Author: Frank Salvato

A closely watched courtroom battle over whether major technology companies engineered their platforms to hook young users entered a new phase as the plaintiff formally rested her case and defense attorneys for Meta and Instagram began presenting evidence in a California social media addiction trial involving a now-20-year-old woman who alleges that prolonged exposure to platforms like Instagram and YouTube during her childhood contributed to severe mental-health struggles. The case is widely viewed as a bellwether proceeding that could shape thousands of similar lawsuits nationwide, as families, schools, and policymakers increasingly challenge the tech industry’s claim that it merely provides…

A rapidly expanding global fintech platform is accelerating its push into the United States after surpassing $1 billion in assets under management tied to its treasury and cash-yield services, marking a significant milestone in the increasingly competitive payments and financial-infrastructure sector. The company’s expansion centers on bringing its “Yield” treasury offering to U.S. businesses, allowing corporate customers to move idle balances into an institutional-grade money-market fund while integrating payments, foreign exchange, and expense management within a single platform. The milestone highlights a broader trend: financial technology firms are aggressively challenging traditional banking structures by offering faster, globally integrated financial tools…

Regulatory pressure in Europe and Brazil is forcing Meta’s WhatsApp to loosen restrictions on competing artificial-intelligence chatbots, allowing outside AI providers to operate on the messaging platform—though not without a price. Brazilian antitrust authorities ruled that blocking third-party AI assistants from WhatsApp could harm competition in a market where the app dominates messaging, prompting Meta to permit rival chatbot companies to offer services through the WhatsApp Business API. However, Meta will charge developers roughly $0.0625 per non-template message in Brazil, a pricing structure critics say could make large-scale AI chatbot deployments costly. The shift mirrors a similar regulatory push in…

President Donald Trump has signed a sweeping executive order aimed at dismantling cybercrime networks and predatory online schemes that have increasingly targeted American citizens, businesses, and critical infrastructure. The directive orders federal agencies to coordinate a comprehensive strategy against transnational criminal organizations responsible for ransomware attacks, phishing campaigns, sextortion, financial fraud, and impersonation scams—crimes that have collectively cost Americans billions of dollars annually. The order mandates a government-wide review of operational, diplomatic, and regulatory tools used to fight cyber-enabled crime, along with the creation of a detailed action plan to identify and disrupt international scam networks. It also prioritizes prosecutions…

Governments across the world are increasingly moving to restrict or outright ban children’s access to social media platforms, driven by mounting concern about online addiction, harmful content, and the psychological effects of constant digital exposure. Australia led the charge by implementing the first nationwide ban preventing children under 16 from using major social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, a move that has triggered a wave of similar proposals and policies elsewhere. Countries including France, Spain, Germany, and Greece are debating or advancing legislation to impose age limits on social networks, while Indonesia has announced plans to restrict…

A young technology company is pushing a new model of urban governance that relies on artificial intelligence to monitor neighborhoods and identify signs of decay before they spiral into bigger problems. The firm has developed a system that mounts cameras on existing municipal vehicles—such as garbage trucks or street sweepers—to capture images of streets and buildings during normal city operations. Those images are analyzed by computer-vision algorithms that flag issues like graffiti, illegal dumping, structural deterioration, and other indicators of urban blight. The startup recently raised about $13 million in Series A funding from venture investors to expand its platform,…

The sudden collapse of negotiations between artificial intelligence firm Anthropic and the U.S. Department of Defense has become a stark lesson for startups eager to pursue federal contracts, demonstrating how quickly political, regulatory, and national-security considerations can override commercial ambitions. After disagreements over the acceptable use of Anthropic’s Claude AI system—particularly the company’s refusal to permit applications tied to domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons—the Pentagon formally labeled the firm a “supply-chain risk,” effectively barring its technology from defense contracts and triggering a broader dispute across the AI industry. The move not only disrupted Anthropic’s government partnerships but also revealed…

A massive cybersecurity breach involving a healthcare technology contractor has exposed the sensitive personal and insurance information of more than 3.4 million individuals across the United States, raising renewed concerns about the vulnerability of Americans’ medical data in an increasingly digitized healthcare system. The breach occurred at TriZetto Provider Solutions, a technology firm that provides billing, eligibility verification, and revenue-cycle services to healthcare providers and insurers. Investigators determined that hackers gained unauthorized access to a web portal used by healthcare clients to review insurance eligibility data, with the intrusion beginning as early as November 2024 and remaining undetected until October…

Major technology platforms have confirmed that Anthropic’s Claude artificial-intelligence model will remain available to most enterprise and commercial customers despite a dispute between the company and the U.S. Department of Defense that resulted in the Pentagon labeling the firm a supply-chain risk. The conflict emerged after Anthropic refused to grant the military unrestricted use of its AI technology for applications the company argued could be unsafe, including mass surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons systems. While the Pentagon’s designation means the Defense Department will ultimately be unable to use the Claude system and may require contractors tied to defense…

A recent artificial intelligence–assisted security effort revealed just how quickly emerging AI systems can uncover software flaws. During a two-week collaboration with developers, an advanced AI model identified 22 previously unknown security vulnerabilities in a widely used web browser, including 14 classified as high-severity flaws that could potentially allow attackers to compromise systems if left unpatched. The AI system scanned thousands of lines of code and began discovering exploitable weaknesses within minutes of starting its analysis, highlighting how rapidly machine-assisted tools can identify problems that traditionally took human security researchers months to uncover. Developers promptly patched many of the vulnerabilities…