Tech Roundup: China Minor Mode, Smartphone Sales Drop & More

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

• Russia passes a new law requiring that internet platforms verify new users' identities via state-approved systems during registration; comes into effect in December 2023.
• Google's plans for a new API called Web Environment Integrity (WEI) in Chrome -- which it said is a trust mechanism that allows websites to evaluate the authenticity of devices and network traffic on clients and block fake or insecure interactions -- draws flak from rival browser vendors, who say the specification tilts the playing field in Google's favor, allowing it to decide "which browser is trustworthy."
• New large-scale independent studies establish the existence of echo chambers on social media, find that users spent "dramatically less time" on Facebook and Instagram when feeds were reverse chronological and the amount of "political and untrustworthy content they saw increased on both platforms," countering existing theories that social media algorithms play a central role in polarisation and shaping misinformation online; also show that "Pages and Groups contribute much more to segregation and audience polarization than users." (While this is an indication that interventions fail to pull users back from ideological extremes, it's perhaps worth noting that people on social media like and subscribe to content they wish to see and share based on their political attitudes, beliefs or behaviours.)
• China releases draft rules to limit smartphone use by minors to curb addictive behaviour, including a mandatory "minor mode" with strict time limits that forbid the use of devices from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. and restrict usage to a maximum of up to 40 minutes for children under the age of 8, up to one hour for kids aged between 8 and 16, and up to two hours for ages 16 through 18 per day; builds on an existing "Youth Mode" requirement the government first put into place in 2022 to curtail the amount of time young people can spend online and play video games to three hours per week, and then only on weekends and public holidays.
• X now lets X Blue subscribers hide their checkmarks, but warns that "the checkmark may still appear in some places" and "some features may not be available"; renames TweetDeck to XPro, to amend its policy to take no cut until a payout exceeds US$ 100,000, and teases government ID-based verification to curtail impersonation.
• Google announces plans to facilitate the export of user data to third-party operators through its Takeout service to address antitrust and interoperability concerns; debuts new content creation tools for YouTube Shorts and tests AI-generated video summaries in the platform; launches new privacy tools to help users find and remove their contact information and explicit images from search results.
• Amazon to begin requiring streaming services on Fire TV to give 30% of their ad impressions to Amazon, or in certain countries share 30% of ad revenue, from September 1, 2023; opens up its Fresh grocery delivery service to people without Prime in select U.S. cities and launches its virtual health clinic service across the U.S.
• Meta offers to seek user consent in the European Union for targeted ads based on users' digital activity as soon as October 2023 following pressure from privacy regulators; comes after the company began to allow users in Europe to request an opt-out from ads based on their activity in Meta apps since April 2023. (The U.K., which exited the E.U., said it's "assessing what this means for information rights of people in the U.K. and considering an appropriate response.")
• Reddit unveils an improved logged-out web experience that offers better performance and search.
• Apple announces a new alliance for Open Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD) with Pixar, Adobe, Autodesk, NVIDIA, and Linux to promote and develop Pixar's 3D Universal Scene Description technology and help "accelerate the next generation of AR experiences, from artistic creation to content delivery, and produce an ever-widening array of spatial computing applications."
• Social network Pinterest reports 465 million monthly active users, up 8% YoY, as of Q2 2023.
• Meta begins blocking news content in Canada in response to the country's Online News Act, which would require tech companies like Meta and Google to negotiate with and pay publishers for their news content; tests a feature that labels AI-generated content on Instagram.
• Apple removes over 100 generative AI apps from the App Store in China, two weeks ahead of the country's new generative AI regulations that are set to take effect on August 15, 2023, that requires such services to obtain an administrative license; says Apple Card's savings account, which has had a 4.15% interest rate since its April 2023 launch with partner Goldman Sachs, has topped US$ 10 billion in deposits.
• Google updates its generative AI-based Search Generative Experience with more multimedia, faster responses and additional context for links in its summary box; previews a revamped Fitbit app for Android, and updates Chrome for Android and iOS to surface trending searches and find related searches by tapping on a word.
• Microsoft improves its Xbox and Discord integration with a new streaming gameplay feature that allows users to stream their gameplay from a console to Discord; rolls out spatial audio for Teams on Windows and macOS after a few months of testing.
• Meta releases AudioCraft, an open-source AI tool that lets users create music and sounds via text prompts; comes as the company faces criticism for open-sourcing large language models that could contain biases and be ripe for misuse by malicious actors.
• X rival Bluesky adopts a new personalised, algorithmic feed; says its focus is on "algorithmic choice — letting you unpin feeds you don't like, and discover and install new feeds that better suit your interests."
• Google is reportedly splitting the Chrome browser from ChromeOS (which is powered by Linux), allowing the company to push out updates independently.
• TikTok's parent company ByteDance faces a new class-action lawsuit in the U.S. over claims that its CapCut video-editing app is vacuuming up data from its more than 200 million active users, including locations, gender, dates of birth, face scans and voiceprints, without consent to serve targeted ads.
• India announces plans to ban the import of laptops, tablets, PCs, and servers with immediate effect without a license in a move to boost local manufacturing.
• Brave Software, maker of the Brave web browser, tunes its search engine to offer image and video search results.
• Meta's Threads loses its shine after daily active users fall to 8 million on July 31, 2023, down 82% from launch; the daily average time spent drops from 19 minutes per day at launch to 2.9 on August 1, 2023; launches a new feature to protect users from unsolicited images and videos in direct messages by ensuring that users can send just one text-only message to someone who doesn't follow them.
• Apple offsets falling product sales with a surging Services business, as the division (which comprises ads, AppleCare, iCloud, App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV+, and Apple Pay) clocks US$ 21.21 billion in revenues in Q3 2023; paying subscribers cross one billion, up 150 million year-over-year.
• Amazon's advertising business grows as it brings in US$ 10.68 billion in sales in Q2 2023, a 22% jump from the previous year during the same period; comes as a new CNBC report finds that the company's employees leak internal information or purge negative reviews in exchange for money through a network of illicit brokers who advertise their warez on Telegram, WhatsApp and Facebook.
• Myanmar's plans for a biometrics-based national ID sets off privacy concerns that the military regime could abuse the personal data for surveillance and to suppress dissent.
• Chinese tech giant Alibaba makes two of its large language models, Qwen-7B and Qwen-7B-Chat, freely available for commercial and research use.
• Global smartphone revenue falls 8% YoY and 15% QoQ to under US$ 90 billion in Q2 2023; Apple leads with a 45% share of global smartphone revenue and an 85% share of profit; comes as smartphone shipments in India drop 10% YoY in H1 2023 to 64 million, with Apple and OnePlus growing 61% YoY each.
• TikTok offers users in the European Union the ability to turn off the personalised algorithm powering its For You and Live feeds in order to comply with the Digital Services Act (DSA); to automatically restrict European users between the ages of 13 and 17 from being being targeted with personalised ads based on their online activities.
• Google faces a whittled down lawsuit in the U.S. over concerns of using exclusive contracts related to Android that require handset makers to both pre-load Google apps and make Google the default search engine in their mobile browsers.