Tech Roundup: E.U. Gatekeeper List, Snapchat Safety Features & More

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

• A new investigation from Adalytics finds that Google's YouTube app for iOS appends an identifier called WBraid to users who watch and click on an ad and then land on the brand's website without seeking their consent in accordance with Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework; also unearths potential evidence suggesting that the platform may be serving behavioural ads on made for kids channels.
• The European Commission formally designates six gatekeepers, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, Microsoft, characterising 22 services from these companies as providing an "important gateway between businesses and consumers in relation to core platform services." (In the meanwhile, Apple and Microsoft appear to have put forth the argument that services such as iMessage and Bing be excluded from the European Union's list, claiming that the services aren't large or powerful enough to justify earning the restrictions of the Digital Markets Act. If added to the list, Apple would have been forced to open up iMessage to third-party messaging services and make it interoperable with other messaging platforms. While both the services have dodged the bullet for now, the bloc has launched investigations to determine if they should be subject to strict DMA obligations.)
• Meta's WhatsApp tests the option to toggle between voice notes and video messages; to stop promoting news content for users in the U.K., France and Germany by deprecating the dedicated News tab in early December 2023, the latest sign that the social network giant is trying to leave the industry behind; says "news makes up less than 3% of what people around the world see in their Facebook feed, so news discovery is a small part of the Facebook experience for the vast majority of people."
• Apple acquires Sweden-based BIS Records, founded in 1973, and plans to fold the classical music label into Apple Music Classical and its artists and repertoire label Platoon; to bring the App Store to visionOS later this year.
• ByteDance-owned TikTok opens its first European data centre in Ireland after announcing the project in August 2020; to complete the migration of user data by Q4 2024.
• Microsoft rolls out a new Xbox dashboard that lets users stream Xbox gameplay on Discord; tests a new change in the European Economic Area (EEA) wherein "Windows system components use the default browser to open links" rather than directing users to its Edge browser.
• Music streamer Spotify experiments new change by putting publicly available lyrics for users on the free tier behind a premium paywall.
• Google gives Android logo a redesign and a 3D bugdroid; debuts new Assistant At a Glance widget and adds options to digitise passes that have a barcode or a QR code.
• Zoom announces AI Companion for paying users that works across Zoom Whiteboard, Zoom Team Chat and Zoom Mail to summarise meetings and brainstorm ideas.
• Google drops individual ad controls in YouTube Studio for pre-roll, post-roll, skippable, and non-skippable ads on new videos; plans a November policy update requiring election advertisers to prominently disclose when their ads contain generative AI-based images, video or audio, and to evaluate new options that minimise average interruptions for viewers of YouTube on connected TVs, such as fewer, longer ad breaks.
• Salesforce-owned Slack announces Slack AI, which can generate channel highlights, thread summaries, and search answers based on messages.
• Clubhouse updates its iOS and Android apps to include asynchronous voice-only group chats, in an attempt pivot away from live audio to be "more like a messaging app."
• Google plans to allow real-money games on the Play Store in India that will be approved by self-regulatory bodies once a new regulatory framework is implemented in the country; experiments with an original video series called The Play Report to let people discover new apps on the Play Store.
• Social network X, formerly known as Twitter, introduces Community Notes for videos.
• China bans officials at central government agencies from bringing foreign-branded phones, including the iPhone, into offices or using them for government work in an attempt to "cut the country's reliance on foreign technology"; comes as handset maker Huawei releases Mate 60, 60 Pro, 60 Pro+ amd X5 smartphones using processors made by China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (which like Huawei is sanctioned by the U.S. and restricted from accessing American technology), in what's touted as a breakthrough for the country. (It's worth pointing out that China became the world’s largest iPhone market in the second quarter of this year.)
• Google rolls out a new feature to Google Workspace customers that makes it possible to lock Google Drive files; teases option to send emoji reactions to emails and kills off Play Movies & TV, as it urges users to migrate to Android TV, Google TV and YouTube. (Needless to say, Google's Play rebranding remains a mess.)
• Duolingo integrates new experiences in its language-learning platform, allowing users to avail math and music learning programs.
• A new study conducted by Mozilla finds that car brands are "terrible at privacy and security," collecting too much personal data, sharing or selling user data to other businesses, and offering no control to users over their information.
• Google plans to update Chrome browser to incorporate Material You design, launch a redesigned version of its Chrome Web Store, and adds an option to hide username and profile picture on ChromOS lock screen; allows users to add emoji to their saved places on Maps, and tests an AI-powered proofreading capability in Gboard to correct spelling, grammar and punctuation.
• Meta's Threads adds the option to search for specific keywords; test new feature to let users share feed posts just with Close Friends.
• eBay rolls out an AI tool for sellers that can generate a product listing, including a title, description, category, and price, from one photo.
• Snapchat adds new safety features for minors, including making it harder for strangers to contact teens via in-app warnings and requiring "a greater number of friends in common" to surface potential friend suggestions; debuts a new strike system to remove accounts that market and promote age-inappropriate content.
• Anthropic launches a premium subscription for its Claude chatbot in the U.S. for US$ 20/month and the U.K. for £ 18/month, offering priority in busy times and access to early features.
• Microsoft commits to defending customers of its AI Copilots from copyright infringement lawsuits, as long as they've "used the guardrails and content filters"; tests a background removal tool in Paint for Windows.
• Pinterest updates its content algorithms to make search more inclusive using a computer vision system that uses shape, size and form to identify various body types in over 5 billion images on the platform.
• X updates its terms of service to ban scraping and crawling without "prior written consent," effective September 29, 2023, likely in an effort to stop companies training AI models on its data; gets caught running unlabeled ads in users’ Following feeds.
• Reddit can now translate posts into eight languages, including English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch and Swedish, when viewing them on its mobile apps or on the web while logged out.
• Gaming platform Roblox announces Roblox Connect, letting users video chat with other people as their Roblox avatar in a shared virtual space; unveils Roblox Assistant, a conversational AI assistant that lets creators enter prompts to generate virtual environments and get help with coding, and announces that its popular social and gaming app is coming to Sony PS4 and PS5 in October 2023.
• Amazon begins requiring writers in its e-book program to disclose the use of AI-generated content in their books.
• Ride hailing service Uber is reportedly working on a service like TaskRabbit and Urban Company, codenamed Chore, to let users hire people to conduct various tasks.