Tech Roundup: China Antitrust, Zoom Email & More

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

• Apple is reportedly planning to manufacture a self-driving car as early as 2024 using internally developed lidar sensors and "breakthrough" battery technology.
• Facebook removes a number of features across Messenger and Instagram in the EU effective December 21, including child abuse detection tools and interactive options such as polls and stickers, following new ePrivacy directive rules that ban automatic scanning of emails and private messages for personalised ads without users' explicit consent.
• Videoconferencing service Zoom comes under investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over its security and privacy issues and interactions with China and other governments; said to be working on web-based email and calendar services in a bid to expand its enterprise offerngs and better compete with Google and Microsoft.
• China's market regulator, the State Administration of Market Regulation, announces antitrust probe into tech conglomerate Alibaba, the first of its kind for a Chinese internet company, for alleged monopolistic practices; to investigate its so-called "choosing one from two" practice, which requires merchants to sign exclusive co-operation pacts, preventing them from offering products on rival platforms JD.com and Pinduoduo.
• TikTok's parent company ByteDance reportedly eyes using artificial intelligence algorithms to discover and manufacture new drugs, as it becomes the latest company to enter the healthcare sector and diversify beyond advertising and live-streaming sales.

Market cap of Big Tech firms in China (Image: Foreign Policy)

• Popular messaging service Telegram debuts new group voice chat feature as it nears 500 million monthly active users; announces plans to monetise the platform with an advertising stream "that is user-friendly, respects privacy and allows us to cover the costs of server and traffic."
• Alphabet's DeepMind details MuZero, the successor to AlphaZero, a new reinforcement machine learning model that's capable of teaching itself the rules and master games as it plays; to be put to use in internet traffic and cut down on bandwidth use by efficiently compressing videos and making them smaller.
• Facebook allegedly offered to build a social networking competitor by licensing its own code and users' webs of relationships to another firm during the early stages of US antitrust investigation against the company.
• China's proposed Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) data protection regulation to have provisions for safeguarding personal biometric information to ensure that it's "used for specific purposes and only when sufficiently necessary," amid growing concerns in the country over the prolific use of facial recognition technology in the country.
• Google's proposed acquisition of Fitbit faces fresh roadblock after Australia threatens Google with a $400 million fine if the merger moves forward without approval from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).