South Carolina passed a law that aims to protect kids from addictive social media use.
The law requires large social media companies to estimate a user’s age using information they already collect, such as behavior, activity, account details, or device data.
>If someone uses the app for more than 25 hours within six months, the company must be at least 80% confident the person is older than 15.
>If the person reaches 50 hours of use, the company must be 90% confident.
>If the company cannot reach that confidence level, it must assume the user is a child.
The company must also recheck the age estimate every additional 100 hours of use and whenever it uses recommendation systems or analyzes user behavior.
If the company wrongly treats a child as an adult, it can face fines up to $10,000 per violation.
When a user is treated as a child, the platform must add protections such as parental permission tools, fewer addictive features like infinite scrolling or highly personalized feeds, stronger privacy settings, less data collection, more parental controls, and yearly safety reviews focused on risks to minors.
The law applies to major online platforms that operate in South Carolina and are likely to be used by people under 18.
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A Spanish court has refused to fine NordVPN in a case linked to LaLiga’s fight against illegal football streaming.
Earlier this year, a court ordered VPN providers like NordVPN and ProtonVPN to block access to pirate football streams. LaLiga later asked the court to punish NordVPN for not following the order.
However, the court decided not to issue fines after accepting that there was a real technical dispute about whether the blocking could actually be done by the VPN provider.
The decision is important because it shows how difficult it can be to apply anti-piracy rules to VPN services.
VPN companies say their systems are built for privacy and security, not for monitoring or blocking specific content.
The bad thing is the ruling does not cancel the original order
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