Meta Rolls Out Detailed Strategy On How It Plans To Combat New EU Competition Rules

It’s no surprise that impressing the EU is never an easy ordeal, especially when you’re a leading tech giant in today’s competitive industry.

Regulators in the European Commission keep rolling out stringent strategies to help ensure Big Tech stays in check and that means restrictions galore.

But Facebook’s parent firm Meta is making sure that it’s ready to tackle all the hurdles being thrown in its direction by responding to the latest set of competition regulations in the best manner and they’re being very transparent about the matter by making sure fairer dealings arise on leading apps.

The DMA was rolled out for six of the world’s leading tech giants which included Meta amongst other leaders.

We saw how the EU dubbed Meta as a ‘gatekeeper’ and listed its top six offerings as core services under the new law. This entailed the Facebook and Instagram apps, advertisement delivery systems, a plethora of messaging options, the WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger apps, and the virtual platform called Marketplace.

But it has to be remembered how the rules in place apply to a wider range of services rolled out by gatekeepers.

So the DMA restricts how such gatekeepers behave in terms of processing the data of users for the sake of advertising. In the same way, the rules also mentioned how gatekeepers can’t link user data between core platform services or with any user information arising from Meta’s other services that it provides or any data given out by third parties either. The only exception is if it provides them with a certain choice and attains consent.

The deadline for such gatekeepers to respect the DMA is March 7th, 2024 and as the date nears, top tech giants are striving and scrambling to do everything that ensures they’re in a dominant position. This means making as many amendments as possible to make the EU happy.

A post was also published by Meta in this regard in terms of how the Tech giant would soon begin rolling out notifications to various users across the region where it is applicable. This gives them more choice in terms of how to use the services more effectively. And one of the top choices included blocking the company from linking data on the Facebook and Instagram apps.

This is a huge deal as it means Facebook can no longer say hello to its goal of sharing data with Instagram and ensure cross-linking between both platforms which has been at the forefront of Meta since day one. After all, they spend billions to invest in the app.

That enabled them to boost the visibility of users' activity through ads as they bought a major arch-rival and got access to the app’s data at the same time.

Users of the company’s leading apps would now be able to see the account separation choices through any existing Account features found.

They hope such changes would better accommodate the DMA that comes into effect this year. Moreover, it suggests these choices will not be alive until the deadline arises for the start of the DMA in March.

Such choices will also ensure Facebook Messenger’s regional users will prevent Meta from using their information. But if they do agree to block the app, they would need to make another Messenger account that generates friction to prevent people from firewalling the messaging actions through social networking on a public level.

Other changes include allowing users on Meta to devise more notable obstacles for blocking them from making use of the app’s gaming endeavors to not having their activity collaborate with their use of the social networking activities by clicking no access to the likes of social gaming.

Photo: Digital Information World - AIgen/HumanEdited

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Are Bad Translations Plaguing The Internet?

Back in the late 1900s, Bill Gates thought he could accumulate people from different areas of the world on the digital platform. These people, speaking 7,000 different languages can gather on the internet like they would at a town square.

And he was right! The World Wide Web has definitely made it possible for people to interact with each other without any physical barriers.

However, a recent study indicates a challenge to this blessing.

According to a study by Amazon Web Services and the University of California, the majority of the translations present in the Internet database are not up to the mark. The study compared over 6 billion sentences translated in at least two languages to assess the quality. They concluded that the more the sentences were translated, the worse they got.

Researchers predict that the low-quality translation was most probably conducted by computers. They also said that these computers are writing new stuff, especially when it comes to languages that are not as widespread. For example, Woolf and Xhosa from Africa.

Unfortunately, the lack of resources on the internet has led many users to rely on these bad translations. Additionally, many of these translations have led to funny and embarrassing scenarios for the users.

For example, Google once translated "Russia is a great country" into something about a fictional place in "The Lord of the Rings." In 2019, Facebook's translation tool also made a big mistake with the Chinese President's name in an article translated from Burmese. After realizing the mistake, Facebook did issue an apology, citing technical issues for the error.

And there was a funny mistake when translating medical advice for Armenian speakers. Instead of suggesting "ibuprofen for pain," it said to take an "anti-tank missile for pain."

Seems like most of the language translation services are simply pushing content on the internet just to make money from ads. What do you think?

Photo: AI-gen

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by Saima Jiwani via Digital Information World

X Forced To Defend Itself After Being Accused Of ‘Shadow Boosting’ Mr. Beast’s First Video On The App

The world’s most popular YouTuber Mr. Beast is famous for a reason. And that has to do with the fact that his content continues to entertain the masses. Perhaps a reason why could be linked to how large of a budget he allocates to keep his viewers engaged.

But a recent finding on X had people alleging it continues to soak up profits from Mr. Beast's first video upload by marketing it as an undisclosed advertisement. This forced Musk’s firm to step in and refute the claims that this was far from the truth. But more research into the matter shows that while it might be right, it’s still lying in terms of how data is being deceivingly displayed to the public.

upon closer inspection seems like it definitely is a non-disclosed ad

🤨 pic.twitter.com/7lcLarUBlZ

— █̶̳̘͛̄̃͒̄̃͜█̴͇̱̅͒̅█̵̻̣̝͒̈̄̈͝͝█̴̞̜̻̝͍̂̽͜█̷̢ (@SHL0MS) January 19, 2024

This past week, we saw several users on X state how the content was visible across streams with the same old advertisement disclosures found in the drop-down menu, despite this not being clearly marketed as ‘promoted content’. Meanwhile, others have gone on to speculate more on this front including the platform marketing the post to several people to try and boost the count of viewers and therefore make greater profits as it seems to be an enticing endeavor on the app.

But the platform clarified how the disclosure in question here is linked to pre-roll ads across the clip and not the video itself. So as per those claims, it is not really shadow boosting the content but we do feel it’s doing everything in its power to make the video aware to the masses. After all, making the world-famous YouTuber happy would be a huge marketing achievement of the potential for other creators in the industry.

However, all of the positives would be cut out against the negatives by not rolling out the right stats related to the new clip. This was witnessed through an exchange of words with one fan account on X, suggesting how the video gets more views on the app. Then we saw one of the company’s own workers double down on the claims, adding how these view counts are better than what’s on display here. This is because YouTube counts other view types which X may not.

But that is very unfair comparison (or at least cherry picking claim). The view count for X posts includes those counted each time it’s displayed on the users’ feed. Whether the user sees it or not, that does not matter and it’s crazy. That should not be designated as view counts because YouTube counts views when the viewer seen clips at least for the first 30 seconds.

So as you can see, the video streaming giant’s count for views is so much more indicative of the real interest taking center stage. But for X, the view count is simply the figure allocated for post impressions. And as one can imagine, it’s much less meaningful.

The X app realizes this and its employees confirm it through replies. But to boost confusing stats in this manner and give the world the impression that it performing far better than reality is wrong for so many different reasons.

It’s quite like how billionaire Elon Musk mentions stats about the app, raising eyebrows with critics for years. Many fail to understand where and how he quotes data from when their research never indicates the same.

What is even more interesting is how Musk continues to reshare the facts like he’s the only one who knows what’s going on in terms of traffic and the rest are immature critics.

You simply cannot fool the world by quoting a small fraction of the reality and expect them to accept whatever you’re saying. It’s quite a meaningless effort for obvious reasons. Maybe it will work for the time being as X takes on more small-scale advertisers but in the long term, there are plenty of problems in terms of how authentic the facts really are.

But these views don’t matter at the end of the day if there are no advertisers present to support the brand. So many leading names in the industry continue to be hesitant in terms of rolling out their campaigns here and the chances of winning those names back are not looking great right now either.

Clearly, having income from X Premium’s users’ subscriptions is far from what’s required to save the app. In case it does not begin getting its advertising business back to where it started, we might have billions in terms of user count but that won’t stop it from working at a serious loss. What do you think?

There is a lot to think about and ponder here and being dishonest with unreliable data is not going to be the right approach, we believe.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Internet Piracy Has Increased by 36% Year Over Year, Are Streaming Sites to Blame?

The rise of streaming was supposed to bring about an end to the age of Internet piracy because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up offering a convenient way to access content from anywhere in the world. However, it turns out that the illegal downloading of various forms of media has actually increased by as much as 13% since 2019.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that there were around 125 billion site visits recorded in 2019, and this decreased to 104 billion in 2020. In spite of the fact that this is the case, a report released by Muso revealed that the number of visits reached 145 billion in 2023, which is a 36% increase from 2020.

92% of this traffic is going towards movie and TV show downloads. 11% of this traffic came from the US, with India comprising another 11%. It bears mentioning that America has seen its proportion increase by 2 percentage points since 2018, whereas India has seen a staggering 7 point increase in that timespan with all things having been considered and taken into account.

This begs the question, why is internet traffic on the rise? According to Muso, it might have something or the other to do with the saturated streaming market. There was a time when Netflix was the only streaming service out there, but nowadays, practically every single media company has launched their own service.

The sheer number of choices overwhelms consumers, with many feeling like the majority of content is locked behind paywalls that are out of reach. Subscribing to each and every service can be a prohibitively costly endeavor, and piracy seems like an easier choice in that regard.

Streaming services might need to introduce bundled packages in the future, which ironically would make streaming just a refreshed version of broadcast and cable television. Either way, the rise in piracy shows that the time to change has arrived, and the industry might not be able to survive if it doesn’t adapt.

Read next: Gamers Are More Likely to Suffer Hearing Loss, Here’s Why
by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

Gamers Are More Likely to Suffer Hearing Loss, Here’s Why

A new study, titled "Risk of sound-induced hearing loss from exposure to video gaming or esports: a systematic scoping review", published in BMJ health has found that gamers have an above average risk of suffering from hearing loss or tinnitus in the long term. This is the result of them playing video games for several hours at a time with the noise level being turned up far past safe levels for human beings with all things having been considered and taken into account.

According to the World Health Organization, a noise level of 80 decibels for forty hours per week is relatively safe. In spite of the fact that this is the case, any minor excess to this safe level results in an exponential increase in the likelihood of harm being done. 90 decibel sounds are only safe for four hours a week, and 95 decibels for just one hour and fifteen minutes.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that the noise level in four shooting games that were analyzed as part of this study hovered between 88.5 decibels and 91.2 decibels. This is the average noise level, and gamers also experience short bursts of up to 119 decibels as well.

The duration of this exposure may result in irreversible damage to their hearing, which is why it’s so important to intervene and inform. It bears mentioning that this study is based on self reported data which goes back to the 1990s, and games weren’t the same back then. However, it’s difficult to deny that a correlation exists between extended gaming sessions and various kinds of hearing loss and tinnitus.

The way to prevent this damage is by encouraging keep volumes down to reasonable levels instead of pushing the sound to the max. We might start to see a widespread epidemic of hearing loss, especially given how loud music can get at concerts, and with gaming now also added to the mix it is more important than ever to educate people on the long term effects of noise exposure. More evidence will also need to be collected in order to verify the theories presented in the paper.

Photo: Digital Information World - AIgen

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

AI Might Surpass Humans in All Tasks by 2047

The rise of AI has been so unbelievably rapid that within the span of just one year it managed to become perhaps the central topic of discussion in the world of tech as well as in day to day life. The main question that people tend to ask here is how effective AI will be at replacing humans in a wide variety of tasks. It turns out that researchers at AI Impacts tried to figure out the likelihood of this occurring in the future.

The researchers at this organization collaborated with the University of Oxford and the University of Bonn to survey 2,778 experts who have published their thoughts on AI. According to these authors, there’s a 10% chance that AI will outperform humans in every single task you can think of over the course of the next three years.

If the current trend persists, these experts say that the chances of it surpassing human beings by the year 2047 is around 50% with all things having been considered and taken into account. As for human occupations in particular, researchers concluded that there’s a 10% chance of all of them becoming automated by the year 2037.

Translating text, recognizing objects after seeing them a single time, writing basic code in Python, writing fiction that could reach the New York Times bestseller list, creating a payment processing site, and even creating large language models of their very own could become a reality. AI is advancing far more quickly than anyone could have expected, which makes it rather necessary to figure out where things might go from here.

It bears mentioning that these are perhaps the most pessimistic predictions that anyone could make. Optimistic predictions have also come about, with many saying that AI will complement jobs rather than replace them entirely, but the fact of the matter is that the pessimistic outlook is no less likely than the optimistic one. Indeed, 81% of survey respondents believe that AI will be able to talk like human experts within the next 20 years, which would make the respondents themselves obsolete all in all.

Photo: Digital Information World - AIgen

Read next: The Enormous Scale of GDPR Fines for Mark Zuckerberg’s Companies Revealed
by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

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