DUBLIN — The Irish capital, which doubles as Europe’s de facto tech capital, hosted two very different AI summits in the past week.

Most eyes were on the International AI Summit, the signature tech event of Ireland’s six-month presidency of the Council of the EU, where top brass from the world’s biggest tech firms discussed ways to harness artificial intelligence and minimize safety risks.

But the weekend before, a very different conversation was taking place at the Workers’ AI Counter Summit, as Ireland’s tech workers demanded a say in how the burgeoning technology reshapes the workplace and society.

Ireland’s lucrative tech sector has been rattled by waves of AI-driven layoffs — and the country’s fledgling tech union has seen an exponential spike in sign-ups from workers who are worried about their future.  

There’s an “awakening” happening right now among workers in Ireland’s tech sector, and a growing “awareness that they’re not bulletproof,” said Sinéad Gibney, a social democrat lawmaker who previously worked for Google.  

“I do think what we will see is that parts of roles will be automated, which means that people will be competing more heavily for the same roles,” she said. “They won’t have the same labor power and therefore we’re going to see a drop in quality of work, we’re going to see more zero-hour contracts, in more places than we already see it.”

The labor movement brewing in Ireland, where many of the world’s tech giants have their EU bases, is part of a wider trend among tech workers globally, who have seen their work disrupted by rapidly evolving AI.

Rise in layoffs

Ireland’s dedicated union for tech workers, the Digital and Techworker Alliance (DATA), has seen a five-fold increase in membership since it was first founded in 2023.  

In its first year and a half of existence, membership hovered around 270 people. In the past year-and-a-half, it’s jumped to more than 1,350 members, DATA organizer John Bohan told POLITICO.  He added that this number tends to spike around layoffs and other actions.

“The tech industry was founded on the idea that it would never have a union, because they’re making people rich, and treat them really well,” Bohan said.  “But post-Covid, workforce adjustments happened again and again, with layoffs and declining conditions in the sector. We started to see more people wanting to get organized around redundancies.”  

The spike in sign-ups coincides with a wave of layoffs in Ireland’s tech bubble (and the tech sector globally), as companies corrected pandemic-era overhiring, and diverted investment to AI.  

Ireland hosts the EU headquarters of most of the world’s largest tech companies, and more than 170,000 people are employed in the tech sector, according to the country’s statistics institute.

Social media giant Meta has roughly halved its workforce in Ireland since the pandemic, axing well over 1,000 roles to offset AI investment and boost efficiency. Separately, Meta subcontractor Covalen also announced massive layoffs earlier this year, cutting more than 700 people.  

Video-sharing platform TikTok announced this year it would shed around 300 Irish jobs, mostly from its trust and safety team, shifting the work to other countries, outsourced vendors or automated AI solutions.  

A report by the IMF earlier this year warned that Ireland’s labor market is “relatively more exposed” to AI than many advanced economies, partly due to its concentration of tech workers.  

The AI race is also creating new jobs on the Irish market – as AI firms like Anthropic and OpenAI are setting up Irish bases and trying to lure Big Tech workers with even bigger salaries.  

Amid the uncertainty and volatility of the AI boom, tech workers are turning to unions for the first time as a safety net. One tech worker who used to work in trust and safety at a big tech firm told POLITICO that there used to be a feeling that as a “pampered” tech worker you “can’t ask for your rights, because you already have it so much better.” 

But as layoffs continue and teams get leaner, workers in fields like trust and safety “now have to deal with these issues with fewer and fewer resources”, and face a “constant threat of being chopped,” the worker said.  

That’s causing an “undoing of a certain perspective that we have of ourselves as tech sector workers,” they said, “because of undeniable experiences that now put us in situations where we clearly see our rights being violated, even if we may have it so much or somewhat better than most people.” 

A different tech worker who currently works for Covalen told POLITICO that there is a sense that “if they believe they can replace you with AI, they will do that.”  

“All these Big Tech firms only care about profit, and what I have realized is the Irish government protects that Big Tech capital [rather than workers],” the Covalen worker said. “But the question is, what’s the government going to do when the tech bros change their mind and move elsewhere?”  

Workers at the center

The speaker list at this week’s AI summit was a flex of the country’s strength as a tech hub, as top names from the world’s biggest companies like Google and Microsoft took to the stage.

Fionnuala Ní Bhrógáin, head of organizing and campaigning at Ireland’s Communications Workers’ Union (DATA’s parent union), was the only union voice on the line-up.

“The fact that 36 executives and industry bosses featured on the program, compared with just one trade union speaker — invited at the last minute after attention was drawn to the absence of workers’ voices — says a lot about the value the Irish government places on AI’s impact on workers,” she told POLITICO.

“The reality is that a meaningful conversation about AI’s future can only happen through genuine engagement with workers and collective bargaining,” Ní Bhrógáin added. “Without that voice, we risk deepening mistrust and resistance rather than creating the conditions for workers to shape these changes collectively.”

DATA organized its counter-AI summit the previous weekend, to put “workers at the center of the debate about power, AI, technology and the future of work.” 

The event cut through the “hype and futurism of politicians and industry figures to focus on the real present harms faced by ordinary workers and communities,” DATA’s Bohan said.  

The union is pushing for stronger legal protections for tech workers caught up in AI-driven layoffs in Ireland, including making it mandatory for employers to recognize unions during collective bargaining. It is also calling for a ban on cooling-off clauses that prevent laid-off workers from moving between Big Tech subcontractors.  

A spokesperson for Ireland’s department for enterprise told POLITICO in a written statement that the government is “committed to strengthening collective bargaining and industrial relations” and has published an action plan to do so between now and 2030.  

They said that employers already have to comply with obligations under Irish employment law, including consultation and notification procedures for collective redundancies, and workers who feel those rules have been broken can complain to the Workplace Relations Commission. 

Firefighting to future-proofing 

Naoise Ó Cearúil, a center-right Fianna Fáil lawmaker who chairs the AI committee, pointed out that while there have been high-profile job cuts in Ireland’s tech sector, “the actual net is that there has been an increase [in jobs], particularly over the past year and even five years.” 

According to Ireland’s central statistics office, total employment in tech and related sectors surpassed 177,000 in the second quarter of this year, up from around 144,000 at the same time in 2021.  

Ó Cearúil pointed out that many job losses were in trust and safety jobs like content moderation that are “very difficult mentally,” and now tech firms are able to “utilize AI and software to be able to do a lot of detection, rather than using humans.”  

He has called for a national program to be established, to support workers whose jobs are at risk due to AI and automation.  

A spokesperson for Ireland’s department of enterprise acknowledged that the country’s tech sector has “experienced significant adjustment in recent years,” but said the changes were generally part of wider global restructuring “rather than reflecting any Ireland-specific weakness.” 

They said the Irish government is currently focused on “ensuring workers and businesses are equipped to adapt to technological change through investment in education, training, lifelong learning and digital skills.”  

To get past the paywall, sign up for VICE membership. A Digital Only subscription is just $2 a month (or $20 a year, if you prefer. $70 a year also gets you 4 issues of VICE magazine, delivered straight to your door. (All three kill all the ads on this site.)

No one likes it when I say this, but you get the algorithm you deserve. Generally speaking, what you get served on social media is a reflection of the things you’ve engaged with the most combined with predictions of what you would engage with based on your age, gender, location, and so on. Hence, my Instagram Explore page is a shameful buffet of women in those shorts Shane Gillis is afraid of providing “glute activation” gym tutorials, clips of Florence Pugh talking about food in a vaguely erotic manner, and drunk Americans belting Alice In Chains in the back of a pick-up; my legitimate interests merged and warped by the digital marketplace of sly OnlyFans promotion and adverts for perimenopausal supplements.

Others, however, might find their timelines filled with other things. Bloodshed, for instance.

In an essay for the latest issue of VICE magazine, The Self-Destruction Issue, Mattha Busby looks into the rise of so-called “fight porn” on social media. That is, the constant barrage of videos of bar fights, dog fights, schoolyard brawls, dashcam road rage, etc, that roll non-stop across our timelines like hot, cortisol-spiking dispatches from the frontlines of the War On The Societal Contract, delivered to us casually between celebrity gossip and photos of our friends’ babies. It begs the question: Are Western societies more violent than they were in the past, or is the algorithm pushing us all, gently, towards insanity?

Mattha writes:

“Perhaps the question isn’t whether we’re more barbarous than our grandparents but what the effect of being constantly exposed to barbarism is on our brains and societies as a whole. To be clear, there is little evidence that street violence itself has exploded in the West, but what has exploded is its visibility—and the way that visibility shapes what feels socially plausible.”

Read the full story in The Self-Destruction Issue or behind the paywall below:

Also behind the paywall this week, you’ll find what is perhaps the spiritual inverse of CCTV footage of Americans punching each other: artistic interpretations of sex in China.

Lao Xie Xie has been photographing Shanghai youth since 2019, following Gen Z through a pandemic and tightening moral codes. Capturing people in their homes, in public spaces, at underground shibari parties and more, his series Shanghai No Why offers a glimpse into the lives of young microcommunities thriving beyond censorship and cultural stereotypes.

Speaking to VICE writer Tom Veréb Czibolya, Lao says:

“To me, these photos are about freedom, freedom to present your body differently […] What I can say is that many of the people I photograph belong to a generation obsessed with images. It’s social media and its hyper-aggressive push toward self-representation, and clearly, this influences how they approach relationships and sexuality too.”

Check out a selection of Lao’s work and read our full interview with him behind the paywall:

Emma Garland
Deputy Editor, VICE Magazine

To get past the paywall, sign up for VICE membership. A Digital Only subscription is just $2 a month (or $20 a year, if you prefer), while $70 a year also gets you 4 issues of VICE magazine, delivered straight to your door. (All three kill all the ads on this site.)

The post A Generation Obsessed With Images—This Week On VICE: Members Only appeared first on VICE.

BRUSSELS — France and Germany said Friday they had struck a deal to favor European-made cars under a landmark EU industry bill in exchange for weakening a 2035 vehicle emissions target, ending months of wrangling between the bloc’s two biggest economies.

Under the agreement, Germany would accept stricter “Made in Europe” — or local content — requirements for the automotive industry in the proposed Industrial Accelerator Act, a longstanding French demand, while France would back Berlin’s push to relax the EU’s plan to phase out new combustion-engine cars.

The EU’s current target is for companies to reduce emissions from new vehicles by 100% from 2021 levels by 2035, with the possibility to “earn” 10% of emissions leeway through initiatives like offsets and investments.

France and Germany now want to soften the 2035 target to 90% but without having  to offer investments in alternative fuels to compensate the remaining 10%, as proposed by the European Commission.

“This balanced approach will enable the European Union to pursue its climate objectives while strengthening the technological sovereignty, industrial base and international competitiveness of its automotive industry,” the two countries said in a joint statement.

The agreement, first reported by POLITICO in July, was due to have been announced Thursday, during a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels. But it was held up at the last minute by disagreements within Germany’s governing coalition.

“We hope that this Franco-German dynamic can swiftly lead to an agreement with our partners, for our jobs and our industry,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a post on social media.

An Elysée official on Friday made clear that, under the Franco-German deal, the scope of Made in Europe for automotive can be extended to the U.K. and Switzerland under certain conditions. — addressing a key concern of Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government ahead of a Nov. 20 U.K.-EU summit in Brussels.

The agreement was reached after the German Social Democratic Party, the junior partner in Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s coalition government, dropped its opposition.

“This is a modern realignment of German industrial policy that places significantly greater emphasis on preserving jobs and production sites,” said German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider, who is from the SPD.

“The clear expectation for German companies is that they will use these new opportunities to make investments and guarantee jobs here in Germany,” he added.

CORRECTION: This article was updated on Oct. 16 after an earlier version misrepresented the figures in the Franco-German proposal on the softening of 2035 targets.

Bluesky's Attie AI tool, which initially launched earlier this year as a way to use AI to build your own feeds, now lets you make "small" social apps like games, polls, and dashboards that you can then share with others as their own websites. In an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt, Bluesky CEO Toni Schneider said to think of Attie as "social vibe coding or vibe coding for your community."

You can make your own Attie app by typing in a prompt. A simple poll I made about Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue took a few minutes to generate. If you want to check out something more full-featured, the Attie website currently highlights a few examples l …

Read the full story at The Verge.

This feature is from THE SELF-DESTRUCTION ISSUE of VICE magazine. Find it in a store near you, or get 4 issues each year sent straight to your door, by subscribing.

Are Western societies more barbarous than they were in decades past? As someone who’s never been on the wrong end of rat torture or a conquistador’s arquebus, it’s impossible for me to say, but abject ultra-violence has certainly become ubiquitous on our screens. Open any social media app right now, and you might see a Mumbai dog fight descend into horrifying farce as a spectator is sucked into the whirling power take-off shaft of a nearby tractor. Or a girl in a U.S. high school corridor crumpling to the floor after receiving a devastating triple blow to the face. Or a guy making minced meat of a foe who goaded him in a mall, complete with an audio edit that makes his punches land with a cartoon thwack.

In some parts of the world, the increasing algorithmic prominence of fist fights, stabbings, and gang brawls on social media has exposed some 70 percent of teens to real fighting on their timelines, often without them ever seeking out this type of content. This so-called “fight porn” bleeds into the everyday scroll, dissolving the line between entertainment, news, and snuff as it’s delivered by the same mechanisms that show you celebrity selfies and photos of brunch.

In a high rise building in Malad West, Mumbai a pet dog suddenly turned aggressive inside the elevator and tried to attack three girls

The dog's owner showed quick presence of mind and managed to control the dog, preventing a major tragedy

The entire incident was captured on… pic.twitter.com/LMghePMioz

— Ramesh Speaks (@rameshofficial0) July 18, 2026

“If you make someone sit down and watch a UFC fight or a boxing fight, they’re going to have a very different reaction behaviorally and neurochemically than if they are watching a street fight,” reasons Dr. Nafees Hamid, a cognitive scientist of political violence at King’s College London. “In both cases, you’re watching someone beat the hell out of another person. But one case is sanctioned. There are rules and a referee.” Street-fight clips are a different beast. “Are they spreading a particular vision,” Hamid wonders, “of what it means to be a man?”

When I was at school in England in the 2000s, videos of playground dust ups would occasionally be shared from phone to phone, and we’d grimace at the beatings meted out to classmates. Some of my peers would be a little more cautious the next time we were around the assailant. Others would puff out their chests, wishing to gain the prestige of putting them in their place. But crucially it was all contained, the distribution system that disseminates such content yet to be invented. Social media creates a greater incentive to “post and boast,” allowing bullies to bask in a dopamine-fueled orgy of infamy—until their victim dies and they are arrested, as has been the case in several high-profile incidents both in the UK and abroad.

Fight porn bleeds into the everyday scroll, dissolving the line between entertainment, news, and snuff

Just as violence has always been a way for men to assert their dominance, violence in entertainment has long prompted outbursts of social hysteria, from the heavy metal “Satanic Panic” in the 80s to first-person shooters like Grand Theft Auto in the 2000s. But those were all packaged forms of opt-in violence. What we’re seeing now is unpackaged, real, and floating around us constantly in a grisly ambient cloud. Who profits from turning the human experience into a never-ending fight club? Violent content on X has blossomed since the social-media platform, then called Twitter, was bought by Elon Musk in October 2022.

“I noticed [the uptick] almost immediately,” says filmmaker Luke*, who neglected to provide his surname for privacy reasons. “People fighting in the streets and dying constantly.” He assumed there’d been an algorithm tweak, intended to increase the amount of time people spend on the platform, since it’s “the kind of horrible shit that’s hard to look away from.”

The never-ending stream of gritty street brawls via popular X accounts, or on the 2.2 million-member subreddit r/fightporn, are clearly intoxicating for some. But whereas an afternoon escapade into the darkest recesses of online porn naturally concludes in a regretful discharge and at least a temporary disinterest in watching yet more filmed intercourse, the abundance of titillating bareknuckle boxing pumps adrenaline that has nowhere to go, almost leaving you craving a fight of your own. The algorithm discovered that we’ll stop scrolling when someone’s face meets concrete, and the attention economy meets the adrenal economy.

“Shocking footage registers in the brain as threat and arousal, and as a result, dopamine is released to keep you alert and engaged,” says anger management expert Mike Fisher, the founder of the British Association of Anger Management. He warns that regular viewers of this sort of content may develop worsening emotional control issues and increased baseline anxiety. “The two together, anger and watching violence, become a serious toxic concoction.”

The allure of fight porn and the ultraviolent soup careening around social media is that anyone can get into a street fight. Perhaps titillatingly, we are all just an errant barge or a misconstrued glance away from a potentially life-ending brawl. 

Road rage in Birmingham.. pic.twitter.com/KKHmK3yI5W

— London & UK Street News (@CrimeLdn) July 10, 2025

“It’s like billions of cortisol spikes frying our brains every day,” says entrepreneur Antoine, who did not want to disclose his full name for business reasons. He’s been watching street brawl content on YouTube since the very dawn of the video-sharing platform. “I’m a little addicted to these videos. I have had to protect myself and others in the past, and I feel watching fight videos helps me to be more ready if I need to defend myself again.” 

Nick admits he went through a phase of watching no-rules backyard fights on YouTube. “There’s a well-organized European brand I liked the most and found the most unnerving,” he says. “Before I knew it, I was being fed all manner of violence and actual human suffering constantly,” he adds, saying he even got served someone live-streaming their own murder.

Over the last year, Nick believes that his consumption of extreme fight content may have led him to experience intrusive thoughts, which he has found are consistent with harm OCD (a type of obsessive compulsive disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts, images, or urges about causing harm to oneself or others). “While I’m speaking to people, I have these unwelcome thoughts of twatting them in the face,” he explains. “These people could be parents, family friends, or basically anyone. It’s obviously jarring: I don’t want to hit my mom.”

It’s like his brain is saying: “What would happen if this entirely neutral situation became incredibly violent out of nowhere?” When violence becomes ambient, the mind begins simulating it. Not because we want to be violent, but because the brain is rehearsing threats.

“While I’m speaking to people, I have these unwelcome thoughts of twatting them in the face”

We are hardwired to pay attention to violence from an evolutionary perspective, says Brad Bushman, a professor of communication at Ohio State University. “Our ancient ancestors who ignored violent cues became extinct,” he says. “But when people are repeatedly exposed to street violence, they likely become desensitized and numb to it. These videos reduce empathy—and empathy is one of the best predictors for pro-social behavior.”

He learned a lesson they don't teach in schools. pic.twitter.com/Vcx1zoeSuf

— Libs Hate Us (@LibsHateUs) July 12, 2025

Even primates are drawn to violent videos, he adds, citing a recent paper he co-authored, which reports that monkeys pay more attention to videos with active and aggressive content compared to sitting and grooming videos.

Perhaps the question isn’t whether we’re more barbarous than our grandparents but what the effect of being constantly exposed to barbarism is on our brains and societies as a whole. To be clear, there is little evidence that street violence itself has exploded in the West, but what has exploded is its visibility—and the way that visibility shapes what feels socially plausible. When violence is everywhere, it stops being shocking and begins to feel normal. The danger may not be that fight porn makes us more violent, but that it makes violence feel ordinary.

*Names have been changed for privacy.

Follow Mattha on X @matthabusby

This feature is from THE SELF-DESTRUCTION ISSUE of VICE magazine. Find it in a store near you, or get 4 issues each year sent straight to your door, by subscribing.

The post Is Fight Porn Destroying Us? appeared first on VICE.

Federal authorities arrested a Saudi national employed at OpenAI and charged him with planting a recording device in a company’s executive conference room, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

On or around Sept. 30, OpenAI discovered a sophisticated recording device inserted into the back of a television in an executive conference room located in one of its San Francisco offices. The company determined that the device was installed approximately a couple days prior, concealed in toilet paper. The contents of the device were encrypted, according to the DOJ.

The Department of Justice said in a news release that the employee, Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, was arrested Friday and appeared in federal court Tuesday. OpenAI confirmed the incident on social media and said that it was supporting the FBI’s investigation.

“We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier,” OpenAI said in its statement. “At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data.”

Alfozan used a “productivity tool” to inquire about the company’s meeting rooms, calendars, and “leadership and exec” locations, according to OpenAI’s complaint to the DOJ. A chatbot account associated with his spouse also indicated that the user submitted prompts in September relating to installing and remote accessing a recording device.

The DOJ said that CCTV footage showed Alfozan, who had been employed as an engineer by OpenAI since July 2025, near and inside the conference room on multiple occasions before the device was discovered. Meetings in the conference room “frequently involved discussions of highly confidential technical, commercial, and strategic information, including proprietary research, product plans, and business-development opportunities,” according to the complaint.

The company also discovered another recording device in one of Alfozan’s bags left in the office.

“We referred the matter to the FBI, and we’re grateful to the agents and prosecutors who moved quickly to make an arrest,” OpenAI said. “Our security program is designed to protect against a wide range of threat actors, from insider risks to cybercriminals to nation states, and this case is an example of how AI can help address these sophisticated security threats.”

The Saudi national, who has since been fired by OpenAI, faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release if convicted, according to the DOJ.

“For us it is a matter of national security,” U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian for the Northern District of California said in a statement. “This arrest highlights our relentless efforts in partnership with the FBI to identify and prosecute those who seek to steal our technology, as alleged in the complaint.”

Facebook's new "Your Algorithm" feature will let you directly add and manage topics you want to see in your feed and Facebook Reels. Meta says your recommendations "respond right away" after you make updates using the new feature by hitting "interested" or "not interested" for different topics. Your Algorithm previously launched on Instagram earlier this year, and Meta also launched a similar "Dear Algo" feature on Threads.

Facebook users will be able to access Your Algorithm or select "interested" or "not interested" from the three dots menu on individual posts. The "interested" and "not interested" buttons may also appear under posts, an …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Multiple Ukrainian drone strikes over the last week have taken Russian data centers offline and reportedly caused online bot traffic to plummet - but in reality it's probably not the kind of bot activity most people associate with Russia.

A chart citing Cloudflare data has been circulating around social media platforms, showing a sharp decline in bot traffic following attacks on Yandex servers - a technology company often described as "Russia's Google." While many people are inferring that the chart refers to bot farms that push disinformation, conspiracy theories, and other harmful content across online platforms, reputed troll farm expose …

Read the full story at The Verge.

BRUSSELS — The EU’s idea of getting social media influencers to cover leaders’ summits has not gone according to plan, as no content creators have been invited to this week’s European Council.

Earlier this year, POLITICO reported that the Council had suggested influencers be invited to EU leaders’ summits in Brussels as well as certain ministerial meetings in a bid to “reach new audiences to inform about Council activities.” The influencers were to be chosen and invited by the EU countries, rather than by the Council.

However, six EU diplomats told POLITICO’s EU Influence newsletter that their countries hadn’t put forward any names for the European Council on Oct. 15 and 16.

Why? Seems they just haven’t got around to it. “Mainly logistical problems and budget constraints,” said one of the diplomats, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, as were others quoted in this piece. Another said they’d not had a chance to discuss it with their capital, but hadn’t ruled out the idea for future summits.

“There is no appetite for this,” said a third diplomat. “If my leader wants an influencer [they] would take one” with them, the diplomat said, adding that countries “don’t need the Council for that.”

Council spokesperson Romain Sadet confirmed that  “we won’t be having content creators at the upcoming European Council.”

When the plan was unveiled, a Council official said the influencers would be granted access to areas of the Council’s Brussels HQ that are currently open only to journalists accredited by the EU institutions — though they would be banned from asking ministers and leaders questions. 

“Content creators will be accompanied at all times and will not be treated as media,” the Council official continued. “We are working on the basis of about 10 content creators per event max, accompanied by Council staff.”

In June, the Council sent guidance for choosing influencers to national governments, seen by POLITICO.

It is up to member countries to decide which YouTubers and TikTokers should attend, but the Council’s guidance says they should not pick anyone who has “published views against EU values.”

The content creators should also not have any “significant or long-standing commercial collaborations” to avoid associations with large brands, the guidance continues.

It added that the influencers will not be paid as part of the scheme.

The idea has not gone down well with many journalists.

“Clicks, views and impressions are great on TikTok and Instagram. But the basic fact remains: influencers in press conferences and at summits will not have to disclose who pays them,” the International Press Association, which represents reporters covering European institutions, said in a statement at the time. “By contrast, EU-accredited journalists are not expected to accept payment in return for writing nice stories. It’s sort of called journalistic ethics.”

BRUSSELS — EU countries must “do their job” to prevent travelers from being stuck in airport queues over Christmas, Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner told POLITICO, as he singled out Brussels Airport for the way it has handled the new Entry/Exit System.

In an interview, Brunner defended the bloc’s digital border system and blamed its problems on national authorities and airports.

“Member states had enough time to prepare themselves for this system. They agreed on the system,” Brunner said. “It’s a security issue. It has to work … it’s up to the member states to do their job.”

EU countries began rolling out the Entry/Exit System, which records the fingerprints and facial images of non-EU visitors to the Schengen area, a year ago. It has been fully operational at all external Schengen border crossings since April.

But it has led to long waits at many airports — particularly over the summer, when some countries switched it off during peak periods. Delays persist at some airports, including at Brussels Zaventem, where travelers were forced to wait in lines for up to five hours last month.

“Some member states are a bit behind,” Brunner acknowledged. “We have some challenges, like Zaventem for instance, in Belgium, but also in other member states. And they have to do their job. They agreed on the new system, and now it’s up to the member states to do their job.” 

Brunner also said the Commission had offered support from border agency Frontex and funding to help countries implement the system, adding that he was “very confident” the problems would be ironed out before the next holiday rush.

Belgian Interior Minister Bernard Quintin pushed back at Brunner’s criticism, with a spokesperson saying his responsibility was to ensure there were enough police officers to staff the infrastructure provided by Brussels Airport Company.

The police have “been fully staffing the 12 positions at arrivals,” the spokesperson said, but the airport can process only 500 to 600 non-Schengen passengers an hour, compared with nearly 3,500 who may arrive between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. on busy days. The airport’s infrastructure “cannot cope” with that demand, the spokesperson said, and the company must “make significant changes.”

Brussels Airport did not directly address the criticism from Brunner or Quintin, instead saying in a statement that “all parties involved” were working to fix the delays, including testing new e-gates and pre-registration kiosks, and training more police. “The need for additional infrastructure is also being assessed,” the statement said.

The Entry/Exit System has logged almost 230 million entries and exits across roughly 1,500 border points, Brunner said. Authorities have refused entry to about 80,000 people, including 2,000 considered security threats because of links to activity such as terrorism or organized crime.

“So you see, it actually works. And it pays off,” the Austrian commissioner said.

“This is the most modern border management system in the world,” he added. “We have the comparison to the U.S., to Canada, to others, and they’re all jealous.”

Ceuta stress test

As the EU’s migration commissioner, Brunner also faced another major test over the summer, when tens of thousands of people crossed from Morocco into Spain’s North African exclave of Ceuta.

The crisis remains an ongoing challenge for Spain and the EU.

Madrid initially said almost all those who crossed from Morocco had returned within days. But thousands remained in Ceuta. More than 3,000 people were living at Trampolín beach when authorities cleared an encampment last week; more than 1,200 then chose to return voluntarily to Morocco rather than go through the asylum-screening process, according to local authorities.

Images of thousands of people swimming toward Ceuta and overwhelming the area quickly became political ammunition, with far-right politicians campaigning for tougher migration policies — turning the crisis into a potent election issue and putting pressure on Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

Brunner described Ceuta as a warning that the EU needs to be better prepared for sudden arrivals. He recently proposed a plan for cooperation with partner countries, stronger external borders, early-warning systems, and action against smuggling networks. Migration will be a key topic of conversation at this week’s EU leaders’ summit in Brussels.

Among the Commission’s plans to tackle migration is a proposal to strengthen Frontex that would see it have a reinforced standing corps of officers able to be deployed more quickly, a bigger role in returning people to non-EU countries, closer cooperation with partner countries and more capacity to monitor the EU’s borders. The Commission has also proposed giving the agency a role in monitoring social media to help spot emerging migration movements.

Brunner said the reforms would not mean countries would be forced to host Frontex operations if they did not want them. The plan envisages EU support during border emergencies, but member countries remain responsible for their own external borders.

Greece and other countries want the EU to be able to suspend asylum applications during a large influx and Brunner said he is “definitely going ahead” with an emergency response framework, as requested by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. EU leaders will discuss “concrete steps” at this week’s leaders’ summit.

The goal is to make the EU “more flexible” and “more agile” if events like Ceuta occur, where “mass movements are actually engineered and weaponized” against the bloc, he said.

Brussels also wants to help partner countries protect their borders to reduce irregular arrivals into Europe. To that end, Brunner on Monday begins a trip to Bangladesh and Pakistan, seeking to strengthen cooperation on migration with the two countries, he said.

“We want to help them to protect their borders,” Brunner stated, adding that the EU could support Bangladesh “via Frontex, for instance.”

This story has been updated with statements from Interior Minister Bernard Quintin’s office and Brussels Airport.

The government of Turkey on Saturday formally banned access to social media platform for children under the age of 15.

The law was published today following the Turkish Parliament’s adoption of the bill last April. The ban will come into force on Nov. 1.

Social media platforms will have to “take the necessary technical and administrative measures, including age verification,” to implement the new rules, the law states. The age verification system would work with a government-issued “token”, according to the law’s Article 7.

The law also includes provisions for minors over 15, stating that platforms cannot offer them services that could have “an addictive effect.”

Turkey has often implemented tough restrictions on social media services, frequently banning individual accounts from media outlets or activists, and at times banning access to entire platforms. Ankara banned Instagram for a week in 2024 amid claims the Meta-owned platform censored users mourning Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Last week Turkey blocked a news website and its social media accounts over what a court deemed to be “LGBT propaganda,” sparking outrage from human rights and media freedom groups.

A 2025 report from the U.S.-based think tank Freedom House described Turkey’s internet as “not free.”

Turkey joins a growing group of states, including Australia and Indonesia, that are introducing or exploring tougher age restrictions on social media access.

In September the European Union presented a legal proposal to restrict children’s access to social media and video-sharing platforms until they turn 15, following months of intense pressure from EU leaders on the issue.

Austria, Denmark, France, Greece and Spain are all pushing ahead with national laws to restrict kids’ access to social media. The United Kingdom is also expected to introduce a ban next year.

Canada has also presented a bill to restrict access to social media platforms for children under 16.

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen was mostly unfazed watching Oscar-winning actress Mikey Madison play a character named after her in The Social Reckoning, except for one thing: the wrist warmers.

In Aaron Sorkin's new thriller, the fictional Haugen - who, like her nonfictional counterpart, leaks thousands of documents to Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz - habitually dons the accessories. It's a character quirk that reflects real life, where they're a way to deal with the effects of a vasoconstrictive disorder. "I've figured out lots of ways to minimize how much of an obstruction this is," she tells The Verge in an interview. …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Meta has banned ads from TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance across the US and several other countries as the rivalry between the major social media operators heats up, as reported earlier by Bloomberg. The ban, which went into effect on Thursday, restricts ads and paid marketing messages from ByteDance, along with third-party ads that link to TikTok.

"We don't have to run ads from a competitor whose goal is to pull people off our apps," Meta spokesperson Christopher Sgro said in a statement to The Verge. "Declining promotional services to a competitor is a normal business practice across industries. We will continue to compete on pr …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten sharply criticized Friday the U.S.’s decision to publicly livestream an execution, labeling it “absurd.”

“Personally, I find it truly absurd to broadcast a death penalty execution live,” Jetten told reporters at a press conference in The Hague. “I haven’t discussed this with the U.S. myself recently, but I can imagine that if there is contact with them, for instance, at the level of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we would certainly make our dissatisfaction known,” he added.

The U.S. military plans to carry out a public execution for the first time in recent history, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Thursday. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 3. The Pentagon has said his death will be livestreamed, but has not provided details on which social media platforms would be used, if any.

Jetten said social media platforms in Europe have a responsibility to ensure the execution is not broadcast on the continent.

“As far as I’m concerned, it is really up to the social media platforms in Europe to prevent this from being circulated and broadcast on their channels. But I fear it will be impossible to prevent,” he said.

Jetten added that if the execution does appear on European social media, there will be “a great number of reports filed,” as violent content must be moderated by social media platforms under European law.

“Video-sharing platforms that allow video content displaying scenes of gratuitous violence must use effective age assurance so that children cannot normally see this content,” a spokesperson for the Irish Media Commission told POLITICO. This means platforms can show violent content as long as they ensure it doesn’t reach minors.

The media regulator is currently investigating X over possible breaches in online safety rules for failing to carry out proper age checks.

The UN has said livestreaming an execution would amount to torture. “The livestreaming of an execution is tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture,” the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights told AFP.

The body said its statement is in line with previous ones it has released about public executions in Afghanistan and Iran.

The European Commission did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.

This is a developing story.

BRUSSELS — European Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič opened two days of talks in Beijing on Thursday aimed at rebalancing a gaping trade deficit, with failure to reach a deal likely to test Brussels’ resolve to impose tougher trade restrictions.

The meeting marks the final round of an effort launched in June to reset the lopsided trading relationship, and will hinge on whether China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao is prepared to make substantial concessions.

If no agreement can be reached to narrow the EU’s €1 billion-a-day goods trade deficit, Brussels and Beijing could find themselves on a collision course. EU leaders will review the outcome of the talks at a summit in Brussels next Thursday, where they will consider next steps.

Arriving in China, Šefčovič said his goal was to balance what he called an unsustainable trade deficit. Heading into a meeting with Wang, he said it was crucial that the talks deliver “tangible outcomes.”

The discussions have zeroed in on cars, with Chinese exports increasingly eating into the market share of European automakers. In August, one in eight cars bought in the bloc was Chinese, thanks largely to a boom in sales of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

European negotiators have been pushing China to commit to some form of export restraint — in particular for hybrids. Unlike Chinese-made battery-electric vehicles, which were hit with extra countervailing duties in 2024, plug-in hybrids are not subject to such measures.

Without meaningful commitments from Beijing, the Commission has warned it will resort to unilateral trade restrictions. For cars, it is considering safeguard measures that would mix import quotas and tariffs to protect European automakers.

Chemicals are next. Industry Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné said Thursday that the Commission plans to introduce targeted safeguards on plastics and composite materials, subject to a request from EU governments that Brussels do so.

Wind in his sails 

Šefčovič flew to Beijing with the backing of the leaders of Europe’s two biggest economies — France and Germany — to take a tougher approach to trade.

In a joint appeal on Monday, President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the Commission should be given a freer hand to shut off access to the EU for goods from countries that distort the bloc’s single market.

While the two leaders did not mention China in their letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, there was no mistaking the target of their proposed trade “kill switch,” which could be blocked only by a qualified majority of EU countries.

The EU already has a powerful trade weapon in its Anti-Coercion Instrument, designed to counter economic bullying by foreign powers. 

But Brussels has yet to muster broad support from member countries to deploy it, most recently in January when U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to seize Greenland, a Danish territory.

The EU’s difficulty in responding swiftly to trade threats has heightened concerns about a surge in Chinese exports that European officials say benefit from unfair government subsidies. With Trump hiking U.S. tariffs, ever more Chinese exports are heading to Europe — increasing pressure on industries that are already being forced to retrench.

Europe’s heavy dependence on China for processed rare earths and other critical raw materials also leaves it vulnerable to retaliation should relations deteriorate.

“If we aren’t willing to fix the way our model works, then we’ll be destroyed,” said one EU diplomat, summing up the concerns flooding Brussels.

“What’s the point of having [more tools] if the Chinese can shut down our strategic production in a matter of days?”

Low expectations

Although Šefčovič entered the talks strengthened by the Franco-German letter, a second diplomat said they didn’t foresee a deal with Beijing this week.

“He knows that a lot of member states are behind the Franco-German push,” the diplomat said, adding that this “has been seen in China.” 

But Beijing has little room to compromise, given its reliance on exports to sustain growth amid weak domestic demand and a prolonged property slump.

“The Chinese side is starting to recognize that there is a problem. But I don’t think they are ready to enter into a substantial deal,” said Gunnar Wiegand, a former head of the EU diplomatic service’s Asia-Pacific department.

Wiegand, now a visiting fellow at the German Marshall Fund, said Šefčovič had earned a reputation as a dealmaker in talks on Britain’s exit from the EU and in last year’s trade deal with Trump. This time, however, “both sides are bound by their own circumstances,” he said.

Europe is desperate to halt the erosion of its industrial base, while China remains heavily dependent on exports to sustain economic growth. 

“The Chinese are going to object to being singled out. Even if a deal with the EU would be the most rational solution, other important markets for Chinese exports, such as ASEAN countries, will start asking the same. It will undercut their global market,” he said. 

Since TikTok burst into mainstream consciousness, many things have been called a "TikTok clone": YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Snapchat Spotlight, Netflix's Clips, LinkedIn's vertical video feed, and countless other, less recognizable names like Triller, Zynn, and Byte.

For years now, Facebook and Instagram have pumped users' feeds with video as Meta chases TikTok's runaway success. But if tests running abroad are any indication, the TikTok-ification of social media might finally be reaching its fullest form.

TechCrunch reports that some users in India are getting a Facebook test that, upon opening the app, drops them directly into a …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Trump administration pressured diplomatic officials from the EU, Canada and Lithuania to pull out of an international conference on disinformation after organizers announced panels warning of the threat posed by American government officials and the country’s influence broadly, according to excerpts of a State Department cable seen by POLITICO.

The conference, titled #Disinfo2026, included sessions that described the U.S. as a “foreign information manipulation and interference” actor, or “FIMI,” which bothered the Trump administration, according to the cable. The conference is being held Wednesday and Thursday in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital.

The State Department asked American embassies in several European countries and the EU to express Washington’s concerns and “assess” whether the governments involved in the conference agree with the U.S. being characterized as a FIMI actor, according to the cable.

FIMI is an EU term used to describe activities that try to distort public information, such as spreading disinformation online, usually by foreign actors such as Russia. The conference conflates the U.S. with “foreign adversaries like Russia and China,” which is a “false equivalence” that “obscures the scale and nature of Russian and Chinese interference in our democracies,” the cable states.

The demarche request appears to be an unusual administration effort to use allied government pressure to silence criticism from European citizens and Americans abroad (three U.S. citizens appeared on one of the panels that prompted the cable). It also marks an acceleration of the Trump administration’s years-long pressure campaign on the continent, which includes U.S. criticism of perceived EU censorship.

The recipients of the cable included U.S. embassies in France, Norway, Romania and Poland. The embassies each were told to tell their hosts — verbally, not in writing — that the U.S. was unhappy with the panels on American disinformation, according to the cable and a U.S. official, who, like others, was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation.

One of those panels, titled “USA as a FIMI threat: acknowledge, adapt, push back” featured two American researchers and a former CIA official and looked at how the U.S. had become a disinformation threat to Europe. Another, titled “Under attack: How the counter-disinformation community is dealing with US government pressure,” asked legal experts to weigh in on the threat of U.S. government travel bans against European figures.

The State Department asked some of those countries — but not all — to reconsider participating in the event, said the U.S. official familiar with the cable, which came from the secretary of State’s office.

Officials from Norway, Romania and Poland still appear on the conference agenda. Spokespeople for the ministries of foreign affairs in Norway, Romania and Poland did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S. officials also contacted France’s Foreign Ministry, but it did not withdraw from the conference.

The Trump administration and its allies have repeatedly tried to pressure EU allies to align with Washington’s standards of free speech, which some in Europe consider to be too broadly defined. These efforts have included public criticism, closed-door lobbying against EU laws and visa restrictions for Europeans.

Domestically, the administration has dismantled U.S. government organizations that fight disinformation, including at the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.

Republicans have also taken issue with some European laws that force social media platforms to be more active in combating false information online, such as laws requiring age verification for potentially harmful content, which some have said amount to censorship.

As of Monday, Canada and Lithuania asked organizers to remove their ministry logos from conference materials, according to a conference participant, and the European External Action Service followed on Tuesday. European news site Rapporteur first reported on the removal of the foreign ministry logos.

“To me, I see a very strange reaction from the State Department to a conference of researchers using our First Amendment free speech rights to talk about how to stop lying and manipulation that undermines democracy and hurts our families and hurts our children,” said Adam Fivenson, who works for the Center for Security, Innovation and New Technology at American University and was on one of the panels the Trump administration took issue with. This panel still proceeded as scheduled.

The cable also notes that top officials in the State Department’s global public diplomacy section reached out directly to Canadian officials to express frustrations with Ottawa’s participation in the conference. This part of the State Department, led by Sarah Rogers, handles the public-facing aspects of diplomacy that are aimed at building support for U.S. goals among foreign populations.

Asked for comment, the State Department said in a statement: “While we are unable to comment on the details of diplomatic conversations, it should not be a surprise that countries would disaffiliate from this conference upon learning that it labeled the U.S. a ‘FIMI threat.’ Labeling the United States a ‘FIMI threat’ — a term normally reserved for describing influence operations of adversaries — undermines shared goals and should alarm those involved.”

After speaking with U.S. officials, Canada and Lithuania pulled their support from the conference, meaning they don’t appear on panels or in conference materials. The EU’s External Action Service, its diplomatic arm, was also removed from official programming.

Images reviewed by POLITICO show conference banners with the logos of all Canadian, Lithuanian, and EU diplomatic services covered. France remains the sole “main supporter.”

Spokespeople for the EEAS and Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry both said they withdrew because some of the conference programming didn’t align with their official positions, though they did not specify what those positions are.

The cable draws a clearer line between U.S. engagement with Lithuania and Canada and their decision to pull public support for the conference. After speaking to the local U.S. embassy, “Lithuania’s Foreign Minister [Kęstutis] Budrys stated the U.S.-focused sessions did not represent the views of the Lithuanian government and committed that no one from Lithuania MFA would participate,” the cable reads.

Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning has its fair share of cinematic flair, but many details in the story hew closely to real life. The movie tells the story of how Frances Haugen, a Facebook civic integrity product manager, came to leak a large trove of internal documents to Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz, in what would later become a 2021 series called "The Facebook Files." In both real life and in the film, Haugen's leaks lead her to testify as a congressional whistleblower. The final frames of the movie describe the impact she had even after that closing scene, speaking before governments around the world and bols …

Read the full story at The Verge.

X is turning its NFL-focused Gametime feature into a year-round sports destination, starting with MLB and with other professional leagues to follow.

When David Fincher's The Social Network premiered in 2010, many people still thought of Mark Zuckerberg as a genius who had revolutionized the world by creating Facebook. Writer Aaron Sorkin's script was critical of Zuckerberg's character and his ruthless approach to doing business, but it also helped mythologize the co-founder at a time when the general public was much more enchanted by Silicon Valley. When Zuckerberg said in 2014 that he'd been hurt by the film's depiction of him, Fincher said he was "sorry that it did" and admitted that he "wouldn't want a movie made about the things I did when I was 19 years old," either. Fincher's apolo …

Read the full story at The Verge.