Welcome to Tech Beat, your daily look at the stories shaping our digital world.
A significant privacy concern surfaced today around YouTube channel Channel Five, hosted by Andrew Callaghan. The outlet reportedly handed a list of subscriber email addresses to Hunter Biden, who then used that data to promote a personal memecoin. A data privacy expert told four-oh-four Media the move is likely illegal in several jurisdictions, raising hard questions about where the line sits between a journalist's relationship with a source and the commercial exploitation of an audience's trust.
Shifting to the payments world, Visa is making a notable move into blockchain territory, pairing its payment settlement data with onchain lending tools to help fintechs and stablecoin-linked card programs access working capital. It is a signal that one of the most established names in traditional finance sees stablecoin infrastructure not as a threat, but as a funding mechanism worth building around.
And in the United Kingdom, Apple and Google have both missed a government deadline to block child nudity on their platforms. The UK is now preparing legislation that would expose companies to fines and potential criminal liability, with signals that Snapchat and Instagram could face similar pressure. It is a story about regulatory patience running out.
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