The space race: US v China edition: Six decades after the US and Soviet Union’s Cold War-era space race, it’s now Washington and Beijing who are scrambling to assert their dominance in outer space, the Washington Post writes. While the US and Soviet Union’s space race was predominantly about technology and resources, the contemporary version also has strong diplomatic and political implications, with the US pushing to create alliances with other major players, the Post says. These alliances — which are being formalized under the 2020 Artemis Accords that outline “a common set of principles to govern the civil exploration and use of outer space” — are meant to ensure that certain countries with which the US might not have strong diplomatic ties here on Earth are better aligned with Washington in outer space.

What’s the big concern when it comes to China? China successfully launched the Chang’e 4 explorer to the far side of the moon in January 2019, putting it in direct competition with the US as a space power — a position the US wants to continue leading with the advancements of its technology. But beyond maintaining its political capital, the US is also concerned about the exploitation of resources in outer space. The space industry could reach USD 1 tn in annual revenue, Citigroup analysts estimate, according to CNBC. Planets, including the moon, also hold precious resources that the US, China, and others want to mine and take advantage of, setting the stage for uncontrolled competition.

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Can social media giants effectively moderate livestreams? Livestream video, which has grown in popularity as a communication medium, creates unique difficulties in moderating content that platforms are scrambling to overcome as they prepare for the possibility of strict new regulations throughout Europe, The Financial Times reports. Livestreaming “quickly balloons the sheer number of hours of content beyond the scope of what even a large company can do,” CEO of AI content moderation business Hive Kevin Guo tells the salmon-colored paper. Even large platforms like Facebook are unable to moderate the amount of content produced through the medium, he explains, and several businesses, including Guo’s, are vying to develop technologies that can keep up.

Livestreaming’s growth has raised questions on how to restrict harmful content without obstructing the vast majority of harmless content or violating users' privacy rights. These issues have reached a critical point in the UK, as the government aims to enact an online safety bill this year to compel internet companies to monitor both illegal content and information that is technically legal but considered detrimental to minors. The bill would, if passed, encourage social media platforms to adopt age-verification technology and impose fines on companies that fail to safeguard children on their platforms. The EU is preparing a broader piece of legislation that is also anticipated to have a substantial effect on the industry. Both aim to make age verification substantially more stringent, which is currently mostly assessed by platforms asking users to input their dates of birth to determine whether they are under 13.