Tech Roundup: China Tech Crackdown, TikTok Video Resumes & More

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

• Chinese tech giant Tencent announces plans to use a facial recognition system to prevent minors from playing games late into the night, following new regulation that includes a ban on minors playing video games from 10:00 p.m. to 8:00 a.m., as well as limiting their playtime to 90 minutes a day; comes as China's antitrust regulator, State Administration of Market Regulation (SAMR), is set to formally block Tencent's plan to merge the country's top two video game streaming platforms Huya and Douyu.
• Didi's main app gets removed from Tencent's WeChat messaging service and Ant Group's Alipay, for new users, landing yet another huge blow to the Chinese ride-hailing company, just days after authorities ordered app stores in the country to remove the app's listing in the wake of an ongoing cybersecurity review; SAMR dishes out 22 fines amounting to 500,000 yuan (US$77,000) each to Big Tech firms, including Alibaba, Tencent, and Didi Chuxing, for a series of irregularities related to merger deals over the past decade, as the government ups its scrutiny of the domestic technology sector across a range of issues, including data security, consumer privacy and anticompetitive practices.
• Google faces yet another antitrust lawsuit in the U.S., accusing the company of abusing its market power to stifle competitors and forcing consumers into in-app payments that grant the company a hefty cut, that it tried to "preemptively quash" Samsung's app store by making "a direct attempt to pay Samsung to abandon relationships with top developers and scale back competition through the Samsung Galaxy Store", and that the company worked with app developers to encourage them not to distribute their apps outside of the Play Store; says "Not only has Google acted unlawfully to block potential rivals from competing with its Google Play Store, it has profited by improperly locking app developers and consumers into its own payment processing system and then charging high fees," as Google calls the legal hurdle "a meritless lawsuit that ignores Android's openness." (It's worth pointing out that Google, like Apple, herds all app payment processing into its own service, Google Play Billing, and reaps a 30% cut of all transactions made through the Play Store. The difference lies in the fact that, unlike Apple, Android allows alternative app stores.)

• Twitter loses its liability protections in India after it fails to comply with IT rules introduced in February 2021, potentially opening the door for the company to face criminal charges over objectionable content posted by its users.
• Chinese handset maker OnePlus admits to throttling "300 of the most popular apps, including Chrome, by matching the app's processor requirements with the most appropriate power" on OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro to "provide a smooth experience while reducing power consumption."
• ByteDance-owned TikTok tests letting U.S. users apply for jobs with video resumes posted with a #TikTokResumes hashtag; more than 30 brands join the pilot, including WWE, Shopify, and Target.
• A new study conducted by Comscore and commissioned by Facebook claims that 75% of the top 20 apps on iOS in the U.S. are made by Apple, while Google made 60% of the top apps on Android, with preinstalled offerings from Apple and Google dominating services when it comes to basics such as weather, photos, and clocks, as both companies increasingly come under scrutiny for how they favour their own services over competitors.
• A crowdsourced study undertaken by Mozilla about YouTube over a 10-month period finds that over 71% videos flagged as objectionable by 1,162 participants (from a total of 3,362 videos) were recommended by the platform itself, underscoring the platform's starring role in allowing "AI-generated bubbles of hate" surface ever more toxic and extremist content.
• Amazon open sources its Lumberyard game engine; project to be overseen by the Linux Foundation and now be called the Open 3D Engine.