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Tech giant is protesting proposed law that would require large online platforms to pay ‘journalism usage fee’

Google has temporarily blocked links from local news outlets in California from appearing in search results in response to the advancement of a bill that would require tech companies to pay publications for links that articles share. The change applies only to some people using Google in California, though it is not clear how many.

The California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA) would require large online platforms to pay a “journalism usage fee” for linking to news sites based in the Golden state. The bill cleared the California assembly in 2023. To become law, it would need to pass in the Senate before being signed by the governor, Gavin Newsom.

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L'entreprise veut utiliser l'IA pour détecter et censurer les images pornographiques envoyées et reçues par les mineurs.

Company says it is testing out features as part of campaign to fight sexual scams and forms of ‘image abuse’

Instagram said it’s deploying new tools to protect young people and combat sexual extortion, including a feature that will automatically blur nudity in direct messages.

The social media company said in a blog post Thursday that it’s testing out the features as part of its campaign to fight sexual scams and other forms of “image abuse”, and to make it tougher for criminals to contact teens.

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Sponsored video promoted ultra low calorie diet without encouraging users to take medical advice, regulator rules

A post on Katie Price ’s Instagram account has been banned by the UK’s advertising regulator for irresponsibly encouraging a low calorie diet, while simultaneously failing to disclose it was an advert and making unauthorised weight loss claims.

The Instagram reel, a video shared on the glamour model’s account in August 2023, depicts her making meals throughout the day and talking about her efforts to lose weight while repeatedly promoting the Skinny Food Co line of low-calorie meals.

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Tech firms can do more, but it’s the government’s job to ensure children have safe places to play – and it’s not doing it

Three-quarters of children want to spend more time in nature. Having spent the Easter weekend trying to force four resistant teenagers off their phones and out for a nice walk over the Yorkshire Dales, admittedly I’ll have to take the National Trust’s word for this. But that’s what its survey of children aged between seven and 14 finds, anyway.

Kids don’t necessarily want to spend every waking minute hunched over a screen, however strongly they give that impression; even though retreating online satisfies the developmentally important desire to escape their annoying parents, even teenagers still want to run wild in the real world occasionally. Their relationship with phones is complex and maddening, but not a million miles off adults’ own love-hate relationship with social media; a greasy sugar-rush we crave but rarely feel better for indulging. Yet lately, longstanding parental unease over children’s screen habits has been hardening into something more like revolt.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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The royals are perennial clickbait, but the wild online bunkum over the Princess of Wales hints at new and darker forces

On TikTok, there is a short clip of what an AI voiceover claims is a supposed “ring glitch” in the video in which Princess of Wales reveals her cancer diagnosis. It has 1.3 million views. Others, in which users “break down” aspects of the video and analyse the saga with spurious evidence, also rack up millions of views and shares. I have then seen them surface on X, formerly known as Twitter, and even shared on WhatsApp by friends and family, who see in these videos, presented as factual and delivered in reporter-style, nothing that indicates that this is wild internet bunkum.

Something has changed about the way social media content is presented to us. It is both a huge and subtle shift. Until recently, types of content were segregated by platform. Instagram was for pictures and short reels, TikTok for longer videos, X for short written posts. Now Instagram reels post TikTok videos, which post Instagram reels, and all are posted on X. Often it feels like a closed loop, with the algorithm taking you further and further away from discretion and choice in who you follow. All social media apps now have the equivalent of a “For you” page, a feed of content from people you don’t follow, and which, if you don’t consciously adjust your settings, the homepage defaults to. The result is that increasingly, you have less control over what you see.

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What happened when a lifestyle influencer started eating what she liked?

Lee Tilghman entered the online world in the early 2010s, with a healthy food blog she had started in college. Influencing was just becoming a thing. When she moved to Instagram, with the rest of her generation, in 2014, and featured one of her smoothie bowls, she gained 20,000 followers overnight. “Brands began reaching out to send me products,” she remembers now.

Two years later, she quit her nine-to-five and moved from Connecticut to Los Angeles. Within a year, she gained another 100,000 followers, an agency and manager. “I was earning upwards of $15,000 a post and working with major food and lifestyle brands who’d sell out of whatever I posted about.”

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