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Roblox is working on content ratings for games and on ways to make parental controls easier to find and use, to address sexual content issues on its platform — Sexual role-play and ‘dating’ are common on the children's gaming platform; parental controls help make it a safer space
Charles “Chuck” Geschke, who co-founded Adobe in 1982 with John Warnock and helped develop PDF technology, died on Friday at 81 — Survived kidnapping at gunpoint — Charles “Chuck” Geschke, co-founder of the iconic Silicon Valley company Adobe Inc. and prominent cheerleader of downtown San Jose, died Friday at age 81.
Newly filed Google Ireland Holdings accounts show $75B+ in profits moved through the subsidiary in 2019, the last year Google used the “double Irish” tax scheme — Newly filed accounts show that over $75bn in profits moved through a subsidiary of Google that was incorporated in Ireland in 2019 …
Twitter says it is “investigating a possible system irregularity currently affecting all Twitter API v2 endpoints” that is causing issues for some users — Users on the east coast in the US started reporting problems Friday night — It looks like problems on Twitter …
Big tech whistleblowers describe the severe emotional toll that standing up to gigantic companies takes and how it sets them on the path to advocacy — Last summer, just before she published a viral Twitter thread about the discrimination she said she faced at Pinterest …
Internet blackouts following a military coup have shut down swathes of the online economy in Myanmar, where internet penetration had surged to around 43% — Amid internet blackouts, economic isolation, and massive strikes, a decade of development is unwinding.
As the EU considers new regulations for AI, 60+ NGOs ask the EC to ban automatic gender recognition systems, which rely on outmoded understandings of gender — Dangers posed by facial recognition like mass surveillance and mistaken identity have been widely discussed in recent years.
How Weibo helps Chinese authorities quash the feminist movement by deleting activist accounts, while also profiting from their nationalist harassers — Prominent feminist activist Xiao Meili had never expected to find herself in the center of a nationalist storm.
As Spotify turns 15, a look at the ways in which it changed how people listen to music, like breaking down boundaries between genres through “mood playlists” — Ask any executive what the music business was like in the '00s and their face may take on an expression more commonly associated …
Sources: at least four types of equipment vital to chip production are in short supply and lead times for wire bonding machines have grown to 10-12 months — Longer delivery times mean slower ramp-up of production capacity — TAIPEI/TOKYO — Trying to solve the global chip crunch?
Google is moving FeedBurner to a “more stable, modern infrastructure” later this year, but is shutting down email subscriptions and other non-core features — FeedBurner was founded in 2004 and acquired by Google three years later to manage web feeds.
Outschool, a marketplace for online after-school classes, raises $75M Series C led by Coatue and Tiger Global at a $1.3B valuation, up from $320M in Sep. 2020 — The after-school class marketplace brings on Coatue and Tiger Global as investors — Outschool, a marketplace providing small-group …
Interview with Initialized Capital's Garry Tan on the firm's seed investment in Coinbase, Ohanian's departure, building a presence on social media, and more — Covering venture capital, software and startups — In March 2012, Garry Tan received an email from the founder of a new startup called Bitbank, Brian Armstrong.
Andrew Bosworth says Facebook will not release an Oculus Quest Pro in 2021 and expects the Quest 2 to be in the market “for a long while” — Facebook won't release an Oculus Quest Pro in 2021 and Quest 2 is expected to be in market and selling to buyers “for a long while,” …
Sources detail Amazon's tactics during the Alabama union campaign, including “captive audience meetings”, as workers explain why the union was unconvincing — - Last week, workers at one of Amazon's Alabama warehouses overwhelmingly voted against joining the Retail …
Ireland-based digital rights group begins “mass action” to sue Facebook over 2019 breach, citing the right to monetary compensation set out in the GDPR — Facebook is to be sued in Europe over the major leak of user data that dates back to 2019 but which only came to light recently …
Google’s historical collection of location data has got it into hot water in Australia where a case brought by the country’s Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has led to a federal court ruling that the tech giant misled consumers by operating a confusing dual-layer of location settings in what the regulator describes as a “world-first enforcement action”.
The case relates to personal location data collected by Google through Android mobile devices between January 2017 and December 2018.
Per the ACCC, the court ruled that “when consumers created a new Google Account during the initial set-up process of their Android device, Google misrepresented that the ‘Location History’ setting was the only Google Account setting that affected whether Google collected, kept or used personally identifiable data about their location”.
“In fact, another Google Account setting titled ‘Web & App Activity’ also enabled Google to collect, store and use personally identifiable location data when it was turned on, and that setting was turned on by default,” it wrote.
The Court also ruled that Google misled consumers when they later accessed the ‘Location History’ setting on their Android device during the same time period to turn that setting off because it did not inform them that by leaving the ‘Web & App Activity’ setting switched on, Google would continue to collect, store and use their personally identifiable location data.
“Similarly, between 9 March 2017 and 29 November 2018, when consumers later accessed the ‘Web & App Activity’ setting on their Android device, they were misled because Google did not inform them that the setting was relevant to the collection of personal location data,” the ACCC added.
Similar complaints about Google’s location data processing being deceptive — and allegations that it uses manipulative tactics in order to keep tracking web users’ locations for ad-targeting purposes — have been raised by consumer agencies in Europe for years. And in February 2020 the company’s lead data regulator in the region finally opened an investigation. However that probe remains ongoing.
Whereas the ACCC said today that it will be seeking “declarations, pecuniary penalties, publications orders, and compliance orders” following the federal court ruling. Although it added that the specifics of its enforcement action will be determined “at a later date”. So it’s not clear exactly when Google will be hit with an order — nor how large a fine it might face.
The tech giant may also seek to appeal the court ruling.
Google said today it’s reviewing its legal options and considering a “possible appeal” — highlighting the fact the Court did not agree wholesale with the ACCC’s case because it dismissed some of the allegations (related to certain statements Google made about the methods by which consumers could prevent it from collecting and using their location data, and the purposes for which personal location data was being used by Google).
Here’s Google’s statement in full:
“The court rejected many of the ACCC’s broad claims. We disagree with the remaining findings and are currently reviewing our options, including a possible appeal. We provide robust controls for location data and are always looking to do more — for example we recently introduced auto delete options for Location History, making it even easier to control your data.”
While Mountain View denies doing anything wrong in how it configures location settings — while simultaneously claiming it’s always looking to improve the controls it offers its users — Google’s settings and defaults have, nonetheless, got it into hot water with regulators before.
Back in 2019 France’s data watchdog, the CNIL, fined it $57M over a number of transparency and consent failures under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. That remains the largest GDPR penalty issued to a tech giant since the regulation came into force a little under three years ago — although France has more recently sanctioned Google $120M under different EU laws for dropping tracking cookies without consent.
Australia, meanwhile, has forged ahead with passing legislation this year that directly targets the market power of Google (and Facebook) — passing a mandatory news media bargaining code in February which aims to address the power imbalance between platform giants and publishers around the reuse of journalism content.
