Stories from Abroad

The European Commission has opened formal proceedings to assess whether Meta, the provider of Facebook and Instagram, may have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA). The suspected infringements cover Meta's policies and practices relating to deceptive advertising and political content on its services.

The Financial Times has struck a deal with OpenAI to train artificial intelligence models on the publisher’s archived content, in the latest agreement between the Microsoft-backed start-up and a global news publisher. Under the terms of the deal, the FT will license its material to the ChatGPT maker to help develop generative AI technology that can create text, images and code indistinguishable from human creations. The agreement also allows ChatGPT to respond to questions with short summaries from FT articles, with links back to FT.com.

The telecommunications industry’s transition from an analogue to a digital telephone system was partially paused after two Virgin Media O2 customers died following the failure of their telecare devices after the upgrade process. The incidents in 2023 triggered the government’s announcement in December that it had secured industry commitments to protect vulnerable customers.

Using a 2003–2019 dataset on broadband adoption in Algeria, we explore its pattern and the market structure, institutional, and socio-economic factors that influenced its pace, which was considerably delayed due to political and social instability during the decade of the 1990s. We propose an integrative model selection approach that simultaneously searches for the best diffusion model among the Bass, Gompertz, and Logistic diffusion models, as well as relevant explanatory variables.

On battlefields from Ukraine to Sudan, Starlink provides immediate and largely secure access to the internet. Besides solving the age-old problem of effective communications between troops and their commanders, Starlink provides a way to control drones and other advanced technologies that have become a critical part of modern warfare.

In April 2020, Netflix, Inc. and its Korean subsidiary Netflix Services Korea Ltd. filed a lawsuit against SK Broadband, Inc., seeking confirmation that there were no obligations to bear network costs. On June 25, 2021, the Seoul Central District Court rejected Netflix’s argument and acknowledged the existence of an obligation to negotiate fees. Netflix subsequently appealed the decision on November 5, 2021.

SpaceX’s Starlink touts its high-speed internet as “available almost anywhere on Earth.” In the real world, its reach extends to countries where Elon Musk’s satellite-enabled service has no agreement to operate, including territories ruled by repressive regimes. There are wide-spanning examples of Starlink kits being traded and activated illegally.

In a household-based assessment of digital needs conducted by the University of Liverpool, parents and young people defined what is ‘enough’ for a household with children to feel digitally included. Respondents considered devices and internet services, basic functional skills, and critical skills. This Minimal Digital Living Standard (MLDS) includes:

The European Parliament approved the Artificial Intelligence Act that ensures safety and compliance with fundamental rights, while boosting innovation. The law aims to protect fundamental rights, democracy, the rule of law and environmental sustainability from high-risk AI, while boosting innovation and establishing Europe as a leader in the field.

Doctors' appointments, job applications, personal banking, key services and more are today mostly managed online. While the UK government details its plans for a digital future to transform public services, one in seven Britons are forced to live without the internet. This film is voiced by three individuals experiencing digital exclusion, revealing how varied and complex the repercussions can be. Through enacted scenes from their lives, it makes visible the expanding digital divide—an issue too often unseen or ignored by policy makers, businesses and society at large.