Kalakshar US

Last year, New York joined the wave of states passing legislation aimed at protecting minors using the Internet, particularly social media. Governor Kathy Hochul signed the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act and the New York Child Data Protection Act in June 2024. Today, the state’s Attorney General Letitia James released more specifics about what the SAFE for Kids Act will entail in practice. Public comment is open until December 1 and the rules must be finalized within a year from that date.

In particular, the rule will require online platforms to confirm the ages of users before showing them algorithmically-curated feeds or sending them notifications at night. The Attorney General’s approach allows sites to choose their method of age verification, as long as the approach “are shown to be effective and protect users’ data.” New York will also require an age confirmation method that does not rely on having a government-issued ID.

There is also a component of parental consent in the SAFE for Kids Act. Minors must request a social media network to seek parental permission for accessing algorithmic feeds or receiving nighttime notifications. If parental consent is not granted, the platforms may not block minors from generally accessing their service or content. Both the minor and their parent may revoke their consent at any time.

“The proposed rules released by my office today will help us tackle the youth mental health crisis and make social media safer for kids and families,” James said in the announcement. “This is an issue that affects all of us, and I encourage parents, educators, young people, industry groups, and others to review the proposed rules and submit a comment during the public comment period.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/new-york-details-its-plans-for-online-age-verification-rules-195223379.html?src=rss 

A regulator has accused NVIDIA of violating China’s antitrust laws over its acquisition of chipmaker Mellanox. In its preliminary findings of an investigation it commenced in December, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) claimed that the company breached both national regulations and the conditional terms China outlined when it rubberstamped the $6.9 billion takeover. The SAMR hasn’t announced any penalties yet, as the investigation will continue.

The SAMR is said to have determined its preliminary findings several weeks ago. According to Financial Post sources, the regulator held off from releasing its statement until now, as trade talks with the US take place in Madrid, with the idea of giving Chinese officials more leverage. (Those talks have so far resulted in a framework agreement for TikTok.)

NVIDIA and Mellanox announced the buyout back in 2019. China approved it in April the following year on the condition that NVIDIA continued to supply GPUs and interconnect products to the country and adhere to “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory principles,” per the South China Morning Post.

Last month, it was reported that China was discouraging companies in the country from buying NVIDIA’s H20 chips pending a national security review. Officials were said to have taken offense at remarks from Howard Lutnick, the US commerce secretary. After the US allowed NVIDIA to start offering chips to China again in July following a three-month ban, Lutnick said the company wasn’t going to be selling its most cutting-edge tech there.

“We don’t sell them our best stuff, not our second best stuff, not even our third best. The fourth one down, we want to keep China using it,” he told CNBC. “The idea is the Chinese are more than capable of building their own. You want to keep one step ahead of what they can build, so they keep buying our chips. You want to sell the Chinese enough that their developers get addicted to the American technology stack.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/china-says-nvidias-mellanox-acquisition-violated-antitrust-law-200409929.html?src=rss 

Valve has apparently updated its Steam Early Access policy to no longer accept games with what the company deems to be “mature themes.” As first reported by Gamesmarkt earlier this month, gaming studio Dammitbird, which develops the adult adventure game Heavy Hearts, was not allowed to put the title on Steam Early Access because of its content.

Payment processors like Mastercard and Visa have been mounting a pressure campaign on video game marketplaces Steam and Itch.io to remove certain adults-only content since early summer. After taking down a game called No Mercy in April at the behest of payment processors and an Australian anti-porn organization, there has been a steady expansion in the application of these new policies.

Steam, for its part, made some incredibly vague policy changes to appease the payment giants, adding a sweeping clause that promises to ban certain kinds of adults-only content before proceeding to remove hundreds of games. Itch.io made similar changes before removing more than 20,000 titles from its marketplace. Steam has removed hundreds of titles that we know of. 

The apparent scope creep is of particular concern to small independent developers whose fairly innocuous games like VILE: Exhumed were banned from Steam and delisted from Itch.io. Exhumed is a mostly text-based game whose limited imagery and innuendo is worlds away from the sort of adult games that were first banned when this whole saga kicked off.

Part of the problem is how card payments are policed. Stores like Steam and Itch.io don’t contract with Visa or Mastercard directly but with acquiring banks and processors that must enforce the card networks’ brand-safety and anti-trafficking rules. This can end up influencing how companies like PayPal work with Steam across different regions, depending on how banks in those areas are responding to the pressure exerted by Visa and Mastercard.

The confusion will continue to cause consternation among developers and consumers alike until policies on these platforms are made clearer, or payment processors relieve some of the pressure by clarifying their own standards.

Engadget has reached out to Valve for comment and will update if we hear back. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/early-access-is-the-latest-place-where-steam-is-restricting-games-with-mature-themes-190806818.html?src=rss 

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said that the United States and China have reached a framework deal on TikTok. Speaking to reporters in Madrid after two days of talks with his Chinese counterparts, Bessent said, “It’s between two private parties, but the commercial terms have been agreed upon.” President Trump said in a Truth Social post that he will be speaking with Xi Jinping this Friday regarding the potential deal, among other things.

This breakthrough comes after the Trump administration extended the TikTok ban for a third time earlier this summer, giving the company until September 17 to undergo a sale or face a ban in the United States. The short-form video content app faced increasing scrutiny over national security concerns due to the Chinese ownership of its parent company, ByteDance.

President Trump issued an executive order in August 2020 banning the app in the United States unless it was divested from ByteDance, though courts halted enforcement of the order. In 2024 the United States Congress passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) which was signed into law by then-President Biden. The Trump administration has repeatedly delayed the enforcement of that law in hopes a deal could be made for a US-based acquisition, leaving the app online in the meantime.

As it stands, this appears to be a framework for how TikTok could come under some level of US control, and not a signed final deal. Companies from Oracle to Microsoft have expressed interest in acquiring TikTok, and the president is on record as saying he would be OK if a “very American company” buys it. It’s unclear if the September 17 deadline will be pushed once again, but US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Monday that another delay may be needed in order to get the deal signed.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/a-tiktok-deal-may-finally-be-happening-160448732.html?src=rss