It was a global counterattack. After AI chatbot Grok started producing fake sexualized images, the European Commission warned of an investigation. UK regulator Ofcom launched a formal investigation. Brazil considered a ban. Malaysia and Indonesia went ahead and blocked the chatbot. Even in the US, California’s Attorney General sent a cease and desist letter.   
  
Grok surrendered. After accusing governments of suppressing free speech, the chatbot restricted its image-generation function.  
  
There are lessons here: when governments work in parallel, they often succeed in forcing tech to backtrack. When they work alone, they struggle to gain traction. While regulations take a long time to roll out, the united response to Grok produced fast results.  
  
Governments of almost all political persuasions believe that tech needs to take more responsibility for the content they host or produce. Over the past few years, they have put in new rules to safeguard user privacy, jumpstart competition in digital markets, and protect child safety.  
  
Many of the new rules have proved difficult to enforce. After being fined €120 million for violating Europe’s Digital Services Act, the social media company X appealed and ignored the demands to increase content moderation. The US government imposed visa bans on European officials involved in drawing up the DSA regulation.  
  
Antitrust has also proved frustrating for governments and is losing steam. The UK and the US have launched multiple antitrust cases against Apple, Google, Meta, and Amazon. The rise of artificial intelligence has undermined some; courts have blocked others.    
  
European Commission investigations into Alphabet, Meta, and Apple under the new Digital Markets Act have produced little meaningful change. For example, Europe required Meta’s WhatsApp messaging service to become “interoperable” with other messaging services in an effort to spur competition. But none of WhatsApp’s competitors took up the offer, and WhatsApp continues to dominate in Europe.  

By contrast, when governments acted together and acted fast, tech companies have been quick to change. After the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, when Facebook scraped the data of more than 50 million profiles for political campaigns, parliamentarians from nine countries united to grill the company on disinformation and fake news. Facebook paid a $5 billion fine in the US, $50 million in Australia, and $500,000 in the UK.  
  
After years of reports about the addictiveness and danger of social media platforms on young people’s mental health, countries are rolling out age restrictions, another sign of the power in numbers. Australia’s social media ban for under-16s took effect in December 2025. Indonesia, Denmark, Spain, and the UK are considering similar bans. Germany, France, and Malaysia already have age restrictions. Several US states are pushing for age controls, though those efforts have so far been stymied by the courts. 
  
Social media companies have complied. Since the ban took effect in Australia, social media giants have taken down millions of accounts. Some tech companies, notably the Chinese marketplace Shein, are proactively considering or putting in place age restrictions.  
  
Other issues gathering support around the globe include demands for tech companies to pay publishers for their content. Once again, Australia pioneered this effort, forcing tech companies to pay to host local news outlets on their platforms. Similar efforts were soon announced in the EU, Canada, and Indonesia. Malaysia and India are considering. Even though news outlets had been calling for this for years, widespread change only happened when multiple governments acted in concert. Yet because they were slow to act, significant reversals are visible: Canada, for one, has backed down from its demands to pay publishers.  
  
Data privacy concerns are a further occasion where governments acting in quick succession lead to tangible change. After the EU passed the General Data Protection Regulation in 2016, similar efforts quickly popped up around the world. 
  
After Grok backed down, individual governments took credit. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer celebrated the chatbot’s climbdown as a rare win for the administration after months of suffering under abysmal approval ratings. The European Commission depicted it as a victory against American tech companies. Instead of viewing this as a show of strength for one country, the takeaway should be that governments acting together mayforce change.   
  
Clara Riedenstein is a tech policy analyst and writer whose work examines how emerging technologies shape existing political, legal, and social institutions. Her research has been featured in Bandwidth, Tech Policy Press, and European View. Clara holds an MSc in Political Theory Research from Oxford University, where she studied as a C. Douglas Dillon Scholar and focused on the implications of large language models for theories of state and jurisdiction.   

Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions expressed on Bandwidth are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.

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