OTHER
TikTok Banned on Government Devices in Australia Over Security Concerns
Australia banned TikTok on Tuesday from all federal government-owned devices over security concerns, becoming the latest US-allied country to take action against the Chinese-owned video app.
The ban underscores growing worries that China could use the Beijing-based company, owned by ByteDance, to harvest users’ data to advance its political agenda, undermining Western security interests.
It also risks renewing diplomatic tension between Australia and its largest trading partner after things eased somewhat since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese took office in May at the head of a Labour government.
TikTok said it was extremely disappointed by Australia’s decision, calling it “driven by politics, not by fact”.
The ban will come into effect “as soon as practicable”, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said in a statement, adding that exemptions would only be granted on a case-by-case basis and with appropriate security measures in place.
With Australia’s ban, all members of the so-called Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network – which consists of Australia, Canada, the United States, Britain and New Zealand – have banned the app from government devices. France, Belgium and the European Commission have announced similar bans.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, in testimony before the US Congress last month, repeatedly denied the app shares data or has connections with the Chinese Communist Party.
TikTok’s Australia and New Zealand General Manager Lee Hunter said TikTok should not be singled out.
“There is no evidence to suggest that TikTok is in any way a security risk to Australians and should not be treated differently to other social media platforms,” Hunter said in a statement.
The Australian newspaper late on Monday reported Albanese had agreed to the ban after a review by the Home Affairs department.
Dreyfus confirmed the federal government had recently received a “Review into Foreign Interference through Social Media Applications” report and that its recommendations remained under consideration.
Trade talks ‘going well’
The ban comes on the day Australian and Chinese officials held talks in Beijing in a bid to normalise trade as the World Trade Organisation prepares to release findings into an Australian complaint on barley tariffs.
“Things are going well, but of course, it’ll take some time to turn this ship around,” Trade Minister Don Farrell told Sky News, referring to prospects for improving trade relations.
In 2018, Australia banned China’s Huawei from providing equipment during the rollout of its 5G network, riling China. Ties soured further after Canberra called for an independent investigation into the origin of COVID-19.
China responded by imposing tariffs on Australian commodities.
Australian lawmakers can still use TikTok on personal phones but some, including federal Government Services Minister Bill Shorten and Victoria state Premier Daniel Andrews, have decided to delete their accounts.
Victoria state will also ban the app on state government-owned phones, a government spokesperson told Reuters.
While TikTok comes under mounting pressure over the potential Chinese influence over the platform, it also faces criticism over its influence on children.
TikTok has said the administration of President Joe Biden demanded its Chinese owners divest their stakes or face a potential US ban.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
Smartphone companies have launched many compelling devices over the first quarter of 2023. What are some of the best phones launched in 2023 you can buy today? We discuss this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
Affiliate links may be automatically generated – see our ethics statement for details.
YouTube will roll out a slew of artificial-intelligence-powered features for creators, the latest effort from parent company Alphabet to incorporate generative AI — technology that can create and synthesize text, images, music and other media given simple prompts — into its most important products and services.
Among the new products YouTube announced Thursday is a tool called Dream Screen that uses generative AI to add video or image backgrounds to short-form videos, which the company calls Shorts. It also announced new AI-enabled production tools to help with editing both short- and long-form videos on its platform.
“We’re unveiling a suite of products and features that will enable people to push the bounds of creative expression,” Toni Reid, YouTube’s vice president for community products, said in a blog post timed to the announcement Thursday. The Google-owned video platform first announced that it was developing the tools in March.
Google has been under pressure to show results and practical applications for its generative AI products. Some critics have been wary the company, which has long been seen as a leader in artificial intelligence, was falling behind upstarts like OpenAI or rival Microsoft, and that the products Google was rolling out weren’t yet ready for public consumption. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and a new Bing chatbot from Microsoft — which has invested $13 billion (nearly Rs. 1,08,100 crore) in OpenAI since 2019 — have been wildly popular and gained mainstream favour.
Over the past few months, Google launched its own ChatGPT competitor, Bard, and released a steady flow of updates to the product. It’s also incorporated experimental generative AI features into its most important services, including its flagship search engine, in what the company calls its experimental “search generative experience.” The product generates detailed summaries based on information it’s ingested from the internet and other digital sources in response to search queries.
The announcement of the new features also comes as YouTube is locked in fierce competition with ByteDance‘s TikTok and Meta Platforms‘s Instagram Reels to gain more share of the vertical, short-form video market. YouTube said it now sees more than 70 billion daily views on Shorts, and the new generative AI tools appear to be aimed at attracting even more users and creators and gaining a competitive edge over its rivals.
The company also announced YouTube Create, a mobile app aimed at helping the platform’s creators make video production work easier. The app includes AI-enabled features like editing and trimming, automatic captioning, voiceover capabilities and access to a library of filters and royalty-free music. The app is currently in beta on Android in “select markets,” the company said, and will be free of charge.
Beyond creation, YouTube said it would also provide creators with more tools to get AI-powered insights, help with automatic dubbing of videos and assist with finding music and soundtracks for videos.
© 2023 Bloomberg LP
Affiliate links may be automatically generated – see our ethics statement for details.
WhatsApp has begun rolling out support for a new feature that will allow you to log in to your account using the biometric authentication mechanism on your smartphone. The messaging service will soon allow you to create a passkey — a kind of login credential that eliminates the need to use or remember a password — on your device and use it to securely log in to apps and services using the facial recognition or fingerprint scanner on your device.
Feature tracker WABetaInfo spotted the new passkey feature on WhatsApp beta for Android 2.23.20.4 on Tuesday, that is rolling out to beta users. However, not all users who have updated to the latest beta release will have access to the feature, which is reportedly rolling out to a “limited number of beta testers”. Gadgets 360 was unable to access the feature on two different Android smartphones that are both enrolled in the beta program.
The new Passkeys feature on WhatsApp
Photo Credit: WABetaInfo
The new passkey feature is described as a “simple way to sign in safely” to WhatsApp in a screenshot shared by the feature tracker. This suggests that it could be used to help sign in to other devices via secure authentication on your primary device.
Authenticating using passkeys isn’t a novel concept and the technology is slowly gaining traction online— Google already allows you to log in to a new device by using fingerprint-based biometric authentication for passkeys in place of a password. These passkeys are securely stored on your device and used when biometric authentication is provided.
The screenshot posted by WABetaInfo also states that WhatsApp will store the passkey in the device’s password manager — for most users, that would be the device’s default password store that is handled by Google with autofill support. The feature is also expected to make its way to iOS, where it is likely to be stored in the iOS Keychain.
It is currently unclear whether WhatsApp will also support storing passkeys in third-party apps like Bitwarden, 1Password, or Dashlane. We can expect to learn more about how the feature works when it is rolled out to more users in the beta program and the feature is expected to arrive on all smartphones on the stable channel in the future.
Affiliate links may be automatically generated – see our ethics statement for details.
Britain urged Meta not to roll out end-to-end encryption on Instagram and Facebook Messenger without safety measures to protect children from sexual abuse after the Online Safety Bill was passed by parliament.
Meta, which already encrypts messages on WhatsApp, plans to implement end-to-end encryption across Messenger and Instagram direct messages, saying the technology re-enforced safety and security.
Britain’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman said she supported strong encryption for online users but it could not come at the expense of children’s safety.
“Meta has failed to provide assurances that they will keep their platforms safe from sickening abusers,” she said. “They must develop appropriate safeguards to sit alongside their plans for end-to-end encryption.”
A Meta spokesperson said: “The overwhelming majority of Brits already rely on apps that use encryption to keep them safe from hackers, fraudsters and criminals.
“We don’t think people want us reading their private messages so have spent the last five years developing robust safety measures to prevent, detect and combat abuse while maintaining online security.”
It said it would update on Wednesday on the measures it was taking, such as restricting people over 19 from messaging teens who do not follow them and using technology to identify and take action against malicious behaviour.
“As we roll out end-to-end encryption, we expect to continue providing more reports to law enforcement than our peers due to our industry leading work on keeping people safe,” the spokesperson said.
Social media platforms will face tougher requirements to protect children from accessing harmful content when the Online Safety Bill passed by Parliament on Tuesday becomes law.
End-to-end encryption is a bone of contention between companies and the government in the new law.
Messaging platforms led by WhatsApp oppose a provision that they say could force them to break end-to-end encryption.
The government, however, has said the bill does not ban the technology, but instead, it requires companies to take action to stop child abuse and as a last resort develop technology to scan encrypted messages.
Tech companies have said scanning messages and end-to-end encryption are fundamentally incompatible.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Affiliate links may be automatically generated – see our ethics statement for details.
YouTube Announces AI-Enabled Editing Products for Video Creators
WhatsApp Passkey Support Reportedly Rolling Out to Beta Testers on Android: How It Works
Career stories: Influencing engineering growth at LinkedIn
Meta Urged Not to Roll Out End-to-end Encryption on Messenger, Instagram by UK
CCI Said to Have Appointed Former WhatsApp Executive, Government Officials as New Members
WhatsApp iPad Support Spotted in Testing on Latest iOS Beta, Improved Group Calls Interface on Android
Allowing Users to Promote Stories as Ads (via Marketing API)
Facebook Hashtags: Free Hashtag Tool + 70 Ideas
How to Boost Engagement With LinkedIn Carousel Posts and Ads
Enhancing homepage feed relevance by harnessing the power of large corpus sparse ID embeddings
![17-tips-for-writing-effective-youtube-descriptions-[free-tool]](https://www.social-ping.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/127190-17-tips-for-writing-effective-youtube-descriptions-free-tool-80x80.png)
17 Tips for Writing Effective YouTube Descriptions [Free Tool]
Enhancing Security and Developer Productivity: LinkedIn’s Journey with Implementing Content Security Policy
-
Uncategorized1 week ago3 Ways To Find Your Instagram Reels History
-
Uncategorized2 weeks agoSocial Media for Business: A Practical Guide
-
OTHER2 weeks agoWhatsApp Chat Interoperability Feature Spotted in Development on Latest Beta Update: Report
-
FACEBOOK1 week agoIntroducing Facebook Graph API v18.0 and Marketing API v18.0
-
OTHER2 weeks agoYouTube ‘Subscribe’ Button Spotted to Be Glowing When Creators Request Subscription
-
Uncategorized1 week agoCommunity Manager: Job Description & Key Responsibilities
-
LINKEDIN1 week agoCareer Stories: Learning and growing through mentorship and community
-
Uncategorized7 days agoThe Complete Guide to Social Media Video Specs in 2023