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A new bipartisan bill unveiled Wednesday would require parental consent for anyone under 18 to use social media.

The Protecting Kids on Social Media Act would also bar platforms from using algorithms to feed content to minors and would set the minimum age to use the platforms to 13. It also would create a pilot program for a new, age-verification credential that could be used to enroll on social media platforms.

This latest push from legislators to build new guardrails for kids’ online safety is occurring as similar actions are being taken at the state level. Some state laws — like one in Utah that would give parents access to kids’ private messages — have raised concern among some civil society groups for potentially putting kids further in harm’s way depending on their family situations.

The new proposal, backed by Sens. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Katie Britt, R-Ala., would give parents across the country profound new control over their kids’ access to social networking services like Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Snap’s Snapchat and TikTok.

Still, while many parents have pleaded for lawmakers to give them more tools to protect their kids online, many also feel that monitoring their children’s online behavior has become overly burdensome for them.

In addition to parental consent to use social media, the bill requires such companies to “take reasonable steps beyond merely requiring attestation” to verify users’ ages. That is likely to raise privacy concerns given that it can be difficult to narrow a user’s age without some sort of government ID or facial scan.

The bill says that “existing age verification technologies” should be taken into account and that information collected for age-verification purposes shouldn’t be used for anything else.

While age-verification tools are still somewhat limited, the bill also aims to expand them through a pilot program to explore free “secure digital identification” credentials for U.S. citizens.

The program would be run by the Commerce Department and would seek to create a new, highly secure credential tool based on government-issued documents that once issued could be used to verify users’ ages for enrolled social media platforms, or their parent/guardian relationship to a minor user.

Soon after the bill was announced, tech-backed industry group NetChoice, which has sued California over its Age-Appropriate Design Code, slammed the legislation in a statement, saying it “would require massive, widespread data collection and retention, undermining Americans’ privacy and security. It would also deprive parents of their constitutional right to make decisions about what’s best for their kids online.”

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Intel drops 9% as chipmaker’s foundry business axes projects, struggles to find customers

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Intel drops 9% as chipmaker's foundry business axes projects, struggles to find customers

Lip-Bu Tan, Chief Executive Officer of Intel, appears at an event organized by the company.

Andrej Sokolow | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

Intel‘s stock dropped 9% after the chipmaker said it would slash foundry costs in its latest attempt to turnaround its struggling business.

Concerns about where that leaves Intel’s chip manufacturing business overshadowed a better-than-expected earnings report late Thursday. Intel beat on revenue and issued a sales forecast for the third quarter that also topped estimates. The company reported adjusted earnings of 10 cents per share, topping the average analyst estimate of a penny, according to LSEG.

CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who was appointed to the job in March, wrote in a memo to employees that the company’s forthcoming chip manufacturing process, called 14A, will be built out based on confirmed customer commitments and that there will be “no more blank checks.” In a filing with the SEC on Thursday, Intel said it may “pause or discontinue” its foundry business entirely if it could not secure a customer on its next technology cycle.

“We have been unsuccessful to date in securing any significant external foundry customers for any of our nodes and our prospects for securing a significant external foundry customer for Intel 14A are uncertain,” the company said in the filing.

Intel’s drop on Friday wiped out most of its rally for the year. The shares lost 60% of their value in 2024, their worst year on record. The slump reflected Intel’s inability to make much headway in the artificial intelligence market, which is dominated by Nvidia, as well as skepticism surrounding its foundry bet.

The company said it’s axing chip facility projects in Germany and Poland and slowing production at its Ohio plant. Intel depends on a large customer for its foundry business to succeed.

“Management wants external customer commitments to pursue the node, but in the meantime, this adds more uncertainty to product roadmaps and makes customer adoption more unlikely,” analysts at Barclays, who have the equivalent of a hold rating on the stock, wrote in a note to clients.

Tan, who replaced Pat Gelsinger as CEO, said in the memo that his first few months at the helm of the company have “not been easy.” Intel has gone through with most of its layoff plans, which will result in eliminating 15% of its workforce and finishing the year with 75,000 employees.

“Over the past several years, the company invested too much, too soon – without adequate demand,” Tan wrote. “In the process, our factory footprint became needlessly fragmented and underutilized,” he added

Intel’s net loss widened to $2.9 billion, or 67 cents per share, from $1.61 billion, or 38 cents in the year-ago period. The company recorded an $800 million impairment charge, “related to excess tools with no identified re-use.”

Analysts at JPMorgan Chase called Intel’s foundry decision a “positive step,” although ongoing market share losses remain a concern.

WATCH: Intel shares drop despite topping revenue estimates

Intel shares drop despite topping revenue estimates

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Astronomer HR chief Kristin Cabot resigns following Coldplay ‘kiss cam’ incident

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Astronomer HR chief Kristin Cabot resigns following Coldplay 'kiss cam' incident

Chris Martin of Coldplay performs live at San Siro Stadium, Milan, Italy, in July 2017.

Mairo Cinquetti | NurPhoto | Getty Images

Days after Astronomer CEO Andy Byron resigned from the tech startup, the HR exec who was with him at the infamous Coldplay concert has left as well.

“Kristin Cabot is no longer with Astronomer, she has resigned,” a company spokesperson wrote in an email to CNBC Thursday. Cabot was the company’s chief people officer.

Cabot and Byron, who is married with children, were shown in an intimate moment on the ‘kiss cam’ at a recent Coldplay show in Boston, and immediately hid when they saw their faces on the big screen. Lead singer Chris Martin said, “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy.” An attendee’s video of the incident went viral.

Byron resigned from the company on Saturday. Both Cabot and Byron have been removed the company’s leadership team webpage.

Pete DeJoy, Astronomer’s interim CEO, wrote in a post earlier this week that recent and unexpected national attention has turned the company into “a household name.”

In May, the New York-based company, which commercializes open source software, announced a $93 million investment round led by Bain Ventures and other investors, including Salesforce Ventures.

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Musk’s Starlink hit with outage day after rollout of T-Mobile satellite service

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Musk's Starlink hit with outage day after rollout of T-Mobile satellite service

Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Elon Musk‘s satellite internet service Starlink said it had a “network outage” on Thursday. The company said it was working on a solution.

There were more than 60,000 reports of an outage on Downdetector, a site that logs issues.

Starlink is owned and operated by SpaceX, which is also run by Musk.

Musk apologized for the outage on his social media platform X and said, “Service will be restored shortly.”

Musk posted earlier Thursday that the company’s direct-to-cell-phone service was “growing fast” following the announcement that T-Mobile‘s Starlink-powered satellite service was available to the public.

T-Mobile said the T-Satellite service was built to keep phones connected “in places no carrier towers can reach.”

Starlink didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Starlink internet speeds and reliability decrease with popularity, a recent study found.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the T-Satellite service was affected by or involved in the outage.

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CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this story.

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