New files released by the Justice Department show Jeffrey Epstein joking about being in a "pariahs club" and discussing the fate of powerful men who had been accused of wrongdoing.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is surveying the commercial advertising technology market for tools capable of supplying location data and large-scale analytics to federal investigators, according to a recent Request for Information (RFI).

Framed as market research rather than a procurement, the RFI seeks information from companies offering “Ad Tech compliant and location data services” that could support criminal, civil, and administrative investigations across ICE’s mission set.

• European Commission officials met lobbyists more than 100 times on the Digital Fairness Act since December 2024. 83% of the lobby meetings that Commission top officials had on the DFA were with industry representatives, including 47 meetings with individual companies and 28 with business lobby groups. By contrast, less than 14% of these meetings were held with NGOs and trade unions.
• Meta lobbyists presented misleading claims to the European Commission about the safety of Instagram for young women. These claims are contradicted by several recent independent studies as well as analyses of Meta’s own internal documents that have entered the public domain via whistleblowers and US court cases.
• The Consumer Choice Center – a lobby group funded by Google and Meta – has launched a project called ‘EU Tech Loop’, which publishes articles on EU digital policies on the Euronews website. The content closely echoes Big Tech talking points, which raises questions about untransparent influencing via EU media spaces.
• Beyond Big Tech’s lobbying firepower, the DFA is facing at least four other obstacles: the current obsession among EU decision-makers with industry competitiveness via deregulation, pressure from the Trump administration, the growing power of the far right in EU politics, and the tendency to limit debate on social media addiction to rules for minors.

A researcher recently found that young adults who receive emotional support on social media are significantly more likely to report reduced anxiety symptoms, with a few specific personality traits reporting the most improved well-being.

Among the study's findings was that people with high openness to experience, high extraversion, high agreeableness and low conscientiousness reported an increase in perceived social media emotional support. Positive interactions and perceptions may explain why young adults with these specific traits feel more supported and less anxious overall.

The Estonian state is to analyze how viable it would be to reduce dependence on U.S. tech giants such as Microsoft, Google or Amazon for its software.

The Estonian state is to analyze how viable it would be to reduce dependence on U.S. tech giants such as Microsoft, Google or Amazon for its software.