Tech Roundup: WhatsApp GDPR Fine, Twitter Super Follows & More

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

• Ireland's Data Protection Commission, on behalf of the European Union, fines WhatsApp €225 million for privacy violations for failing to provide users enough information about the data it shared with other Facebook companies, making it the second-largest under GDPR regulations after Amazon was fined €746 million in Luxembourg at the end of July; says the messaging platform failed in its "transparency obligations with regard to the provision of information and the transparency of that information to both users and non-users of WhatsApp’s service."
• Australia passes new "Identify and Disrupt" legislation that permits law enforcement agencies to break into user devices to modify, collect, or delete data and take over social media accounts of suspects for purposes of gathering information for an investigation.
• Apple settles with Japan Fair Trade Commission to allow developers of "reader" apps such as Netflix, Spotify, Audible and Dropbox (but not games) that provide content subscriptions for digital magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video to provide a link to their own websites to prompt users to sign up for a subscription, effectively bypassing Apple' 30% cut in what's a concession related to its restrictive App Store rules; to go into effect in early 2022, as the mobile marketplaces of Apple and Google continue to face a wave of assaults from regulators and governments across the world, forcing them to allow the use of alternative payment systems for in-app purchases.

• Twitter launches Super Follows for iOS users, allowing a select group of U.S. test users to charge either $2.99, $4.99, or $9.99 per month for their tweets (on iOS, each Super Follow subscription is an individual App Store in-app purchase); debuts new harassment prevention feature with "Safety Mode" that automatically blocks accounts using "potentially harmful language" for seven days, and reportedly tests new privacy-focused tools, including archiving and hiding old tweets and editing follower lists, as part of a "social privacy" push.
• Chinese tech giant Tencent ends exclusive licensing deals with copyright holders in accordance with a recent government mandate, as rivals NetEase and Kuaishou jump in to secure music partnerships.
• Google updates its Chat messaging service with support for GIFs via its own Tenor platform; rolls out new feature that allows users to embed Office files (Word, Excel, and Powerpoint) in other Office documents right from within Docs, Sheets and Slides.
• Google-owned YouTube's premium music streaming services surpass 50 million subscribers, as Spotify (32%), Apple (16%), Amazon (13%), and Tencent Music (13%) lead the fiercely competitive market.
• Retail giant Amazon to launch its own TV featuring Alexa software and without third-party manufacturer branding in the U.S. later this year.
• Apple begins prompting iOS 15 users for consent to enable Personalised Ads for their Apple ID, a setting that was previously on by default, allowing the iPhone maker to use App Store purchase history and several other demographics to inform what advertising is displayed in the News and Stocks apps, as well as for targeting App Store Search Ads, months after the company rolled out App Tracking Transparency (aka ATT) that requires third-party applications to ask users' explicit permission before tracking their activity across other apps and websites.