On Tuesday, February 10th, the European Parliament moved the digital euro one step closer to reality, backing amendments that support a push by the European Central Bank (ECB) for a central bank digital […]
The post Europe Edges Closer to Digital Euro: New Backing from EU Parliament first appeared on The Expose.
This article has been corrected to remove unfounded claims we later discovered to be incorrect. Here is a breakdown on what’s actually happening today with digital currency in the US. Although the […]
The post What’s Really Happening With Digital Currency in the US? first appeared on The Expose.
Iran is losing an estimated $1.56 million every hour because of its state-imposed internet blackout, draining its struggling economy and disrupting life for more than 90 million people, according to an internet privacy analyst.
The prolonged disruptions originated amid spiraling protests through January with losses he claimed were continuing even after partial connectivity was restored.
"The current blackout is costing Iran an estimated $37.4 million per day, or $1.56 million every hour," Simon Migliano, head of research at PrivacyCo, told Fox News Digital. "The full internet blackout itself cost Iran more than $780 million, and the subsequent strict filtering continues to have a significant additional economic impact."
"Iran has already drained $215 million from its economy in 2025 by disrupting internet access," the internet privacy and security analyst added.
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Migliano said his estimates were calculated using the NetBlocks COST tool, an economic model that measures the immediate impact on a nation’s gross domestic product when its digital economy is forced offline.
The model assesses direct losses to productivity, online transactions and remote work, drawing on data from the World Bank, the International Telecommunication Union, Eurostat and the U.S. Census Bureau.
Iranian authorities abruptly cut off communications on the night of Jan. 8 amid widespread protests against the clerical regime.
While officials later restored much of the country’s domestic bandwidth, as well as local and international phone calls and SMS messaging, the population is largely unable to freely access the internet because of heavy state filtering.
"The recent 579% surge in VPN demand reflects a scramble for digital survival," Migliano said before describing how even when access is briefly restored, the internet remains "heavily censored and effectively unusable without circumvention tools such as VPNs."
"We can see spikes showing that as soon as connectivity returned, users immediately sought VPNs to reach sites and services outside the state-controlled network, including global platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram that remain otherwise inaccessible," he added.
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"Sustained demand — averaging 427% above normal levels — indicates Iranians are stockpiling circumvention tools in anticipation of further blackouts," Migliano said.
"The usual strategy is to download as many free tools as possible and cycle between them. It becomes a cat-and-mouse game, as the government blocks individual VPN servers and providers rotate IP addresses to stay ahead of the censors," he added.
Iran’s minister of information and communications technology, Sattar Hashemi, acknowledged the economic toll caused by the blackout tactics.
He said recent outages were inflicting roughly "5,000 billion rials" a day in losses to the digital economy and nearly 50 trillion rials on the wider economy, according to Iran International.
"Iran’s three-week internet blackout may have been lifted, but connectivity remains severely disrupted still," Migliano claimed.
"Access is still heavily filtered. It is restricted to a government-approved ‘whitelist’ of sites and apps and the connection itself remains highly unstable throughout the day," he added.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced sweeping plans at the World Government Summit in Dubai to hold social media executives criminally liable and curb platform algorithms, prompting a sharp and profane response from X owner Elon Musk.
Sánchez laid out five measures in a speech, with implementation set to begin next week.
"Dirty Sánchez is a tyrant and traitor to the people of Spain," Musk wrote on X, using an explicit insult and a poop emoji.
Sánchez framed the proposals by describing social media as a lawless digital ecosystem, arguing that platforms have become a "failed state" where disinformation, hate speech and criminal activity flourish without accountability.
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Sánchez also appeared to take aim at Musk directly, criticizing the X owner for amplifying what he described as false claims about Spain’s immigration policy and allowing harmful content to spread on the platform.
"Just last week, the owner of X, a migrant himself, used his personal account to amplify disinformation about the sovereign decision by my government, the regularization of 500,000 migrants that live, work and contribute to the success of our country," Sánchez said.
Under the plan, Spain would first amend its laws to hold platform executives criminally liable for failing to remove illegal or hateful content, exposing executives to potential prosecution.
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Sánchez said governments must stop turning "a blind eye to the toxic content shared under their watch."
Second, Spain would make the algorithmic manipulation and amplification of illegal content a new criminal offense, targeting both disinformation actors and the platforms whose systems promote their content for profit.
"Disinformation doesn’t appear by itself," Sánchez said. "It is created, promoted and spread by certain actors."
Third, Sánchez announced the creation of a "hate and polarization footprint," a system to track and quantify how platforms fuel division and spread hate, which would serve as the basis for future legal and financial penalties.
"For too long, hate has been treated as invisible and untraceable," Sánchez said. "Spreading hate must come at a cost."
Fourth, Spain will ban access to social media for children under 16, requiring mandatory age-verification systems that Sánchez said must function as real barriers, not simple check boxes.
"Today, our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone," Sánchez said, describing social media as a realm of "addiction, abuse, pornography, manipulation [and] violence."
Finally, Sánchez said his government will work with public prosecutors to investigate alleged violations by Grok, TikTok and Instagram, vowing zero tolerance and warning that Spain would defend its digital sovereignty against foreign interference.
"We are fighting back," he said. "And we will continue to do so."
