Tech

  • EU Commission fines Meta €797 mn.

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Privacy, Social Media, Tech

    Meta logoUS technology giants are finding out the hard way that their usual anti-competitive stateside business practices are frowned upon on this side of the Atlantic, particularly in the Berlaymont building in Brussels, headquarters of the EU Commision.

    A few months ago, X, the failing social media site formerly known as Twitter, was notified by the Commission that the latter was in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas linked to dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers (posts passim).

    This week it was the turn of Meta, the parent company of Facebook

    This week the Commission announced it had fined €797.72 million for breaching EU ant-itrust rules by tying its online classified advertising service Facebook Marketplace to its personal social network Facebook and by imposing unfair trading conditions on other online classified advertising service providers.

    The Commission’s investigation found that Meta is dominant in the market for personal social networks, which covers at least European Economic Area (‘EEA’), as well as having national domestic markets for online display advertising on social media.

    In particular, the Commission found that Meta abused its dominant positions in breach of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (‘TFEU’) by:

    • Tying its online classified advertising service Facebook Marketplace to its personal social network Facebook. This means that all Facebook users automatically have access and get regularly exposed to Facebook Marketplace whether they want it or not. The Commission found that competitors of Facebook Marketplace may be foreclosed as the tie gives Facebook Marketplace a substantial distribution advantage which competitors cannot match; and
    • Unilaterally imposing unfair trading conditions on other online classified advertising service providers who advertise on Meta’s platforms, in particular on its very popular social networks, Facebook and Instagram. This allows Meta to use ad-related data generated by other advertisers for the sole benefit of Facebook Marketplace.

    The Commission has ordered Meta to bring the conduct effectively to an end and to refrain from repeating the infringement or from adopting practices with an equivalent object or effect in the future.

    The fine of €797.72 million was set on the basis of the Commission’s 2006 guidelines on fines.

    In setting the level of the fine, the Commission took into account the duration and severity of the infringement, as well as the turnover of Facebook Marketplace to which the infringements relate and which therefore defines the basic amount of the fine. In addition, the Commission considered Meta’s total turnover, to ensure sufficient deterrence for a company with resources as significant as Meta’s.

    Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President in charge of competition policy, said: ” Today we fine Meta €797.72 million for abusing its dominant positions in the markets for personal social network services and for online display advertising on social media platforms. Meta tied its online classified ads service Facebook Marketplace to its personal social network Facebook and imposed unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads service providers. It did so to benefit its own service Facebook Marketplace, thereby giving it advantages that other online classified ads service providers could not match. This is illegal under EU anti-trust rules. Meta must now stop this behaviour.”

  • Torvalds ignores AI hype

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

    Linus Torvalds headshotLinus Torvalds, the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel, has been speaking about Artificial Intelligence, according to The Register; and he’s not impressed by what he has witnessed to date.

    Speaking at the Open Source Summit in Vienna last month, Torvalds was asked for his views on modern technologies, specifically Generative Artificial Intelligence, usually abbreviated to GenAI.

    His reply included the following remarks:

    “I think AI is really interesting and I think it is going to change the world and at the same time I hate the hype cycle so much that I really don’t want to go there, so my approach to AI right now is I will basically ignore it.

    I think the whole tech industry around AI is in a very bad position and it’s 90 percent marketing and ten percent reality and in five years things will change and at that point we’ll see what of the AI is getting used for real workloads.

    His remarks about the hype cycle are particularly relevant. Those with very long memories will remember the Dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and early two thousands, while those with less of a broad sweep of time may recall the more recent episode of overwhelming enthusiasm generated by the marketing of so-called cloud computing, about which the FSFE was particularly blunt in its opinion (posts passim) – just other people’s computers.

  • Font for fascism

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Tech

    Convicted serial offender and fascist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who for some inexplicable reason prefers to be called Tommy Robinson, has brought out a book with the help of a ghost writer Peter McLoughlin.

    For a day the book entitled Manifesto was top of Amazon UK’s best-seller chart, according to The Guardian, is is currently unavailable on Amazon’s website.

    Cover of Manifesto written by Peter McLoughlin with interference from Stephen Yaxley-Lennon

    Whilst the cover looks like the flag of St George folded in half, the text below the title dubiously claims the book deals with Free Speech, Real Democracy and Peaceful Disobedience, whilst what Yaxley-Lennon and his supporters indulge in is freedom to be racially prejudiced, fascism and violent disorder, as the media have duly reported down the years.

    However, the most salient feature of the cover that caught your correspondent’s eye was that the title and the names of the book’s authors were all written in the Comic Sans font.

    This friendly sans serif font is popular in place like primary schools due inter alia to its assumed legibility. This font, termed notorious by none other than the BBC, has also been in existence for 30 years this year.

    However, the font has not proved universally popular, as is imparted by its Wikipedia page.

    Film producer and The New York Times essayist Errol Morris wrote in an August 2012 posting, “The conscious awareness of Comic Sans promotes—at least among some people—contempt and summary dismissal.” With the help of a professor, he conducted an online experiment and found that Comic Sans, in comparison with five other typefaces (Baskerville, Helvetica, Georgia, Trebuchet MS, and Computer Modern), makes readers slightly less likely to believe that a statement they are reading is true.

    Contempt and summary dismissal are both apposite to anything that comes out of Yaxley-Lennon’s mouth, from his pen (or in his case crayon. Ed.) keyboard or camera.

  • CMA objects to Google’s anti-competitive ad tech practices

    Steve WoodsMedia, Politics, Tech

    Google logoThe Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced today its provisional finding provisionally that Google has abused its dominant positions through the operation of both its publisher ad server and buying tools to restrict competition in the UK.

    The provisional findings relate to how Google gives precedence to its own ad exchange – harming competition and, as a result, advertisers and publishers.

    This action in the UK parallels the actions of US and EU agencies which are also investigating similar concerns in respect of the search behemoth.

    As set out in a statement of objections issued to Google on Friday 6th September, the CMA has provisionally found that when placing digital ads on websites, the vast majority of publishers and advertisers use Google’s ad tech services in order to bid for and sell advertising space.

    The CMA is concerned that Google is actively using its dominance in this sector to give precedence its own services. In so doing, Google disadvantages competitors and prevents them competing on a level playing field to provide publishers and advertisers with a better, more competitive service that supports growth in their business.

    In its 2019 market study of digital advertising, the CMA found that advertisers were spending around £1.8 billion annually on open display ads, marketing goods and services via apps and websites to UK consumers.

    The CMA has found provisionally that, since at least 2015, Google has abused its dominant positions through the operation of both its buying tools and publisher ad server in order to strengthen AdX’s market position and to protect its AdX advertising exchange from competition from other exchanges. Moreover, due to the highly integrated nature of Google’s ad tech business, the CMA has provisionally found that Google’s conduct has also prevented rival publisher ad servers from being able to compete effectively with DFP, harming competition in this market.

    Online advertising process
    Overview of the ad tech stack, key intermediaries and Google’s ad tech products

    This practice is still continuing, according to the CMA. The Authority is therefore considering what may be required to ensure that Google ceases these anti-competitive practices and do not do the same or similar in the future.

    The CMA may impose a financial penalty on any business found to have infringed the Chapter II prohibition of up to 10% of its annual worldwide group turnover.

  • New point release for LibreOffice 24.2

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Privacy, Tech

    The blog of The Document Foundation (TDF) has today announced the sixth point release of LibreOffice 24.2 for Linux MacOS and Windows, which it is describing as “the best choice for privacy-conscious users and digital sovereignty“.

    LibreOffice 24.2.6 banner

    This point release includes over 40 bug and regression fixes over LibreOffice 24.2.5 to improve the software’s stability, plus interoperability with legacy and proprietary document formats. LibreOffice 24.2.6 is aimed at mainstream users and business environments.

    LibreOffice for business

    For business use, TDF strongly recommends the LibreOffice Enterprise family of applications from ecosystem partners with a range of dedicated value-added features, long-term support and other benefits such as SLAs.

    Next week, power users and technology enthusiasts will be able to download LibreOffice 24.8.1, the first minor release of the recently announced new version with many bug and regression fixes.

    As per usual, LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members are invited to support The Document Foundation with a donation.

    Download LibreOffice 24.2.6. Please note that the minimum requirements for proprietary operating systems are Windows 7 SP1 and macOS 10.15.

  • US firm fined by Dutch for illegal facial recognition data gathering

    Steve WoodsGDPR, Privacy, Security, Tech

    Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens logoThe Dutch Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens (Personal Data Protection Authority) has announced today that it has imposed a fine of €30.5 mn. on the US company Clearwiew AI, as well as a non-compliance penalty in excess of €5 mn.

    Stylised facial recognitionClearview is an American company that offers facial recognition services, which has, inter alia, built up an illegal database with billions of photos of faces, including those of Dutch citizens. Furthermore, the authority has warned that using the services of Clearview is also prohibited.

    Clearview offers facial recognition services to intelligence and investigative services. Moreover, Clearview customers can provide camera images to find out the identity of people shown in the images. To this end, Clearview has a database with more than 30 billion photos of people, which it has scraped automatically from the internet and then converted into a unique biometric code per face, all without the knowledge and consent of its victims.

    According to the authority’s chair Aleid Wolfsen, “Facial recognition is a highly intrusive technology, that you cannot simply unleash on anyone in the world. If there is a photo of you on the internet – and doesn’t that apply to all of us? – then you can end up in the database of Clearview and be tracked. This is not a doom scenario from a scary film. Nor is it something that could only be done in China. This really shouldn’t go any further. We have to draw a very clear line at incorrect use of this sort of technology.’

    Clearview says that it provides services to intelligence and investigative services outside the European Union (EU) only.

    Clearwiew’s services illegal and in breach of the the GDPR

    Clearview has seriously violated the privacy law General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on several points: the company should never have built the database and is insufficiently transparent. It should never have built the database with photos, the unique biometric codes and other information linked to them. This especially applies to the codes. Like fingerprints, these are biometric data. Collecting and using them is prohibited. There are some statutory exceptions to this prohibition, but Clearview cannot rely on them.

    Clearview is an American company without an established presence n Europe. Other data protection authorities have already fined Clearview on various earlier occasions, but the company has not changed its conduct. For this reason the Dutch regulator is investigating ways to ensure the violations stop, including whether the company’s directors can be held personally liable for data protection violations.

    Wolfsen: ‘Such [a] company cannot continue to violate the rights of Europeans and get away with it. Certainly not in this serious manner and on this massive scale. We are now going to investigate if we can hold the management of the company personally liable and fine them for directing those violations. That liability already exists if directors know that the GDPR is being violated, have the authority to stop that, but omit to do so, and in this way consciously accept those violations.’

    Clearview has not objected to the decision and is therefore unable to appeal against the fine.

  • LibreOffice 24.8 released

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Privacy, Tech

    Today the blog of The Document Foundation (TDF), the organisation behind the free and open source LibreOffice suite. announced the release of LibreOffice 24.8, the second version of the software to be released under the new calendar-based (YY.MM) release numbering system, for immediate download for Linux, macOS (Apple and Intel) and Windows (Intel, AMD and ARM).

    LibreOffice 24.8 banner

    The release announcement lays heavy emphasis on the suite’s privacy features. LibreOffice is the only office suite, i.e. software that can create files containing personal or confidential information that respects user privacy – thus ensuring users themselves can decide if and with whom to share the content they have created. LibreOffice is thus the best option for the privacy-conscious office suite user and provides a feature set comparable to the ubiquitous MS Office. LibreOffice also offers a range of interface options to suit different user habits, from traditional to contemporary.

    New features

    There’s a handy little video that highlights the new features incorporated in LibreOffice 24.8.


    Privacy
    • If the option Tools ▸ Options ▸ LibreOffice ▸ Security ▸ Options ▸ Remove personal information on saving is enabled, then personal information will not be exported (author names and timestamps, editing duration, printer name and configuration, document template, author and date for comments and tracked changes).
    Writer
    • UI: handling of formatting characters, width of comments panel, selection of bullets, new dialog for hyperlinks, new Find deck in the sidebar.
    • Navigator: adding cross-references by drag-and-drop items, deleting footnotes and endnotes, indicating images with broken links.
    • Hyphenation: exclude words from hyphenation with new contextual menu and visualisation, new hyphenation across columns, pages or spreads, hyphenation between constituents of a compound word.
    Calc
    • Addition of FILTER, LET, RANDARRAY, SEQUENCE, SORT, SORTBY, UNIQUE, XLOOKUP and XMATCH functions.
    • Improvement of threaded calculation performance, optimisation of redraw after a cell change by minimising the area that needs to be refreshed.
    • Cell focus rectangle moved apart from cell content.
    • Comments can be edited and deleted from the Navigator’s right-click menu.
    Impress & Draw
    • In Normal view, it is now possible to scroll between slides, and the Notes are available as a collapsible pane under the slide.
    • By default, the running Slideshow is now immediately updated when applying changes in EditView or in PresenterConsole, even on different Screens.
    Chart
    • New chart types “Pie-of-Pie” and “Bar-of-Pie” break down a slice of a pie as a pie or bar sub-chart respectively (this also enables import of such charts from OOXML files created with Microsoft Office).
    • Text inside chart’s titles, text boxes and shapes (and parts thereof) can now be formatted using the Character dialog.
    Accessibility
    • Several improvements to the management of formatting options, which can be now announced properly by screen readers.
    Security
    • New mode of password-based ODF encryption.
    Interoperability
    • Support importing and exporting OOXML pivot table (cell) format definitions.
    • PPTX files with heavy use of custom shapes now open faster.

    Cover of LibreOffice Getting Started guideMinimum requirements for proprietary operating systems are Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 and Apple MacOS 10.15.

    To coincide with the new version release, the LibreOffice Getting Started guide has been updated and is also available for download.

    As usual, users are encouraged to support the TDF’s work with a donation.

  • FSFE intervenes in Apple vs. EU Commission

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Politics, Tech, Uncategorized

    A green apple with an internal wormThe Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is intervening in litigation brought by Apple against the European Commission before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Apple is seeking to avoid Digital Markets Act obligations related to its App Store and the interoperability of its operating system. The FSFE’s mission is to protect free Ssoftware against monopolistic corporate control.

    The CJEU has officially allowed the FSFE to intervene in the litigation brought by Apple against the European Commission to avoid being designated as a ‘gatekeeper’ under the Digital Markets Act. The company has pursued an aggressive policy against software freedom and interoperability, seeking to deter enforcement of the DMA – a law designed to increase fairness and competitiveness in digital markets by regulating the economic behaviour of very large tech companies.

    Dr. Martin Husovec, the FSFE’s counsel, remarked, “Becoming an intervener in this case is crucial as the FSFE is representing the civil society perspective, which enriches the judicial proceedings. This allows the court to make fully informed decisions”.

    The FSFE’s intervention aims to uphold the application of the DMA to Apple, voicing the concerns of the free software community against the Apple’s unfair practices. Free software projects are disproportionately affected by the company’s monopolistic practices. fee policies, strict vendor lock-in, prohibition on side-loading and the restriction on alternative app stores on Apple devices.

    By admitting the FSFE to the proceedings, the court stated that “the case is likely to have a significant impact on […] the supply of free software, free exchange of information and equal chances in accessing software”. Besides, the court recognised that if the EU Commission’s designation decision were to be annulled, […] “such a result would have an impact on the ability of the developers of applications or free software to interconnect their applications free of charge with Apple’s operating system iOS, which, in turn, would affect [the] FSFE’s ability to further and distribute such software to as wide a public as possible”.

    The next step for the FSFE is to submit its arguments by mid-September.

  • Crowdstrike and Microsoft – culprit identified

    Steve WoodsOddities, Politics, Security, Social Media, Tech

    The BBC reports that a massive IT outage is causing chaos around the world, affecting airports, railways, broadcasters and untold companies..

    Cyber-security firm CrowdStrike Holdings has admitted that the problem was caused by a dodgy update to its software which is allegedly designed to protect Microsoft Windows devices from hacking.

    At the same time, Microsoft has said it is taking “mitigation action” to deal with “the lingering impact” of the outage.

    Although Crowdstrike has admitted liability, social media had long since decided who was to blame and where.

    This is Alan Ferrier on Mastodon, who wins the prize for the best attribution of blame.

    Post reads: Anyone heard how Liz Truss's first day at Microsoft is going?

    Liz TrussThe disaster known as Mary Elizabeth Truss was ousted from her comfy job misrepresenting the long-suffering burghers of Norfolk at the 4th July election. She was recently seen at the extreme right-wing Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where the perpetual victim, one Donald John Trump, has been anointed its presidential candidate despite his being a convicted felon 34 times over, confirmed business fraudster, document thief, adjudicated sexual predator, congenital liar, oath breaker and golf cheat.

  • Commission sends preliminary findings to X for DSA breach

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

    X logoToday the EU Commission has informed X – the declining social media platform formerly known as Twitter – of its preliminary view that the company is in breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas linked to dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers.

    Based on an in-depth investigation that included, inter alia, the analysis of internal company documents, interviews with experts, as well as cooperation with national Digital Services Coordinators, the Commission has issued preliminary findings of non-compliance with the DSA on three grievances:

    • First, X designs and operates its interface for the “verified accounts” with the “Blue checkmark” in a way that does not correspond to industry practice and deceives users. Since anyone can subscribe to obtain such a “verified” status, it negatively affects users’ ability to make free and informed decisions about the authenticity of the accounts and the content they interact with. There is evidence of motivated malicious actors abusing the “verified account” to deceive users.

    • Second, X does not comply with the required transparency on advertising, as it does not provide a searchable and reliable advertisement repository, but instead put in place design features and access barriers that make the repository unfit for its transparency purpose towards users. In particular, the design does not allow for the required supervision and research into emerging risks brought about by the distribution of advertising online.

    • Third, X fails to provide access to its public data to researchers in line with the conditions set out in the DSA. In particular, X prohibits eligible researchers from independently accessing its public data, such as by scraping, as stated in its terms of service. In addition, X’s process to grant eligible researchers access to its application programming interface (API) appears to dissuade researchers from carrying out their research projects or leave them with no other choice than to pay disproportionally high fees.

    If the Commission’s preliminary views were to be confirmed, the Commission would adopt a non-compliance decision finding that X is in breach of Articles 25, 39 and 40(12) of the DS, which could entail fines of up to 6% of X’s total worldwide annual turnover and order the provider to take measures to address the breach. A non-compliance decision may also trigger an enhanced supervision period to ensure compliance with the measures the provider intends to take to remedy the breach. The Commission can also impose periodic penalty payments to compel a platform to comply.

    Thierry Breton, Commissioner for the Internal Market said:

    Back in the day, BlueChecks used to mean trustworthy sources of information. Now with X, our preliminary view is that they deceive users and infringe the DSA. We also consider that X’s ads repository and conditions for data access by researchers are not in line with the DSA transparency requirements. X has now the right of defence — but if our view is confirmed we will impose fines and require significant changes.
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