Topic
Laws and regulatory frameworks, such as the UK Online Safety Act and Australia's child-safety rules, governing platform content, age checks and algorithms.
Australia's government introduced laws this week that would force social media platforms to let users turn off recommended content, BBC News reported. The package also adds a legal duty of care for online services. Feed teams get a design task and a liability question to size.
Reality
Ofcom is investigating whether Meta carried out suitable illegal-content and children's risk assessments before launching Instagram Instants in May. For product teams shipping to UK users, the case turns on when the risk work has to be finished and how much of it counts.
Perspective Coverage
13 publishersReality
Aylo is restoring Pornhub in Australia for users who pass Apple's iOS age checks, having blocked the country in March over rules backed by $49.5m fines. Australia's codes still place the duty to verify on the website, even though Apple now runs the check.
Reality
Culture secretary Lisa Nandy says the UK's under-16 social media ban, due in March, is only a staging post toward a more interventionist state. Platforms preparing for that deadline are building for a first tranche, with more promised by the minister now in charge.
Reality
Canberra's exposure draft takes a right Europe already granted and adds the part Europe left out: making platforms keep offering it. That obligation is also the rare online-safety rule a researcher can check in an afternoon.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishersReality
Pornhub's parent company started reading Apple's device-level under-18 signal in May. Ofcom's investigation is about the testing Aylo did before it switched that over. The liability stays with Aylo.
Perspective Coverage
4 publishersReality
The Trump administration used Australia's own public consultation to ask that American platforms be exempted from the proposed under-18 duty of care, a request that lands while the exposure draft is still being written.
Reality
A year after promoting the under-16 social media ban at the UN, Anthony Albanese is legislating a digital duty of care and an algorithm opt-out. The enforcement that has changed Meta's products so far came from Europe and the US.
Reality
Facebook, Instagram and TikTok would have to ask each Australian whether their default feed is algorithmic or friends-only. Approved researchers would get sanctioned fake accounts to test what the systems actually serve.
Reality