Tech Roundup: Dark Patterns, Facebook "Free of Charge" Prompt & More

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

• The European Union charges Apple with antitrust violations saying the iPhone maker squeezed rival music streaming apps by requiring them to use Apple's in-app payments system.
• Facebook, which has been a vocal critic of Apple's iOS 14.5 privacy changes, adds a new "educational screen" in its flagship and Instagram apps urging users to enable tracking to help deliver personalised ads and keep the platforms "free of charge."
• The development comes as Apple rolled out new opt-in requirements in iOS 14.5 released last week, requiring developers (including Apple) to express consent from device owners to allow their Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) to be shared and collected across apps.
• With App Tracking Transparency enabled, apps' access to third-party user data is curtailed, and companies that hold more first-party data have an edge, which includes Google and Facebook. Viewed in that light, Facebook's sustained campaign against Apple is more of an attempt to maintain its status quo, while staving off a hit to its ad targeting business that relies on third-party data.
• Apple has said it will ban and reject apps on the App Store that attempt to use alternative methods to get around App Tracking Transparency (ATT) and fingerprint users as well as offer users monetary incentives to enable tracking with ATT.
• While the company has said the changes are "designed to help developers implement safe advertising practices and protect users — not to advantage Apple," the privacy restrictions are expected to boost Apple's own fledgling advertising efforts.
• Big question: Will Apple's privacy-centric paradigm lead to a rise in ad-free models and more in in-app subscriptions? More importantly, will users be ready to pay?
• China's Cyber Administration calls out 33 apps, including those from Sogou, Baidu, Tencent, QQ, for illegally collecting excessive personal information than deemed necessary, giving them 10 working days (effective May 1) to remediate their practices, or risk facing penalties.

• At least 15 Basecamp employees, roughly a third of the company's workforce, depart the company, days after the company announced sweeping changes to ban societal and political discussions at work.
• Roku takes down YouTube TV from its channel store after the streaming hardware platform and Google fail to come to a distribution agreement (existing users will continue to have access); move comes after Roku alleged that Google was seeking preferential treatment for its YouTube apps to manipulate consumer search results and "require access to data not available to anyone else," while Google claims "Roku requested exceptions that would break the YouTube experience and limit our ability to update YouTube in order to fix issues or add new features."
• Facebook details DINO self-supervised AI for object discovery and segmentation in images/videos, and PAWS, a new ML approach to classify poorly labelled images.
• The U.S. Federal Trade Commissions sets its sights on dark patterns, nuanced design cues and obstructive tactics intended to coerce people into taking certain actions online; says "dark patterns are part of a larger system of deceptive and manipulative practices that we see growing all too rapidly in the commercial digital surveillance economy," adding "it's also crucial that we look at the impact dark patterns are having on different communities, especially those that have been and continue to be disadvantaged and marginalized in both the market and our broader society."