The Enormous Scale of GDPR Fines for Mark Zuckerberg’s Companies Revealed

To date, the social media giant Meta has been penalized with a massive $2.8 billion (yes with B in USD) fine for going against the GDPR.

Meta continues to remain a favorite company by officials in the EU and they’ve been targeting the organization left and right for several violations of the GDPR.

It wouldn’t be wrong to refer to Ireland as the world’s ‘Leading Data Regulatory Authority’ that continues to impose massive fines on big technology companies in the industry who fail to follow the stringent GDPR law that came out in 2018.

Meta is a big player in the digital space and it’s been subject to legal actions for years, let’s not forget how fines worth billions have been handed over. GDPR breaches incurred by Meta have been a constant worry for Zuckerberg and from what we’re seeing right now, it’s not ending soon.

The company was penalized a massive $442 million in Sep. 2022 and then another massive one comprising $425 million was rolled out on Meta Limited in January of 2023. And as time went on, things did not get any better. It’s interesting how the Irish-based regulator has been penalizing the organization from the start of GDPR. The majority of fines that Meta has been forced to pay have arisen from here.

Remember, WhatsApp Ireland also led the pack in terms of fining the company in 2021 so we’re not quite sure what’s going on here. But one thing is certain, Meta’s got a lot to do to get back into the firm’s good books.

The Irish Data Protection Commission enforced a lion’s share record featuring 1.78 billion Euros in the past year.

Most tech firms have headquarters based in Ireland and it’s shocking how the country has been serving as the leading data privacy enforcer for so long. Fines have been hitting tech giants left and right and Meta is the hardest hit amongst them all. Now what could the reason behind all of this be?

Both Facebook and Instagram are now being called out for wrongful data processing. Their apps have breached the GDPR for most of the same reasons and many can’t help but wonder why Meta does not learn from the past.

The head for data privacy regarding cybersecurity mentioned how it appears that the country’s data regulatory body has more to do with its favorable environment than anything else. But recent reports have gone on to prove how the number of fines rolled out across the EU in the past year is mostly due to successful appeals in several jurisdictions. Many also feel this has to do with the fact that opinions have been divided regarding several decisions including the EU Data Protection Board.

In May of 2023, the company was barred from transferring data belonging to EU citizens into the US, which investigators said was a huge privacy violation. This saw cross-border penalties being implemented on the tech giant with a warning of such action to be repeated in the future. But now, we are seeing it being punished for unlawful data processing, leading to a loss worth billions.

Meta did come under fire for another leading reason. Its decision to roll ad-free subscriptions for those with Premium tiers was called out for breaching EU laws. So as you can see, failure in terms of complying with EU laws appears to be the main reason why Meta keeps being penalized.

Sources: Dlapiper Report - Enforcementtracker

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Bill Gates Urges the Richest Countries to Donate to the Global South

Bill Gates spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos recently and addressed the growing divide between the Global North and the Global South. He mentioned that the resource needs of developing countries were outstripping the resources that they are capable of generating, and as a result of the fact that this is the case, they need more help from developed nations than ever before.

It is important to note that he urged the richest countries, governments, people and companies to provide aid to these struggling nations. In the 1970s, the United Nations requested economically powerful countries to donate 0.7% of the overall income the generated each year in the form of aid, and Gates referred to this while making his statements.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, just four countries have met this criteria, namely Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Luxembourg. If the Global South is to be saved, it’s imperative for more countries to join this list because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up helping fix some of the problems that are holding countries in this region back.

Gates also proposed that developing countries should be asked what their main areas of focus are, such as education, health and nutrition, or anything else that they are prioritizing at this current point in time. His final point was that more innovation was required in order to fix the many issues plaguing the Global South, such as malaria and agricultural issues.

One of his final points was that agricultural productivity needed to be optimized in order to feed growing populations. In his view, the amount of innovation in this space was orders of magnitude lower than what it should’ve been, and that might be where the first wave of innovation should go. Gates’s statements came during a panel at Davos, but it remains to be seen whether they have any type of impact whatsoever on the manner in which the wealthiest institutions distribute their wealth.

Photo: Bloomberg Live / YT

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

US Justice Department And FTC Enter Power Struggle As Both Wish To Investigate Microsoft’s Relationship With OpenAI

The American Justice Department and the FTC have both been raising serious concerns related to software giant Microsoft’s collaboration with OpenAI.

Seeing the company invest millions and grow quite close to the ChatGPT maker was already on many people’s minds in terms of how that could serve to eliminate competition in today’s market.

Now, we’re getting to hear so much more on this front including how a power struggle has been attained by both the DOJ and the FTC in terms of who gets to scrutinize the companies.

The report comes to us thanks to media outlet Politico who added recently how both of these agencies were excited to start the rounds of investigation and why Microsoft is so keen on being involved with the AI firm. They hoped to better gauge what sort of competition this could have in today’s AI industry which continues to flourish as we speak.

A lot of antitrust behavior was noted too and now, neither plan on giving up jurisdiction on this front was said to create major hurdles and roadblocks that lead to a formal investigation arising right now.

The crux of the matter appears to be the huge number of investments made by Microsoft in the recent past. It all began when they rolled out the first set of funding in 2019 and this continued for the next couple of years. The software giant also combined services from OpenAI into its own Bing search engine as well as Microsoft Office to get better and more useful products.

One interview had the CEO of OpenAI speak about how the collaboration between both tech giants is more than solid. He hoped that the company would continue to invest in the firm. However, this raised serious concerns in terms of serving as unfair advantages for both enterprises, especially when it comes down to LLMs.

In the past, we saw both regulatory bodies avoiding overlapping investigations so that peace would be maintained. We also saw how they attained handshake agreements to split both organizations up so that they could continue with antitrust investigations of the big names in the industry.

This meant Meta’s Facebook and Amazon would be allocated to FTC while Google and Apple would be sent in the DOJ’s direction.

Recently, one investigation by Microsoft’s Activision-Blizzard overtook but they entered into an agreement about not leveraging that for future legal negotiations.

But a rep for Microsoft denied that statement and mentioned it during a December statement from the software giant’s President Brad Smith who detailed more on the front.

He says that since the year 2019, OpenAI has held great personal and business relationships with the software giant, and that has paved the way for more innovation in the world of AI. This includes more room for competition to take center stage. This helped to preserve independence for both firms along the way too, he added.

But the only thing which altered so far is that the software giant would be taking on the role of non-voting observer during the company’s Board meetings. In case you didn’t know, that’s a very differnet approach when you compare it to the acquisition like that of Android maker Google who purchased DeepMind in the United Kingdom. They hope to work side by side with the CMA to give them all the data that they need on this front.

For now, we know that the scrutiny of both tech giants and their much-talked-about partnership will remain under scrutiny. Moreover, the CMA added in December of 2023 how it hoped to give more chances to all parties keen on submitting comments to the regulator. This would have to do with whether the Microsoft-OpenAI collaboration would give rise to a possible merger or not.

From the looks of it, this is the most serious concern of most investigators today as that could really wipe out major competing firms working on a smaller scale but trying to attract the masses with the same goal as OpenAI.

So as you can see, it’s quite a tricky situation, and wouldn’t be wrong to dub this as a sticky mess.

Photo: Digital Information World - AIgen/HumanEdited

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Google To Profit Billions From Changes To Its Search Thanks To Generative AI

BrightEdge has looked closely at Google’s Search Generative Experience and from what we can see right now.

The company says they’ve undertaken a host of investigations related to keywords spanning a long list of industries seen today. The wide variety of markets is determined to cause a huge change coming to both marketing as well as search advertising.

Such changes are all linked to the company’s SGE and are better-supported thanks to Generative AI.

Once this endeavor gets rolled out as a whole completely, we are sure to see it affect close to $40 billion each year in terms of advertising revenue for marketers across Google’s network.

This is clearly a huge breakthrough as it’s the first of its kind of rollout, not to mention the first time that we will witness search engines giving rise to opinions as explained by the CEO of the firm. The latter is one organization that keenly supports the world of organic search, content, and then digital marketing.

In the past, people are said to have looked for vehicles like BMW X3 and gotten close to 10 links. Now, the results are going to be much more informative as unveiled to Google Search.

All the SGE responses powered by GAI means people could see reviews that combine information on a host of various subjects like maintenance expenses, supply of uncomfortable interiors, and beyond. This could even end up predicting yearly maintenance costs too.

The amendments will alter the world of marketing as explained by the CEO.

Now, Brightedge has even shared more data on this front and given out tools like AI gestures for mobile phones. These make it possible for GAI to give rise to a whole new world of search and Google is said to benefit from this tremendously.

While it’s yet to be rolled out as a whole right now, we’re seeing more information on this front including how an estimated 84% of all queries carried out on Search would be benefited from this. The world of Healthcare, B2B, and e-commerce will be impacted greatly as mentioned in these reports.

The company just rolled out all the detailed stats on this front. This includes healthcare being impacted by 76% and ecommerce being impacted by 49%. The world of B2B would be impacted by 48% while insurance would be affected by 45% and education similarly.

Food industries, entertainment, travel, and even finance would be affected less significantly but it’s still going to happen, the study added.

So as one can see, businesses are all set to get a massive shift, thanks to the world of GAI. The latter would completely alter the way brands market and enable product sales because they can now carry out content analysis, intentions, and sentiments of users, and also detail nuances linked to personal search.

Every question put out would get an immediate response with an opinion and experts think search will change forever after this with Google and its related advertisers benefiting big time.

Chart: Brightedge

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Market Saturation: The Dilemma of Major Internet Players in 2024

One of the top Wall Street’s analysis firms, Bernstein research, says that many of the internet businesses all over the world are experiencing slower growth in their business. They said that the biggest internet investors are seeing a slow period in their business because of saturation and in future, this saturation is said to keep on increasing. This analysis was made after studying top contributors in internet business that are digital advertising, e-commerce, cloud computing, ridesharing and delivery. When their growth rates were predicted for 2024, it was found that they are half of what they were in 2019. The biggest business that can get affected is digital advertising where the online penetration rate is more than 70%.

If we talk about e-commerce, its penetration rate is 20% but if it gets to 30%-40%, it will reach the migration curve. It is all because new users are adapting to new ways because of modernization. There are also some other causes why internet businesses are going down. One of the reasons is that now users are relying more on apps than the internet to order different services. Many consumers have used internet services for over 10 years so now it is time that they are starting to download apps that are convenient. Many companies like Meta and Alphabet have changed their names and mission statements which has also resulted in some saturation in the market.

Now that everyone’s businesses are at risk, they are trying to sell products that they were not selling before. For instance, Amazon has started to sell cars as well as started digital marketing to give competition to Google and Meta. Google is going against Microsoft while Meta is competing with Apple. TikTok wants its share from Amazon due to e-commerce. But now as generative AI is getting popular, everyone is chasing it to make their business grow more than the other. Even though the percentages of these businesses are getting lower, their revenue in dollars has increased a lot since the decade. But no company wants to talk about their lower growth rate. They all are happy with the amount of dollars they are getting.

Photo: Digital Information World - AIgen

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

What Can People Expect in Journalism, Media and Technology in 2024?

The world is changing at a fast pace and that’s the reason the role of journalism, media and technology is also changing. In 2024, there are many changes that can occur in these fields so people belonging to journalism and media should start rethinking their roles. We all know that wars in different parts of the world are happening right now and even in 2023, Ukraine and Palestine was amidst war. There are also some major issues like climate change and uncertain economic conditions that have put journalism in danger. Moreover, there is no big ad market, third-party cookies and less traffic has started the decline of journalism and it’s going to continue in 2024 too.The shifts in social media sites are also expected to decline more in 2024. Facebook and other social media platforms like TikTok are prioritizing content over news on their platforms. Traffic on X has also declined because of removal of headlines from the news. That’s why many sites that people referred to frequently for news are seeing decline in their traffic.

AI is also playing a big part in traffic decline because now it is also being used in many search engines. Many AI models from Google and Microsoft are trying out AI models that can give direct answers to queries, rather than showing different websites. Microsoft Bing was powered by ChatGPT to give real-time news after studying news all over the internet. Google has also released an AI model known as Gemini that will power Google Bard. Many conversational AI assistants will be seen in computers, mobiles and cars in 2024. Many people are now starting to become familiar with AI models with ChatGPT being the most popular. Some use AI chatbots to play around while some use them for useful purposes.

If we see the decline of journalism from a business perspective, about 20,000 media jobs in the US were lost in 2023. There are also ‘ghost newsrooms’ with only one reporter employed. On the other hand, digital newsrooms who became popular through social media are doing good. News has been about text based articles for the past years but now news will focus more on audios and videos because of the changing behavior of the audience about news. It will be a ‘second phase, in digital newsroom and will change the outlook of news in 2024. Many platforms and businesses try to make different news formats to gain more traffic. But the result shows that if the news options are too much, the people will get confused and overwhelmed. There is also news avoidance among young people that needs to be addressed.

Ever since ChatGPT got launched, newsrooms are trying to adapt to AI because they know that they have to use AI one way or another to excel in today’s world. There are many ways that the media uses AI for things like summarisation of news, making headlines, copy editing, transcription, translation, image generation and article generation.

Elections in about 40 countries are expected to happen in 2024 and people are curious to see how AI will play its role in elections. In the recent Argentina elections, candidates used AI imagery to gain attention of the public. It didn’t bring any grand results but we will have to see how AI will be used for elections in 2024. Another thing that people can expect to see in 2024 is new devices that can work well with AI. There will be AI hearables, pins, pendants, smart glasses and VR headsets. There are also many more predictions about AI in 2024 that we will have to look forward to and see if they become true.

H/T: ReutersInstitute

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Threads is Working on a Post Saving Feature, Privacy Improvements and More

Threads has emerged as the top contender to take X/Twitter’s status as the biggest micro-blogging platform on the internet. It turns out that the Meta owned social media site is introducing a slew of new features to offer users a better experience than might have been the case otherwise.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that the first of these features has already been rolled out. It gives users the ability to hide their like and share counts if they so choose, which might be useful because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up introducing a new layer of privacy.

H/T: Mattnavarra

Users can opt into this feature by default, or alternatively switch it on for each post that they choose. This might be a great way to keep control over who gets to see your metrics, and it follows Instagram’s lead after the platform rolled out a similar feature back in 2021.

Another feature that is reportedly in the works according to reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi involves post saving. This might be one thing that X has which Threads currently does not, and it has the potential to improve the user experience by allowing them to save any and all content that they want to circle back to at some point or another in the near to distant future.

Paluzzi also revealed another experiment that Threads is conducting pertaining to post dates. As of right now, any post that you see on Threads will show you the number of weeks that have passed since it was posted. However, the expert’s screenshots reveal that we might soon start to see the actual date of the post.

It will be interesting to see where things go from here on out, since Threads is clearly trying to up the ante and entice more users to switch over. This threatens to derail X’s already precarious position which has continually worsened after the controversial tenure of Elon Musk began following his acquisition of the company.

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World