YouTube TV is thriving, and its rivals want a piece of the action. Recently, media ratings giant Nielsen confirmed that YouTube is now not only the most-watched streaming service in the United States, but also the...more
7/23/2025
/ Censorship ,
First Amendment ,
Foreign Students ,
Free Speech ,
Mental Health ,
Metaverse ,
Political Campaigns ,
Pornography ,
Social Media ,
Telecommunications ,
Television ,
Texas ,
TikTok ,
Warning Labels ,
YouTube
This odyssey began when an old laptop was discovered by a curious 14-year-old boy in Kansas. The boy, known only as “QR,” used it to sneak onto a handful of adult websites over two months last year, racking up 118 virtual...more
7/2/2025
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
At-Will Employment ,
Copyright ,
Copyright Infringement ,
Cyber Threats ,
Employment Policies ,
Exploitation ,
Facebook ,
Fines ,
Fraud ,
Free Speech ,
Influencers ,
LGBTQ ,
Metaverse ,
Minors ,
Social Media ,
Termination ,
Websites
President Donald Trump has signed the TAKE IT DOWN Act, a new federal law aimed at curbing the spread of non-consensual AI-generated pornography. The law makes it a criminal offense to create or share explicit deepfake images...more
5/23/2025
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
Consent ,
Criminal Prosecution ,
Deep Fake ,
First Amendment ,
New Legislation ,
Online Platforms ,
Pornography ,
Privacy Laws ,
Revenge Porn ,
Social Media
CONGRESS MOVES TO BLOCK ALL STATE AI LAWS -
In a late-night addition to a sweeping budget proposal, the House Energy and Commerce Committee inserted a provision in a large reconciliation package that would block state and...more
OHIO SOCIAL MEDIA LAW STRUCK DOWN -
On April 16, 2025, a federal judge in Ohio ended the state’s ambitious plan to severely limit social media access for minors. The court permanently blocked Ohio’s Attorney General from...more
California’s attempt to impose content moderation transparency requirements on social media platforms has suffered a significant setback. Last month, the state reached a settlement with X Corp. (formerly Twitter), effectively...more
If you want the perfect illustration of the high-stakes world of tech acquisition, look no further than the mad scramble for TikTok. Alexis Ohanian, Reddit’s wunderkind co-founder, has joined Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty...more
3/24/2025
/ Acquisitions ,
Arbitration ,
California ,
Consumer Privacy Rights ,
COPPA ,
Data Privacy ,
First Amendment ,
Mergers ,
Online Safety for Children ,
Privacy Laws ,
Regulatory Requirements ,
Social Media ,
TikTok
Looks like WhatsApp just leveled up—whether it wanted to or not. Meta’s messaging giant has officially been crowned a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) under the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which basically...more
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the dismissal of a case that sought to hold Facebook parent company Meta liable for the 2015 mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal...more
In a rare unanimous decision, on January 17, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law that bans TikTok in the United States on national security grounds so long as it has its current ownership structure. TikTok chose to make the...more
1/23/2025
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
China ,
Data Collection ,
Executive Orders ,
First Amendment ,
Google ,
National Security ,
Privacy Concerns ,
Privacy Laws ,
SCOTUS ,
Social Media ,
TikTok ,
Trump Administration ,
User-Generated Content ,
YouTube
The Federal Trade Commission’s new rules banning phony online reviews are now in effect. These rules aim to curb false consumer testimonials, the buying of fake reviews from brokers, review suppression, falsifying social...more
10/31/2024
/ Bankruptcy Trustees ,
Chapter 11 ,
Defamation ,
En Banc Review ,
Fake Reviews ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Online Marketplace ,
Online Reviews ,
Social Media ,
TikTok ,
Unfair Competition ,
Web Tracking ,
Wiretapping
California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed SB-1047. The controversial bill was intended to establish safety guidelines for artificial intelligence models and would have been the first significant piece of state AI...more
10/8/2024
/ Arbitration ,
Artificial Intelligence ,
California ,
Deep Fake ,
Governor Newsom ,
Governor Vetoes ,
Mental Health ,
Online Safety for Children ,
Severance Agreements ,
Social Media ,
Twitter
Sick of the “very demure, very mindful” social media trend yet? The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office probably is too. Our national nightmare began on August 5 when TikToker Jools LeBron uploaded a video of herself...more
9/25/2024
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
Conspiracies ,
Data Collection ,
EU ,
First Amendment ,
Minors ,
Money Laundering ,
Music Industry ,
Social Media ,
State Attorneys General ,
TikTok ,
Trademark Registration ,
USPTO ,
Warning Labels ,
Wire Fraud
The Federal Trade Commission has finalized a new rule aimed at curtailing false, misleading, and otherwise fraudulent reviews on online retail sites. Fake reviews are a significant problem for the big e-commerce platforms,...more
8/28/2024
/ Cybersquatting ,
Defamation ,
Domain Names ,
E-Commerce ,
Endorsements ,
Fake Reviews ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Google ,
Instagram ,
Microsoft ,
Online Reviews ,
Reddit ,
Sexual Harassment ,
Social Media
Social media giant TikTok has been sued by the United States for allegedly collecting data on children under thirteen illegally. The suit claims the app, which is owned by China-based parent company ByteDance, allowed...more
8/19/2024
/ Big Tech ,
Boycotts ,
Data Collection ,
Deep Fake ,
DMCA ,
Electronic Frontier Foundation ,
Minors ,
Parental Consent ,
Section 230 ,
Securities Fraud ,
Social Media ,
TikTok ,
Twitter
In a rare example of bipartisan agreement, the dramatically named DEFIANCE (Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits) Act unanimously passed the Senate. The bill allows victims of AI-generated deepfake...more
8/6/2024
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
Blackmail ,
Censorship ,
COPPA ,
Copyright Office ,
Deep Fake ,
Facebook ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Intellectual Property Protection ,
Intent to Defraud ,
Metaverse ,
Nigeria ,
Pornography ,
Section 230 ,
Social Media
In our fourth installment of our six-part series examining Section 230—the segment of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA) that immunizes online service providers from liability stemming from content created by third...more
As we reported in 2023, Utah was the first state in the nation to enact laws limiting minors’ use of social media. In early March 2024, Republican Governor Spencer Cox effectively repealed and replaced the previously enacted...more
4/4/2024
/ Algorithms ,
Artificial Intelligence ,
Big Tech ,
Data Collection ,
Governor DeSantis ,
Immunity ,
Liability ,
Minors ,
OMB ,
Parental Consent ,
Section 230 ,
Social Media ,
Targeted Digital Advertising
In the prior two installments of our six-part series examining Section 230, the section of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA) that immunizes online service providers from liability stemming from the publication and...more
Here at Socially Aware we talk a lot about Section 230, the section of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA) that immunizes social media platforms and other online service providers from liability stemming from content...more
Social media continues to dominate the headlines this spring, with several high-profile events capturing the media’s, regulators’, and lawmakers’ attention.
Jack Owoc, founder and former CEO of Bang Energy (“Bang,” a...more
Section 23o, the “26 words that changed the Internet,” is once again under scrutiny from lawmakers.
At the federal level, Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary panel’s subcommittee on privacy, technology, and...more
In early March 2022, a coalition of state attorneys general launched an investigation of TikTok to determine whether the social media platform, which is popular among young Americans, causes long-term harm to them....more
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill continue to take aim at social media platforms that collect and use personal information that build algorithms to target individuals across a variety of dimensions when users engage with those...more
In late October, Facebook announced that it would change its name to Meta, signaling a shift of the social media giant’s focus toward the metaverse, a virtual space where social media, gaming, augmented reality, virtual...more
12/21/2021
/ Communications Decency Act ,
Facebook ,
Facial Recognition Technology ,
JAMA ,
LinkedIn ,
Pinterest ,
Rebranding ,
Social Media ,
Technology ,
Video Recordings ,
Websites