Google’s data trade, E2E encryption victory, rumors of ads in WhatsApp, and X’s risky verification
Google’s data trade, E2E encryption victory, rumors of ads in WhatsApp, and X’s risky verification
EU users are given a chance to kick the social media habit — will they seize it? OpenAI faces mounting backlash from news media over data scraping, and WhatsApp is about to make your calls a little more private.
TL;DR
Google’s ‘ad auctions’ face a privacy challenge in the Netherlands. Google has been accused of intrusive online surveillance by more than 82,000 people who have signed up to a class action lawsuit against the tech giant in the Netherlands.
Adobe starts paying out stock contributors for helping train AI. To train Firefly, its generative AI model, the company only uses content that it has rights to through its stock image platform Adobe Stock or that is in the public domain. Adobe has now started to make good on its promise to compensate Adobe Stock creators who may lose out from the widespread adoption of AI.
UK backs down on encryption-breaking plan. The plan was to compel service providers, including messengers, to scan encrypted chats for child porn. Although the British government promised not to force companies to use unproven technology to snoop on users, it may try to enforce the so-called “spy clause” in the future if better and more secure (in the government’s eyes) technology emerges.
WhatsApp denies it will have ads. The Financial Times has reported that WhatsApp is considering inserting ads into lists of conversations with contacts in a bid to increase its revenue. A rebuttal from WhatsApp head Will Cathcart followed. “This @FT story is false. We aren’t doing this.” Still, the FT stood by their story, claiming that before it was published they had reached out to WhatsApp, and they had not denied such conversations could have taken place. Citing sources within WhatsApp, the FT then reported that another option that was being discussed is to introduce a paid ad-free version of WhatsApp.
X unveils verification system based on govt. ID. X, formerly Twitter, has begun offering its paid subscribers a new way of verification. Now, they can upload their government-issued IDs along with their selfie, and get an “ID verified” label on their profile along with “prioritized support.”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In this edition of AdGuard’s digest: EU users get a chance to kick social media addiction, Twitter’s appetite for personal information is growing, WhatsApp will make your device ID harder to track, major news outlets declare war on OpenAI, privacy-hostile porn verification law won’t be enforced, for now.
The DSA came into effect at the end of August, and it stipulates hefty fines for VLOPs (very large online platforms) if they do not give users in the EU the opportunity to free themselves from the algorithmic yoke.
Now Europeans have a choice: they can either keep consuming the content fed to them by social media algorithms or they can see generic recommendations, e.g. “locally relevant” and “globally popular videos” in the case of TikTok.
The question is, though, how many users, groomed by the tech giants for years, would be willing to break free from their social media addiction and switch to perhaps a less exciting and less diverse feed option?
The insatiable appetite for user data has long been a feature of traditional social media, and while one might expect this to decrease in light of EU and California privacy laws, the opposite is rather true.
The New York Times, CNN, Reuters, ABC News, ESPN, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Insider, Axios and many others have inserted code in their website telling OpenAI’s web crawler, called GPTBot, to stay away from their content.
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