Tech Roundup: Tinder Matchmaker, U.K. Online Safety Act & More

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

• The U.K.'s Online Safety Bill, a wide-ranging piece of legislation that aims to make the country "the safest place in the world to be online," officially becomes law; requires social media companies keep the internet safe for children by enforcing age limits and age-checking measures and give adults more choice over what they see online.
• Besides attracting criticism for excluding disinformation and misinformation from moderation, the most divisive part of the law are plans to examine encrypted messages for child abuse material.
• Apple, Signal, and WhatsApp have objected to a clause that allows authorities to ask tech companies to identify child sexual abuse content "whether communicated publicly or privately," which the companies say fatally undermines their ability to provide end-to-end encryption.
• Google partners with the Indian government to launch Center of Excellence on Generative AI and Language Inclusivity; launches DigiKavach to combat online scams, malware and fraud.
• PimEyes, a paid facial recognition service, blocks searches of children's faces via age detection AI to identify photos of minors, as part of a "no harm policy."
• Meta says it's "listening to feedback" after it emerges that the company is cross-posting Threads posts to users' Facebook feeds without offering an opt-out option; comes as the company adds support for polls and GIFs in Threads and tests a toggle in Instagram that lets users only see posts from Meta Verified subscribers, as "a way for businesses and creators to get discovered," following similar moves by X. (With X and Meta fully espousing paid verification, a new research found that "verified" accounts on X are superspreaders of misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war.)
• ByteDance TikTok tests letting users upload 15-minute videos, after raising its maximum video limit to 10 minutes in February 2022, to attract longer-form video creators.
• Amazon rolls out passkey support in its iOS app and the web, letting users log in via their devices' biometrics, with Android support on the way.
• Databricks, the US$ 43 billion analytics firm, acquires enterprise data startup Arcion for US$ 100 million; launches a European sovereign cloud, a "new, independent cloud for Europe, designed to help public sector organisations and customers in highly regulated industries meet their evolving sovereignty needs."
• Google plans to integrate a new "IP Protection" feature for the Chrome browser that enhances users' privacy by masking their IP addresses using proxy servers; disables live traffic and busyness information in Maps in Israel and Gaza amid ongoing conflict. (In a similar move, Apple has switched off live traffic updates for Israel and Gaza in the Maps app.)
• Researchers unveil Nightshade and Glaze, new tools that allow artists to "poison" AI models with corrupted training data.
• Meta's WhatsApp pilots a new feature lets users to hide their locked chats from view in the chat list and which can be viewed only by entering a custom secret code; tests support for stickers and voice messages in Channels.
• Weibo confirms China may start requiring online political, financial and entertainment commentators with more than 1 million followers to display real names on their accounts.
• Online dating app Tinder rolls out Tinder Matchmaker, which lets loved ones view and recommend potential matches.
• Apple says it supports nationwide right-to-repair regulation in the U.S. that would make iPhone parts and tools available to customers; launches Apple Pay Later for all eligible users in the country.
• Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon Seamless, a technology integrated in its newest mobile and PC chips, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Snapdragon X Elite, to better enable cross-device communication between different OEMs and OSes; launches the S7 and S7 Pro chips with increased memory and AI capabilities for earbuds, headphones and speakers.
• More than two dozen states in the U.S. sue Meta in federal and state courts alleging that Facebook and Instagram features such as Like counts, notifications and Stories are addictive and are aimed at kids and teens, harming their mental health.
• Google allows users to update the cover art of their YouTube Music playlists via images created by YouTube's generative AI; debuts a new "About this image" feature in search to check an image's history and metadata.
• Apple ships iOS 17.1 with improvements to AirDrop and and Apple Music; releases an iTunes 12.13 update for Windows users with the ability to listen to podcasts and audiobooks, and updates Shazam with a Concerts feature to find concerts that are happening in their local area.
• WordPress.com and Tumblr owner Automattic acquires the all-in-one messaging app Texts.com for $50 million.
• Snapchat hits 406 million daily active users after it adds nine million users in the last quarter.
• Salesforce-owned Slack gets rid of X integration on its service following expensive API changes.
• Microsoft admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake, as CEO Satya Nadella says "there could have been ways we could have made it work by perhaps reinventing the category of computing between PCs, tablets, and phones."
• ByteDance, in collaboration with researchers from Tsinghua University, develop a new artificial intelligence system called SALMONN (short for Speech Audio Language Music Open Neural Network) that allows machines to understand and reason about audio inputs like speech, sounds and music.
• X begins rolling out support for audio and video calls on the platform and debuts new subscription Basic (US$ 3/month, a small boost but without a checkmark) and Premium+ (US$ 16/month, no ads in For You or Following and reply boost) tiers, as an alternative platform named Pebble (formerly T2), founded by former Twitter employees, announces plans to shut down on November 1, 2023; says X posts corrected by Community Notes will be "ineligible for revenue share" in order to "maximise the incentive for accuracy over sensationalism" and warns that any attempts to "weaponise Community Notes to demonetise people will be immediately obvious, because all code and data is open-source."
• Amazon rolls out a new beta feature that lets advertisers create AI-generated image backgrounds for products, as it says it has more than 181 million users in the European Union; comes as its ad business recorded $12.06 billion in revenue during Q3 2023, marking a 26% jump from the year-earlier period.
• The Internet Watch Foundation warns that generative AI is being used to create child sexual abuse material (CSAM); says there is "now reasonable evidence that AI CSAM has increased the potential for the re-victimisation of known child sexual abuse victims, as well as for the victimisation of famous children and children known to perpetrators."
• Telegram blocks two channels used by Hamas (hamas_com and al-Qassam brigades) for Android users, blaming Google Play Store guidelines, amidst ongoing Israeli-Hamas conflict, as Google plans to require apps on the Play Store to offer users the ability to flag offensive AI-generated content without exiting the app, starting in early 2024.
• Google adds foundation and hair dye options to its AR shopping tool for trying beauty products, and expands the tool to mobile browsers and Google Shopping ads.
• Meta reports 3.14 billion family daily active people, up 7% YoY, for September 2023, with daily active users on Facebook touching the 2.09 billion mark; says users and businesses have 600 million chats on its platforms every day.
• OpenAI forms a new Preparedness team to "track, evaluate, forecast, and protect" against potentially major issues, including tndividualised persuasion, cybersecurity, chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats, and autonomous replication and adaptation (ARA).
• Google says it spent US$ 26.3 billion in 2021 to be the default search engine in multiple browsers, phones and platforms (including paying Apple around US$ 18 billion in 2021 to be default search engine in Safari across all its devices, according to The New York Times), as the deal continues to attract antitrust scrutiny in the U.S.
• Users, primarily those 16 and below, are attending virtual pro-Palestinian protests on Roblox in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, with one virtual protest area being visited over 275,000 times.
• Samsung offers Galaxy smartphone and tablets running One UI 6 a Temporary Cloud Backup feature with unlimited storage for up to 30 days for free to save and transfer important data.
• Google rolls out new Maps features, including updating search with generative AI features to more easily find things nearby and expanding Immersive View for Routes to 15 new cities; adds Lens integration to "find information about nearby ATMs, transit stations, restaurants, coffee shops and stores."
• Chinese smartphone sales fall 3% YoY in Q3 2023, led by Honor (18.3%), vivo (17.8%), OPPO (16.0%), Apple (14.2%) and Xiaomi (14.0%).