Interactive

Google and its subsidiary YouTube will pay a record $170 million to settle allegations by the Federal Trade Commission and the New York Attorney General that the YouTube video sharing service illegally collected personal information from children without their parents’ consent.

[Commentary] Is it time to recognize that Facebook, and ‘Big Tech’ at large, may be a bug in our democracy? In Part 1, I examined how the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica story illustrates the harmful effects of “Surveillance Capitalism.” The erosion of our privacy is contributing to the declining health of our democratic discourse.  Moreover though, Facebook has facilitated the proliferation of hate speech, fake news, and international electoral interference.

Artificial intelligence, like social media, it has the potential to change the world in many ways, some favorable to democracy. But at the same time, it has the potential to do incredible damage to society. There is a lot we can learn about social media’s unregulated evolution over the past decade that directly applies to AI companies and technologies. These lessons can help us avoid making the same mistakes with AI that we did with social media. In particular, five fundamental attributes of social media have harmed society. AI also has those attributes:

The overall scope of data sharing and targeted advertising that occurs on Facebook is immense. No one should be shocked to see ads for items they previously searched for, or to be asked if their data can be shared with an unknown number of “partners.” But what is the scale of this surveillance?

Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said advertisers will no longer be able to use a teenager’s gender to target them with promoted messages on its sites. The updated settings are scheduled to go into effect in February and will mean advertisers can market to teens based only on age and location. Meta previously stopped advertisers from targeting teenagers based on their Facebook or Instagram activity, such as the Pages they like. The changes will apply to those 13 to 17 years old.

Facebook corporate parent Meta has reached a tentative settlement in a lawsuit alleging the world’s largest social network service allowed millions of its users’ personal information to be fed to Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s victorious presidential campaign in 2016. Terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed in court documents filed Aug 26. The filing in San Francisco federal court requested a 60-day stay of the action while lawyers finalize the settlement. That timeline suggested further details could be disclosed by late October.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), a massive trade group that represents companies on all sides of the digital ads ecosystem, is about to get a whole lot more involved in tech policy discussions on Capitol Hill. IAB has tapped Lartease Tiffith, an Amazon public policy executive and former aide to Vice President Kamala Harris, to lead its policy shop. And Tiffith plans to make the group’s presence known.

T-Mobile says it will use its customers’ web browsing and app usage data to sell targeted ads unless those customers opt out.

The following items have been adopted by the Federal Communications Commission and deleted from the list of items scheduled for consideration at the Thursday, Aug 6, 2020, Open Meeting.

Common Antenna Siting Rules (MB Docket No. 19-282); Modernization of Media Regulation Initiative (MB Docket No. 17-105): The FCC will consider a Report and Order that would eliminate the common antenna siting rules for FM and TV broadcaster applicants and licensees.

The National Security Agency issued new guidance for military and intelligence-community personnel, warning about the risks of cellphone location tracking through apps, wireless networks, and Bluetooth technology.