It took a lot more than the initially slated few weeks to arrive, but a pivotal privacy decision that’s been hanging over Sam Altman’s World (aka Worldcoin) for months has finally landed, via a late December decision from the Bavarian data protection authority enforcing the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a comprehensive privacy framework […]

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The European Commission has published draft proposals for how Apple must meet interoperability requirements flowing from the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), inviting feedback on proposed measures targeted at areas like iOS notifications, data transfer, and device set-up by January 9, 2025. European Union regulators have until around mid-March to adopt final decisions on what […]

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Apple and Meta are warring in Europe over the balance between interoperability and privacy, Reuters reports. The fight focuses on the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), a competition regulation that requires designated gatekeepers (including Apple and Meta) not to restrict rivals’ access to so-called core platform services. In Apple’s case, this means: iOS, iPadOS, […]

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The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) published an opinion on Wednesday that explores how AI developers might use personal data to develop and deploy AI models, such as large language models (LLMs), without falling foul of the bloc’s privacy laws. The Board plays a key steering role in the application of these laws, issuing guidance […]

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Five years later sounds like a half-baked sequel to a well-known zombie flick franchise. But it’s a reference to how long it’s taken a data access complaint against Netflix to deliver a penalty decision in the European Union. The fine that’s — finally — been issued under the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is […]

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The U.K. government is consulting on an opt-out copyright regime for AI training that would require rights holders to take active steps if they don’t want their intellectual property to become free AI training fodder. The rise of generative AI models that are trained on vast quantities of data has brought intellectual property concerns to […]

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Meta has been fined €251 million (around $263 million) in the European Union for a Facebook security breach that affected millions of users, which the company disclosed back in September 2018. The penalty, issued on Tuesday by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) enforcing the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is far from being the […]

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TikTok is now subject to not one, but two Digital Services Act (DSA) investigations. The European Union announced on Tuesday that it has opened a formal proceeding focused on election risks, specifically in the context of recent elections in Romania. The probe will focus on TikTok’s recommender systems, principally “risks linked to the coordinated inauthentic manipulation […]

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Meta has agreed to a $50 million payment program to settle a long-running proceeding in Australia related to misuse of information for political ad targeting, the country’s information watchdog OAIC announced Tuesday. The settlement concerns the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, when data on millions of Facebook users was exfiltrated without their knowledge or consent by […]

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Ireland’s media regulator has put social media giant Meta on watch over terrorist content takedowns again — it issued a decision against Facebook on Monday. The Coimisiún na Meán said the tech giant would have to take “specific measures” to prevent its services from being used for the dissemination of terrorist content and report back […]

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On Monday, the U.K.’s internet regulator, Ofcom, published the first set of final guidelines for online service providers subject to the Online Safety Act. This starts the clock ticking on the sprawling online harms law’s first compliance deadline, which the regulator expects to kick in in three months’ time. Ofcom has been under pressure to […]

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The European Union’s executive body is facing an embarrassing privacy scandal after it was confirmed on Friday that a Commission ad campaign on X (formerly Twitter) breached the EU’s own data protection rules. The finding by the EU’s oversight body, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), relates to a micro-targeted ad campaign that the Commission […]

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Google has ended a test in which it was returning basic “blue link” search results for hotel-related searches in a handful of markets in the European Union, in response to compliance complaints related to the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). These blue links appeared instead of visually richer results, where its search engine will display […]

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A few years ago, Australia passed legislation requiring platform giants including Facebook-owner Meta and YouTube’s parent Google to negotiate with news publishers to pay for journalism reshares. The News Media Bargaining Code forced Big Tech to cut deals with local news outlets. However, Meta has since moved away from promoting news on its platforms globally […]

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Right after BeReal got acquired by French mobile games publisher Voodoo this summer, the candid selfie-sharing app which has been popular with Gen Zers changed how it asks users to consent to tracking. The resulting pop-up is now the target of a privacy complaint in Europe. Confirmed breaches of the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation […]

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Another attempt to get a class action-style privacy damages case to stick against Google has failed in the U.K. after the Court of Appeal refused to overturn an earlier dismissal. The lawsuit concerned the misuse of health records for some 1.6 million patients whose information was passed to Google’s AI division, DeepMind, back in 2015 […]

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Rules for boosting the security of connected devices have entered into force in the European Union. The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) puts obligations on product makers to provide security support to consumers, such as by updating their software to fix security vulnerabilities. Although the deadline for compliance with the main obligations of the law is […]

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Back in March, the European Commission’s use of Microsoft 365 was found to have broken the bloc’s data protection rules. Since then, we haven’t heard much about this awkward situation. But Monday was the deadline for the EU’s executive to respond to the European Data Protection Supervisor’s (EDPS) order requiring it to suspend any infringing […]

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Age assurance, an umbrella term that refers to technologies for verifying, estimating, or inferring an internet user’s age, is being thrust into the global spotlight thanks to a blanket ban on social media use for people under 16 in Australia. The law, which is expected to come into force in Australia in November 2025, will […]

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Turning sunflower seeds into sustainable, cocoa-free chocolate has netted Munich-based B2B food tech startup Planet A Foods (formerly QOA) a $30 million Series B funding round. Now, the Y Combinator alum is gearing up for industrialization, with the funds set to be deployed to scale its production capacity by around 7.5x. The round fast follows […]

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