Global Pulse

分类： technology

  • Robotaxi service debuts on London’s busy streets as Europe weighs more self-driving vehicles

    Robotaxi service debuts on London’s busy streets as Europe weighs more self-driving vehicles

    On Thursday, a milestone in European autonomous mobility arrived in London: ride-hailing giant Uber and British autonomous vehicle technology firm Wayve have launched the capital’s first commercial self-driving taxi service, bringing a technology already widely accessible across U.S. and Chinese cities to UK consumers for the first time.

    The rollout will begin on a small, controlled scale, with a fleet of all-electric Ford Mustang Mach-E SUVs fitted with Wayve’s proprietary autonomous driving software and sensor hardware. Unlike fully driverless robotaxi services already operating in multiple U.S. and Chinese metropolitan areas, Europe has adopted a far more cautious, regulatory-first approach to autonomous public transit. For this London pilot, a trained human safety operator will remain in the driver’s seat for every trip, ready to take over manual control of steering or braking if any safety issue arises during the journey.

    Under the UK government’s existing national pilot framework for self-driving vehicles, commercial operators such as Uber and Wayve must obtain specific regulatory approval before they can remove human safety drivers from fully autonomous services. Sarfraz Maredia, Uber’s global head of autonomous mobility, noted that the approval process is still ongoing, with no clear timeline for when fully driverless operation can begin.

    London’s complex street network presents unique testing challenges that set it apart from many North American and Asian cities already hosting robotaxi services. Its narrow, notoriously winding roads are consistently choked with mixed traffic, including private cars, double-decker buses, regular bicycles and the city’s large fleet of dockless electric rental bikes. Adding to the complexity, jaywalking is not illegal in the UK, meaning pedestrians frequently cross streets outside designated crossing areas, requiring more advanced adaptive driving responses from autonomous systems.

    Uber and Wayve are not the only firms racing to launch commercial robotaxi service in London. U.S. autonomous technology leader Waymo, a subsidiary of Google-parent Alphabet, and Chinese tech giant Baidu are also finalizing preparations to launch their own commercial passenger services in the city in the near future.

    This London pilot marks the second commercial robotaxi launch for Uber in Europe. Last month, the company rolled out its first European service in Zagreb, Croatia, in partnership with Chinese autonomous firm Pony.ai and a local operator, which also requires on-board human safety drivers. Most European markets remain in the early testing phase of autonomous vehicle regulation as policymakers work to balance innovation with public safety.

    Globally, the robotaxi industry is expanding rapidly. In the U.S., Waymo already operates fully driverless commercial service across 14 cities, with Amazon-owned Zoox and Tesla working to scale up their own competing services. In China, three major players — Baidu, WeRide and Pony.AI — run robotaxi networks across dozens of cities, and all three have recently expanded into the Middle East through partnerships with Uber and local fleet operators in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia.

    Maredia confirmed that the initial London fleet will consist of fewer than 20 autonomous vehicles, with plans for gradual expansion as the pilot collects data and earns regulatory approval. For consumers using the Uber app, customers cannot specifically request a self-driving vehicle, but may be randomly matched with a Wayve-equipped Mach-E when hailing a ride. Riders retain the option to accept or reject the autonomous vehicle match, and pricing for robotaxi rides will be identical to standard Uber trips. The company also confirmed that no tip prompt will appear for passengers at the end of self-driving trips.

  • Berlin is being blackmailed by hackers, mayor says

    Berlin is being blackmailed by hackers, mayor says

    The German capital of Berlin is facing a high-stakes standoff with international cybercriminals after a significant data breach that compromised multiple city government networks, Mayor Kai Wegner has confirmed. The attack, which first saw unauthorized access to city systems between August 7 and 12, has prompted a full-scale emergency response from local, state and federal security agencies, with officials drawing a hard line against meeting the hackers’ extortion demands.

    Wegner announced on Friday that the city would not cave to the ransom demand delivered to officials Thursday evening. While the mayor declined to disclose the exact sum being demanded, reporting from German outlet Der Spiegel puts the demand at 30 bitcoin, equivalent to roughly €2 million ($2.15 million) as of recent market valuations.

    In the wake of the initial breach, city authorities shut down two departmental networks on August 14 as a protective measure. This outage disrupted critical public services for several days, leaving residents unable to submit applications for housing benefits or process routine government payments. Subsequent forensic investigations have uncovered additional unauthorized access within the city’s transport and environment departments, raising concerns about the full scale of compromised information.

    “It cannot be ruled out that personal or other non-public data may also be affected,” the mayor’s office said in an official statement Friday.

    Responsibility for the attack has been claimed by the Rhysida hacking group, a prolific ransomware operation that researchers believe operates from Russia and Eastern Europe. The group, which first emerged in 2023, has already carried out hundreds of attacks on government agencies and private businesses across dozens of countries, building a reputation for aggressive extortion tactics. Most notably, Rhysida breached the British Museum’s digital systems in 2023, stealing roughly 500,000 files containing personal data of visitors, subscribers and staff. When the museum refused to pay the demanded ransom, the group published all stolen data on the dark web.

    Per the group’s dark web posting cited by Reuters, Rhysida is now in possession of 5.79 terabytes of stolen data from Berlin city systems. Der Spiegel has published a screenshot of the group’s dark web page showing the stolen assets include internal contracts, non-disclosure agreements, personnel records, user passwords, and thousands of personal contact details. The page also features an active seven-day countdown, after which the group says it will begin auctioning off the entire stolen dataset with a starting bid set to match its 30 bitcoin ransom demand.

    Wegner reaffirmed the city’s stance in clear terms Friday: “Berlin will not be blackmailed.” He added that state police, public prosecutors, and federal German security services are working “with the utmost urgency” to identify the attackers and map the full extent of the breach. “Inquiries into the content and scope of the compromised data are being pursued with great intensity,” he said.

    Notably, the attack comes roughly one month ahead of scheduled municipal elections in Berlin. However, State Senator Iris Spranger has moved quickly to reassure voters that all election-related digital infrastructure remains fully secure and was not compromised in the breach.

    Cybersecurity researchers warn that Rhysida’s ongoing targeting of public sector institutions reflects a growing trend of ransomware actors targeting government entities, which often face greater pressure to resolve service disruptions quickly but also face widespread public backlash if they agree to pay ransoms that fund further criminal activity.

  • ‘Not far enough’ – US parents and teens on Meta’s new limits for young users

    ‘Not far enough’ – US parents and teens on Meta’s new limits for young users

    A landmark $18 billion settlement between Meta Platforms and 48 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and three U.S. territories has ended a high-profile lawsuit over the tech giant’s impact on child mental health — but many American parents who have watched their children navigate social media’s harms say the new restrictions fall far short of fixing the systemic problem.

    The lawsuit, first launched in 2023 by 29 states, accused Meta of intentionally engineering its platforms — which include Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp — to trigger addiction in young users, misleading the public about well-documented youth safety risks, and violating federal privacy regulations governing the collection of children’s personal data. The settlement was announced mid-trial this week, just as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was preparing to take the stand; the agreement does not require Meta to admit any wrongdoing.

    As part of the settlement, Meta has outlined a slate of new restrictions for teenage users: a default 2-hour daily time limit on platform use, hiding public like counts on all posts, disabling automatic video playback, muting push notifications during standard school hours, and banning the use of extreme, body-altering beauty filters. The company is also updating its age-verification protocols and parental control tools, and has agreed to bring on an independent auditor to confirm the measures are properly implemented and maintained long-term. Meta has additionally structured the deal to withhold $5 billion of its settlement payout, releasing those funds only if competing platforms including YouTube and TikTok adopt similar youth protection rules, and has pledged to cut the default daily time limit to one hour if other major platforms match its restrictions.

    But for parents across the U.S. who have directly experienced social media’s harms to their children, the changes feel like too little, too late. Elizabeth Cardner, a Houston mother of two teen daughters, calls the new rules a welcome step that signals growing public awareness of social media’s dangers, but doubts they will deliver meaningful long-term change. “It will save a few arguments at home, but it doesn’t go far enough,” Cardner told the BBC. Her 14-year-old daughter Paige, who supports the like-count hiding and filter ban, agrees that benefits will likely be temporary. With artificial intelligence advancing rapidly, Paige notes, users will quickly find new workarounds to create unregulated altered content. “People will find new ways to have fake filters, and correct certain parts of their videos or pictures,” she explained. “So I think it’ll help until people use other resources to try and find new ways to do that.” For Cardner, the situation is a no-win bind: banning her girls from social media entirely would only leave them socially excluded by their peers, but keeping them on the platforms means exposing them to documented harms. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any winning on it.”

    Andria Rose, a Boston-area mother of two teens, echoes that frustration, describing herself as feeling defenseless against platforms that draw children in despite parental efforts. “No matter how much I protect my kids, Facebook, Instagram – they’re coming in and literally, like, taking them out of their rooms,” she said. While she calls Meta’s new restrictions “fantastic,” she argues they do not address the core issue of platform addiction. “They’re trying to limit the drug, but they’re not controlling the drug,” Rose said. She points to her own addiction to social media, which disrupts her nightly sleep, as evidence of how much more vulnerable children are to the platforms’ design. For Rose, Meta’s $18 billion settlement is a negligible drop in the bucket compared to the profits the company has earned from young users, particularly during the pandemic when screen time surged nationwide. She calls the payout “like throwing a couple of dollar bills at a problem.”

    Long Island mother Joanie Story, who has four sons, criticizes Meta’s decision to tie further restrictions and full settlement payment to competing platforms’ action, calling the move “petty.” “That’s like saying: ‘You know, we have the ability to fix what is broken, but we’re only gonna fix it halfway,’” she said. Story knows firsthand the damage unregulated social media can cause: two of her sons were accidentally exposed to explicit content on a non-Meta platform years ago, and one has required ongoing therapy for four years as a result. “It’s almost like being abused,” she said. Even so, she acknowledges that Meta’s new rules are “good controls” that represent a small step forward.

    Some parent advocates argue that meaningful change cannot come from tech company regulations alone, and requires collective action from families. Mark SooHoo, a Chicago suburban father of three and an advocate with the organization Wait Until 8th, which encourages parents to pledge to delay giving children smartphones until they finish eighth grade (around age 13 or 14), says social media and smartphones are inextricably linked, and both pose unique risks to young people. SooHoo notes that most parents cave to peer pressure to give their children smartphones early to avoid social exclusion, but his group’s message is intentional: “We do want them to be left out. We want them to be left out of all the negative impacts of social media.” Rather than relying on social media companies to implement change, SooHoo says more parents should join the pledge to prioritize youth safety. “A communal problem requires a communal solution,” he argued.

    Multiple peer-reviewed studies have confirmed that unregulated social media use carries significant mental health risks for children and adolescents, and a 2025 BBC investigation found that underage users are routinely exposed to harmful content including bullying, suicide glorification, and violent material on major platforms. As Meta begins rolling out its new restrictions, parents across the country remain in a holding pattern, waiting to see if the changes will deliver on their promised protections — while many remain convinced that much more work is needed to address youth social media harm.

  • Trump administration illegally retaliated against Anthropic, judge rules

    Trump administration illegally retaliated against Anthropic, judge rules

    In a landmark legal ruling that sets a new precedent for tensions between private artificial intelligence developers and the U.S. military, a federal district judge has found that the U.S. Department of Defense acted unlawfully when it labeled leading AI startup Anthropic a national supply chain security risk, deeming the agency’s action “illegal and baseless”.

    The clash between the two parties stems from Anthropic, the developer of the widely used large language model Claude, declining the Pentagon’s request to grant the U.S. military access to its proprietary AI models for use cases including mass surveillance and the development of autonomous weapons systems. Refusing to comply with the military’s demand, the AI developer argued that its technology was not sufficiently tested or reliable to be deployed safely in weapons systems. It also reiterated its longstanding opposition to using AI for domestic surveillance, framing such use as a violation of fundamental civil rights.

    Following the company’s refusal, the Pentagon publicly designated Anthropic as a supply chain risk under a statute originally crafted to shield U.S. military infrastructure from foreign sabotage. This marked the first time in U.S. history that a domestic American tech company received such a public, official designation. The Biden administration doubled down on the Pentagon’s position, with White House officials publicly attacking Anthropic as “a radical left, woke company” that was overstepping by attempting to restrict U.S. military operations. The Pentagon argued at the time that private sector firms have no right to place constraints on U.S. military action, asserting that the armed forces answer only to the U.S. Constitution, not a private tech company’s terms of service.

    Anthropic swiftly filed a lawsuit challenging the designation, calling the government’s actions both “unprecedented and unlawful”, and argued that Defense Secretary Pete Hegeth had abused his authority by imposing the label in retaliation for the company’s policy choices. In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Rita Lin rejected the government’s national security justification, writing that “citing national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics”.

    The designation carried severe potential consequences for Anthropic: company executives have projected that the label could cost the startup billions of dollars in lost commercial partnerships and irreversible reputational damage. As of Wednesday, the BBC has confirmed it has reached out to the Pentagon, the White House and Anthropic to request official comment on the ruling, with no formal responses released publicly at the time of reporting.

  • After US settlement, EU says Meta must ‘protect our kids too’

    After US settlement, EU says Meta must ‘protect our kids too’

    In the wake of a groundbreaking multi-state settlement that forces Meta to implement sweeping new restrictions on teenage use of its Facebook and Instagram platforms, the European Union has issued a clear call for the tech giant to extend equivalent child safety protections to young users across the bloc.

    Last month, the European Commission already ruled that Meta violated the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA) — a landmark regulatory framework designed to curb harmful practices by large technology companies operating in the EU’s 27 member states. At that time, regulators ordered the company to draft concrete proposals to reduce risks to minors using its platforms.

    European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier told reporters Thursday that EU regulators have held new discussions with Meta following the U.S. settlement, which Brussels has monitored “very closely.” “The ball is in Meta’s court,” Regnier said. “Meta knows what we are expecting from them. Now it is for the company to offer these commitments in the European Union to protect our kids here too.”

    Regnier confirmed that EU investigators are probing Meta over the same harmful design features that were the focus of the U.S. legal action, and regulators are pushing to secure “at least equally good protection for our kids here in the European Union.” Specific demands from Brussels include mandatory, built-in screen time management tools and robust, default parental controls for minor accounts.

    EU regulators have long flagged risks to children from specific Meta platform features, including infinite scrolling functionality, algorithmically-driven highly personalized content feeds that promote compulsive use, and automatic video playback. Regulators issued a nearly identical warning to rival short-form video platform TikTok back in February.

    Meta has publicly stated that it disputes the EU’s DSA violation finding, but has committed to engage “constructively” with regulators to address their concerns. If the company fails to meet the bloc’s demands, EU rules allow regulators to impose fines of up to 6% of Meta’s total global annual revenue, a penalty that could run into billions of dollars.

    The U.S. settlement, which resolved a years-long landmark lawsuit brought by a coalition of U.S. states in California, requires Meta to pay up to $16.7 billion in damages and implement a far-reaching set of new safety rules for underage users. These include an automatic block on platform access during nighttime hours and a default daily cumulative usage cap of two hours across all of Meta’s apps. The agreement marks the strictest set of child safety obligations Meta has ever agreed to, coming after years of sustained criticism from parents, child health experts and policymakers over the impact of social media on adolescent mental health and development.

    Parallel to its ongoing DSA investigation, the EU is also considering broader age restrictions on social media access, a move driven by multiple member states that want to follow Australia’s lead on strict child online protection rules. Last month, an expert panel convened by the EU presented its recommendations to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Von der Leyen is scheduled to outline proposed new restrictions in a major policy speech on September 16, with a formal draft legislative proposal expected before the end of the year.

    The panel, which includes doctors, academic researchers, youth representatives and parents, recommended a complete ban on screen use for infants and toddlers. For children under 12, the panel advised that only age-appropriate social media platforms should be allowed, all under direct adult supervision. For adolescents aged 13 to 18, the panel recommended gradually expanding autonomous access only to platforms that have already implemented mandatory core child safety features.

    “This is not about whether children can access social media. It is about whether and when social media can access our children,” von der Leyen said last month, emphasizing that the burden of proof falls to technology companies to “prove that their services do no harm.”

  • Meta’s $18bn settlement may hasten reckoning for social media on child safety

    Meta’s $18bn settlement may hasten reckoning for social media on child safety

    In a sudden development that cut short a high-stakes legal showdown, Meta Platforms has agreed to a $17 billion settlement with 29 U.S. states over allegations that it illegally collected and misused personal data from children under 13, violating the decades-old Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The surprise conclusion came just five days into the trial, before Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was scheduled to testify, ending what many observers had expected to be weeks of tense courtroom proceedings that would put the social media giant’s child safety practices on public trial.

    The case, filed by nearly two-thirds of U.S. states, was never just a technical dispute over compliance with a 30-year-old privacy law written long before today’s largest social platforms even existed. For the global tech industry, 2026 has already emerged as a turning point: social media platforms across the board are facing mounting global scrutiny over their impact on young users, and this case represented one of the most significant coordinated challenges to Big Tech’s long-held approach to online safety.

    For months leading up to the trial, Meta had poured extensive resources into defending its track record, repeatedly highlighting the dozens of safety tools it has rolled out for young users over the years. Senior Meta executives have walked journalists through the company’s safety initiatives at private briefings, including a presentation at Meta’s London headquarters that detailed more than 60 separate safety tools for Instagram alone. Yet the company’s efforts to frame itself as a responsible steward of child safety have been undermined by the experiences of parents who say they have struggled to navigate the overwhelming number of opt-in tools that require ongoing parental oversight. During the trial, damaging testimony from former Meta insiders further eroded the company’s position.

    Whistleblower Arturo Bejar, a former Instagram engineer, told the court that he had alerted senior leadership to harmful content affecting young users on the platform years ago, but no meaningful action was taken. Another senior Meta executive acknowledged he could not recall denying that the company had sometimes chosen to pay regulatory fines instead of changing harmful business practices. Internal documents presented during the trial also revealed that Meta knew opt-in safety tools have far lower adoption rates than default-enabled features — yet still chose to roll out child protection measures that users had to actively turn on themselves.

    Legal analysts had warned that a guilty ruling could have resulted in staggering fines for Meta, with the worst-case scenario reaching $1.4 trillion — a sum equal to the company’s entire current market value — calculated by applying the maximum COPPA penalty for every underage user who accessed Meta platforms for more than 30 minutes a day over a 12-year period. While that extreme outcome was never considered likely, even more realistic estimates projected hundreds of billions of dollars in penalties. By comparison, the $17 billion settlement, paid out over 10 years, represents a far smaller financial hit for the company. Crucially, the settlement does not require Meta to admit any wrongdoing, a outcome that legal experts say protects Meta’s core social media advertising business, which still generates the vast majority of the company’s revenue even as it prioritizes artificial intelligence development.

    As a core condition of the settlement, Meta has agreed to implement sweeping new default safety rules for teen users on both Facebook and Instagram, changes that child safety advocates have called long overdue. The new rules include a default daily 2-hour time limit for teen users across both platforms (excluding direct messaging), automatic notification muting between midnight and 6 a.m. and between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on school days, and a full platform-wide hiding of post likes for all teen accounts. Most of these changes will be rolled out as default or optional settings for teen users within six months, though new systems to accurately identify underage users on the platforms will take up to a full year to deploy.

    Industry observers widely expect these new rules will not remain limited to the U.S. for long, as governments around the world facing similar pressure over child online safety will almost certainly move to adopt similar standards. Meta has argued that the new measures will only deliver meaningful protection if competing platforms also adopt similar rules, and analysts note that mounting global backlash against social media’s impact on children could force rivals like TikTok and Snapchat to follow Meta’s lead in tightening restrictions for teen users.

    The settlement has drawn mixed reactions from stakeholders. One parent of a child harmed by Meta platforms summed up the response as a long-overdue step forward, saying “Finally, something was done.” But Bejar, the former Meta whistleblower, emphasized that the real test will be whether the new measures actually improve outcomes for young users. “At the end of the day, Meta needs to be held accountable for results, not efforts,” he said. Looking ahead, the settlement raises bigger questions about the future of social media: if platforms deliberately tone down engaging, addictive content to protect teens, will young users continue to engage? Some analysts even speculate that the growing wave of regulation could bring the era of unregulated social media to a natural end, as older users gradually exit the space and young users lose interest in a more muted, less addictive experience.

  • Brazil sues Discord over child safety measures, demands $100 mln in damages

    Brazil sues Discord over child safety measures, demands $100 mln in damages

    Brazilian federal authorities have launched a major legal action against communication platform Discord, pushing for sweeping changes to the company’s child protection systems and demanding nearly $100 million in compensation for collective harm, after a 13-year-old girl was coerced into dying by suicide during a live broadcast on the service.

    The lawsuit, filed Wednesday by Brazilian government bodies, comes after weeks of failed regulatory negotiations, during which Discord’s proposed safety adjustments were labeled inadequate to mitigate documented threats to young users. The move marks the latest escalation in Brazil’s aggressive crackdown on global social media and digital platforms that fail to meet strict new online child protection requirements.

    The crisis that prompted the latest legal action unfolded in July, when a 13-year-old girl from a small town in central-western Brazil was targeted during a livestream held on Discord. According to Brazilian Justice Ministry cyber intelligence officials from Ciberlab, a group of participants taunted and pressured the girl for more than 45 minutes: first forcing her to attempt to kill an animal, then urging her to take her own life when she refused the initial demand. Six people, including five teenagers—one just 14 years old—and one adult, have been arrested in connection with the girl’s death.

    In early August, Brazil’s National Data Protection Agency (ANPD), the country’s top digital regulator, ordered Discord to immediately halt all livestreaming services within the country’s borders. On August 17, the platform, which boasts over 90 million daily active users globally, complied with the order, issuing a public statement saying it was actively working to “make Discord safer for teens.” But Brazilian regulators argue that the platform has not fixed fundamental gaps in its age verification and user protection frameworks, leaving minors and other vulnerable users exposed to severe harm.

    Government officials clarified that the lawsuit has two core goals: first, to compel Discord to implement comprehensive, effective safety measures that protect children, adolescents, and women from harm in the platform’s digital space; second, to force the company to pay 500 million Brazilian reals, equivalent to roughly $97 million, in collective moral damages.

    This legal action against Discord is not an isolated move, but part of a broader regulatory push by Brazil to hold digital platforms accountable for online child safety. Just one day before the Discord lawsuit was filed, ANPD imposed a nearly $30 million fine on ByteDance-owned short-video platform TikTok for its own failures to meet child protection obligations. Regulators called that fine a “powerful signal” to all platforms operating in Brazil that non-compliance will not be tolerated.

    ANPD director Lorena Giuberti Coutinho confirmed last week that the agency has opened compliance reviews for 22 major social media networks and digital platforms, to check alignment with a new national law enacted this year that strengthens protections for children and teenagers online. She told reporters that users and companies should prepare for far more aggressive enforcement actions from the regulator in the coming months.

    Brazil has already implemented sweeping rules for digital platforms, including mandates that require all user accounts for people under 16 to be linked to a parent or legal guardian’s account, alongside broad crackdowns on the spread of disinformation across digital services.

  • A robot sprinter shatters a 100-meter record again as sparks fly at China’s robot competition

    A robot sprinter shatters a 100-meter record again as sparks fly at China’s robot competition

    BEIJING – China’s rapidly advancing humanoid robotics sector hit a new milestone this week, when a cutting-edge robot sprinter broke its third consecutive 100-meter sprint record on the final day of the country’s second annual World Humanoid Robot Games, closing out a five-day event designed to highlight the nation’s growing technological expertise.

    Hosted in Beijing, the 2024 Games drew more than 2,000 competing humanoid robots, which went head-to-head across a range of Olympics-style athletic competitions including soccer, boxing and track running, alongside practical real-world task challenges covering household chores, hotel hospitality services and emergency disaster response scenarios.

    On Wednesday, the Tiangong Ultra humanoid robot crossed the 100-meter finish line in a historic 8.64 seconds, shaving 0.22 seconds off the record it set just 24 hours earlier. This marks the third consecutive record broken by the model over the course of the Games: four days before the final sprint, Tiangong Ultra clocked 9.39 seconds, before improving to 8.86 seconds the following day. For context, the current men’s 100-meter world record held by legendary sprinter Usain Bolt since 2009 stands at 9.58 seconds, meaning the robot’s time is nearly a full second faster than the fastest human performance in history.

    Not all went according to plan during the historic run, however. Shortly after crossing the finish line, the record-breaking champion and several other competing robot sprinters crashed into a padded end-of-track barrier. Some damaged robots sparked after impact, prompting event staff to quickly deploy fire extinguishers to douse potential hazards on the overturned machines. Nearly all of the crashed robot competitors were eventually carried from the track on custom stretchers for post-race repairs.

    The three consecutive records were all claimed by the same robot model: the Tiangong Ultra, developed by the Beijing Innovation Center of Humanoid Robotics, which operates under the brand name X-Humanoid. Founded in Beijing just one year ago in 2023, the young research and development center has quickly emerged as a leader in China’s expanding humanoid robotics industry.

    This report has been updated to confirm the official Wednesday record time is 8.64 seconds, correcting an initial typo that listed the time as 8.84 seconds.

  • Meta, US states agree $16.7 bn settlement in landmark teen safety case

    Meta, US states agree $16.7 bn settlement in landmark teen safety case

    In a groundbreaking resolution to one of the highest-stakes regulatory cases facing Big Tech in recent years, Meta Platforms has agreed to a $16.7 billion settlement and sweeping platform overhauls to resolve allegations brought by 29 U.S. states that the social media giant deliberately designed its platforms to harm young users, according to a federal court filing made public Wednesday.

    The multi-state lawsuit, which kicked off its second week of trial before the settlement was reached, accused Meta of intentionally building addictive algorithmic features for Facebook and Instagram to hook teen users, deliberately misleading the public about the documented mental health and safety risks of its products, and illegally harvesting personal data from children under the age of 13. The proposed deal brings an end to a years-long legal battle and sets a new precedent for industry-wide regulation of social media content targeted at minors.

    Legal analysts note that the regulatory changes mandated by the settlement go further than any voluntary safety commitments Meta has previously adopted, coming after years of sustained public outcry from parents, child development experts and public health officials over the well-documented harms of unregulated social media use for adolescents. Growing global scrutiny of social media’s impact on teens has already spurred widespread adoption of age verification rules and school cell phone bans across dozens of countries, with policymakers pointing to the U.S. case as a catalyst for stricter global regulation.

    The most transformative elements of the agreement are not the financial penalties, but the binding structural changes Meta will be required to implement to its core platforms within months. Under the terms, all teen accounts will automatically be locked out of Facebook and Instagram between midnight and 6 a.m. local time by default, and cumulative daily usage across Meta’s apps will be capped at two hours for users under 18 (time spent on direct messaging and long-form video is excluded from the limit). If other major social media platforms adopt equivalent safety rules, the restrictions will be tightened further: the overnight block will expand from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m., and the total daily usage cap will drop to one hour per app, with a two-hour overall maximum.

    For 10 years after the agreement takes effect, an independent auditor jointly selected by Meta and the state coalition, and funded entirely by the company, will oversee compliance with the new rules to ensure enforcement. The $16.7 billion settlement payment will be disbursed in 10 annual installments to the participating states, with California set to receive between $1.5 billion and $2.1 billion over the decade as the lead plaintiff in the case, and New York slated to receive up to $1.13 billion.

    California Attorney General Rob Bonta framed the outcome as a turning point for child online safety, saying in a statement following the filing: “Meta has agreed to make massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm from its platforms — and will do it within months.” He added that the deal delivers “real change, real transparency, and real enforceable protections for children.”

    Crucially, the settlement does not require Meta to admit any liability or wrongdoing, a standard term in such regulatory agreements. The company has consistently denied all allegations brought by the states, and the deal still requires final approval from a federal judge to go into effect. It also does not resolve thousands of outstanding personal injury claims and separate litigation from U.S. school districts that are still pending against the company.

    During the first week of trial, witnesses testified that Meta internal documents showed company leaders knew its existing teen safety tools were ineffective, with some even being “designed to fail” to protect business metrics. On the second day of the trial, Instagram head Adam Mosseri admitted that he had publicly promoted new teen safety tools years ago without disclosing that early testing showed extremely low user adoption rates. Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had been scheduled to testify in the case before the settlement was reached.

    Meta had previously warned that an adverse courtroom ruling in the case could have exposed the company to more than $1 trillion in potential statutory penalties, making the 29-state litigation one of the most financially and reputationally high-stakes cases in the company’s history.

  • Meta agrees to pay up to $16.7bn to settle social media case

    Meta agrees to pay up to $16.7bn to settle social media case

    One of the world’s largest social media conglomerates, Meta, has finalized a landmark legal settlement with a bipartisan coalition of 52 U.S. states, territories and the District of Columbia to resolve a high-profile lawsuit centered on failures to protect children and teens on its flagship platforms Facebook and Instagram.

    According to official court filings, the company is on the hook to pay up to $16.68 billion (£12.26 billion), a sum Meta itself clarified will be disbursed in annual installments spread across a 10-year period. The funds will be allocated to state priorities including youth online safety programs, marking one of the largest financial resolutions ever reached in a tech industry youth protection case.

    Beyond the financial penalty, the settlement imposes sweeping new mandatory safety measures designed to limit underage users’ exposure to harm on Meta’s platforms. Key requirements include daily screen time limits for teenage accounts, automatic night-time usage blocks, restricted access to platforms during standard school hours, enhanced parental oversight tools, and more rigorous age verification processes to stop children from creating accounts under false ages.

    The legal action, brought by state attorneys general, accused Meta of violating multiple federal and state privacy regulations designed to protect minors. Plaintiffs alleged the company deliberately built platform algorithms to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare young users, while deliberately turning a blind eye to well-documented harms to the mental and physical health of America’s youth. Meta has consistently denied any wrongdoing, and said it agreed to the settlement to avoid prolonged legal conflict.

    Following the announcement of the agreement, District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb framed the resolution as a transformative win for public health. “The safety features Meta is required to install will fundamentally and immediately change how young people use Instagram and Facebook,” Schwalb said.

    In its own official statement, Meta framed the settlement as an extension of its existing work to support teen wellbeing and give parents more control over their children’s online activity. The company also called on its major industry competitors, TikTok and YouTube, to adopt identical safety frameworks for their own underage user bases.

    “Our new Time Limit commitments, Night Mode features and usage limits during school hours set the right path forward for our whole industry, but this framework will only work if all our peers join us,” said Meta Chief Legal Officer CJ Mahoney. As of the settlement announcement, representatives for both TikTok and YouTube have been contacted for comment but have not yet released a public response.