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Apple, Meta, Other Tech Giants Brace for Rollout of EU’s Digital Services Act
More than a dozen of the world’s biggest tech companies face unprecedented legal scrutiny, as the European Union’s sweeping Digital Services Act (DSA) imposes new rules on content moderation, user privacy and transparency this month.
Across the EU, a host of internet giants – including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms, Chinese-owned video app TikTok and a handful of Google services – are adapting to the new obligations, including preventing harmful content from spreading, banning or limiting certain user-targeting practices, and sharing some internal data with regulators and associated researchers.
The EU is seen as the global leader in tech regulation, with more wide-ranging pieces of legislation – such as the Digital Markets Act and the AI Act – on the way. The bloc’s success in implementing such laws will influence the introduction of similar rules around the world.
But researchers have raised questions over whether these companies have done enough to meet lawmakers’ expectations.
For now, the rules only apply to 19 of the largest online platforms, those with more than 45 million users in the EU. From mid-February, however, they will apply to a variety of online platforms, regardless of size.
Any firm found in breach of the DSA faces a fine worth up to 6 percent of its global turnover, and repeat offenders may be banned from operating in Europe altogether.
Reuters asked each company designated under the DSA to discuss changes they had made. Most pointed to public blog posts on the matter, declining to comment further, or did not respond at all.
Two of the companies singled out for early regulation – e-commerce giant Amazon and German fashion retailer Zalando – are currently challenging their inclusion on the list in court.
“We can expect that platforms will fight tooth and nail to defend their practices,” said Kingsley Hayes, head of data and privacy litigation at law firm Keller Postman. “Especially when new compliance rules encroach on their core business models.”
Stress tests
Over the past few months, the European Commission said it had offered to conduct DSA “stress tests” with the 19 platforms.
Such tests assessed whether these platforms could “detect, address and mitigate systemic risks, such as disinformation,” a Commission spokesperson said.
At least five platforms have participated in such tests — Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (now X), TikTok and Snapchat. In each case, the Commission said more work was needed to prepare for the DSA.
Now, just as the rules come into effect, research published on Thursday by nonprofit Eko shows Facebook was still approving online ads containing harmful content.
The organization submitted 13 ads containing harmful content for approval, including one inciting violence against immigrants and another calling for the assassination of a prominent Member of the European Parliament (MEP).
Eko said Facebook approved eight of the submitted ads within 24 hours and rejected five. Researchers removed the ads before they were published, so no Facebook users saw them.
In response to the Eko research, Meta said, “This report was based on a very small sample of ads and is not representative of the number of ads we review daily across the world.”
This year Global Witness, another nonprofit, claimed Facebook, TikTok and Google’s YouTube had all approved ads inciting violence against the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community in Ireland.
Responding to the Global Witness research, both Meta and TikTok said at the time that hate speech had no place on their platforms, and that they regularly review and improve their procedures. Google did not respond to a request for comment.
Tricky business
While none of the designated companies have said they will disobey the DSA, Amazon and Zalando have disputed their inclusion on the list.
In July, Amazon filed a legal challenge with the Luxembourg-based General Court, Europe’s second highest, arguing that bigger rivals in these countries had not been designated.
It has still introduced a number of new features as part of its DSA compliance programme, such as a new channel for users to report incorrect product information.
Fashion retailer Zalando launched a similar legal challenge, arguing that because only 31 million monthly active users bought from third-party sellers on its platform, it fell below the 45 million user threshold.
It will soon become obvious if any of the designated companies had “skirted their legal responsibilities,” said Hayes. “Ironing these obligations out will be a tricky business for any platform with a large user base.”
© Thomson Reuters 2023
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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
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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.
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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.)
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