Lawmakers in the state legislature approved the bipartisan Arkansas Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act Tuesday and the measure now heads to the governor's desk for signature. HB-1717 is modeled after the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) 2.0 (see 2503040037), and would ban tech companies from collecting, retaining and disclosing minors' data, except in a few situations.
Texas will excise the private right of action from its app store age-verification bill, Rep. Caroline Fairly (R) told the House Trade Committee on Tuesday evening.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti (R) told a court Monday that the decision in NetChoice, LLC v. Griffin demonstrates the weakness of NetChoice's argument for a preliminary injunction against a law that requires age verification before accessing social media accounts. NetChoice urged the U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee on April 1 to use the Griffin ruling (see 2504010044), to enjoin the law (see 2504020033).
A proposed committee substitute for a North Carolina bill aimed at creating social media protections for minors passed the House Commerce and Economic Committee Tuesday by voice vote and will now be referred to the Rules, Calendar and Operations of the House.
X asked the court to deny Bright Data's request to turn over additional evidence as part of a copyright case. In a letter Monday, X claimed it has provided "voluminous information," and Bright, a data scraper, is attempting to distract and stall the court despite withholding its scraping activity logs.
Three amendments to a bill that would ban tech companies from collecting, retaining and disclosing minors' data, except in a few outlined situations, passed by a voice vote in the Arkansas House Aging, Children and Youth & Legislative Affairs Committee Monday. Rep. Zack Gramlich (R), one of the bill's sponsors, said the amendments served to clarify language and definitions in the bill.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) on Friday appealed an injunction on the state’s Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, re-emphasizing the need to protect children online. The U.S. District Court for Northern California had granted trade association NetChoice’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the Act on March 13, ruling that the legislation was content-based, likely violating the First Amendment, and the state failed to allege real harms.
The Irish Data Protection Commission announced Friday it's investigating how social media site X processes personal data from publicly accessible content that EU/European Economic Area users post on its platform to train Generative AI Large Language Models. A major focus of the probe is X's Grok chatbot, which an LLM of the same name powers. The probe will examine X's compliance with a range of General Data Protection Regulation provisions, including the lawfulness and transparency of the processing, the DPC said.
The U.S. District Court for Northern California on Thursday ordered that social media platform X submit server logs and other evidence in its copyright case against a data-scraping company by Monday, April 14 at noon PT. The evidence was supposed to be presented to data scraper Bright Data -- the defendant -- but X has yet to do so, the court said.
Some Florida lawmakers aren’t hiding that they want “a backdoor into any end-to-end encrypted social media platforms that allow accounts for minors,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation blogged Friday.