Tech Roundup: China PIPL Law, Telegram Ads & More

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

• China's Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) officially goes into effect, laying out ground rules around how data is collected, used, and stored, in addition to outlining data processing requirements for companies based outside of China, including passing a security assessment conducted by state authorities.
• ByteDance limits staff working hours from 10am to 7pm on weekdays, becoming one of the first tech companies in China to officially end its "996" culture (i.e., work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week).
• Meta's Instagram introduces a new "Add Yours" sticker that creates public threads in Stories, as new disclosures show that the company, formerly known as Facebook, attempted to build new products targeted at children as young as six years old as a means to stave off its demographic problem and counter a dip in in teen usage of its namesake platform since 2019.
• Facebook AI Research (FAIR) unveils open-source tactile tech dubbed DIGIT, including a robot "skin" and high-resolution fingertip sensors to give robots a sense of touch.
• Sales of Chromebooks fall in Q3 2021, accounting for a 9% share in the notebook market with 5.3 million units being sold, down 37% year-over-year, as "major education markets such as the U.S. and Japan reach saturation point."

• Pinterest turns into a full-fledged live shopping platform; to launch a Pinterest TV shoppable live series on November 8, with weekday episodes airing in its app, featuring some of its top creators.
• Cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase acquires AI-powered customer support service company Agara in a deal valued at over US$ 40 million.
• PC maker Dell spins off its 81% stake in VMware, creating a $64B independent software company.
• Apple's new privacy features, including App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework, which requires apps to ask for permission before they track the behaviour of users to serve them personalised ads, have cost social media companies including Meta, Twitter, Snapchat, and YouTube, nearly $10 billion in revenue in the second half of 2021; reportedly planning a "crash detection" feature next year for iPhones and Watches, which measures a spike in g-forces to detect car accidents and auto-dial emergency hotlines such as 911.
• Messaging service Telegram announces sponsored messages on public channels with over 1,000 subscribers based "solely on the topic of the public channels in which they are shown" to prevent any ad personalisation or data mining.
• Epic Games to shutter Fortnite in China on November 15 after a two-year experiment to try to build a version of the platform that met Chinese government rules for gaming companies.