Have a great vacation! I’m Alexandra Sternlicht, technology reporter.
When you subscribe, wall street journal In print, you may have been surprised to open the A section yesterday and see a full-page ad for Instagram. In huge text it says: “More than 75% of parents agree that young people under 16 should not be able to download apps from app stores without their permission. Instagram wants to work with Congress to pass federal legislation to make that a reality. I believe.”
The campaign, which also featured television commercials, comes as Instagram’s parent company Meta faces multiple lawsuits accusing the social media giant of harming children with its technology. The first of these lawsuits is a class action lawsuit filed against Meta and his peers ByteDance (TikTok), Snap, and Alphabet (YouTube), and school districts across the U.S. are warning that these companies are They allege that they caused physical and mental harm to them. The second lawsuit was brought by attorneys general from dozens of states, accusing Meta of addicting children to its technology in pursuit of huge profits.
Meta didn’t respond. luckQuestions about the relationship between the campaign and the lawsuit have been answered by the time of publication. However, the company’s head of global safety advocated for federal mandates on app store downloads by children in a Nov. 15 blog post. “Each state in the United States has passed a patchwork of different laws, many of which require that teens (of various ages) get parental approval to use certain apps and access apps. “Everyone needs to verify their age if they do so,” she says. “Teens are bouncing between many websites and apps, and social media laws that hold different platforms to different standards in different states don’t ensure that teens are consistently protected. It means no.”
For further context, throughout the 233-page complaint, attorneys general say Mehta was aware of Instagram accounts owned by children under 13, but removed those accounts after investigating the underage users. It states that it did not disable or disable it. “Meta knows that age restrictions are ineffective and that more than half of its teenage users lie about their age,” the complaint says. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, was quoted as saying in an internal chat, “I would be happy if the version grew from an age-appropriate version to a complete version.” [version] Instagram. ”
As part of a new marketing campaign, Meta appears to be shifting the responsibility of controlling app downloads by minors to app store owners Apple and Google. The campaign was launched in conjunction with research firm Morning Consult, which was commissioned by Mehta to conduct a survey on how parents feel about their children’s app downloads. Companies are finding that the overwhelming majority of parents (79%) want to approve their child’s app downloads, and they want to do so “in one place (such as an app store)” rather than per app. discovered.
It’s worth noting that Apple and Google already have parental control features available for app downloads, just not in the way Meta is proposing. And these controls still require a per-app authorization system.
The age limit debate is a difficult one. The attorney general has suggested that Mehta require children to upload a photo of their student ID card to verify their age. And a few months ago, Australia and the UK rolled back digital age verification measures, saying they introduced a new set of problems, including privacy and data security issues.
It will be interesting to see how Apple and Google respond, perhaps under pressure from the unlikely duo of metas and parents.
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Former Meta executives warned that encrypted messages could lead to untraceable child sexual abuse. David Erb, former Facebook community integrity engineering director, warned about the encryption of messages on the platform and said his team was using the “People You May Know” feature to “prompt people who are targeting tens of millions of children.” He said he had discovered “a million pedophiles.” Erb’s concerns were echoed by Vaishnavi J, former head of youth policy at Mehta, who spoke to the paper in an interview. wall street journal. “Meta consistently says this is an industry-wide problem. But no other company is blending recommendations with encrypted messaging,” she said. WSJ. “It’s meta’s unique recipe for disaster.”
Nvidia hacker sentenced to life in hospital. The 18-year-old hacked Nvidia, British Telecom/Everything Everywhere, Uber, and Rockstar Games. the rest of his life Unless doctors determine that you are no longer in danger, you will be admitted to a secure hospital. Autistic Arion Courtaj was out on bail and under police protection at the Travelodge Hotel when he hacked Rockstar Games and used only Amazon devices as punishment for cyberattacks on semiconductor giant Nvidia and others. and stole 90 unreleased clips of Grand Theft Auto 6. Firestick, hotel TV, cell phone. After that, the Lapsus $ gang hacker went into the company’s internal Slack and said, “Within 24 hours, he will start publishing the source code if Rockstar does not contact me on Telegram.” On Thursday, a British court heard the case and others and handed down a life sentence.
Substack’s co-founder said the company has no intention of de-platforming or demonetizing Nazi content. After over 200 Substack authors joined the platform and asked why they were “platforming and monetizing” Nazis, Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie responded: However, some people hold such extreme views. With that in mind, we do not believe that censorship (including by demonetizing publications) will solve the problem, but rather make it worse. ” hit The Verge, some substackers questioned why the platform censored groups like sex workers but not Nazis, but received no answers. This is an important example of the always tense conversation surrounding free speech on the internet.
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—Reuters reporter Chris Bing on X
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before departure
Apple may be bullying your green text friends into the rest of your green text friends.
My father is the only close contact who sends me green texts.to new york times Today we published an article about Beeper Mini, an app that allows green texters (Android users) to send blue texts (iMessages) to Apple users. I can also send messages to my dad, his ellipsis and puns, and memes from my computer. It’s annoying because he keeps his iPhone in another room while he’s working to reduce digital distractions. As a result, I have a hard time texting my dad and respond to his dad’s jokes with crickets. Beeper Mini could be the solution for us.
But less than a week after Beeper Mini gave Android users the power of emoji reactions, Apple changed the iMessage source code to prevent Beeper Mini from giving Android users the power of blue text. did. Apple claims Beeper Mini poses security and privacy risks.This Apple Beep scuttling reportedly lasted for a month. tech crunch. Now, Beeper is waving the white flag and opening its code to anyone on GitHub.
“Beeper reliability takes a hit every time Beeper Mini goes ‘down’ or becomes unreliable due to interference from Apple,” the company wrote in an article. blog. “We want to fight for what we believe is a great product that really should exist, but the truth is you can’t win a game of cat and mouse with the biggest companies on the planet.”
I’m not the only one interested in the Beeper Mini. Antitrust lawyers from the Justice Department met with the company, the people said. times. The Dec. 12 meeting came amid a four-year Justice Department investigation into alleged anticompetitive conduct by Apple.
To which I would respond: *emphasis on the emoji. *