by Matt Taibbi and Paul Thacker.

Ahmed himself was sanctioned by the US State Department in December 2025 over concerns that his organization had led “organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints.” A federal court blocked his deportation with a temporary restraining order.

This is the organization Ofcom chose to help build the evidence base for pressuring X into compliance. Ahmed, for his part, welcomed the deal. Speaking to POLITICO, he said CCDH will be “watching closely to ensure this results in meaningful action, not just words.”

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Virginia Democratic Governor Abigail Spanberger erupted in anger on social media Friday after the Supreme Court refused to reinstate the state’s new congressional map that Democrats openly designed to flip up to four House seats in the 2026 midterms.