Amazon’s palm-scanning technology offers highly reliable verification, although the price includes some hefty privacy concerns. They’ve just added age verification, so members can buy age-restricted items like alcohol without showing other ID. Retailers only see a message like “21+”, which is a good approach – so long as you trust Amazon not to do anything else with the information it’s collecting.
Knowing who to trust is trickier than ever, and don’t get me started on fake news from blue checks at Twitter. The folks at LinkedIn are considerably more sensible. They’ve expanded their employment verification feature to job postings, ensuring that listings are made by someone who actually works at the company they claim.
Tech companies won’t be held liable for user posts and any subsequent disinformation – thanks to two Supreme Court cases won by Google and Twitter. The companies and tech platforms withstood a challenge to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Established in the early days of the Internet, Section 230 protects companies against liability for postings of users. So, despite growing concerns now about disinformation, discrimination, and violent content on social platforms and sites, these justices opted to side with corporations.
The U.S. Department of Justice has formally requested the sale of the Chrome browser among other measures following last August’s guilty verdict in its search advertising antitrust suit (not to be confused with last week’s guilty verdict in the adtech antitrust lawsuit). Google is asking for a much narrower focus on deals to be the default search engine for Apple, Mozilla and others. There will be a three-week hearing on the government’s proposals.