Apple Rolls Out New Set Of Changes To Its EU App Store And iPhone Policies Including Default App Controls

iPhone maker Apple has yet again made changes to its policies and App Stores across the EU.

The company is now working on an expansion of default app controls, allowing for first-party app removal, and updates for users’ browser screens.

While we did see the browser choice screen included in the EU during this year’s start, we now see another update. Users get to choose which default browser they want on their browser screen across different devices.

The feature comes into play when users install the update and launch Safari. However, this choice screen will not apply to those who have another browser set as their default choice. It will be on display only once per device and therefore has nothing to do with users.

If users are switching to new devices, they get the feature if their former default browser is Safari. Meanwhile, Apple also shared some changes to the browser screen design. This includes no detailed data on the page of the App Store for the browser. Apple highlighted a host of other changes related to browser screens as well which can be found on its website

Users can also expect to see changes made to default app settings. The new update for iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 will entail Default Apps where users manage default settings. Before, it was restricted to mailing apps, a marketplace, and a few contactless platforms. Now, the features are being expanded to calls, messages, keyboards, filters for call spam, and more. Similarly, Apple hopes to add more support for navigation and translation apps as well.

Apple will also enable another new change that gives users the chance to delete apps. This includes Camera, Safari platforms, Photos, Messages, and even its App Store. It will be possible after a new software update arrives during the latter part of this year.

Image: DIW-Aigen

Read next: DeepMind Employees Urge Google to Halt Military AI Projects, Highlight Ethical Issues
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

DeepMind Employees Urge Google to Halt Military AI Projects, Highlight Ethical Issues

The workforce at Google’s AI division, DeepMind has united for an important cause. They want the company to drop its military contracts that they feel are unjustified and spreading evil.

Workers united to sign an internal letter that was sent to Google, as reported in a recently published article by Time. It features 200 signatures and was sent in May of this year. This figure is equivalent to 5% of the company’s workforce who demand fast action.

DeepMind is the Android maker’s AI division and as per workers in the department, such contracts go against the firm’s own rules and regulations. It specified serious concerns related to AI labs and its technology was sold to leading military groups, thanks to AI cloud agreements in place.

Another report by Time specified how several contracts were held with the American military and those in Israel. The goal was to give the latter access to Google’s top service through cloud technology. There is no specific name of any group mentioned in the letter. Furthermore, the letter fails to delineate any kind of geopolitics linked to the war or any other conflict. It was a neutral stance.

Clearly, this is not the first time that we’ve seen the company be accused of this act. Since the start of 2021, many shed light on how tech provided by Google to Israel’s military was set into place. The controversial contract Project Nimbus was said to be the main reason here.

This happens to be far from the initial instance of workers at Google who protested openly. They did not wish to see their hard work and efforts be used for this cause. Similarly, we saw dozens of employees protest against Project Nimbus this year too. Some were suspended while others terminated.

The letter published recently explained how contracts with these forces mean direct involvement with the military. This includes helping them irresponsibly produce weapons through AI that is used irresponsibly. Did we mention how Google’s slogan from day one is ‘Don’t be evil?’ Clearly, the company might need to rethink that, as per employees.

Additionally, the letter asks the heads of the DeepMind division to say no to military access to AI technology. Instead, they want a new in-house body set up that regulates the issues and stops the tech from getting misused by other military groups in the future.

So far, Google is silent on the matter and no response has been generated. They do hope a meaningful reply does arrive soon but until then, the frustration on the workers’ part can be felt.

Google did however generate a reply to the article published by Time. It clearly says that the company is following all AI principles and therefore complies with all of its policies. They want the world to know that the agreement with Israel’s government isn’t linked to any sensitive military operations like weapons production or even intelligence services.

That’s shocking because this deal has been called out for months and is constantly scrutinized.

Google’s DeepMind division became a part of the organization in 2014 but it did vow to never utilize it to cause harm to others. This includes no use in military operations and for any surveillance endeavors.

For years, DeepMind operated far from Google’s interference but the current AI race may have altered that. While the heads of this division did wish to get more independence from Google’s leadership, it was far from what it hoped for.

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Read next: Google AI Overview Sources Align With Its Top 10 Organic Search Results 99% Of The Time
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

New Report Shows Meta Has the Highest Share of Time Spent on its Platforms as Well as Highest Digital Ad Spending

A new survey by Emarketer shows that Meta is far ahead of other apps in terms of digital time spent on the platform and total digital ad spending. What’s interesting is that Meta’s digital ad spend is nearly three times the total time spent on the platform. The survey shows that time spent with digital on Meta apps is 7.5%, while its total digital ad spending is 21.3%, as of June 2024 forecast. Meta has the highest ad spend on Instagram, with the number of users growing by 7% on all Meta platforms with 10% increase in impressions and price per ad.

On the other hand, YouTube has the second highest time spent on digital (7.4%) and total digital ad spending(5.6%). Netflix reported 7.3% of time spent on digital, with only 0.3% digital ad spending. Netflix and YouTube aren’t keeping up with the consumer shift from linear to digital because of Connected TV (CTV).

The reason why Meta has the highest time spent on digital and highest ad spending is probably its strategies to facilitate easy ad placements and trackable ROI. Ad industry isn’t growing much on connected tv because they are slow to meet consumer time spent.

TikTok also showed some good progress in digital time spend and ad spending. It reported 3.6% of the time spent with digital, and 3.4% total ad spending on the platform. Spotify and Hulu were good at spending time with digital, but couldn’t get noticeable ad spending. Spotify has 0.3% total digital ad spending, while Hulu has 1.3% ad spending.

Read next: Meta’s Ad Business Earnings Reach New High Thanks To AI-Driven Improvements
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Meta Releases New Bots With Web Crawling Capabilities That Gather Data For AI Models And Related Products

Tech giant Meta just rolled out a new array of bots with web crawling capabilities. The tools are known for sucking up online data which the company can use for various AI products.

The bots entail specific features that prevent website owners from blocking or securing their content and preventing it from getting scraped and collected. When asked to explain, Facebook’s parent firm shared how the first bot called Meta-ExternalAgent is designed for training purposes.

They can improve the firm’s AI offerings through direct indexing of content. On the other hand, the second bot dubbed Meta-ExternalFetcher has to do with the firm’s AI offerings. It can gather links to provide specific functional support.

The bots were first spotted last month as per startup Originality.ai. It’s an alarming finding because as we speak, Robots.txt was called out for similar actions. You can see it as a race where startup firms are working round the clock to create the most powerful chatbots.

To become a frontrunner, AI models need to be trained on the best data and that is where web crawlers come into play. One of the biggest ways to get this done is by sending bots on the web to scrape content from the internet. So far, bots from all leading tech giants have been identified. This includes Google, Anthropic, OpenAI, and more.

If any website wishes to block this from happening, they make use of robots.txt which stops scraping of content online. You can consider it as a small code that has been in use for the past decade, if not more.

Despite such rules in place, many AI giants have a growing thirst for more data for AI training purposes. A lot of companies were outlined for ignoring the robots.txt rule including OpenAI and Anthropic.

With the latest offering by Meta, it seems like this is the goal, although the company hoped to do it more discreetly to be less noticed. As it is, Meta has already warned the world that one of the two web crawlers has this capability and therefore could bypass the robots.txt regulations.

Not only can it collect data for AI training but also indexes content at the same time. Meanwhile, a lot of website owners can block Meta from this, only if they opt to stop their websites from getting indexed by Facebook’s parent firm. If that’s the case, fewer visitors will come to their page from Meta, which again is not good for revenue.

When you combine both of these offerings into a single bot, it’s harder to block. Today, just 1.5% of all leading pages block the bot. Another web crawler from Meta dubbed FacebookBot gets blocked by just 10% of leading pages. Yahoo and X are on the list. Interestingly, the other Meta bot called Meta-ExernalFetcher gets blocked by less than 1% of the top pages.

As per the head of Originiality.ai, companies like Meta need to give websites the chance to block onsite data as it’s their material. Nobody should be forced to give in to tech giants due to their growing power, only because they fear website visibility loss.

The news is alarming and clear proof that Meta fails at respecting other pages. While its older bots may have been mindful, the latest offerings are not. This can be a huge debate and controversial move for the company.

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Read next: Google Under Fire as New Allegations Claim Its Sales Reps Advised Advertisers To Target Teens On YouTube
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Google Under Fire as New Allegations Claim Its Sales Reps Advised Advertisers To Target Teens On YouTube

Google’s sales representatives are being accused of breaking their own policies regarding minors.

A new set of allegations has accused the search engine giant's sales team of advising advertisers to target young audiences on the YouTube app. This is a clear violation of the platform’s own terms and conditions.

More details spoke about how reps informed several buyers about hitting the unknown category for users that mostly comprised youngsters. It’s not something new and was outlined to have taken place a while back, only to be found now.

Google and Meta were called out in the past for their controversial agreement of targeting users who fell in the 13 to 17-year age bracket. What’s even more shocking is how Google confirmed in 2021 that wouldn’t permit advertisers to target anyone below 18.

The unknown category being discussed includes those having demographics that are not familiar to Google. It’s a simple way for the company to target minors. Meanwhile, one advertiser did reveal how the sales rep from Google spoke about targeting those who were 16 years old and had a disposable income. Again, they fell into this unknown category.

One buyer shed light on the huge entertainment brand which convinced the company to upload information about teenagers so that targeting would become easier. Knowing that this was a violation of the policy, they still went ahead.

This is a very serious matter. It similarly raises a lot of questions about the Android maker and how it fails in terms of enforcing its own policies related to minor user targeting. We already have laws such as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection that are designed to restrict online ads to teens.

Advertisers really just want to make money at the end of the day. And if that comes at the cost of targeting minors, then so be it. With Google making their lives simpler by breaking policies, not a lot can be done here.

This is why Google is now being asked to justify the act after the allegations took center stage. On that note, the company says that it has always prohibited ad personalization for users below 18. After hearing the news, they vow to take strict and swift action. Similarly, they will be working closely with sales reps to investigate what went wrong here.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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• New Study Reveals People Feel More Bored When They are Continuously Scrolling Through TikTok/YouTube Videos
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

New Study Reveals People Feel More Bored When They are Continuously Scrolling Through TikTok/YouTube Videos

Dr Katy Tam at the University of Toronto Scarborough led a study which found out that when we continuously browse through different videos, we feel more bored. We all watch videos on YouTube and TikTok. But since there are different types of content, we keep switching between them and cannot get engaged to only one video. So, we keep scrolling in hopes of finding something more interesting but it just keeps increasing our boredom.

The researchers of the study surveyed 1200 participants. The first group of 140 participants reported switching between videos because they found the content they were watching more boring, while the second group of 231 participants reported that they switch a video or skip it in hopes that it would make their scrolling less boring.

The study found that this wasn't the case as a survey of 166 undergraduate participants showed that they felt more bored when they had an option to skip a video instead of an option of not skipping. 159 undergraduate participants reported feeling more bored when they had an option of watching different five-minute videos they could switch between than when they were given a single ten minute video to watch.

On the other hand, when the same survey was done among participants of broader age range, the researchers didn't find any reported boredom during either of the options, i.e., switching between five-minute videos or watching a single 10-minute video. 174 undergraduates experienced less boredom when they were allowed to pick videos of their choice from YouTube.

The researchers said that feelings of boredom while watching videos can also depend on different ages. People from different age groups have different watching and switching video habits. But there needs to be more extensive studies about this to find out why people feel bored when they are scrolling online.

Image: DIW-Aigen

Read next: How to Customize YouTube Kids for a Safer Viewing Experience: A Step-by-Step Guide
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Meta’s Ad Business Earnings Reach New High Thanks To AI-Driven Improvements

A new report is sharing the business earnings for Meta during the first half of 2024. It’s safe to say the company is on a roll, thanks to the adoption of more AI-driven improvements.

On average, every employee of the company accounted for revenue that went beyond the $1M mark, a clear record for Facebook’s parent firm.

The news is major considering where Meta was coming from. Remember, it made a series of firings in the latter part of 2022 and the early part of last year. It’s easy to think that this would have really affected the business’s growth. However, that’s not the case.

Meta has AI to thank as the company’s recommendation system for social media as well as its advertising platform is generating a lot of income. While Meta did suffer at the hands of Apple’s decision to introduce app-tracking changes, it’s slowly but surely recovering from the phase.

There was a time when the company had warned investors about Apple’s changes negatively impacting the company but three years from that day, business is bigger and better than before.

Meta did struggle in terms of adapting to new changes. It rolled out all kinds of tests including VR and paid subscriptions. However, it cannot be denied that ads are where the majority of its revenue comes from. For instance, advertising is responsible for 98% of the company’s overall revenue for the second quarter of this year.

The company’s advertising was more focused on desktops until the arrival of smartphones. This is where the ad business for mobile phones became the biggest revenue generator. Again, Apple’s changes to privacy meant a huge setback. Advertisers couldn’t track users for ad-targeting purposes on Facebook.

This led Meta to think outside the box. It’s created a new set of ad tools using AI technology.

Today, nearly all of its clients make use of the tool dubbed Advantage + and the figure has hit one million. The tool is designed to select specific targets and optimize placements easily and more efficiently.

Meanwhile, one study commissioned by Meta showed how clients generated more revenue than anticipated. There has been a 12% rise in business since the start of 2022.

Furthermore, the study has proven how AI-based recommendations keep increasing users’ engagement and driving more ad business. All the ad impressions throughout Meta’s family of platforms keep increasing by the day. It’s a 10% YOY rise during Q2 of this year.

It’s also interesting to note that more than half of the content that you see on Instagram is driven by AI recommendations. And the fact that Reels make up more than 50% of viewership says a lot.

A new update by Meta also spoke about how it will be testing a new feature that enables AI-embedded chats for businesses. This makes it simpler for them to sell products and get the leads they need for growth.

We agree that while Meta might have seen several challenges in the past, thanks to Apple, it’s well on the way to attaining success. Thanks to AI tools, Meta’s ad business is performing its best. This might be one of the main reasons why the company is planning to invest big in generative AI for the future.

As explained by CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the latest earnings call to investors last month, AI is big on the agenda and after seeing the results, we can only imagine why that’s sensible.

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Read next: OpenAI Allows Developers To Customize GPT-4o Models For Specific Uses
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World