X is fighting Andrew Tate’s attempt to unmask his critics
X is fighting Andrew Tate’s attempt to unmask his critics

X is fighting for its users’ right to anonymity against the far-right influencers and accused human traffickers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are seeking to unmask their online critics. The Tate brothers filed suit against the owners of more than a dozen social media accounts – several of them run pseudonymously – last year, claiming […]

X agrees to crack down on illegal hate and terror content in the UK
X agrees to crack down on illegal hate and terror content in the UK

British online safety regulator Ofcom says it has accepted new commitments from X that aim to better protect UK users from seeing illegal hate and terror content on the platform. Under the agreement announced today, X says it will withhold access in the UK to accounts reported posting illegal terrorist content and determined to be […]

Cancel Culture Critic To NYU Grads: Protect Your Attention, Do Hard Things

Controversial commencement speaker Jonathan Haidt urges graduates to delete social media apps on their phones and invest in real-world relationships.

Linux devs are fighting the new age-gated internet
Linux devs are fighting the new age-gated internet

In January, Colorado lawmakers introduced a proposal to make operating systems collect users’ ages and pass them to app developers. The bill, SB26-051, had clearly been designed for commercial platforms like iOS and Android – one of numerous plans to age-gate the internet through users’ devices. It was intended to provide information that would let […]

Use this map to find the data centers in your backyard
Use this map to find the data centers in your backyard

When Oregon resident Isabelle Reksopuro heard Google was gobbling up public land to fuel its data centers in her home state, she didn’t initially know what to believe. “There’s a lot of misinformation about data centers,” she said. “Google has denied taking that land.” Technically, she explains, The Dalles, a city near the Washington state […]

Americans do not want AI data centers in their backyards
Americans do not want AI data centers in their backyards

Over 70 percent of Americans oppose AI data center construction in their area, according to a new Gallup survey. Just 7 percent said they were “strongly” in favor of new data centers. According to Gallup, data centers are so strongly disliked that Americans would prefer to live near a nuclear power plant than a data […]

How companies weaponize the terms of service against you
How companies weaponize the terms of service against you

Today, I’m talking with Brendan Ballou, founder of the Public Integrity Project and author of a new book, called When Companies Run the Courts, about the rise of forced arbitration. Brendan’s actually been on the show before — his previous book, Plunder, was about private equity taking over huge swaths of American life, and that conversation […]

The Major Reforms The TSA—And Passengers—Desperately Need

There’s already an ongoing solution to the long lines for those security checkpoints at airports; apply it nationwide.

Trump administration defends right to ban content moderation experts from US
Trump administration defends right to ban content moderation experts from US

The Trump administration is fighting for the right to keep some social media moderation advocates out of the US. On Wednesday, US District Court Judge James Boasberg heard arguments in a lawsuit between the nonprofit Coalition for Independent Technology Research (CITR) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other Trump administration officials. The suit concerns […]

The crypto Clarity Act returns to the Senate this week. The banks are already trying to kill it.
The crypto Clarity Act returns to the Senate this week. The banks are already trying to kill it.

Hello and welcome to Regulator, the newsletter for Verge subscribers that goes into tech shenanigans that take place in the backrooms of Washington. Really, it sometimes does feel like the online series The Backrooms: a parallel universe with no internal logic, evil corporations lurking in the background, and mind-rending eldritch horrors around every corner. (Not […]