Tech Roundup: Lyft IPO, Spotify India Launch & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

• China barred people from buying plane or train tickets 23 million times last year (17.5 million times from purchasing airplane tickets, and 5.5 million times from buying high-speed train tickets) because their social credit scores were too low, according to a report by Associated Press, after the travel ban was instituted last May.
• New documents, amounting to nearly 100 pages, including court filings and internal discussions by Facebook employees, throw light on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's plans (dropped later in 2012) to charge developers for access to Facebook users' data (especially for features like instant personalisation, showing who was friends with who, and "coefficient" - Facebook's term for rating which of your friends you care about the most); reveals the company planned to use its Android app to track the location of its customers and to allow advertisers to send political advertising and invites to dating sites to 'single' people.
• Shortform social video sharing app TikTok to no longer allow children under 13 to upload videos, leave comments, build a profile, or send messages, after it settles with U.S. Federal Trade Commission for US$ 5.7 million for violating COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires that apps and websites get parental approval for users under 13 years old.
• YouTube begins removing millions of predatory comments and disabling comments on almost all videos featuring children after the video sharing platform comes under fire for failing to police the alarming number of comments and videos targeting young children, including time stamping specific scenes that sexualise the child or children in the videos.
• Ride hailing startup Lyft files to go public, beating rival Uber; captures 39 percent market share in the U.S. as of December 2018, with over 18.6 million active riders and 1.1 million drivers, and reports revenues of US$ 2.2 billion in 2018 by providing more than 1 billion rides, while also simultaneously losing US$ 911.3 million for the same period.
• Facebook's long awaited Clear History tool, which was supposed to be available May last year in the wake of Cambridge Analytica data scandal and allows users to see information about apps and web sites they've interacted with and delete them from their Facebook accounts, to launch later this year; says "We want to make sure this works the way it should for everyone on Facebook, which is taking longer than expected."
• Google says it won't remove Saudi Arabian app Absher from Play Store despite calls for its removal by human rights groups for its controversial tracking feature; says the app doesn't violate the terms of service, while Apple, which agreed to look into the matter last month, is yet to respond.
• The app, designed by Saudi government, functions as an e-services portal, letting users request/renew passport and vehicle registration documents, in addition to allowing men in the country to track their female relatives' movements and restrict their travel - or in some cases prevent them from traveling anywhere outside the country at all, alerting the men with SMS notifications in the event they try to leave on their own.
• Technically, though, Google is right. There are hundreds of tracking apps on Android and iOS, including apps that lets parents keep tabs on their kids. (One could however argue that the applications are different: Absher's location tracking is discriminatory, whereas child tracking apps are more a safety measure.) Banning one app for violating the terms, therefore, would necessitate Apple and Google to ban all of them, which is counterintuitive to their business model, as both companies make significant revenue by taking a cut from each sale made on the respective app stores.
• Facebook quietly changes its stance that "Less than 5 percent of the people who chose to participate in this market research program were teens" after a TechCrunch investigation found last month that the social network was paying teens and adults US$ 20 gift cards per month in exchange for installing a free Research VPN app that monitored all their mobile app usage and browser traffic; now states it misreported the number of teen users and that "analysis shows that number is about 18 percent when you look at the complete lifetime of the program, and also add people who had become inactive and uninstalled the app," indicating a significant fraction of teens signed up to install the VPN app.
• Nokia unveils Nokia 9 smartphone with a quintuple lens rear camera that takes a photo with each lens that the camera software then combines together, outputting a single, better photo using a technique called "image stacking"; Sony introduces flagship handset Xperia 1 at Mobile World Congress (MWC) equipped with a trio of 12-megapixel cameras and a 21:9 aspect ratio that allows users to watch video in the same format as a movie theatre, as Huawei teases its first foldable smartphones Mate X for a price tag of US$ 2,600.
• Android Messages, the SMS-cum-RCS client from Google, gains Google Assistant integration following impending shutdown of Allo this month; to offer links to more information called "suggestion chips" using on-device machine learning method as and when users text about restaurants, movies, or weather on the app.
• Google makes its video chat app Duo accessible on desktop web at https://duo.google.com/; strikes deals with handset manufacturers like LG, Nokia, TCL, Xiaomi, and Vivo to release new Android phones with a dedicated Google Assistant button.
• Facebook's nebulous privacy settings comes under the scanner once again after users find that there is no option to prevent others from looking up their profiles using the phone numbers associated with their accounts (including scenarios where the phone number was provided for purposes of two-factor authentication (2FA) or someone uploads your contact info to Facebook from their mobile phone).
• That Facebook considers data gathered about its users from others sources (including your friends' contact books) fair-game should come as no surprise. Last year, it became amply clear that the social network was using phone numbers handed over for security purposes, and personal contact information not explicitly provided at all, but collected in the aforementioned fashion, to target ads. The only way to minimise this is to switch to an app-based 2FA method.

Facebook's "Who can look me up?" privacy settings

• Apple Music integration reportedly in the works for Google Home devices, but Google clarifies it's a software bug that caused Apple Music to be listed and that it has "nothing to announce regarding updates to Google Home", but not before the development is eventually confirmed, with "a bug in the rollout" causing the option to appear before it was officially announced.
• For Apple, bringing its music streaming service to Google Home devices makes sense. As iPhone sales have tapered off, the company's focus has been slowly shifting towards new product innovation and on doubling down on service offerings like music, video, and news streaming. Last December, Apple announced a deal with Amazon, making Apple Music available on smart speakers with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant built in, and is expected to launch a subscription service within Apple News later this month.
• Blogging platform Medium removes paywall for users who visit the service through Twitter, as it launches a member-only tech-focussed publication OneZero.
• Microsoft showcases its next iteration of HoloLens mixed-reality headset at MWC with a significantly larger field of view and higher resolution for US$ 3,500 in selected markets such as United States, Japan, China, Germany, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Australia and New Zealand.
• Google updates Google Play Services to allow users with Android devices running version 7.0 and later log into apps and websites without requiring to type in a password; makes use of biometrics or PIN to authenticate users locally on the device (FIDO2 standard).
• French telecom major Avenir Telecom-owned Energizer brand unveils a new Android smartphone Power Max P18K Pop with 18,000 mAh battery; comes at 18mm thickness and promises a week's worth of use, or two full days, 48 hours, of continuous video playback (or 50 days in stand-by mode).
• Microsoft, after failing to gain traction with Windows 10 'S', to take on Chromebook's dominance again ith a new operating system called Lite OS that can run only Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps and Progressive Web Apps.
• Music streaming service Spotify finally launches in India at 119 INR/month (US$ 1.67), entering an already crowded market with established players like JioSaavn, Gaana, Apple Music, Google Play Music and Amazon Music; also allows users with a free account play songs on demand (which is a Premium feature in other markets) as it becomes the top free app on Apple App Store.
• U.S. Federal Trade Commission fines Cure Encapsulations US$ 50,000 for falsely advertised its weight-loss supplements by paying for fraudulent Amazon reviews ("Works brilliantly", "Highly recommended!") through a website called Amazon Verified Reviews.
• Facebook announces its enterprise alternative Facebook Workplace has hit 2 million paid users (excluding those who are using the free tier, and NGOs and educational and non-profit organisations using Workplace for Good that was launched last year), as it takes on rivals Slack, Microsoft Teams and Google Hangouts Chat.
• Tesla finally launches Model 3 car for US$ 35,000 after repeated production delays; to layoff unspecified number of employees as it eliminates most of its stores (numbered at 378) and shifts to an online-only sales model.
• Twitter said to be working on a new feature that would allow users to hide responses to tweets, making them difficult to be viewed in a Twitter conversation, raising concerns about suppression of speech while also giving original posters control over the responses by limiting vitriol and hate speech.
• Facebook reportedly launching a cryptocurrency for cash transfers between users on WhatsApp across international borders, reports The New York Times, as rival messaging platforms are readying Telegram, Signal, Kakao and Line race to develop their own digital coins.
• Amazon reportedly planning to launch a new chain of brick and mortar grocery stores in the U.S. to take on competitors like Walmart, Kroger and others, reports The Wall Street Journal, adding they would be separate from the company's existing Whole Foods chain and its cashier-less Go convenience stores.
• Amazon kills dash buttons, a device that allowed Amazon users reorder household items that needed frequent replenishing (paper towels, toilet paper, laundry detergent, and so on) with the click of a Wi-Fi-connected button, as Alexa-powered Echo devices take centre stage.