Tag: social media

Meta raises specter of shutting down service to New Mexico in legal clash over child safety

Meta is raising the prospect of shutting down its social media services in New Mexico in response to a push by state prosecutors for fundamental changes to the company’s platforms, including Instagram, to protect the mental health and safety of children.

The possibility emerged amid legal gamesmanship in the runup to a bench trial next week on allegations that Meta poses a public nuisance. It’s the second phase of a case that already resulted in $375 million in civil penalties on a jury’s determination that Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

Prosecutors are asking the court to order a series of changes to child accounts on social media aimed at reining in addictive features, improving age verification and preventing child sexual exploitation through default privacy settings and closer oversight.

Meta executives have emphasized that the company continuously improves child safety and addresses compulsive social media use. The company says its being singled out among hundreds of apps that teens use.

In a court filing unsealed Thursday, Meta said it was unfeasible for the company to meet a proposed requirement for 99% accuracy in verifying that child users are at least 13 years old, among other demands.

“As a practical matter, this requirement effectively requires Meta to shut down its services — for all users in the state — or else comply with impossible obligations,” Meta said in the filing.

Such a shutdown across a population of 2.1 million residents in New Mexico could silence personal communication on Meta’s immensely popular platforms, which also include Facebook and WhatsApp, and also impact their use for commercial advertising.

By withdrawing from New Mexico, Meta would satisfy any concerns about harm to children, but the message could appear intentionally hostile and might lead to unintended consequences, said Eric Goldman, codirector of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law in California.

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Australia’s Under-16 Social Media Ban Fails: 73% Ignore It

Australia’s under-16 social media ban has been in force for four months and the headline finding from a new working paper out of the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute is that around three-quarters of the teenagers it targets are ignoring it.

The paper, “Why Bans Fail: Tipping Points and Australia’s Social Media Ban,” surveyed 746 Australian teenagers between March and April 2026. Among 14- and 15-year-olds covered by the ban, only about 27% are complying. The other 73% are still using Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X, YouTube, Reddit, Twitch, Threads, or Kick, the ten platforms the law designates off-limits to anyone under 16.

The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 took effect on 10 December 2025, making Australia the first country to outlaw teenage social media accounts at the federal level.

More than a dozen other countries and numerous US states are now considering versions of the same approach. The Australian model places enforcement entirely on the platforms, which face penalties of up to A$49.5 million for failing to take “reasonable steps” to keep under-16s off their services. Teenagers themselves face no legal sanction.

The teenagers know this. According to the survey, only 22% of banned teens believe they personally face any consequence for using a banned platform.

47% correctly understand that the consequences fall on the companies. Awareness of the ban is near-universal at 86%. The teens aren’t confused about what the law says. They’ve simply concluded, accurately, that the law isn’t aimed at them.

Getting around the restrictions takes minimal effort. 75% of banned teens describe circumvention as easy or very easy.

The most common workarounds are the obvious ones: lying about age on verification prompts (57%), entering false birthdates at sign-up (44%), borrowing a parent’s or older sibling’s account (42%), and routing through a VPN (30%). 64% of 14- and 15-year-olds in the survey have not had their accounts removed at all. The platforms haven’t found them. A quarter of non-compliers report that a parent, older sibling, or other adult helped them sign up for a new account after a previous one was deactivated.

The researchers also asked teenagers a more interesting question. What share of your peers would need to stop using social media before you stopped? The average answer was 69%. Some teens placed the threshold even higher. The result holds across every way the question was framed, whether the reference group was age peers, classmates, the wider school, or “a typical person your age.” The numbers came out between 62% and 69% in every variant.

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UK Gov’t Promises More Social Media “Restrictions”

While embattled PM Sir Keir Starmer takes a pointless grilling on the even more pointless existence of Peter Mandelson, other members of his cabinet were busily paving the way for the next construction phase of our increasingly dystopian society.

Speaking to Sky News earlier today, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson promised…

“more action to keep young people safe online, including around social media”.

Which is delightfully vague.

Education Minister Olivia Bailey kept her cards similarly close to her chest, whilst trying to sound forceful:

“It is a question of how we act, not if, but to put this beyond any doubt, we are placing a clear statutory requirement that the Secretary of State ‘must’, rather than ‘may’, act […] We are clear that under any outcome, we will impose some form of age or functionality restrictions for children under 16.”

So we know they’re going to do something…we just don’t know what. And, if I had to guess, neither do Bridget or Olivia. Neither seems like the kind of people that get kept in the loop, and that flavour of waffle is usually the reserve of those who have no idea what’s going on.

Many commenters – both for and against – have interpreted this promised action as an Australia-style social media ban for children. Certainly, that’s what Conservative MP Laura Trott seems to think in her champagne-popping tweet:

…but the signs might be pointing in another direction.

After all, the Social Media Ban is practically on the books. It was introduced as an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools bill, and has already passed the Lords four times. It could have become law already, but Ministers and MPs have repeatedly overturned the vote, declaring the need for further consultation.

Then, earlier today and coinciding with this government pledge to take action, the Independent published a report that suggests Australia’s social media ban doesn’t work.

Two thirds of Australian teens still using social media despite under-16s ban

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Children pushed to suicide by online grooming network targeting kids through games and chat apps

A grieving British Columbia father is going after an online extremist group after his teenage daughter was allegedly groomed into taking her own life by a disturbing online network that targets children through popular gaming and messaging platforms.

The group, known as 764 or “the Com,” has been described as an international extremist network that preys on children as young as nine through apps such as Roblox, Discord and Telegram. Members are accused of manipulating young users into self-harm, harming pets, committing violent acts and ultimately attempting suicide, often while being watched online.

The father said his daughter Penelope loved amusement parks, zombie movies and creating digital art through games like Minecraft and Roblox. But over time, her behaviour changed dramatically. Her grades collapsed, she stopped attending school and began self-harming.

He later discovered she had allegedly been groomed by individuals connected to the group.

He said members sent him videos of his daughter trying to harm the family cat and that multiple suicide attempts may have been livestreamed. Penelope died in February 2025, three days before her 16th birthday.

Authorities in Canada have reportedly classified 764 as a terrorist organization, with investigations and charges emerging in multiple jurisdictions.

Public awareness remains dangerously low, and this is another reminder that parents should closely monitor children’s online activity. Once vulnerable youth are drawn into these networks, reversing the psychological damage can be extremely difficult.

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FACT CHECK: An X Account in 2023 Tweeted Name of Alleged WHCA Dinner Shooter in Only Post to Platform

CLAIM: A mysterious X account using the screen name “Henry Martinez” posted the name of alleged White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner shooter Cole Allen in December 2023, the only tweet made on the account.

VERDICT: TRUE. Social media users discovered the tweet shortly after authorities identified Allen as the suspect arrested at the Washington Hilton. The account, identified as @HenryMa79561893, posted the message at 6:07 p.m. on December 21, 2023, and has remained inactive since that date.

The mysterious nature of the post has divided internet users into two camps. Some dismiss it as pure coincidence, while others believe there may be a more complex explanation. The single tweet has generated thousands of replies and sparked numerous conspiracy theories across various social media platforms. Although the theories are flying hot and heavy, the initial question of if the post by “Henry Martinez” is real has been definitively answered.

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‘Staged Theatrical Event’: Bluesky Leftists Insist Latest Trump Assassination Attempt Was a False Flag

President Donald Trump was the apparent target of another assassination attempt at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night.

The event was safely evacuated after shots were fired in the lobby as a man attempted to breach the Secret Service protection.

The suspect has since been identified as 31-year-old Cole Allen, a school teacher from Torrance, California.

A Secret Service Agent was shot and injured during the incident.

However, the miserable leftists over on Bluesky are absolutely convinced that the event was a “staged theatrical event.”

Among their wild theories was the idea that the attack would somehow increase Republican success in the midterms and distract from Trump’s alleged dealings with Jeffrey Epstein.

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Top MAGA influencer revealed to be AI — created by a guy in India who made a mint off lonely men online

A comely MAGA influencer who racked up millions of followers with patriotic content of her posing in a bikini while ice fishing, drinking Coors Light and shooting guns has been unmasked — as an Indian man who put himself through med school on the proceeds of his trickery.

“Sam,” a 22-year-old orthopedic surgeon in training, told Wired that he got the idea to sell AI-generated images of a young woman in a bikini while scrounging for money in school — and trying to save up enough to emigrate to the US after graduation.

He turned to Google’s Gemini AI for advice and decided to create a “hot girl” crafted specifically for the “MAGA/conservative niche,” after the software told him that “the conservative audience (especially older men in the US) often has higher disposable income and is more loyal,” according to Wired.

And that’s how Emily Hart was born.

According to her profile, she was a registered nurse with Jennifer Lawrence looks who offered red-meat posts to lonely conservative men online.

One post showed her firing a rifle with the caption: “If you want a reason to unfollow: Christ is king, abortion is murder, and all illegals must be deported,” and “POV: You were assigned intelligent at birth, but you identify as liberal.”

Sam told the magazine, “Every day I’d write something pro-Christian, pro-Second Amendment, pro-life, anti-abortion, anti-woke, and anti-immigration.”

The account “blew up,” and Emily Hart had 10,000 followers within a month.

Every reel he posted garnered millions of views and earned him more followers.

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Federal Judge Blocks Arkansas Social Media Law on First Amendment Grounds

A federal judge blocked Arkansas Act 900 today, one day before the law was set to take effect, handing the state its second courtroom defeat in the same fight over who gets to decide what people can see and say online.

We obtained a copy of the order for you here.

US District Judge Timothy L. Brooks granted NetChoice’s motion for a preliminary injunction, freezing enforcement of a statute that would have imposed strict liability on social media platforms for a growing list of “addictive practices,” forced default settings on anyone in Arkansas the platform couldn’t verify as an adult, and required platforms to build parental dashboards tracking minors who don’t even have accounts. The ruling came in the Western District of Arkansas, Fayetteville Division.

The First Amendment problem is obvious. The government wrote a law that restricts what platforms can say, who they can say it to, and when. It restricts what minors can see and post. Then it backed those restrictions with $10,000-per-day fines and rules so vague that platforms cannot tell in advance what will trigger liability. Each of those features is a constitutional problem on its own. Act 900 combined all of them.

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Elon Musk Is a No-Show for Questioning in French Court Hearing Into X Social Media Platform and Grok Chatbot

France is scrambling to censor free-speech X.

We have been reporting on how France is waging lawfare against free-speech X platform, and how US authorities refused to aid in the nefarious lawsuit, as you can read in DOJ Refuses Cooperation, Warns France to Back Off Censorship Probe Targeting X Platform.

Today (20), it arose that the platform owner, tech billionaire Elon Musk did not appear at a summons for questioning in a French probe into X and its AI ‌chatbot, Grok.

The investigation began looking into alleged abuse of algorithms and fraudulent data extraction, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office.

Reuters reported:

“The investigation, which has been expanded in past months to include suspected complicity in the distribution of child pornography and the creation of sexual deepfakes by Grok, has added to strains in relations between the U.S. and Europe over Big ​Tech and free speech.”

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DOJ Refuses Cooperation, Warns France to Back Off Censorship Probe Targeting X Platform

The U.S. Justice Department has flatly refused to help French authorities investigate Elon Musk’s social media platform X.

In a letter sent Friday obtained by The Wall Street Journal , the DOJ’s Office of International Affairs said the French probe is an attempt to regulate a U.S. company through criminal law.

“This investigation seeks to use the criminal legal system in France to regulate a public square for the free expression of ideas and opinions in a manner contrary to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution,” the letter states.

The department added that France’s requests “constitute an effort to entangle the United States in a politically charged criminal proceeding aimed at wrongfully regulating through prosecution the business activities of a social media platform.”

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