Tech ACB

EU singles out 19 tech giants for online content rules

Rafid April 28, 2023

Five Alphabet subsidiaries, two Meta Platforms units, two Microsoft businesses, Twitter and Alibaba'AliExpress are among 19 companies subject to landmark EU online content rules, EU industry chief Thierry Breton said on Tuesday.

The rules known as the Digital Services Act (DSA) require the companies to do risk management, conduct external and independent auditing, share data with authorities and researchers and adopt a code of conduct by August.

The 19 companies include Alphabet's Google Maps, Google Play, Google Search, Google Shopping and YouTube, Meta's Facebook and Instagram, Amazon's Marketplace and Apple's App Store.

The others are Microsoft's two units Linkedin and Bing, booking.com, Pinterest, Snap Inc's Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, Wikipedia, Zalando and Alibaba's AliExpress.

"We consider these 19 online platforms and search engines have become systematically relevant and have special responsibilities to make the internet safer," Breton told reporters. The companies will have to do more to tackle disinformation, give more protection and choice to users and ensure stronger protection for children or risk fines as much as 6% of their global turnover.

Breton said he was checking to see whether another four to five companies fall under the DSA, with a decision expected in the next few weeks.

Breton singled out Facebook's content moderation system for criticism because of its role in building opinions on key issues.

"Now that Facebook has been designated as a very large online platform, Meta needs to carefully investigate the system and fix it where needed ASAP," he said.

Twitter and TikTok also showed up high on Breton's radar.

"At the invitation of Elon Musk, my team and I will carry out a stress test live at Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco," he said."We are also committed to a stress test with TikTok which has expressed also interest. So I look forward to an invitation to Bytedance's headquarters to understand better the origin of Tiktok," Breton said.

Apple, others face shipment delays as China COVID curbs squeeze suppliers

Rafid April 28, 2023

China's race to stop the spread of COVID-19 has jammed highways and ports, stranded workers and left countless factories awaiting government approval to reopen - disruptions that are rippling through global supply chains.

Apple Inc supplier Pegatron Corp said this week it would suspend its plants in Shanghai and Kunshan, where according to supply chain experts it produces the iPhone 13, the iPhone SE series, and other legacy models.

Quanta Computer Inc, which produces some three-quarters of Apple's Macbooks globally, also shut operations, which could impact delivers more severely, analysts said.

The final impact on Apple's supply chain is uncertain and depends on factors including how long lockdowns persist.

The company may also consider re-routing production out of Shanghai and Kunshan to factories elsewhere, such as Shenzhen, which currently is not under lockdown, analysts said.

"Apple may consider transferring the orders from Pegatron to Foxconn, but we expect the volume may be limited due to the logistics issue and the difficulty of equipment adjustment," said Taipei-based Eddie Han, a senior analyst at Isaiah Research. Foxconn is the trade name of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd.

As a worst-case scenario, Pegatron may fall behind on 6 million to 10 million iPhone units if the lockdowns last two months and Apple cannot reroute orders, Han said.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

The chief executives of Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and Xpeng Inc have flagged huge economic costs if factories in Shanghai cannot resume production soon.

Shanghai is approaching its third week of lockdown and has shown no sign of a wide re-opening.

Forrest Chen, research manager at Trendforce said that if lockdowns lift in a few weeks, there is still a chance to recover.

However, "if the lockdown lasts longer than two months, there is already no way to recover. At that point, after lockdown lifts, there would be a shortage for end-users," he said.

Some suppliers may be able to re-route production.

Unimicron Technology Corp, which makes printed circuit boards for companies including Apple, told Reuters the impact of the Kunshan lockdown so far has been minor and that it can rely on other plants in the Hubei province and Taiwan to support production.

But logistics and transport remain a nationwide issue, as cities across China enact measures.

One factory owner in Kunshan told Reuters that the district government had announced protocol for re-opening but provided no date for implementation.

Laptop makers may also suffer, including Compal Electronics Inc, a Taiwan-based company that makes PCs for Dell Technologies Inc and Lenovo Group Ltd from its plants in Kunshan. Chen estimates that roughly 50% of Compal's laptop production is located in Kunshan.

Compal told Reuters on Friday that it had not halted production in Kunshan. Dell and Lenovo did not respond to emails seeking comment.

EU singles out 19 tech giants for online content rules

Rafid April 28, 2023

The 19 companies include Alphabet's Google Maps, Google Play, Google Search, Google Shopping and YouTube, Meta's Facebook and Instagram, Amazon's Marketplace and Apple's App Store.

The others are Microsoft's two units Linkedin and Bing, booking.com, Pinterest, Snap Inc's Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, Wikipedia, Zalando and Alibaba's AliExpress.

"We consider these 19 online platforms and search engines have become systematically relevant and have special responsibilities to make the internet safer," Breton told reporters.

The companies will have to do more to tackle disinformation, give more protection and choice to users and ensure stronger protection for children or risk fines as much as 6% of their global turnover.

Breton said he was checking to see whether another four to five companies fall under the DSA, with a decision expected in the next few weeks.

Breton singled out Facebook's content moderation system for criticism because of its role in building opinions on key issues.

"Now that Facebook has been designated as a very large online platform, Meta needs to carefully investigate the system and fix it where needed ASAP," he said.

Twitter and TikTok also showed up high on Breton's radar.

"At the invitation of Elon Musk, my team and I will carry out a stress test live at Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco," he said.

"We are also committed to a stress test with TikTok which has expressed also interest. So I look forward to an invitation to Bytedance's headquarters to understand better the origin of Tiktok," Breton said.

UK watchdog defends Microsoft block in face of onslaught from companies

Rafid April 28, 2023

The boss of Britain's antitrust regulator said blocking Microsoft's acquisition of 'Call of Duty' maker Activision Blizzard was the right decision for the UK after both companies said it sent the wrong message to the global tech industry.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) blocked the deal on Wednesday, saying it could hit competition in the nascent cloud gaming market.

Microsoft's president Brad Smith said the decision "had shaken confidence in the UK tech industry" and was "probably the darkest day in our four decades in Britain".

"If the government of the United Kingdom wants to bring in investment, if it wants to create jobs (...) it needs to look hard at the role of the CMA, the regulatory structure in the United Kingdom, this transaction, and the message that the United Kingdom has just said to the world," he told BBC radio.

"There's a clear message here - the European Union is a more attractive place to start a business than the United Kingdom," he added.

But CMA Chief Executive Sarah Cardell said the regulator's role was to make sure Britain was a competitive environment for businesses to be able to grow and thrive.

"That's important for UK consumers and UK business and it's those UK consumers and UK businesses that the CMA is here to protect," she told BBC radio.Asked if the British government could override the block if it thinks it is damaging to the country, she said the CMA acted independently and it was accountable for its decision.

"The decision that the CMA takes is an independent decision that we reached looking at an overall assessment of the impact of the deal on competition, and we think that is the right decision for the UK," she said.

She said Britain had not acted alone, noting that the US Federal Trade Commission was also suing to block the deal.

Spotify investigates issues after reports of outage

Rafid April 28, 2023

Spotify Technology said on Thursday it was investigating some issues with its web page, following reports the audio streaming platform was down for thousands of users.

There were more than 15,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Spotify, according to Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources including user-submitted errors on its platform.

Many users took to Twitter to share updates about the service disruption.

"Is Spotify down again?? my music isn't playing and i need motivation before i head to work," a user tweeted.

Earlier this month, the company had experienced a brief outage, which impacted more than 20,000 people in the United States and over 8,000 in the UK at the peak of the service disruption, according to Downdetector.

Apple, others face shipment delays as China COVID curbs squeeze suppliers

Rafid April 28, 2023

Quanta Computer Inc, which produces some three-quarters of Apple's Macbooks globally, also shut operations, which could impact delivers more severely, analysts said.

The final impact on Apple's supply chain is uncertain and depends on factors including how long lockdowns persist.

The company may also consider re-routing production out of Shanghai and Kunshan to factories elsewhere, such as Shenzhen, which currently is not under lockdown, analysts said.

As a worst-case scenario, Pegatron may fall behind on 6 million to 10 million iPhone units if the lockdowns last two months and Apple cannot reroute orders, Han said.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

The chief executives of Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and Xpeng Inc have flagged huge economic costs if factories in Shanghai cannot resume production soon.

Shanghai is approaching its third week of lockdown and has shown no sign of a wide re-opening.

Forrest Chen, research manager at Trendforce said that if lockdowns lift in a few weeks, there is still a chance to recover.

However, "if the lockdown lasts longer than two months, there is already no way to recover. At that point, after lockdown lifts, there would be a shortage for end-users," he said.

Some suppliers may be able to re-route production.

But logistics and transport remain a nationwide issue, as cities across China enact measures.

One factory owner in Kunshan told Reuters that the district government had announced protocol for re-opening but provided no date for implementation.

Compal told Reuters on Friday that it had not halted production in Kunshan. Dell and Lenovo did not respond to emails seeking comment.

WhatsApp tests new feature to organise groups for work, school

Rafid April 28, 2023

WhatsApp head Will Cathcart said the feature would bring together groups, which are capped at 256 users, under bigger umbrellas where administrators could send alerts to a community of thousands.

"This is really oriented at the communities you're already a part of in your life that are doing private communication," said Cathcart in an interview with Reuters, citing Salesforce-owned CRM.N Slack or Microsoft Teams MSFT.O as comparable types of communication.

He said there were no current plans to charge for the new feature, which is being beta tested with a small number of global communities, but did not rule out offering "premium features to enterprise" in the future.

The messaging service, which is end-to-end encrypted and has about 2 billion users, said the Communities feature would also be end-to-end encrypted.

WhatsApp has grappled with abuses including bulk messaging and the spread of misinformation and hate speech. Cathcart said users would not be able to search for different Communities on WhatsApp and that it would use anti-abuse tools and safeguards like forwarding limits for the new feature.

WhatsApp said there would also be changes to its Groups feature before the launch of Communities. It said it was adding the ability for group administrators to remove problematic messages from everyone's chat, introducing voice calling for up to 32 people, increasing file sharing to 2 gigabytes and adding emoji reactions to messages.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Thursday post that Communities would be rolled out over the coming months. He said Meta would be building community messaging features for Facebook, Messenger and Instagram.

Meta also plans to roll out end-to-end encryption across the other messaging services on its apps as part of its ongoing, declared pivot towards privacy.

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