This week: how Meta’s child-safety settlement doubles as a regulatory moat, how Apple’s own definition of “tracking” happens to exclude Apple, and what an exposed Chinese police dashboard reveals about surveilling foreigners.

1. Meta Just Paid Nearly $17 Billion To Make Sure It Gets To Write The Kid Safety Rules For Every Other Social Media Platform

Mike Masnick
Published: 08/26/2026

Meta Just Paid Nearly $17 Billion To Make Sure It Gets To Write The Kid Safety Rules For Every Other Social Media Platform
Meta’s settlement with 52 state attorneys general sets time limits, night mode, and age checks for teens, and pressures YouTube and TikTok to match them. None of it has to be proven to actually help kids. Social media companies have now learned that studying their own platform’s harms just hands lawyers ammunition, so this settlement path is what’s left, and it lets Meta look like it’s losing a case while effectively writing the industry’s rulebook, which state attorneys general will point to as “industry standards” and force them on other companies whether they actually help or not.

Cutting engagement isn’t the same as protecting children, and nobody’s shown these specific rules do either, not for all kids, just some.

Filed Under: #opinion #techdirt #regulatoryCapture #ageVerification #freeSpeech #stateAgSettlement #meta

2. Data and Definitions

Ben Thompson
Published: 06/21/2022

Apple’s ATT restricts rivals’ access to iPhone transaction data while exempting its own ad business
Apple defines “tracking” narrowly enough that it never applies to Apple. The rule only kicks in when data is linked to a third party or sold to a broker, so everything Apple collects itself from purchases, subscriptions, and browsing doesn’t count. Every iPhone purchase runs through Apple’s payment system, and Apple treats that transaction data as its own, exempt from the same restrictions it imposes on Meta and everyone else.

Germany’s Bundeskartellamt opened an investigation into this asymmetry back in 2022, and Apple is now changing the policy there because of it.

Filed Under: #stratechery #antitrust #appTrackingTransparency #platformPower #advertising #dataPrivacy #apple #euRegulation

3. How China Keeps Tabs on Foreigners

Lily Kuo, Pei-Lin Wu
Published: 08/01/2026

Unsecured Chinese police dashboard exposed surveillance data on 700+ foreign residents and 300+ journalists
An unsecured police dashboard in Zhangjiakou combined immigration records, surveillance-camera footage, facial recognition, medical visits, payments, and travel details into single profiles on more than 700 foreign residents and 300 journalists.

I think many assumed China already does this. It’s still a clear signal: visit or live there, and you’re getting added to a database if you step out in public.

Filed Under: #stateSurveillance #chinaSurveillance #investigation #nyt #policeTechnology