Tech Roundup: Clearview AI Controversy, Jigsaw Assembler & More

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

• China tightens social media censorship amid novel coronavirus outbreak in the country that has killed over 900 people in an attempt to stave off fear and panic, as tech giant Alibaba suspends its credit scoring system Zhima Credit, a program that assigns a 3-digit score to users based on whether they pay their bills on time.
• Google-owned YouTube, Microsoft LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook demand Clearview AI to stop scraping videos and photos from their social networks to gather faces for its controversial facial recognition database and delete any images it's already collected; development follows an investigation by The New York Times that shed light on the company's facial recognition app (which is also being used by law enforcement in the U.S.) that can find images of a person's face across the web by just uploading a sample photo and comparing to a database of 3 billion pictures that Clearview scraped off social media and other sites, and use that to find where else they've appeared online, and then using that information to locate their name. (The precarious legal position aside, Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That has stated that the First Amendment allows his company to scrape the internet for people's photos.)
• Amazon-owned home security subsidiary Ring begins rolling out new privacy and security controls in the wake of weak security protections (absence of location-based logins and concurrent sessions) and data leaks (including revealing the potential locations of up to tens of thousands of Ring cameras through a network traffic of its Neighbors app); turns on two-factor authentication by default and lets users opt out of sharing their recorded video footage with law enforcement.
• Google's music streaming services YouTube Premium and Music reach 20 million subscribers, as its over-the-top TV offering YouTube TV hits 2 million paid users. (Spotify, in contrast, has 271 million monthly active users.)
• Wacom clarifies concerns of its tablets collecting app usage data from users and sharing it with Google Analytics, stating it doesn't amass personal data and that users can choose to opt out of data collection; comes in response to findings that the company's privacy policy let it collect "aggregate usage data, technical session information, and information about ... hardware device" as well as recording the name of every application that was opened. (The incident is yet another reminder which such data collection should be opt-out by default, with an option to opt-in.)
• Ireland's Data Protection Commission launches separate inquiries into Google, over location data, and Tinder, examining how the firms process users' personal data, amid mounting regulatory scrutiny aimed at tech companies.
• France competition watchdog Directorate General for Competition, Consumption and the Suppression of Fraud (DGCCRF) fines Apple US$ 27 million for "deliberately" slowing down older iPhone models (iPhone 6, iPhone 7, and iPhone SE) by capping their performance to handle surges in energy use on the ageing batteries without users' consent.

• Facebook revamps Messenger Kids, its child-friendly alternative to the main Messenger app, with improved parental controls (viewing a child's conversation partners and whether they're video-chatting or texting, the conversation frequency over the past 30 days, and the most recent photos and videos sent and received) and an updated privacy policy regarding the handling, management, and storage of Messenger Kids data.
• Google alerts users of a technical issue in its Takeout data archival and download tool that might have had sent some videos mistakenly to other users' accounts briefly between November 21 and 25. (In a classic case, the company hasn't specified how many users were affected, or what "fixed" means.)
• Disney's much-anticipated streaming service Disney+ reaches 28.6 million subscribers in the U.S. just three months after launch, as it closes in on Netflix, whose subscriber count is at 61 million as of January 2020; unveils plans to launch Disney+ in India via Hotstar on March 29, as Hulu, a streaming service Disney now controls, climbs to 30.7 million users.
• Apple updates iCloud.com with mobile web support for Photos, Notes, Reminders, and Find iPhone features; releases the first iOS 13.4 beta, which includes a "CarKey" API, making it possible to unlock, lock, and start a car with an iPhone or Watch, and capabilities to bundle third-party app purchases across iOS and macOS.
• Alphabet-owned Jigsaw unveils Assembler, a new tool to identify doctored photographs (aka deepfakes), even ones created with the help of AI.
• Workplace productivity toolmaker Asana follows the footsteps of Slack and Spotify by confidentially files to go public via a direct listing after raising US$ 213 million to date for a market valuation of US$ 1.5 billion in 2018.
• Google to block disruptive video ads in August, including long pre-roll ads, mid-roll ads, and overlays ads on video, on Chrome browser; kills Androidify app that let users customise Android operating system's iconic green Android bot with clothes, shoes, and accessories.
• Google gives Maps a design facelift, complete with a new icon and five-tabbed navigation comprising of Explore, Commute, Saved, Contribute, and Updates, on its 15th anniversary; officially brings a bare-bones podcasts app to the web.
• Facebook acquires Scape, a London-based startup that works on computer vision-based location technology that it says is far more accurate than GPS.
• Twitter suspends "a large network of fake accounts" and many others for abusing an API feature that let them match phone numbers to usernames; hits 152 million daily active users, up from 126 million a year ago.
• Gaana, the most popular music streaming service in India, reaches 152 million monthly users; leading caller identification platform Truecaller amasses 200 million monthly active users, with India alone accounting for 150 million active users.
• Child safety experts from 102 countries urge Facebook to halt plans for encrypted messaging across its apps until it addresses child exploitation concerns, comes as the number of reported videos related to online child sex abuse touches 41 million in 2019, surpassing the number of reported photos, with Facebook accounting for 85 percent of the total.