Russia has blocked popular messaging service WhatsApp for failing to abide by Russian legislation, the Kremlin said Thursday.

"Such a decision was indeed made and implemented," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the reported ban.

Adam Mosseri, the head of Meta's Instagram, testified Wednesday during a landmark social media trial in Los Angeles that he disagrees with the idea that people can be clinically addicted to social media platforms.

The question of addiction is a key pillar of the case, where plaintiffs seek to hold social media companies responsible for harms to children who use their platforms. Meta Platforms and Google's YouTube are the two remaining defendants in the case, which TikTok and Snap have settled.

Jurors in a landmark social media case that seeks to hold tech companies responsible for harms to children got their first glimpse into what will be a lengthy trial characterized by dueling narratives from the plaintiffs and the two remaining defendants, Meta and YouTube.

At the core of the Los Angeles case is a 20-year-old identified only by the initials "KGM," whose case could determine how thousands of similar lawsuits will play out. KGM and the cases of two other plaintiffs have been selected to be bellwether trials — essentially test cases for both sides to see how their arguments play out before a jury.

Meta has failed to disclose what it knows about the harmful effect of its platforms on children in violation of New Mexico's consumer protection laws, a state prosecutor said Monday as a trial began over the dangers of child sexual exploitation on social media.

It's the first stand-alone trial from state prosecutors in a stream of lawsuits against major social media companies, including Meta, over harm to children, and one that is likely to highlight explicit online content and its effects.

The European Union on Friday accused TikTok of breaching the bloc's digital rules with "addictive design" features that lead to compulsive use by children, in preliminary charges that strike at the heart of the popular video sharing app's operating model.

EU regulators said their two-year investigation found that TikTok hasn't done enough to assess how features such as autoplay and infinite scroll could harm the physical and mental health of users, including minors and "vulnerable adults."

In France, civil servants will ditch Zoom and Teams for a homegrown video conference system. Soldiers in Austria are using open source office software to write reports after the military dropped Microsoft Office. Bureaucrats in a German state have also turned to free software for their administrative work.

Around Europe, governments and institutions are seeking to reduce their use of digital services from U.S. Big Tech companies and turning to domestic or free alternatives. The push for "digital sovereignty" is gaining attention as the Trump administration strikes an increasingly belligerent posture toward the continent, highlighted by recent tensions over Greenland that intensified fears that Silicon Valley giants could be compelled to cut off access.

As the new robot called Sprout walks around a Manhattan office, nodding its rectangular head, lifting its windshield wiper-like "eyebrows" and offering to shake your hand with its grippers, it looks nothing like the sleek and intimidating humanoids built by companies like Tesla.

Sprout's charm is the point. A 5-year-old child could comfortably talk at eye level with this humanoid, which stands 3.5 feet (1 meter) tall and wears a soft, padded exterior of sage-green foam.

French lawmakers approved a bill banning social media for children under 15, paving the way for the measure to enter into force at the start of the next school year in September, as the idea of setting a minimum age for use of the platforms gains momentum across Europe.

The bill, which also bans the use of mobile phones in high schools, was adopted by a 130-21 vote late Monday. French President Emmanuel Macron has requested that the legislation be fast-tracked and it will now be discussed by the Senate in the coming weeks.

Three of the world's biggest tech companies face a landmark trial in Los Angeles starting this week over claims that their platforms — Meta's Instagram, ByteDance's TikTok and Google's YouTube — deliberately addict and harm children.

Jury selection starts this week in the Los Angeles County Superior Court. It's the first time the companies will argue their case before a jury, and the outcome could have profound effects on their businesses and how they will handle children using their platforms. The selection process is expected to take at least a few days, with 75 potential jurors questioned each day through at least Thursday. A fourth company named in the lawsuit, Snapchat parent company Snap Inc., settled the case last week for an undisclosed sum.

Europe "will not tolerate" online abuses against women and children, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen warned Monday, as the bloc opened a probe into sexualized deepfakes created by Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok.

"The harm caused by illegal images is very real. In Europe, we will not tolerate unthinkable behaviour, such as digital undressing of women and children," the European Commission chief said in a statement sent to AFP.