Commerce media through advertising in connected vehicles is projected to hit $625 billion in in-vehicle value by 2030,  Ptolemus Consulting Group projects, according to Autoweek. Drivers would be served location-based ads for food, parking and entertainment. “Connected vehicles and in-car platforms are opening up entirely new media surfaces, transforming infotainment systems, navigation, and driver services into monetizeable environments,” Forrester said in a recent study.  

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has proposed a statewide fee on social media companies to fund education in the state, CBS News reports. Pritzker, facing a $2 billion budget shortfall, seeks to raise $200 million per year for education. Social media platforms would pay a monthly fee based on the number of users in the state, and larger firms would pay higher fees. 

Meta CEO Zuckerberg took the stand on Wednesday in the to defend his company in the unprecedented social media trial in Los Angeles, Associated Press reports.  Opposing attorney Mark Lanier asked Zuckerberg whether people use something more if it’s addictive. Zuckerberg responded, “I’m not sure what to say to that. I don’t think that applies here.” Later, Zuckerberg said that “if something is valuable, people will use it more because it’s useful to them.” He was also quizzed on children’s Instagram use.   

Lawmakers on Tuesday unanimously advanced a bill that would criminalize creating artificial intelligence-generated content using someone’s likeness without permission, Oklahoma Voice reports. Such an action would be a misdemeanor, but would become a felony if it caused $25,000 worth of financial harm.

As Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was to start testifying on Wednesday in the California trial of social media giants, a study found that 86% of Americans want Meta and Google held accountable for the social media addiction crisis affecting kids. The study by The Tech Oversight Project also determined that 67% would vote for lawmakers who support crack downs on social media features like infinite scroll and predatory algorithms, The New York Post reports. 

Perplexity is not seeking deals to place ads in chatbot answers, Business Insider reports. Instead, the AI search firm is moving ahead with subscriptions and business sales and plans, while focusing more on monetization than it did before, executives said during a roundtable discussion.

Virginia will require that social-media platforms limit usage by minors to one hour per day unless a parent or guardian increases the time, Attorney General Jay Jones announced on Monday, WRIC reports. Jones said his office will fully enforce the new measures in the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act.

X suffered a widespread outage on Monday, leaving users unable to access the platform, Fox News reports. Complaints peaked around 8:40 a.m., ET, hitting 41,000, according to Downdetector. But reports starting coming in earlier this morning.

Anderson Cooper is leaving "60 Minutes" at a time of turmoil for CBS News, Associated Press reports. The media pundit announced on Monday that he will depart, but will continue his role at CNN.  “For nearly 20 years, I’ve been able to balance my jobs at CNN and CBS, but I have little kids now and I want to spend as much time with them as possible, while they still want to spend time with me,” he said in a statement. But the question of whether this decision was related to the leadership of Bari Weiss, editor in chief at CBS News, …

The West Virginia Senate has passed a bill that would prevent state agencies from using media reliability and bias monitors or advertising firms that use them. SB 531 is similar in intent to efforts in Florida and by the Federal Trade Commission under President Donald Trump related to NewsGuard, an organization that provides ratings of news organizations and media outlets based on a “trust score.”