Technology

The Commission is concerned that the systems of both Facebook and Instagram, including their algorithms, may stimulate behavioural addictions in children, as well as create so-called 'rabbit-hole effects'. In addition, the Commission is also concerned about age-assurance and verification methods put in place by Meta.

Today's opening of proceedings is based on a preliminary analysis of the risk assessment report sent by Meta in September 2023, Meta's replies to the Commission's formal requests for information (on the protection of minors and the methodology of the risk assessment), publicly available reports as well as the Commission's own analysis.

The current proceedings address the following areas:

• Meta's compliance with DSA obligations on assessment and mitigation of risks caused by the design of Facebook's and Instagram's online interfaces, which may exploit the weaknesses and inexperience of minors and cause addictive behaviour, and/or reinforce so-called ‘rabbit hole' effect. Such an assessment is required to counter potential risks for the exercise of the fundamental right to the physical and mental well-being of children as well as to the respect of their rights.
• Meta's compliance with DSA requirements in relation to the mitigation measures to prevent access by minors to inappropriate content, notably age-verification tools used by Meta, which may not be reasonable, proportionate and effective.
• Meta's compliance with DSA obligations to put in place appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of privacy, safety and security for minors, particularly with regard to default privacy settings for minors as part of the design and functioning of their recommender systems.

https://flipboard.social/@mike/112452374982317735

cross-posted from: https://lemy.lol/post/25062075

https://fosstodon.org/@bert_hubert/112444298499426055

cross-posted from: https://hachyderm.io/users/maegul/statuses/112442514504667645

Google's play on Search, Ads and AI feels obvious to me.

* They know search is broken.
* And that people use AI in part because it takes the ads and SEO crap out.
* IE, AI is now what Google was in 2000. A simple window onto the internet.
* Ads/SEO profits will fall with AI.
* But Google will then just insert shit into AI "answers" for money.
* Ads managed + up-to-date AI will be their new mote and golden goose.

@technology

See @caseynewton 's blog post: https://mastodon.social/@caseynewton/112442253435702607

Cntd (Edit):

That search/SEO is broken seems to be part of the game plan here.

It’s probably like Russia burning Moscow against Napoleon and a hell of a privilege Google enjoy with their monopoly.

I’ve seen people opt for chatGPT/AI precisely because it’s clean, simple and spam free, because it isn’t Google Search.

And as @caseynewton said … the web is now in managed decline.

For those of us who like it, it’s up to us to build what we need for ourselves. Big tech has moved on

My pals in BBC World Service have been doing some awesome work on "lite" versions of their news articles (other page types to follow). They essentially skip the Server-Side React hydration which means you end up with a simpler HTML+CSS page, no JS. Page sizes drop significantly:

• Transferred: ~600KB -> 30KB
• Total: 1.65MB -> 135KB Just append .lite on a URL e.g. https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/crgyyvdz1dro.lite There's no on/off UX at the moment but they're working on that too. #WebDev #WebPerf #WebPerformance #BBC

We’re announcing GPT-4o, our new flagship model that can reason across audio, vision, and text in real time.

A week of downtime and all the servers were recovered only because the customer had a proper disaster recovery protocol and held backups somewhere else, otherwise Google deleted the backups too

Google cloud ceo says "it won't happen anymore", it's insane that there's the possibility of "instant delete everything"

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15454966

Banana Pi BPI-F3: Single-board computer and RISV-V alternative to the Raspberry Pi now available

The tool is nearly ready to be released, Zuckerman told Ars, but the University of Massachusetts Amherst associate professor is afraid that Facebook owner Meta might threaten legal action if he goes ahead. And his fears appear well-founded. In 2021, Meta sent a cease-and-desist letter to the creator of the original Unfollow Everything, Louis Barclay, leading that developer to shut down his tool after thousands of Facebook users had eagerly downloaded it.

Zuckerman is suing Meta, asking a US district court in California to invalidate Meta's past arguments against developers like Barclay and rule that Meta would have no grounds to sue if he released his tool.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15421429

Global car giants seek tech allies in China's cutthroat EV market