The government announced today that it would add an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill requiring platforms to "remove this content no more than 48 hours after it is flagged to them." Platforms that do not do so would potentially face fines of 10 percent of "qualifying worldwide income" or have their services blocked in the UK. The amendment follows outrage over the Elon Musk-owned chatbot Grok's willingness to generate nude or sexualized images of people, mainly women and girls, which forced a climbdown
The European Union has opened a formal investigation into Shein after French regulators found listings for "child-like sex dolls" on the retail platform last year. The investigation will assess whether the systems Shein is using to curb illegal product sales are compliant with the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), according to the European Commission, including "content which could constitute child sexual abuse material."
On the veranda of her family's home, with her laptop balanced on a mud slab built into the wall, Monsumi Murmu works from one of the few places where the mobile signal holds. The familiar sounds of domestic life come from inside the house: clinking utensils, footsteps, voices. On her screen a very different scene plays: a woman is pinned down by a group of men, the camera shakes, there is shouting and the sound of breathing.
Ever since taking over the platform, Musk has had ongoing disputes with regulatory authorities in several nations, as he continues to push for X users to be able to share whatever they like within the app, within the boundaries of what's legal, as part of his free speech ethos. And Musk has been consistent on this, arguing all along that X users should be able to post anything that's not against local laws.
"Bound by Honor," billed as a "top series" on ReelShort, opens with a young woman being drugged and coerced into marriage. In "Divorced at the Wedding Day," a "popular" pick on DramaBox, a pregnant widow is whipped and pushed onto broken glass at an engagement party before being locked up in a crate. ReelShort and Disney-backed DramaBox are the market leaders in the rising category of micro dramas, made-for-mobile soaps that feature fast-paced action and wild plots.
When WIRED attempted to post a link on Facebook, we received a message that read: "Posts that look like spam according to our Community Guidelines are blocked on Facebook and can't be edited." Hours later, however, that message was updated to read: "Your content couldn't be shared, because this link goes against our Community Standards." The message linked to Meta's Community Standards homepage rather than a specific part of those rules.
On 13 January 2026, Bandcamp published "Keeping Bandcamp Human", declaring that "music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI is not permitted on Bandcamp", alongside a strict prohibition on AI-enabled impersonation of other artists or styles. The post invites users to report releases that appear to rely heavily on generative tools, and it explicitly reserves the right to remove music "on suspicion of being AI-generated".
The European Commission, the bloc's governing body, said on Monday that it had opened a formal investigation into X over the spread of illegal images, including possible child sexual abuse material, generated by Grok on the platform. The Commission said it would also extend an ongoing investigation into X's recommendation algorithm, with the regulator previously fining the social media platform $140 million over its "deceptive" blue checkmarks.
After the week-long Twitter backlash which received over 50,000 tweets under the hashtag #FBrape, Facebook agreed to update its policies, releasing a statement acknowledging that its systems to monitor and remove gender-based hate speech had failed. The backlash prompted 15 major advertisers, including Nissan and Nationwide, to suspend their Facebook marketing campaigns, and highlighted some of the issues brands potentially face when it comes to online advertising.
After months of negotiations, TikTok finalized a deal with several US-based investors days before the next deadline, after which TikTok would have allegedly been banned in the US. Today, TikTok was finally divested from ByteDance, which retains a 20% stake, while the other 80% is split between Oracle, Silver Lake, MGX and others. Each of those three companies gets a 15% stake.
Your YouTube Shorts feed might soon be filled with a lot more AI-generated content from your favorite creators - including AI-generated versions of the creators themselves. In his annual letter released today, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan says that sometime this year, creators will be able to make Shorts using their "own likeness." Mohan didn't share further details about these likenesses. "We'll have more to share soon, including the launch date and how the feature will work," according to YouTube spokesperson Boot Bullwinkle.
OpenAI has added age prediction features to ChatGPT, meant to identify and bolster protections for underage users. These age detection plans were announced in December alongside updated guidelines for interacting with teens, and follow a rise in similar age-gating efforts from online platforms, including Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Roblox. ChatGPT's age prediction model works by examining behavioral and account-level signals, including a user's stated age, how old the account is, when the user is active, and usage patterns over time.
