Jury finds Meta and YouTube built ‘addiction machines’ that harmed a child, awards $3 million in landmark trial

A Los Angeles jury has found Meta and Google liable for intentionally building addictive social media platforms that harmed a young woman’s mental health, awarding her $3 million in compensatory dam [...]

Sony will require age checks in the UK and Ireland to access PlayStation communication features

Sony is adopting new age verification policies for PlayStation users in the UK and Ireland. The company isn't making this a blanket requirement, but steps to confirm age will be needed to access [...]

GoPro pushes update to its entry-level Hero camera, adding 4:3 video for social clips

GoPro is rolling out a software update for its entry-level Hero camera that allows users to shoot 4:3 video in 4K. This is great for the kinds of clips that populate social media sites like TikTok, as [...]

Mastodon is adding Bluesky-like starter packs

Mastodon, the federated social network built on ActivityPub, is taking cues from Bluesky and introducing its own version of the social platform's "Starter Packs." The hope is that Masto [...]

A shaky year for American EVs could set the tone for 2026

If you like both electric vehicles and emotional roller coasters, 2025 was an excellent year. However, for those of us whose nerves are already sufficiently frazzled, the highs and lows of the last 12 [...]

Elon Musk leaves DOGE amid tanking Tesla sales

Elon Musk has left his role as the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). “As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank Pres [...]

Mastodon was hit by a 'major' DDoS attack that briefly took down parts of the service

Mastodon seems to be recovering after a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that took down its primary mastodon.social instance. As TechCrunch notes, the platform began reporting issues early [...]

Adobe’s new Firefly AI Assistant wants to run Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator and more from one prompt

Adobe today launched its most ambitious AI offensive to date, unveiling the Firefly AI Assistant — a new agentic creative tool that can orchestrate complex, multi-step workflows across the company&# [...]

The MPA tells Meta to stop using PG-13 to describe teen accounts

The Motion Picture Association doesn’t share Meta’s view that the content people under the age of 18 might encounter on an Instagram Teen Account is comparable to what you might find in a PG-13 mo [...]