TikTok gave teens and children access to a placebo safety feature instead of a real one that would have let them refresh their recommendations in an experiment, according to allegations in New York’s lawsuit against the social media platform.

Reuters reports that TikTok’s experiments involved thousands of users, including teens and children, who had opted to use safety features like “Algo Refresh,” a tool that allows users to reset their recommendations and stop seeing unwanted or potentially harmful content.

Although the users believed that they had activated the feature, their feeds didn’t change, unlike those of users who weren’t part of the experiment and had access to a fully functioning version of the tool.

New York’s lawsuit against the company is one of more than two dozen cases brought by states that accuse the social media giant of designing its platform to encourage addictive use among children and misleading users about its safety.

“We continuously make improvements to our platform which means that, like most companies, we regularly test new products and features to validate the ​experience and understand how they work in the real world,” TikTok told told Reuters.

TikTok did not immediately return a request for comment.

The lawsuit also claims that TikTok conducted other experiments. Bloomberg reported in June that one such experiment withheld a safety feature from 15 million U.S. users, including a teenager who later died by suicide.

Elon Musk has questioned billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s influence in India as SpaceX struggles to launch its Starlink satellite internet service in the country. Musk’s comments, which were posted on X, escalate a dispute over regulatory delays after the Indian government rejected his claims that powerful business interests were blocking its entry.

Musk accused on Wednesday unnamed “oligarchs” of blocking Starlink’s launch in India to maintain what he called their “monopolistic chokehold” on the country, without identifying them or providing evidence for his claim. He called the alleged blocking a “crime against the people of India” and argued that Starlink could bring affordable, high-speed internet to people who lack internet access.

Hours later, India’s Ministry of Communications pushed back, saying its regulatory framework for satellite communications is “fair and non-discriminatory.” The ministry said in a statement that Starlink and two other licensed satellite operators are all at “broadly the same regulatory stage.” It added that all three companies are undergoing security assessments that must be completed before they can seek spectrum, the radio frequencies that satellites use to send signals.

Musk went further on Thursday, questioning the influence of Reliance Industries chairperson Mukesh Ambani.

”Is Ambani the real boss of India?” he wrote on X, after claiming that Starlink had spent years complying with Indian regulations and questioning why it still lacked a license.

Starlink has spent more than five years trying to enter India, a market with more than a billion internet subscribers. But it has yet to begin commercial services despite securing key regulatory approvals and partnering with telecom giants Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel last year. SpaceX has also set up a local team as it prepares for a launch, appointing former Payoneer executive Prabhakar Jayakumar to lead its India operations in December.

Musk’s comments came hours after Lauren Dreyer, Starlink’s vice president of business operations, appeared at India Mobile Congress, a telecom industry conference in New Delhi and reiterated the company’s commitment to the market.

“We stand ready to serve India,” Dreyer said, adding that Starlink wants to help realize Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s goal of achieving universal connectivity across the country.

Starlink said it already has more than 20 gateway sites (the ground stations that link its satellites to the internet) and hundreds of antennas on the ground in India, and has adapted its operations to meet the country’s regulatory, security, and data-sovereignty requirements. Moreover, SpaceX has positioned its satellite network as a complement to — rather than a replacement for — India’s terrestrial telecom networks.

SpaceX first attempted to launch Starlink in India in 2021. The company, however, had to refund preorders for its equipment in early 2022 after the Indian government called it out for “booking/rendering the satellite internet service” before getting the necessary licenses.

Starlink has also previously clashed with India’s largest telecom operators over how satellite spectrum should be allocated. Starlink pushed for spectrum to be assigned administratively, while Reliance Jio argued that it should be auctioned — a position that could have made Starlink’s entry more expensive. India ultimately sided with Starlink’s preferred approach, deciding to allocate satellite spectrum administratively rather than through an auction.

Jio and Airtel, India’s two biggest telcom operators, are also pursuing their own satellite internet services, even as they have agreed to distribute Starlink in India. Jio is working with satellite operator SES on satellite broadband, while Airtel is a major backer of Eutelsat OneWeb, another licensed satellite operator in India.

While the timing of Starlink’s India launch remains unclear, the company this week launched Starlink Mobile, which connects ordinary phones to satellites, in neighboring Bangladesh.

Starlink, India’s Ministry of Communications, Reliance Jio, and Bharti Airtel did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Update: This article was originally published at 11:14 p.m. PDT and has since been updated to include Musk’s comments questioning Reliance Industries chairperson Mukesh Ambani’s influence in India.

UK fashion retail giant Asos has confirmed a data breach of its customers’ personal information after hackers used the company’s own app to notify users that the company had been compromised.

Asos said in a filing with the London Stock Exchange that hackers broke into a third-party platform hosting data that the company uses to communicate with customers. 

The company said that names and contact information were taken in the breach. 

BBC News reports that the stolen data includes home addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses, as well as notes relating to customer profiles, such as their website search queries.

Asos said the hackers sent an “unauthorised customer notification,” which many posted to social media. The notification addressed Asos’ data protection officer and IT department and said that the hackers “fully compromised” the company’s data hosted on Snowflake, a tech company that allows its corporate customers to analyze large amounts of data. “Engage with us, or we will leak it,” the notification reads.

By using the app’s own notification system to alert customers, the hackers are trying to pressure the company into engaging with them or risk having the stolen data published online.

The hackers reportedly broke into the Snowflake instance by “impersonating a trusted contact to obtain log in credentials,” reports Bleeping Computer. Snowflake said it had not experienced a breach of its systems. It’s unclear if the Asos-run Snowflake instance was protected with multi-factor authentication. It’s also not known how the hackers gained access to Asos’ system for sending in-app push notifications, which is often handled by a third-party service. 

The hackers, who go by the handle Xuanye Group, have not indicated how much data they allegedly possess. Asos has 17 million customers, according to its website.

Earlier this year, fintech giant Betterment was compromised by hackers who used their access to the company’s third-party marketing platform to impersonate the company and send a crypto scam to its customers. The hackers also access customer names, email addresses, and phone numbers, among other data, during the breach.