Big Tech’s not big on transparency, and judging by new actions by Meta, Google and Microsoft, definitely does not like the European Union’s new transparency guidelines for political advertising. The big three have decided rather than follow the guidelines, which say people should be informed about what groups or individuals are sponsoring specific ads, that they’ll ban political ads there instead.
Amazon has made it easier for Ring camera videos to be requested by police and other law enforcement agencies. It announced a partnership with Flock Safety so neighbors (who want to) can share videos in response to police requests. This follows an announcement of integration with Axon for digital evidence collection. Both represent expansion of the Ring Neighbors app’s Community Requests function, in which police, ICE and other law enforcement can request video or images.
The streaming company, which provides services to about half of US households, has been accused of violating the state’s privacy law by selling data that includes children’s viewing habits, voice recordings, and geolocation information, which can cause the data to be reidentified.
Meta has announced agreements with USA Today, People Inc., and other news publishers to pay for access to their content and link to their articles in its AI chatbot. It’s a sharp contrast to Perplexity, which the Chicago Tribune and New York Times are separately suing for allegedly scraping content and bypassing paywalls. Despite this deal, Meta apparently still opposes compensating publishers for news links in social media posts.