If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. X has told the Australian Senate committee that a proposal expanding the powers of the nation’s top censor would let the regulator demand documents from people outside of Australia. The only connection that would be required for X to have to hand over documents to Australia’s eSafety Commissioner is that the person is “affiliated” with a platform. The submission, published Tuesday, targets the Online Safety Amendment (Strengthening Enforcement for the Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2026. The bill cleared the House of Representatives on July 1 and hit the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee on the same day. That committee will report on August 25. The changes would “compel any person outside Australia…to provide information and documents merely because they are ‘affiliated’ with a company,” X said in a filing. X described that as being “in clear conflict” with international legal principles, warning that the amendment “raises potential for a severe impact on international comity.” X said the plans gave no “due regard to procedural fairness, privacy, the broader impacts on online services, and Australia’s digital economy.” A company that fails to take “reasonable” steps to keep under-16s off its platform currently faces a penalty of up to A$49.5 million or 30,000 penalty units. The bill doubles that to A$99 million, around US$69 million, for systematic breaches. Under the bill, eSafety could also compel the records from the third-party digital ID vendors that platforms hire, as well as from app store operators. Those vendors hold face scans, ID document images, and inference data drawn from Australians who handed over sensitive data in order to stay on the platform after Australia banned social media for under 16s. The bill would give the government regulator a legal route into all of that data that it recently mandated to be collected. eSafety complained to the panel that its current authority to compel documents lags behind that of other regulators and that it’s left to depend on “representations from providers about their own compliance.” Without power over third-party age assurance providers, the regulator said investigations face “significant” barriers. eSafety is preparing a possible enforcement lawsuit against five platforms and says its limited powers are slowing that work. A US congressional committee has already asked Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to testify, accusing her of imperiling American free speech. Elon Musk called the ban a “backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians” in an earlier post. DIGI, one of the industry groups representing several online platforms, told the inquiry that the eSafety commissioner already holds enforcement powers that have not yet been put to use, the implication being that they should use those powers before demanding more. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post X Warns Australia’s Censor Wants Reach Beyond Australia appeared first on Reclaim The Net: Free Speech, Privacy, Digital Rights.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The final rules for New York’s SAFE for Kids Act require users to verify their age (which means a form of digital ID) before an algorithm can curate their feed or a platform can send notifications after midnight. Attorney General Letitia James released the rules on July 28 alongside Governor Kathy Hochul. They take effect January 25, 2027. The law is written for under-18s but, as always has to be the case, the age-checking reaches everyone. To keep an algorithmic feed or overnight notifications, a user above 17 has to prove to the platform that they are an adult. Confirming who counts as an adult means collecting government IDs, face scans, phone numbers and email addresses from people who until now typed a birth date and moved on. James rejected the privacy objection to all this. The rules are “not a question of privacy,” she said. Platforms can accept a government-issued ID upload and the rules force them to offer at least one other option. James’s office also lists a selfie image or video, or an email address or phone number cross-checked against other data that is held on a person. Any of those hands a company something it can tie to a real identity. It’s clear that the law isn’t shying away from allowing platforms to collect sensitive user data, including biometrics, and allowing cross-referencing against other data. For minors, the default changes. Instead of a personalized feed, users under 18 see posts from accounts they follow in a set sequence such as chronological order, unless a parent consents to the algorithm version. Notifications between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m. also stop without parental consent, and it’s not clear how that works with travel or time zones. A minor can ask a parent to switch either feature back on, but the request only goes through if the minor agrees to let the parent be notified of it. A parent who wants to grant consent goes through digital ID checks too. A minor who lacks consent keeps access to the rest of the app, including search. An “acceptable” check has to meet an accuracy standard. It can wrongly pass a minor off as an adult only so often and the tolerance widens as children get older and harder to tell from adults. The rate has to stay at or below 0.1 percent for children up to age 7, 1 percent for ages 8 to 13, 2 percent for 14 and 15, 8 percent at 16, and 15 percent at 17. Those ceilings leave out users who refuse to hand over data or whose result comes back inconclusive. The check must also block at least 98 percent of attempts to get around it. Companies run annual testing, which means a lot of data collection, and keep the results for at least 10 years. Information collected to check age or obtain parental consent cannot be used for anything else, and platforms must delete or “de-identify” it immediately after use and collect only the minimum needed. We all know the de-identifying data does very little, especially in the AI era where people can be profiled in unlimited new ways and people’s identities can be detected from their usage patterns. And we also know that platforms say they delete user data after use and then don’t. That promise holds only as long as the company holding the data honors it or a hack, breach, or bug gets in the way. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, X and YouTube were the platforms officials named at the announcement but the rules reach any service whose users spend at least 20 percent of their time on addictive feeds. Websites are exempt if they have fewer than 5 million monthly users or fewer than 20,000 monthly users who are minors. Breaking the law can cost a company up to $5,000 per violation. Hochul had little patience for any objections to the law. “Social media companies tell me, ‘We have no way of knowing whether someone’s under 18 or not.’ I said, ‘You’re smart people. Use AI to figure it out,'” she said. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post New York Will Require Digital ID Checks for Social Feeds appeared first on Reclaim The Net: Free Speech, Privacy, Digital Rights.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The European Commission plans to designate OpenAI’s ChatGPT and the gaming platform Roblox as a “very large online platform” under its online censorship regulation, the Digital Services Act. The label is expected as soon as August, Bloomberg reported. Both services reportedly crossed the law’s line of 45 million monthly users in the European Union, the level at which the DSA’s strongest obligations kick in. That top tier demands the two American companies to file transparency reports with the EU, draw up risk-mitigation plans, submit to an annual independent audit, and pay a yearly fee to the Commission. Breaking the rules brings penalties of up to 6 percent of annual global revenue, not just a percentage of EU revenue. The DSA also compels American platforms to police content the EU deems harmful. For Roblox, this would be the first time a gaming platform carries the DSA’s systemic-risk duties, including obligations around the protection of minors. Robolx has already rolled out tighter controls in recent months. ChatGPT clears the threshold by a wide margin, with OpenAI’s own data showing ChatGPT search reaching 120.4 million monthly users in the EU over the six months to the end of September 2025. This puts it right in the crosshairs of EU regulators. Interestly, an OpenAI spokesperson told Euractiv that those published figures count only search use, not the chatbot’s other functions. How far the designation reaches is still open, and whether large language models fall under the DSA at all is unsettled. The Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told Reuters that officials were still assessing OpenAI’s user numbers and that classifying AI companies under the DSA will be decided on a “case-by-case” basis. Reportedly, the regulator is unsure how to classify ChatGPT, and any decision was expected to wait until at least mid-2026. Once designated, a platform has four months to comply with the EU’s strictest demands. It must open new channels between regulators and users, monitor users closely so that it can report criminal offenses, hand monitoring data to the Commission and national regulators, and let vetted “researchers” into its systems. The two companies are joining a regime that has already levied heavy fines. The Commission fined X €120 million last December over “deceptive” design and a lack of transparency, a decision the company appealed. More than 12 investigations into digital platforms have opened since the censorship law took effect. As of April 1, 2026, the EU counted 21 services as very large platforms or search engines, among them are Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and X. Designation carries a running cost too. A VLOP contributes up to 0.05 percent of its worldwide net income toward the Commission’s supervision, and Brussels collected around €54.8 million in supervisory fees last year. All of this lands while Washington is already treating EU controls against American tech firms as a trade grievance. After the Commission fined Google €890 million for breaching the Digital Markets Act, President Trump announced a Section 301 investigation into European penalties levied against US companies over the past five years, called the fines illegal and discriminatory, demanded they be reversed, and even floated a substantial tariff that would negate the impact of the fines. The United States, he wrote, is not a “PIGGYBANK” for Europe. Just days earlier, 25 Republican lawmakers had urged him to aim Section 301 at both the DMA and the DSA, arguing the rules fall mostly on American companies. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post ChatGPT and Roblox Face the EU’s Strictest Online Rules appeared first on Reclaim The Net: Free Speech, Privacy, Digital Rights.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. California Democrats, Senator Adam Schiff and Representative Ro Khanna, reintroduced the AI Ads Act on Monday. The bill would change the Federal Election Campaign Act to ban the “fraudulent” use of AI to impersonate candidates or committees in federal elections. We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.  The bill extends existing bans on fraudulent misrepresentation to cover the content generated wholly or partly by AI. It would also extend the reach to anyone falsely claiming they represent a candidate or political organization. Schiff’s office said it would remove the requirement that a misrepresentation be shown to be “damaging” before enforcement can begin, dropping any need to prove harm. The bill has First Amendment implications. Schiff first introduced the measure as a House member in 2024. The reintroduction responds to ad spending in two recent California primary contests. Republican Spencer Pratt’s viral run for Los Angeles mayor leaned on AI video ads from director Charles Curran, one a “Pratt Man” riff on Batman. Curran went on to make ads for GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton criticizing Governor Newsom, Kamala Harris, and Xavier Becerra. A federal judge struck down California’s version of this idea last year. On August 29, 2025, Judge John Mendez ruled in Kohls v. Bonta that AB 2839, the deepfake law Newsom signed in 2024 to shield Harris from AI parodies, “discriminates based on content, viewpoint, and speaker” and failed scrutiny. He permanently enjoined it. AB 2839 at least carried a carveout for satire and parody, though it forced such content to wear a disclaimer. Judge Mendez found even that suspect, noting that a “disclaimer for parody or satire would kill the joke,” and that the law covered protected parody because it did not require the parody to actually fool anyone. Removing the AI Ads Act’s harm threshold would reach the same kind of stylized, obviously fake videos the court protected, so it’s unclear where Schiff and co are going with this. “AI-generated fraudulent advertising which uses the likeness or voices of candidates to misrepresent their positions, campaigns, or causes, or otherwise misrepresents a candidate’s point of view is not only wrong,” Schiff said. He called it “a serious threat to our democracy that should concern all Americans regardless of their party.” Khanna said AI should not be “used to mislead voters or undermine our democracy.” Despite the wording of the bill, Schiff says the bill is aimed at fraudulent impersonation rather than a ban on AI political ads. His office says it tracks bipartisan recommendations the Federal Election Commission issued in 2022 to modernize campaign fraud rules. The backers include Common Cause, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the Campaign Legal Center, Protect Democracy, and Public Citizen. Supporters say more than 30 states have passed laws on deceptive AI election content while Congress has set no federal standard. This bill, unlike the California law, contains no parody carveout at all. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Schiff and Khanna Revive the AI Ads Act With No Parody Carveout appeared first on Reclaim The Net: Free Speech, Privacy, Digital Rights.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Russia’s FSB has charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with aiding terrorist activity and demanded that he be placed on an international wanted list. This formalizes a case Durov first disclosed in February, one the FSB ties to how Ukrainian intelligence allegedly used a dating bot running on his app. The FSB said Telegram had been used “to prepare and co-ordinate acts of sabotage and terror” inside Russia and had failed to remove channels, chats, and bots used by Ukraine. The charge, assistance to terrorist activities under Article 205.1 of the Russian Criminal Code, carries up to 15 years in prison. The bot is called Daivinchik/Leo. It works like Tinder but works inside Telegram, with up to 16 million monthly users. The FSB says Ukrainian operatives posed as young women there to befriend young Russians before pressuring or coercing them into attacks. According to the Investigative Committee, Russia’s federal investigating authority, the agents sent phishing links about supposedly hacked government accounts, then, posing as Russian law enforcement, pushed their targets into setting fires and assaulting police. Russian authorities say 46 people aged 12 to 22 have been detained since July 2025 across 16 regions over the alleged campaign. The FSB released a video it said showed several young people confessing to setting fire to gas stations after being recruited by anonymous handlers through Telegram. Telegram’s press account on X answered with a photo of Durov raising his middle finger, an image Russian media noted he first published in 2011 during his fight with Mail.ru over control of VKontakte, the network he founded before Telegram. The post drew 1.3 million views by morning. Durov rejected that earlier case in February. “Each day, the authorities fabricate new pretexts to restrict Russians’ access to Telegram as they seek to suppress the right to privacy and free speech,” he said then. He called it “a sad spectacle of a state afraid of its own people.” The prosecution is happening alongside Russia’s push to move users off Telegram and onto MAX. Moscow has throttled Telegram’s traffic by 55%, according to Roskomnadzor, its own communications regulator. It has steered users toward MAX, a state-built messenger with no encryption between users, pre-installed on every smartphone sold in Russia since September 2025. Telegram is used by nearly 90 million Russians each month and around 950 million people worldwide, is what MAX is meant to replace. Durov has said Russia is restricting the app to force its citizens onto a state-controlled service built for surveillance and political censorship. Unusually, Russia is charging the man who built the app, not the people who allegedly broke its laws inside it. Durov has already experienced a version of this in France, where police detained him at an airport in 2024 over allegations that Telegram failed to counter criminal activity and cooperate with law enforcement. France lifted his travel ban last November and Durov denies wrongdoing and says Telegram exceeds its obligations to moderate content and answers valid legal requests. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Telegram Founder Pavel Durov Charged with Aiding Terrorism by Russia appeared first on Reclaim The Net: Free Speech, Privacy, Digital Rights.