#online-services

#online-services

A pox on the ad tech tax.Google initially launched its tool, Confirming Gross Revenue, last summer before making it publicly available through Ad Manager and DV360 this week.How well it's working, however, is another story.So, is the ad tech tax problem overstated or is the tool insufficient?Perhaps both.

On Tuesday Microsoft loudly announced the new AI-fueled version of Bing.At the same time it quietly published a new version of the search engine's terms of service, claiming rights over what goes into and comes out of the AI.However, what the company wants may not square with what the law says it can have.

Security researchers discovered recently that the online travel agency Booking.com was impacted by serious vulnerabilities that could have been exploited to take complete control of a user's account.The issues were identified by API security firm Salt Security and reported to Booking.com in early December 2022.

Twitter's risky plan for its ads business may actually end up doing more harm than good for advertisers still advertising on the social network.What now, you say?Well, earlier this week Platformer broke the news that Twitter's controversial billionaire owner Elon Musk wants to force users to accept personalized advertising unless they pay for a subscription service that will let them opt-out of ads.

Amazon agreed on Wednesday to pay a civil penalty of $25 million to settle federal charges that it kept sensitive information collected from children for years, including their precise locations and voice recordings, in violation of a children's online privacy law.It was the latest legal action in an intensifying regulatory effort to require some of the world's largest tech platforms to better safeguard their younger users.

Since ChatGPT debuted in November, hundreds of millions of people have experimented with the online chatbot, which can answer questions, write poetry, draft emails and riff on almost any topic from inside a web browser.On Thursday, OpenAI, the San Francisco artificial intelligence lab behind ChatGPT, unveiled a new version of the chatbot for the iPhone, hoping to build on its enormous popularity.

BusinessUnited States of America 28 minutes ago28 minutes ago The social media giant is making another round of mass layoffs as it seeks to reduce costs.The company has sunk billions into its metaverse venture.Facebook parent Meta is cutting another 10,000 jobs, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in an email to employees on Tuesday.

Microsoft has quietly banned mining for cryptocurrency using its online services.The software and cloud giant slipped the prohibition into an update of its Universal License Terms for Online Services that came into effect on December 1.That document covers any "Microsoft-hosted service to which Customer subscribes under a Microsoft volume licensing agreement" and, on The Register's reading, mostly concerns itself with Azure.

Facebook is to be fined more than 746m (648m) and ordered to suspend data transfers to the US as an Irish regulator prepares to punish the social media network for its handling of user information.The fine, first reported by Bloomberg and expected to be confirmed as soon as Monday, will set a record for a breach of the EU's general data protection regulation, beating the 746m levied on Amazon by Luxembourg in 2021.

BBC Northern Ireland journalists are on the picket lines as votes are counted across the region following the local government elections.The 24-hour strike saw several flagship programmes including BBC Radio Ulster's Good Morning Ulster and The Nolan Show go off air as more than 200 journalists took part in the walkout.

NUJ members at BBC Northern Ireland have announced a 24-hour strike that will commence on the first day of counting in the region's local government elections.Almost 83% of those who voted in a recent National Union of Journalists (NUJ) ballot backed strike action in opposition to cutbacks at Radio Foyle.

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Three million people who applied for a driving licence since April 2020 have experienced delays costing some their jobs or income, a report by MPs has found.

BBC iPlayer is lagging behind Netflix and Disney+ on user experience but beats its other rivals, a watchdog has said.The National Audit Office (NAO) said the streaming giants have better picture and sound quality, recommend content easier and have more functional subtitling than the BBC.However, the corporation leads in picture and sound quality over All 4 and ITV Hub, which has since been revamped as ITVX, according to the NAO's A Digital BBC report.

The BBC needs to do more to connect with audiences from lower incomes, according to media watchdog Ofcom.In the regulator's annual report on the corporation, published on Wednesday, they said people from lower socio-economic groups are less engaged than the rest of the population and are less satisfied with their portrayal in programmes.

Around the 30th minute of this week's Google I/O 23 keynote, Aparna Pappu, VP and GM for Google Workspace, casually launched a Google Docs document as part of her presentation on how as a collaborator, is coming to , and (love the fact that it called Duet, a bit more poetic than Microsoft's Copilot).

AI Music
Artificial intelligence-powered generator tools that can create brand new music tracks at the click of a button are starting to come for musicians' livelihoods - and that has lobbyist groups deeply concerned.Case in point, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is worried that AI-powered music generators could threaten both the wallets and rights of human artists.

At its Google I/O developer conference this week, Google shared details on the security improvements in Android 14, which include a series of APIs for safer online browsing, sign-ins, and malware protection.In 2018, Google announced that Safe Browsing, the decade-and-a-half-old web protection against phishing, malware, and unwanted software, was enabled by default on Android, in WebView.

The Federal Trade Commission escalated its fight with the tech industry's biggest companies on Wednesday as it moved to impose a blanket prohibition on the collection of young people's personal data by Meta, Facebook's parent company.The commission wants to significantly expand a record-breaking, $5 billion consent order with the company from 2020 and said that Meta had failed to fully meet the legal commitments it made to overhaul its privacy practices to better protect its users.

A new Washington state law will require companies to receive a user's explicit consent before they can collect, share, or sell their health data.Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed the My Health, My Data bill into law on Thursday, giving users the right to withdraw consent at any time and have their data deleted.

Lawsuits claiming that online services aid terrorist organizations just by hosting their content or having users who espouse the organizations' views potentially could censor a vast amount of protected expression online, EFF and a coalition of other civil society groups argued in filed this week.In Twitter v. Taamneh , the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that online services can be civilly liable under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) based on claims that the platform had generalized awareness that members of a terrorist organization used its service.

The Killnet collective, a group of hacktivists aligned with the Russian state's interests, claim to have caused significant disruption to multiple websites and organisations in the UK in a wave of distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyber attacks, supposedly in revenge for the government's support for Ukraine.

Today, Microsoft Advertising announced a new API for publishers, apps and online services to deliver ads through chat.The new Chat API will allow sites and apps to customize their chat experience, choose ad formats that work best for them and incorporate relevant ads for their audiences.This comes on the heels of new visual features and capabilities for Bing Chat users Microsoft announced last week.

In today's ExchangeWire news digest: Microsoft launches a new API to enable ads to be delivered in chat; LinkedIn closes its Chinese social networking platform, InCareer; and Mastercard announces a new data and services hub in Malaysia.Microsoft announces API for ad delivery via chatbots
Microsoft has announced a new API to enable the delivery of ads via chatbots.

Ambulance staff in the south-east of England are to strike over pay for the second time on Tuesday, prompting warnings from hospital bosses of further pressure on overstretched emergency services.Members of the Unite trade union employed by two ambulance trusts are striking after rejecting the government's pay offer of a lump sum cash payment for 2022-23 and a below inflation increase of 5% for 2023-24.

For years, Big Tech has insisted that the death of the password is right around the corner.For years, those assurances have been little more than empty promises.The password alternatives-such as pushes, OAUTH single-sign ons, and trusted platform modules-introduced as many usability and security problems as they solved.

Concerns have been raised about the processes used by social media giants to block advertisements containing hateful language towards the LGBT+ community.GO Global Witness submitted ads that used extreme and violent language to three social media companies for approval.Ten were submitted to Facebook, TikTok and Google, as part of the group's investigation.

C oncerns have been raised about the processes used by social media giants to block advertisements containing hateful language towards the LGBT+ community.NGO Global Witness submitted ads that used extreme and violent language to three social media companies for approval.Ten were submitted to Facebook, TikTok and Google, as part of the group's investigation.

Ontario is expanding digital options at ServiceOntario locations, including video health-card renewal appointments and applying for marriage licences online.Premier Doug Ford says the moves will save people time and money.The province says an enhanced booking system is now running at 64 of the busiest ServiceOntario locations and it lets people book a single appointment for multiple services or multiple family members.

Microsoft Lists is a great way to share data; other users can view and even edit these lists if the author gives permission.And for our audience, it's important to know there is a dedicated connector in Microsoft Power BI for Microsoft Lists.But for interested readers, my first suggestion is this: If you're deciding on whether to use Microsoft Lists or not and Power BI is a potential destination for that data, don't use Microsoft Lists.

BBC Northern Ireland has announced plans to cut up to 40 jobs as part of a drive to save money and invest in online services.The changes, announced to staff on Tuesday, will see the end of BBC Radio Foyle's Breakfast programme and the Inside Business programme on Radio Ulster.The plans have been criticised by the NUJ and Foyle MP Colum Eastwood, who said it was an attempt to close Radio Foyle by stealth.

The BBC is to overhaul its local radio services with stations sharing more content and broadcasting less programming unique to their area.Plans confirmed by the broadcaster on Monday include the loss of 48 jobs across local staffing in England, amounting to a total reduction of 2%.The proposals come as part of the BBC's new strategy, announced in May, to create a modern, digital-led broadcaster.

Amazon disclosed its Q3 earnings Thursday with its ads business generating $9.5 billion, contributing to an overall net sales total of $110.8 billion during the period.While it's clear Amazon is primarily an e-commerce outfit (and that won't change any time soon) the fact that media-related sales increased 30% year-on-year in the quarter illustrates its growing prominence there.

In the first major case under new British rules protecting minors online, British regulators on Monday sent a warning notice to TikTok saying the company had handled youngsters' information without appropriate permission from their parents, processed sensitive details without the legal grounds to do so and failed to explain the platform's data practices in ways that children could easily understand.While the findings are provisional, the legal document sent to TikTok by Britain's data protection agency, the Information Commissioner's Office, constitutes a formal notification that regulators intend to impose a fine.

The company has collected more than 20bn images of people's faces from Facebook, other social media companies and from scouring the web.- the third largest it has imposed - for collecting images of people from social media platforms and the web to add to a global database.TikTok is facing the prospect of a £27m fine for failing to protect the privacy of children, the UK's data watchdog has said.The ICO ordered the US-based firm to delete the data of UK residents from its systems.Edwards, who began his five-year term as commissioner in January, said the ICO was also looking at more than 50 other online services to see if they were complying with data laws relating to children.