Lauren Feiner

After back -to- back losses in trials grappling with its impact on teens' mental health, Meta just settled what was supposed to be its next legal battle with Kentucky's Breathitt County School District. Google's YouTube, Snap, and TikTok all recently settled similar claims brought by the school district, which was seeking payment from the companies to cover the cost of combatting social media-related mental health harms.

A federal judge is officially being tasked with deciding whether to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.

The company asked the judge to rule that as a matte of law , it could not be found an illegal monopolist, despite the jury issuing a verdict against it. If that fails, it's asked the court to grant it a new trial altogether

It wants to throw out the original decision, as well as an order to share data with rivals.

Google officially filed its appeal of the federal ruling deeming it an illegal search monopolist , arguing the decision “crashed” through legal guardrails. “Google just prevailed in the marketplace fair and square,” it writes in its legal filing.

Republican Ken Paxton is seeking to require Discord to implement age verification, maximum default safety settings, and pay penalties for allegedly designing its platform in a way that facilitated teen exploitation. It echoes lawsuits against major social media platforms that have gone to trial this year.

A document posted to the federal register shows the administration is considering a new non-disclosure agreement barring government workers from sharing confidential information. It's unclear what it would actually change, and agencies would have discretion to adopt it. If you're a federal worker who wants to chat anonymously, I'm on Signal at laurenfeiner.64.

A bipartisan group of attorneys general wrote to congressional leaders that passing the House's KIDS Act — which includes a weakened version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) — would preempt state laws and “insulate Big Tech from appropriate oversight and accountability and imperil the young people it purports to protect.”

Governor JB Pritzker says he plans to sign a bill passed Wednesday by the state legislature, which would require independent audits and whistleblower protections at AI companies. Those features go beyond recently passed AI safety laws in New York and California, according to NBC News, while also including similar protections. [Link: Illinois Legislature passes historic AI bill that would require third-party safety audits

In a brief order, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed Texas to move forward with implementing its App Store Accountability Act while the case seeking to block it plays out. It’s an early test of a method that is being considered across several states, and in Congress. [Link: Fifth Circuit Lifts Block on Texas Age Requirements for Apps