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The UK's advertising watchdog has banned Instagram betting ads featuring Erling Haaland and Harry Kane, ruling that the campaigns held strong appeal for under-eighteens. It's a reminder that when platforms profit from attention, the youngest and most vulnerable users often bear the cost.
Shifting to a very different kind of digital commentary — Pope Leo has cited Tolkien's Lord of the Rings in a papal encyclical addressing artificial intelligence. The move lands as a pointed, if perhaps unintentional, rebuke to Silicon Valley billionaires who have long invoked the same mythology to justify their ambitions, often getting the themes spectacularly backwards.
And in the courts, the Supreme Court has declined to hear Meta's appeal in a Vermont case centered on social media addiction among teenagers. The decision keeps the lawsuit alive and signals that platforms may no longer be able to count on federal intervention to shield them from state-level accountability for harms to young users.
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