Tech Roundup: Facebook's Giphy Deal, Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 & More

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

• China's State Council and the Communist Party's Central Committee releases a "five-year blueprint calling for greater regulation of vast parts of the economy," setting the stage for a sweeping regulatory onslaught in areas including national security, technology and monopolies, with law enforcement strengthened in sectors ranging from food and medicine to big data and artificial intelligence.
• Twitter rolls out a web and mobile app redesign, implementing its first proprietary font, Chirp, along with updating its "colours to be high contrast and a lot less blue — a change made to draw attention to the photos and videos you create and share."
• U.S. lawmakers table new antitrust bill named Open App Markets Act that would allow side loading and bar mobile app stores from requiring app providers to use their payment systems as well as prohibit them from punishing apps that offer different prices or conditions through another app store or payment system; say "Google and Apple have gatekeeper control of the two dominant mobile operating systems and their app stores that allow them to exclusively dictate the terms of the app market, inhibiting competition and restricting consumer choice," as the tech giants are likely to object to the bill on security grounds.
• Researchers demonstrate a new method to create nine computer-generated faces via StyleGAN face generator that can serve as "master keys" to impersonate almost half of the faces in three top deep facial recognition systems.
• Google updates Tasks apps for Android and iOS to display multiple lists at the same time in a tabbed user interface; adds an interactive Periodic Table to search results.
• Facebook's WhatsApp adds new feature that allows users to move their entire chat history, including photos and voice notes, between iOS and Android devices; Instagram introduces anti-hate speech tools called Limits and Hidden Words to let users limit comments and filter abusive direct message requests on popular posts.

• South Korean electronics giant Samsung debuts Galaxy Z Flip 3 with an internal 6.7" 120Hz display, a 1.9" external screen, 8GB RAM, and Snapdragon 888 (US$ 999), Galaxy Z Fold 3 with a 7.6" 120Hz primary screen, S Pen support, 12GB RAM, and IPX8 water resistance (US$ 1,799), Galaxy Buds 2 with active noise cancellation (US$ 150), and Google WearOS-powered Galaxy Watch 4 (US$ 249) at its Unpacked event.
• Facebook announces plans to make advertising more privacy-conscious using technologies like secure multi-party computation amid looming regulations aimed at restricting data collection to fuel its ads business that's predicated on its ability to track users across the internet.
• Disney's Disney+ streaming service lands in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, as it hits 116 million paid subscribers, after passing the 100 million mark in March 2021, with ESPN+ growing 75% YoY to reach 14.9 million customers and total Hulu subscribers growing 21% to reach 42.8 million.
• The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) calls on Facebook to unwind its proposed US$ 400 million takeover of Giphy, stating it will "negatively impact competition between social media platforms"; says "Facebook's ownership of Giphy could lead it to deny other platforms access to its GIFs, [and] alternatively, it could change the terms of this access – for example, Facebook could require Giphy customers, such as TikTok, Twitter and Snapchat, to provide more user data in order to access Giphy GIFs, [adding] such actions could increase Facebook's market power, which is already significant."
• Google says it banned SafeGraph in early June after the company was caught harvesting and selling Android users' location data for COVID-19 mapping and other purposes; gives third-party apps relying on SafeGraph SDK seven days to remove SafeGraph's location gathering tools from their apps or face possible ejection from the Play Store.
• Internal docs reveal that Amazon plans to monitor keyboard strokes and mouse movements of customer service staff to stop rogue workers or hackers accessing customer data.
• ByteDance-owned TikTok becomes the latest tech company to roll out increased protections for minors on its platform in the wake of increased regulatory scrutiny; to turn off direct messaging for new users aged 16 to 17 by default, limit the visibility of their content to only approved followers, restrict video downloads, and entirely disable notifications from the app after 9:00 pm.