News of the Cyber World

[kyonides]

Apple Instructs Staff to Remain Silent
on iPhone 12 Radiation Issue

Bloomberg reports that Apple has found itself embroiled in a controversy over the radiation levels of its iPhone 12 model. The Cupertino, California-based technology giant reportedly explicitly advised its tech support staff not to volunteer any information when consumers inquire about this sensitive issue. “If customers inquire about the French government’s claim that the model exceeds standards for electromagnetic radiation, workers should say they don’t have anything to share,” Apple employees were told.

The French government has recently called on Apple to halt sales of the iPhone 12, citing tests that indicate the device emits electromagnetic waves exceeding permissible levels. In response, Apple has been engaging with French authorities, asserting that the iPhone 12 complies with all legal requirements. The company has provided both in-house and third-party lab testing data to back its claims. Despite its claims that the iPhone 12 is within legal levels, the tech giant is updating the iPhone’s software to address the problem.

This development comes at a time when Apple was already in the process of phasing out the iPhone 12, following the announcement of its latest iPhone 15 line. However, the French government’s stance could potentially ignite concerns among the millions of existing iPhone 12 users worldwide. According to Counterpoint Research, Apple sold more than 100 million units of the iPhone 12 within its first seven months on the market.

The controversy has not only caught the attention of French authorities but has also led other European Union countries, including Belgium and Germany, to begin their own assessments of the iPhone 12’s radiation levels. This could signify a ripple effect that may impact Apple’s reputation and sales in the broader European market.

Google Antitrust Trial: Expert Witness Claims
Internet Giant Manipulates Consumers with Default Settings

The New York Post reports that in a courtroom drama that has captured the attention of both Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill, Google finds itself in the hot seat. The tech giant is facing allegations that it has used its default search engine settings to manipulate user choices, thereby stifling competition and maintaining its stranglehold on the market.

Antonio Rangel, a behavioral economist and professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), took the stand as an expert witness for the government on Thursday. Rangel, who specializes in human behavior, testified that Google has been strategically leveraging default settings to keep users engaged with its search engine and other services. “If I can move your eyes, if I can manipulate your fixations, I can manipulate your choices quite a bit,” Rangel said.

The professor emphasized the power of default settings, stating that they generate a “sizable and robust bias” towards whatever is set as the default. In short, if Google is the default search engine on your smartphone or computer, you’re more likely to stick with it. This, Rangel argues, has a “powerful impact on consumer decisions.”

Google’s legal team was quick to counter these claims. During cross-examination, they reiterated their central argument that users opt for Google’s search engine due to its superior quality, not because it’s the default option on their devices. They cited internal documents showing that even when other search engines were set as the default on certain smartphones, the majority of users still chose Google.

The trial also delved into Google’s financial arrangements with other tech companies. Without disclosing specific figures, it was revealed that Google has been paying “more than $10 billion per year” to secure its dominant position in the search market.

Google Antitrust Lawsuit: Executives Trained Workers
to Avoid Words Like ‘Leverage’ that Imply Monopoly Power

According to DOJ attorney Kenneth Dintzer, not only did Google cover its tracks by auto-deleting four years of internal chats, but also instructed employees since 2003 to avoid words and phrases that could cause it to run afoul of future antitrust investigations.

“We should be careful about what we say in both public and private,” Google’s chief economist, Hal Varian, wrote in a memo circulated to employees in 2003.

Google employees were allegedly trained to avoid the words “market share,” “scale,” “network effects,” “leverage,” “lock up,” “lock in,” “bundle,” and “tie.”

“We don’t ‘lock up’ or ‘lock in’ our customers,” and “we do not ‘leverage’ anything,” Google told its employees.

Google also conducted a training session for employees called “Antitrust Basics for Search Team,” in 2011, which told employees to avoid phrases involving “wars or sports, winning or losing.”

In opening arguments in the government’s landmark antitrust trial against the tech giant, Google’s lawyers argued that its market advantage is a result of the value it offers to consumers — not a result of backroom deals like the billions it pays to Apple annually to be the default search engine on Safari browsers, or the agreements with Android phone manufacturers that forbid them from pre-installing search engines that aren’t Google’s.

China’s TikTok Hit with $368 Million Fine
Under EU’s Strict Data Privacy Rules

European regulators hit the China-owned app TikTok with a $368 million fine on Friday for failing to protect children’s privacy on the platform. This is reportedly first time that the Chinese app has been punished over Europe’s strict data privacy rules.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, the lead privacy regulator for Big Tech companies, said it is fining TikTok €345 million — which comes to roughly $368 million — over violations stemming from the second half of 2020, according to a report by Associated Press.

TikTok has been accused of setting their system up so that whenever teen users signed up for the Chinese app, their profiles were set to public by default, allowing anyone to view and comment on their videos.

Those default settings also pose a risk to children under the age of 13 who had created accounts on the platform, even though they are not permitted to do so.

Moreover, TikTok’s “family pairing” feature — meant for parents to manage the settings on their kids’ accounts — was not strict enough, the European investigation found.

TikTok said it disagrees with the decision, “particularly the level of the fine imposed.”

“Most of the decision’s criticisms are no longer relevant as a result of measures we introduced at the start of 2021 — several months before the investigation began,” TikTok’s head of privacy for Europe, Elaine Fox, said.

The regulators are still carrying out a second investigation into whether TikTok complied with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation when it transferred users’ personal information to China, Associated Press reported.
...
The app’s parent company, ByteDance, has been caught snooping on U.S. and UK journalists in multiple instances. TikTok has also shown itself to be a danger to kids and teens, a national security threat, and having meddled in U.S. elections.

Writers Michael Chabon, David Henry Hwang Sue Meta & OpenAI
Class-Action Copyright Claim on Thousands of Books

The dual proposed class-action lawsuits have the potential to turn into an epic battle if more writers join in — a growing possibility, as more authors are waking up to the fact that Silicon Valley is allegedly mass harvesting books to train A.I. bots.

In the suit against Meta, which was filed this week in a California federal court, the writers accuse the Facebook parent of vacuuming up mass quantities of books across the Internet in order to train the company’s “Llama” large-language model using data that included pirated versions of their writings.

The same writers filed a similar proposed class-action lawsuit last week against ChatGPT maker OpenAI, claiming that their books and plays are particularly valuable for AI language training as the “best examples of high-quality, long form writing,” according to a Reuters report.

In addition to Chabon and Hwang, the other writers leading the suits are authors Matthew Klam, Rachel Louise Snyder, and Ayelet Waldman.
...
The two new suits follow a similar one brought by another group of writers headed by comedian-actress Sarah Silverman, alleging Meta and OpenAI used their written content without permission to train A.I. language models.

Other writers including Stephen King, Zadie Smith, and Michael Pollan are among a growing list of authors whose works are being used to train A.I. platforms, according to a recent report.