Doug Isenberg

Apple said it pulled the Meta-owned apps WhatsApp and Threads from its app store in China on government orders, potentially escalating the war over technology between the United States and China. The iPhone maker said that China’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration, ordered the removal of WhatsApp and Threads from its app store because of national security concerns.

Adult content companies Pornhub, Stripchat and XVideos will have to do risk assessment reports and take measures to address systemic risks linked to their services to comply with new EU online content rules, the European Commission said. The three companies were designated as very large online platforms last December under the Digital Services Act (DSA) which requires them to do more to remove illegal and harmful content on their platforms.

The U.K. privacy regulator says Google’s proposed replacements for cookies need to do more to protect consumer privacy, according to internal documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google’s proposed technology, dubbed Privacy Sandbox, leaves gaps that can be exploited to undermine privacy and identify users who should be kept anonymous, the Information Commissioner’s Office wrote in a draft report.

Republican House leaders unveiled an unconventional plan to tuck the TikTok crackdown into a series of foreign aid packages slated for a vote. The tactic could fast-track the proposal, maneuvering the stand-alone bill that has stalled in the Senate.

Chinese government-linked hackers have burrowed into U.S. critical infrastructure and are waiting "for just the right moment to deal a devastating blow," FBI Director Christopher Wray said. An ongoing Chinese hacking campaign known as Volt Typhoon has successfully gained access to numerous American companies in telecommunications, energy, water and other critical sectors, with 23 pipeline operators targeted, Wray said in a speech at Vanderbilt University.

A financially motivated criminal hacking group says it has stolen a confidential database containing millions of records that companies use for screening potential customers for links to sanctions and financial crime. The hackers, which call themselves GhostR, said they stole 5.3 million records from the World-Check screening database in March and are threatening to publish the data online.

California politicians are advancing a bill that would force Google and Meta — which owns Facebook and Instagram — to pay news publishers each time they display pieces of their articles or show links to them in search results or on social media. The companies are lobbying furiously to block it, saying the law would enact a “link tax” and upend the free flow of information online.

Social media platform X said it would challenge in court an order from an Australian regulator demanding the company remove some posts related to the stabbing of a bishop in Sydney. Police charged a boy, 16, with a terrorism offence for the alleged stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel at a church in the New South Wales capital.

TikTok told employees it will fight in the courts if a U.S. bill forcing a ban or divestiture of the Chinese-owned app is signed into law, as one of the world’s most valuable technology businesses tries to fend off an existential crisis in its most important market. “This is an unprecedented deal worked out between the Republican Speaker and President Biden,” Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, said in a memo to TikTok’s U.S. staff. “At the stage that the bill is signed, we will move to the courts for a legal challenge.”

The Federal Communications Commission voted to restore regulations that expand government oversight of broadband providers and aim to protect consumer access to the internet, a move that will reignite a long-running battle over the open internet. Known as net neutrality, the regulations were first put in place nearly a decade ago under the Obama administration and are aimed at preventing internet service providers like Verizon or Comcast from blocking or degrading the delivery of services from competitors like Netflix and YouTube.