rules

Thirty five states have backed a legal challenge to the way Apple runs its app store. The specific case centers on a game but could affect the entire way app stores operate. Unlike other mobile systems, most users can only install software on ... iPhones and iPads through the official Apple app store. Apple not only takes a cut of the purchase price of any paid apps, but also requires developers to pass on 30 percent of any in-app purchases such as upgrading an app to remove ads or selling digital content. Epic Games, maker of the Fortnite game, tried to get round that rule by including a message ... (view more)

Californian laws requiring "net neutrality" have been found lawful by an appeals court. As so often on the topic, the legal argument is as much about who has the power to make laws as it is the legal measures themselves. While precise definitions ... vary between people with different viewpoints, the most common definition of net neutrality is the principle that all Internet traffic (except that carrying illegal material) should be treated equally. One of the key issues for that principle in practice is whether Internet carriers can give priority to connections to specific sites or intentionally ... (view more)

US regulators want new rules on when companies - particularly tech firms - can merge. They say existing rules aren't designed to cover businesses that offer free services to consumers. Traditionally one of the key questions in approving or blocking ... mergers is whether it reduces competition to the point that consumers no longer benefit from price competition. The rules have only been updated once since 1984. Regulators say even that review in 2010 is now outdated as the tech world has changed so much. In particular, they point to the way many tech giants offer free services to the public and ... (view more)

Facebook and Google have been fined a total of $237 million for the way they ask users for permission to issue cookies. French regulators said the companies breached rules that say refusing cookies must be as simple as accepting them. The fines came ... from the CNIL, France's primary data privacy regulator. It found the companies had breached France's Data Protection Act. In both cases, the companies breached rules on cookies that took effect last year with a deadline of March 31st for compliance. (Source: cnil.fr ) Unfair Choice Facebook was fined approximately $68 million USD while Google was ... (view more)

Internal Facebook documents suggest automated moderating will never pick up more than a small portion of the hate speech posted on the site. The figures suggest Facebook has used some creative wording when publicly arguing how well its systems are ... working. The company has a natural interest in using automated moderation, particularly with artificial intelligence that doesn't simply follow rules to spot content that breaks site rules, but develops its own methods for detecting it. That's because it's highly unlikely Facebook could every employ enough humans to manually moderate posts (before ... (view more)

Proposed laws in Europe would ban some forms of artificial intelligence while restricting others. But critics say the proposals are too vague to be workable in practice. The proposals, expected to be formally published in the next few weeks, come ... from the European Commission. If approved by the European Parliament they could become a regulation that takes immediate legal effect across all European Union countries. It's not yet clear if and how the rules would extend to businesses in other countries as happens with data protection rules. Under the proposals, only AI used by the military or for ... (view more)

Tech giants such as Facebook could face eye watering fines or even be blocked if they don't do enough to remove "illegal content." The proposals in the United Kingdom highlight the difficultly every government faces in balancing online freedoms and ... responsibilities. The measures, set out in the Online Harms Bill, would affect websites and services around the world. If it becomes law, it raises the question of whether the UK is a significant enough market that websites change their practices worldwide to avoid headaches, similar to the way many US business decided it was better to ... (view more)

Google is making Chrome extension publishers give users more details about the data they collect. They will also have to promise to follow a new policy limiting the way they use the data. Extensions are third-party tools (called plug-ins or add-ons ... with some browsers) that interact with a web browser to provide a useful function. Examples include password managers that automatically fill in log-in details on a site, and an official Amazon plug-in that can send a copy of a long web page article direct to a Kindle e-Reader. One of the main concerns about extensions is that they inherently need ... (view more)

Facebook is taking new steps to prevent misleading political ads following the Cambridge Analytica scandal , which had millions of Facebook profiles harvested and used without consent for political advertising purposes. It says it's tightening the ... rules on buyers, which must now not only prove their identity, but also the organization they are associated with. Since 2018, anyone paying for an advertisement on Facebook relating to elections, politics or social issues has had to prove their identity to Facebook. They also have to include a disclaimer in the ad marked "Paid for by...", which is ... (view more)

Google's use of data to personalize advertisements could cost it more than $50 million. It's been fined for breaching European rules on data protection. The fine comes under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a set of rules drawn up by ... the European Union and covering activity in 27 countries. It follows a complaint filed by privacy groups the day the rules came into force last May. The breach is all to do with Google's obligation to get user consent before using personal data to provide targeted ads - one of the key aspects of the company's business. Although Google does allow ... (view more)