Happy Tuesday. Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, with the week’s top stories from the intersection of technology and politics.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced Monday that children under age 16 will no longer be allowed to access social media starting in 2027.
A press release from the U.K. Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology said gaming sites and livestreaming platforms are banned for younger users as well:
In a move to protect children online and address the scale of the challenge, the government will also go further than a blanket ban on social media with world-leading blocks on harmful functions such as livestreaming and stranger communication with children for under-16s. These restrictions — which together with the ban go further than any other country — will apply to a wider range of online services, including on gaming sites.
British officials said they see a similar ban in Australia as a model. Australian officials acknowledged that many children under 16 have managed to exploit workarounds to access social media platforms despite the ban but defended it as an important barrier nonetheless. Starmer struck a similar note during a press conference Monday, acknowledging that loopholes are inevitable but adding that he’s “not prepared to compromise on the safety and happiness of our children.”
I think of such regulations as akin to those around alcohol consumption. Are you going to stop teen drinking completely by enforcing a minimum drinking age? No. But it’s worth encouraging a culture that sees teens’ consumption of products with known risks as a crisis, and takes rational steps to stop it.
Read more at The Associated Press.
Ominous IPOs
After SpaceX’s initial public offering made Elon Musk a trillionaire on paper, my colleague Hayes Brown wrote about his ominous feelings about the massive investments shareholders are making in artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.
He warns:
Amid the talk of trillionaires, it should not be missed that a few people stand to get much, much richer in the short term — and these giant IPOs have the potential to leave everyone else holding the bag if AI proponents’ visions do not become reality.
Read more on MS NOW.
Polymarket pays propagandists
Semafor writer Maxwell Tani has been sounding the alarm on online betting platform Polymarket paying to promote far-right conspiracy theorists’ social media posts, some of which are making baseless claims about election fraud in the Los Angeles mayoral primary.
As Tani noted in the post above, NPR reached Polymarket for comment last week:
On Monday, Polymarket said that while it does not have language specifically banning creators from posting election-related disinformation, any post denying the result of an election would violate its rules against spreading false and misleading information.
Polymarket told NPR posts from two of the creators it works with have lost the “paid partnership” tag. It has not asked creators to delete any posts, but told them about the company’s content guidelines.
It seems that not everyone has gotten the message.
Trump crypto businesses touted at UFC event
Donald Trump’s Ultimate Fighting Championship event on the White House lawn was a grotesque spectacle in many ways, not the least of which was its obvious use as a commercial to boost the self-enriching cryptocurrency schemes of the president and his family.
Read my blog on Trump’s crypto businesses at the event on MS NOW.
Debunking Big Tech’s spin
Wired has a new report debunking claims from Big Tech investors like Kevin O’Leary, the pro-Trump “Shark Tank” star, that China is behind Americans’ growing backlash to data centers.
Read more in Wired.
Musk’s insecurity exposed
Elon’s insecurity is showing. Since obtaining trillionaire status, he’s shown he’s clearly quite tender about people discussing how much of his fortune has been built on massive federal contracts and other government-backed incentives that benefited his companies.
A segment from MS NOW’s Jen Psaki breaking down some of the facts explains “why trillionaire Elon Musk’s investment relies on you.” Check it out below.
DOGE redux
Writer Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic wrote about members of Trump’s defunct and destructive so-called Department of Government Efficiency and their efforts to re-create that effort, which hacked away at federal programs with abandon, for private sector clients.