These days, some of tech’s most important decisions are being made inside courtrooms. Google and Facebook are fending off antitrust accusations, while patent suits determine how much control of their own products they can have. The slow fight over Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act threatens platforms like Twitter and YouTube with untold liability suits for the content they host. Gig economy companies like Uber and Airbnb are fighting for their very existence as their workers push for the protections of full-time employees. In each case, judges and juries are setting the rules about exactly how far tech companies can push the envelope and exactly how much protection everyday people have. This is where we keep track of those legal fights and the broader principles behind them. When you move fast and break things, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise when you end up in court.
Some plurals are just more fun than others to say — this commenter gets it.
The Schpongler:
Must feel so good to use the plural “attorneys general” at a scale like this. It’s like “senators elect”, “notaries public”, or “Bigs Mac”.
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A pair of bipartisan lawmakers introduced the Transparency and Responsibility for Artificial Intelligence Networks (TRAIN) Act in the House, letting copyright holders see if AI models were trained on their work. It’s already been introduced in the Senate, and counts the Recording Industry Association of America and SAG-AFTRA among its endorsers.
[Congresswoman Madeleine Dean]
The Democratic state AGs think they’re the only officials standing up to Trump. They are probably right.
The governor’s call to film ICE is part of an attempt to protect states’ rights — but not like that.
Two individuals who were driving dump trucks to the construction site in Richland Parish, Louisiana, were arrested on Wednesday. Local law enforcement says ICE “did not enter the Meta site at any time,” but told Bloomberg that agents were sweeping for identification of workers en route to the site.
Powell’s statement says the Fed received grand jury subpoenas “threatening a criminal indictment related to my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June,” about historic building renovations. But, he said, it’s actually retaliation for setting interest rates based on “what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.”
Real people died while Trump treated war like a meme stock.
In June, the New York state legislature passed a bill requiring social media companies to display warnings about the potential mental health harms of using their products. Now the governor has officially signed the bill into law. The announcement of the signing says that:
To combat the mental health risks of using harmful features of social media platforms that prolong use, this legislation will require social media companies to display warning labels on their platforms when a young user initially uses the predatory feature and periodically thereafter, based on continued use.
[Governor Kathy Hochul]
The CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) is suing Trump administration officials after they targeted him for deportation from the US because of his online content moderation work.
On Thursday morning, he announced that US District Judge Vernon Broderick granted a TRO and preliminary injunction blocking his arrest or detainment. A hearing has been scheduled for Monday.
[DocumentCloud]
The Trump administration just sanctioned five people, including Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) founder Imran Ahmed, over their work in content moderation and anti-disinformation. On Wednesday he filed a lawsuit (pdf) to stop their “unconstitutional attempt to arrest and expel him.”
Ahmed:
My life’s work is to protect children from the dangers of unregulated social media and AI and fight the spread of antisemitism online. That mission has pitted me against big tech executives – and Elon Musk in particular – multiple times. I am proud to call the United States my home. My wife and daughter are American, and instead of spending Christmas with them, I am fighting to prevent my unlawful deportation from my home country.
In the middle of threatening funding for hospitals that provide gender-related care to minors and trying to tack his name onto the Kennedy Center, the president also signed another executive order.
This one directs the Attorney General to take steps to move marijuana from Schedule I classification under federal law, along with heroin, to Schedule III, which includes ketamine and anabolic steroids. It’s something Biden had said he would pursue.
This report from New York magazine follows up after a few months of the state’s bell-to-bell ban:
At one high school, an entrepreneurial senior even bought a pouch-unlocking magnet on Amazon and tried to charge classmates a dollar per jailbreak. But generally, with phones off-limits, the atmosphere feels different. There’s a pleasant buzz in the lunchroom, chatter in the hallways, and an alphabet of new analog hobbies popping up just about everywhere.
In 2025, the company staved off monopoly charges and AI upstarts to set revenue records.
President Donald Trump, who was reelected despite the events of January 6th, 2021, has filed a defamation lawsuit against the BBC in his home state of Florida. He’s seeking $10 billion to repair reputational harm allegedly suffered after a misleading edit of his actions prior to the attack on the US Capitol building was broadcast to people living 4,000 miles away.
In a blog post, the nonprofit says it has “significant reservations” about systems that require AI companies to pay to train on their content, stating that they “could become new concentrations of power, with the ability to dictate how we experience the web.”
Despite its concerns, the Creative Commons recently partnered with the RSL Collective to allow creators to collect “contributions” from AI companies, as it aims to “infuse concepts of reciprocity in standards that are ready for adoption.”
In addition to complying with the under-16 social media ban that begins December 10th in Australia, Reddit is making changes globally for under-18s:
Teen account holders under 18 everywhere will get a version of Reddit with more protective safety features built in, including stricter chat settings, no ads personalization or sensitive ads, and no access to NSFW or mature content.
There’s some kind of news coming from the White House this week about AI regulations, after a post from the president to Truth Social saying, “You can’t expect a company to get 50 Approvals every time they want to do something. THAT WILL NEVER WORK!”
The court is hearing arguments in a case where it could overturn decades of precedent over the president’s firing of a Federal Trade Commissioner. While conservative justices worry about letting Congress’ authority run wild, liberal justices like Elena Kagan warn of creating “a president with control over everything.”
Frog costumes, Luigi hats, and the press frenzy at the viral murder trial.
Earlier this week, the judge overseeing the New York state case against Mangione said he would seal all exhibits, including police body camera footage of the arrest. Mangione’s defense argues releasing the exhibits could be prejudicial — but Judge Gregory Carro just told us that some exhibits will be released soon. Journalists made a push for releasing the exhibits earlier this week, with one reporter even getting removed from court.
In court Thursday during evidence suppression hearings, prosecutors showed a hand-written note that police say they found among Mangione’s possessions. It was only briefly shown and hard to make out, but one day’s tasks included buying USBs and a digital camera from Best Buy. Journalist Lorena O’Neil reports one section of the note may have referenced archiving social media pages, which were scrutinized by the public after Mangione’s arrest.
Cool update to last week’s story on why language doesn’t equal intelligence: a Michigan judge cited it to justify imposing sanctions over a ChatGPT-assisted filing that mentioned real cases but misstated their facts. Congrats to author Benjamin Riley, and thanks to folks who pointed it out on X and Bluesky!
![LLMs are toolsthat “emulate the communicative function of language, not the separateand distinct cognitive process of thinking and reasoning.” BenjaminRiley, Large language mistake, The Verge https://techyes.pages.dev/aiartificial-intelligence/827820/large-language-models-ai-intelligenceneuroscience-problems [https://perma.cc/7EHD-PLLZ]. When an LLMoverstates a holding of a case, it is not because it made a mistake whenlogically working through how that case might represent a“nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existinglaw or for establishing new law;” it is just piecing together a plausiblelooking sentence – one whose content may or may not be true](https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/Screenshot-2025-12-04-at-8.35.16%E2%80%AFAM.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,0,100,100)
According to FlatpanelsHD and TheWalkmanblog, Sony has trademarked “True RGB” in Japan and Canada. It’s almost certainly for the RGB TV technology announced earlier this year to compete with similar RGB tech from Hisense, TCL, and Samsung shown in 2025.
