Archives for March 2024

Matty Schaefer fits the bill of what you’d expect a young tech hopeful to look like – clean-cut, attentive, and periodically puffing on a bright red vape as he talks about his ideas. This month marks the finalization of a deal in which he sold off his first start-up, Vade, a system that collects real-time data for parking spots. The closing of this deal isn’t really celebratory, other than the fact that the 25-year-old entrepreneur will finally be able to put the venture behind him.

[Read more…] about Building a company isn’t easy, but Matty Schaefer is willing to try again

Meta’s fight for privacy rights seems to be never-ending as the European Union has now filed multiple complaints accusing the platform of illegal operations of collecting data from users.

Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram is facing serious allegations as eight European Union consumer groups asked watchdogs to go against Facebook’s owner, Mark Zuckerberg, for alleged breaches of the bloc’s privacy rules when it collects user data. 

Complaints came from the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Greece, Norway, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.

These groups are claiming that Meta is taking unnecessary private data from their users that they may not be able to consent to, such as their sexual orientation and mental health.

“Meta has tried time and time again to justify the massive commercial surveillance it places its users under. Its unfair ‘pay-or-consent’ choice is the company’s latest effort to legalize its business model. But Meta’s offer to consumers is smoke and mirrors to cover up what is, at its core, the same old hoovering up of all kinds of sensitive information about people’s lives which it then monetizes through its invasive advertising model,” said Ursula Pachl, Deputy Director General of the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) in a statement.

In November last year, Meta began offering its users a choice to either pay to see an ad-free service or consent to the company’s full commercial surveillance with ads. The BEUC filed a complaint last year with consumer protection authorities.

“Subscription for no ads addresses the latest regulatory developments, guidance and judgments shared by leading European regulators and the courts over recent years,” a Meta spokesperson said.

 

 

After the House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted in support of a TikTok ban Tuesday, surprising rifts have arisen between the bill’s advocates and those who say it does an inadequate job of protecting children online. 

“We don’t have only a TikTok problem — we have a Big Tech privacy problem,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass) Tuesday on X, formerly known as Twitter. “From Meta to Amazon to Discord, US-owned companies are preying on children & teens for profit. We don’t need to ban Tiktok to fix their invasive practices.” 

[Read more…] about Would a TikTok ban affect children’s online safety?

Apple and Meta’s debate over in-app purchases continues as Apple recently began charging users a 30% service fee on boosted posts.

Boosted posts allow advertisers to promote their content without needing to create a full campaign to do so. This feature is typically used by small businesses who want to receive recognition through social media sites like Facebook and Instagram.

“Boosting, which allows an individual or organization to pay to increase the reach of a post or profile, is a digital service — so of course In-App Purchase is required. This has always been the case and there are many examples of apps that do it successfully,” Adam Dema, Apple’s spokesperson told The Verge.

Meta, who owns Facebook and Instagram, encourages their users to switch from Apple’s app store and use their desktop browsers in order to avoid the service charge, and they made it clear that the service fee is not retained by Apple, not Meta.

“To support the millions of small businesses that use boosted posts on Facebook and Instagram, advertisers can now go to Instagram.com and Facebook.com on mobile and desktop to boost their content and avoid a 30% Apple service charge” said Meta in a recent response.

Meta is faced with two options: comply to Apple’s guidelines or remove boosting as an option altogether.

“We do not want to remove the ability to boost posts, as this would hurt small businesses by making the feature less discoverable and potentially deprive them of a valuable way to promote their business,” said Meta.

Additionally, those who want to continue boosting their posts through their IOS apps will have to begin adding prepaid funds to pay for the service before their post is able to be published through social media.

Boosting plays a large factor in Meta’s revenue as many use this feature to advertise their content. Implementing a service charge will decrease the usage of the boosting feature, which is resulting in Meta’s attempts to encourage all users to steer away from Facebook and Instagram’s IOS apps.

While Apple and Meta have always been at odds with each other about advertising, this new debate could be a result of new privacy policies and cookie settings that have been implemented this year.

“Meta and Apple have been increasingly at odds as Apple expanded its advertising business, cutting into Meta’s revenue. With the launch of App Tracking Transparency, which allows consumers to opt out of having apps track them, Meta lost advertising market share as Apple’s grew” said TechCrunch.

These changes will apply to the United States for now and will be implemented in other markets in the near future.

A District Judge invalidated a proposed Ohio law Monday that would have required parental consent for children under 16 to use social media apps. 

Chief U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley was ruling on a court case between tech industry group NetChoice and the Ohio Attorney General, in which the industry group argued such a law would violate teen users’ First Amendment rights. The proposed law, titled the Social Media Parental Notification Act, was Ohio Republicans’ attempt at curbing mental health and predation risks for children online — the first of several similar state laws being debated across the country.

Republican Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted pushed for the law, arguing that social media companies intentionally design their products to be addictive to children. “These companies could solve this problem without passing new laws, but they refuse to do so,” he said in a Monday press release. “Because social media companies will not be responsible, we must hold them accountable.”

[Read more…] about Ohio law meant to protect children on social media fails in court

The former Treasury Secretary is the latest to announce his bid for TikTok, a sale that is not for the faint of heart

Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced Thursday morning that he is putting together a consortium of U.S. investors to buy TikTok. The potential acquisition would involve many hurdles.

His announcement followed the approval of a House bill on Wednesday that requires ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to divest the social media app within six months. If it is not acquired by a U.S. party within that timeline, the House decided the app will no longer be available to American users.

Mnuchin’s announcement is the newest development in his long push to either force a sale or ban TikTok in the U.S. that tracks back to his Trump Administration days as Treasury Secretary.

“This should be owned by U.S. businesses,” Mnuchin told CNBC this morning. “There’s no way the Chinese would ever let a U.S. company own something like this.”

Analysts say China will likely block such a sale. Other critics point out the improbability of finding a group of investors willing to purchase a business losing billions of dollars per year. If a realistic buyer or group of buyers do emerge, they will face many hurdles. Besides having to build-out operations to be U.S.-based, the potential buyer or buyers would need to come up with a more profitable business model.

That is no easy task in a regulatory milieu with a greater proclivity for imposing rules on social media companies.

Other critics point out that six months is too stringent a timeline for a buyer to rebuild the app and move its operations from China to the U.S., which Mnuchin said would be required under the new bill.

“I think a lot can be done in six months,” he said.

Mnuchin does not want TikTok to be bought by another big tech company, which he said could introduce a new set of antitrust issues in the U.S. He specified that he would include multiple investors and have no one owner but did not disclose who he has in mind for this group of buyers.

“I’m working on it,” Mnuchin said.

Leading tech companies agreed to develop and implement new technologies to combat AI-driven disinformation in 2024 global elections. Google, Amazon, OpenAI, X, Meta, Microsoft and TikTok are among the 20 companies who signed the Accord in Munich on February 16.

More voters will head to the polls worldwide to choose new governments this year than ever before in history, with over 40 countries having scheduled national elections and over four billion people expected to participate. Many of them are high-stakes and will lay the groundwork for significant shifts in human rights and international affairs. 

“With so many major elections taking place this year, it’s vital we do what we can to prevent people being deceived by AI-generated content,” Nick Clegg, President of Global Affairs at Meta, said in a press release.

Meanwhile, AI deception has become an increasingly pervasive threat to the democratic process. Proliferating and more accessible AI tools are making it easier for the average J to create fake images, audio and video content realistic enough to foreseeably fool voters.

Deep Fakes are an especially concerning issue – with the potential to misrepresent political candidates using fake video content. 

As a result, tech executives at the Munich Security Conference pledged to both build tools to detect AI deception and actively seek out, then “appropriately address,” such content on their platforms, according to a press release. 

IBM, Adobe and AI LinkedIn also signed the agreement. 

“Democracy rests on safe and secure elections,” Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs at Google, said in a press release. “Today’s accord reflects an industry-side commitment against AI-generated election misinformation that erodes trust.”