Tech Roundup: Meta Ad-Free Plan Pushback, ChatGPT Turns One & More

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

• Meta faces legal pushback from privacy and consumer groups in the E.U. for its plans to offer an ad-free version of Facebook and Instagram; call the "pay or okay" (or "pay or consent") model an unfair choice and a circumvention of GRPR laws by pressurising users to either consent to the processing of their data for advertising purposes by the company or pay in order not to be shown advertisements.
• "Instead of giving users a clear 'yes/no' choice, Meta is now trying to extort supposed consent from its users with a 'yes or pay' choice," privacy advocacy group NOYB said, adding condoning Meta's current ad-free subscription fees risks turning privacy into a "luxury good."
• What Meta should have ideally offered is a choice to let users opt from "ads with tracking," "ads without tracking," and "pay to avoid ads altogether." But it doesn't take a genius to figure out why the second option is missing.
• Google starts deleting personal Google accounts that have been inactive for at least two years starting December 1, 2023.
• Automattic-owned Tumblr plans to sunset Post+, which launched in 2021 to let creators charge users a subscription to access content, in January 2024.
• Google's YouTube rolls out Playables to Premium subscribers, allowing users play games on mobile and desktop without having to download them; tests a "boarding pass detector" for Chrome on Android that checks for boarding pass data on opened tabs and likely add them to users' Wallet app.
• The European Commission says Amazon's proposed acquisition of iRobot may restrict competition in the market for robot vacuum cleaners.
• Amazon launches Amazon Q, a workplace-focused AI assistant that starts at US$ 20/user/month and competes with rival offerings such as ChatGPT Enterprise and Microsoft's Copilot; unveils Guardrails in preview, a tool to help companies implement safeguards for LLMs.
• Meta enforces new rules that require advertisers to disclose when they use AI or other digital techniques to create or alter a political or social issue ad in certain cases ahead of elections in the U.S., India, Indonesia, Mexico and the E.U. next year.
• Amazon's AWS cloud unit announces new AI Trainium2 chips for customers to build and run artificial intelligence applications on, following the footsteps of Microsoft, which revealed its inaugural AI chip, the Maia 100, earlier this month; debuts Titan Image Generator, an AI model that creates images from text and adds an invisible watermark by default.
• Adobe's proposed acquisition of Figma hits a new regulatory roadblock after the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) provisionally finds that the deal would "eliminate competition between two main competitors in product design software, reduce innovation and the development of new competitive products and remove Figma as a threat to Adobe’s flagship Photoshop and Illustrator products."
• Mozilla says Firefox extensions compatible with Android will be "openly available" to users on December 14, with over 400 coming at launch.
• Intuit-owned Mailchimp plans to shut down TinyLetter on February 29, 2024, to focus on its core Mailchimp marketing product, more than a decade after acquiring TinyLetter in 2011.
• Google launches a new .meme top level domain in its Registry service, adding to .dad, .boo, .ing, and its other unconventional domain names; updates Drive for iOS and iPadOS with support for built-in document scanning, and unveils a new homepage view for the web.
• Samsung launches its Chromium-based Samsung Internet browser on Windows via the Microsoft Store.
• Note-taking service Evernote introduces new caps for free users that limits them to a maximum of just 50 notes and one notebook starting December 4, 2023.
• Google backs off its threat to block Canadian news in protest of Online News Act, due to take effect on 19 December, agreeing to a deal on Wednesday to pay US$ 100 million to news companies each year for the right to share their links on its platform.
• Google's DeepMind announces the discovery of 2.2 million new crystals through a deep learning tool called Graph Networks for Materials Exploration (GNoME) that "dramatically increases the speed and efficiency of discovery by predicting the stability of new materials."
• Reddit announces a visual rebrand of its logo, alongside new bespoke typefaces, Reddit Display and Reddit Sans.
• Substack rolls out video creation and editing tools to enable creators to publish video podcasts, create interactive AI-made transcripts and customise clips.

• Movie streamer Netflix continues to bet big on gaming; to add Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition to its games library on December 14, 2023.
• Meta expands the keyword search feature of Threads to all markets where the service is available, with support for "all languages," as it prepares for E.U. expansion later this month; WhatsApp begins letting users hide locked chats behind a secret custom password.
• Google rolls out new features for Android phones and tablets, Wear OS smartwatches and Google TV devices, inluding 10 new free TV channels and controls for smart home devices from the smartwatch; says it has over one billion monthly active users on RCS-based Google Messages, and introduces new Photomoji, Voice Moods, custom bubbles, screen effects, animated emoji and profile features.
• Google asks the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to take action against Microsoft, claiming the company's licensing practices unfairly discouraged customers from using rivals' services.
• Meta sues the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in a lawsuit that challenges the latter's authority to impose new privacy obligations on the social media firm that requires to stop monetising the data for users under 18 years old and limiting its use of facial recognition technology.
• ByteDance-owned TikTok launches Artist Account, which offers up-and-coming musicians new ways to curate their profiles in ways that boost discoverability and promote their music.
• OpenAI's ChatGPT officially turns one, as the mobile app versions of ChatGPT top 110 million combined installs and reach nearly US$ 30 million in subscription revenue; delays its GPT store launch until early 2024 after "a few unexpected things have been keeping us busy."
• Apple faces a renewed comprehensive probe into its dominance in mobile browsers and cloud gaming following a ruling by London's Court of Appeal, after it was dropped in March 2023 following an appeal from Apple that alleged the CMA missed key timing requirements.
• A new investigation from Adalytics finds that Google search ads being served on non-Google websites that make up the Google Search Partner (GSP) network, including sites containing pirated content, hardcore pornographic sites, and hundreds of putative Iranian websites; Google says the highlighted instances are from its Programmable Search Engine (ProSE) product, "a free search tool we offer to small websites so that they can present a search experience directly on their sites," that "ads may appear based on the user's specific search query; they are not targeted to, or based on, the website they appear on," and that there is no evidence of "revenue being shared with a single sanctioned entity."
• Bluesky rolls out "more advanced" automated moderation tools, along with moderation lists, which let users mute or block many users at once.
• Telegram rolls out new features that allow better discovery of similar channels, emoji customisation for reactions, stats for stories and voice transcription for all users.
• Meta says it's expanding and updating its child safety features aimed at protecting kids following a series of reports from The Wall Street Journal about how Facebook and Instagram enable the distribution of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) and guide users to child-sex content.
• Music streamer Spotify to phase out service in Uruguay effective January 1, 2024, following new copyright bill requiring "fair and equitable remuneration."
• A federal judge in the U.S. state of Montana blocks a law that would have resulted in a state-wide ban of TikTok starting on January 1, 2024.
• India's Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) issues new guidelines that bans e-commerce platforms from engaging in dark patterns and deceptive behaviour to manipulate customers.