An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: Renters filed a lawsuit (PDF) this week alleging that a company that makes price-setting software for apartments and nine of the nation's biggest property managers formed a cartel to artificially inflate rents in violation of federal law. The lawsuit was filed days after ProPublica published an investigation raising concerns that the software, sold by Texas-based RealPage, is potentially pushing rent prices above competitive levels, facilitating price fixing or both. [...] RealPage's software uses an algorithm to churn through a trove of data each night to suggest daily prices for available rental units. The software uses not only information about the apartment being priced and the property where it is located, but also private data on what nearby competitors are charging in rents. The software considers actual rents paid to those rivals -- not just what they are advertising, the company told ProPublica.

ProPublica's investigation found that the software's design and reach have raised questions among experts about whether it is helping the country's biggest landlords indirectly coordinate pricing -- potentially in violation of federal law. In one neighborhood in downtown Seattle, ProPublica found, 70% of more than 9,000 apartments were controlled by just 10 property managers, who all used RealPage pricing software in at least some of their buildings. RealPage told ProPublica that the company "uses aggregated market data from a variety of sources in a legally compliant manner." The company also said that landlords who use employees to manually set prices "typically" conduct phone surveys to check competitors' rents, which the company says could result in anti-competitive behavior. "RealPage's revenue management solutions prioritize a property's own internal supply/demand dynamics over external factors such as competitors' rents," a company statement said, "and therefore help eliminate the risk of collusion that could occur with manual pricing."

The lawsuit said that RealPage's software helps stagger lease renewals to artificially smooth out natural imbalances in supply and demand, which discourages landlords from undercutting pricing achieved by the cartel. Property managers "thus held vacant rental units unoccupied for periods of time (rejecting the historical adage to keep the 'heads in the beds') to ensure that, collectively, there is not one period in which the market faces an oversupply of residential real estate properties for lease, keeping prices higher," it said. Such staggering helped the group avoid "a race to the bottom" on rents, the lawsuit said. RealPage brags that clients -- who agree to provide RealPage real-time access to sensitive and nonpublic data -- experience "rental rate improvements, year over year, between 5% and 12% in every market," the lawsuit said. RealPage encourages property companies to have daily calls with a RealPage pricing adviser and discourages deviating from the rent price suggested by the software, the lawsuit said. A RealPage representative told ProPublica that the company "strongly denies the allegations and will vigorously defend against the lawsuit."

RealPage "uses aggregated market data from a variety of sources in a legally compliant manner." The company also said that landlords who use employees to manually set prices "typically" conduct phone surveys to check competitors' rents, which the company says could result in anti-competitive behavior.

"RealPage's revenue management solutions prioritize a property's own internal supply/demand dynamics over external factors such as competitors' rents," a company statement said, "and therefore help eliminate the risk of collusion that could occur with manual pricing."

Uber is launching a dedicated advertising arm in a push to cash in on a captive audience and tap the higher-margin revenue stream. From a report: The new division encompasses ad offerings on Uber's ride-hailing and food-delivery apps. On Uber Eats, for example, brands will be able to pay for sponsored listings, prominent placing on the homepage or checkout, and featured menu items. Uber also rolled out Journey Ads, a new service that runs advertisements for ride-share users while they wait for their driver and during their trip. More than 40 brands have partnered with Uber to run Journey Ads, including NBCUniversal and Heineken NV, Uber said in a statement on Wednesday. The move expands Uber's prior efforts to monetize an audience of 122 million monthly active users.

As part of Netflix's earning results today, which says the company reversed customer losses, Netflix plans to crack down on password sharing beginning in 2023. The Verge reports: After giving users the ability to transfer their profiles to new accounts last week, the streamer says it will start letting subscribers create sub-accounts starting next year in line with its plans to "monetize account sharing" more widely. [...] Earlier this year, Netflix reported losing subscribers for the first time in over 10 years, with the company's subscriber count dipping by another 1.3 million in the US and Canada and 1 million worldwide last quarter. To remedy this, Netflix has also been slowly nudging subscribers away from password sharing. The company conducted tests that prompted users in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru to pay extra for a sub-account if Netflix detected someone was using the owner's subscription outside of their household.

It also tried out a way for users in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic to buy additional "homes" for accounts located outside of the subscriber's primary household. More recently, Netflix widely introduced a Profile Transfer tool that lets users easily transfer their personalized recommendations, viewing history, My List, saved games, and other settings to a new account after testing it in other countries. Last month, a report from Rest of World revealed frustration from users subject to the tests in Latin America. The earnings report (PDF) projects that the company's new ad-supported streaming service, which starts at $6.99 per month and launches in November, will help attract 4.5 million subscribers by year's end. This quarter it added 2.4 million subscribers and grew by 104,000 paid subscribers in the U.S. and Canada over the last three months, up from 73,000 in the same period last year.

Joey Sneddon, reporting at OMG! Ubuntu: In September I tweeted a screenshot of something unexpected that has started to show up in the terminal when I ran system updates. It didn't enrage me at the time (and it kinda still doesn't) but I did find it a little ... Off. Now, if you're suitably tuned-in to the Linux newswire and/or an avid attendee of social media you'll probably heard about the drama in question. If you haven't, then allow me to... Yes, the furore is over an "ad" for Ubuntu Pro, Canonical's revamped support offering that replaces/augments Ubuntu Advantage (which has been around for many years) that appears in the terminal when managing system updates.

Other people are calling it an "ad" (hence quote marks). I prefer the term plug (which, it turns out, some people aren't familiar with; it means to mention something in order to promote it). For although this sentence is technically advertising something, in this case Ubuntu Pro, the offering itself is free for regular users (on up-to five devices). Thus, it's not like this is an "ad" that generates Canonical revenue. It's more akin to a public service announcement to raise awareness.

DuckDuckGo is rolling out its web browsing app for Mac users as an open beta test. Designed for privacy, the app was announced back in April as a closed beta, but is now available for all Mac users to try before its official public launch. From a report: The desktop browser includes the same built-in protections we've seen already featured in DuckDuckGo's mobile apps, combining DuckDuckGo's search engine, defenses against third-party tracking, cookie pop-up protection, and its popular one-click data clearing 'Fire Button.' Some additional features have been added to the browser (version 0.30) since its original announcement.

Now users can try Duck Player, a feature that protects users from targeted ads and cookies while watching YouTube content. Ads viewed within the Duck Player will not be personalized, which DuckDuckGo claims actually removed most YouTube ads as a result during testing. YouTube will still register your views, but content watched through Duck Player won't contribute to your YouTube advertising profile. Pinned tabs and a new bookmarks bar have been included to address feedback from early beta testing, as well as a way to view your locally stored browsing history. DuckDuckGo's Cookie Consent Pop-Up Manager is also available which works on about 50 percent of sites (with more to come) to automatically choose the most private option and spare users from the annoying pop-up messages. The app also lets you activate DuckDuckGo Email Protection on the desktop to better protect your inbox with email tracker blocking.

Meta has been ordered to sell gif platform Giphy for the second time by the UK competition regulator, bringing an end to the $315mn deal following a two-year antitrust battle. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority said on Tuesday that Meta's purchase of New York-based Giphy -- the biggest provider of animated images known as gifs to social networks -- would "limit choice for UK social media users and reduce innovation in UK display advertising." The CMA first told Meta to unwind the deal last November, but was forced by the Competition Appeal Tribunal in July to reconsider its conclusion after it upheld one of the social media company's grounds of appeal.

The CMA's final decision underlines the pressure on Silicon Valley's biggest technology companies from the UK regulator, which has broad powers to intervene in tie-ups touching British consumers even when the parties are based overseas. The Giphy deal marked the first time the regulator had moved to dismantle a completed Big Tech deal. Meta on Tuesday said it was "disappointed by the CMA's decision" but accepted the ruling as "the final word on the matter."

Google said Tuesday that it will rely on Coinbase to start letting some customers pay for cloud services with cryptocurrencies early in 2023, while Coinbase said it would draw on Google's cloud infrastructure. From a report: The deal, announced at Google's Cloud Next conference, might succeed in luring cutting-edge companies to Google in a fierce, fast-growing market, where Google's top competitors do not currently permit clients to pay with digital currencies. The cloud business helps diversify Google parent Alphabet away from advertising, and it now accounts for 9% of revenue, up from less than 6% three years ago, as it is expanding more quickly than Alphabet as a whole. Coinbase, which generates a majority of its revenue from retail transactions, will move data-related applications to Google from the market-leading Amazon Web Services cloud, which Coinbase has relied on for years, said Jim Migdal, Coinbase's vice president of business development. The Google Cloud Platform infrastructure service will initially accept cryptocurrency payments from a handful of customers in the Web3 world who want to pay with cryptocurrency, thanks to an integration with the Coinbase Commerce service, said Amit Zavery, vice president and general manager and head of platform at Google Cloud, in an interview with CNBC.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has sent its latest overview of notorious piracy markets to the US Government. The Hollywood group, which also represents Netflix, lists a broad variety of online piracy threats. Aside from traditional pirate sites, it also includes domain registries, hosting providers, advertisers, and apps. [...] The MPA report typically provides a detailed overview of the piracy landscape. This year, the USTR further asked rightsholders to explain how piracy impacts US workers. According to the movie industry group, the effect is significant. "In 2020, there were an estimated 137.2 billion visits to film and TV piracy sites globally, which cost the U.S. economy at least $29.2 billion in lost revenue each year. Specifically, piracy has been estimated to reduce employment in our industry between 230,000 and 560,000 jobs," MPA writes, citing external research. The MPA notes that piracy is a global problem that requires cooperation from the broader Internet ecosystem. Services that see themselves as neutral intermediaries, operating parts of the core Internet infrastructure, should take responsibility. "All stakeholders in the internet ecosystem -- including hosting providers, DNS providers, cloud services, advertising networks, payment processors, social networks, and search engines -- should actively seek to reduce support for notoriously infringing sites," MPA writes.

The industry group views Cloudflare as part of this group and mentions the US company by name in its submission. "Cloudflare's customers include some of the most notorious, longstanding pirate websites in the world, including the massively popular streaming site cuevana3.me and The Pirate Bay," MPA notes, adding that repeated notices of infringement elicited no action on Cloudflare's part. The notorious markets list is limited to non-US operations, so Cloudflare itself isn't one of the MPA's targets. Various other Internet services are, including several third-party intermediaries. The MPA's list of notorious markets calls out domain name registries, including the Russian .RU registry, and the companies that maintain the records for the .CH, .CC, .IO, .ME and .TO domain names. These continue to keep pirate sites on board, despite numerous complaints. The same is true for the payment provider VoguePay, which is reportedly quite popular among IPTV services. In addition, advertisers such as 1XBET and Propeller Ads are called out as well. The latter company rebutted MPA's accusations last year but that didn't prevent it from being highlighted again.

Hosting companies are also cited as intermediaries that could and should do more. Instead, some find themselves appealing to pirate services with products such as "bulletproof" hosting. Squitter.eu and Amaratu are two such examples, the MPA reports. In addition to third-party intermediaries, there is also a category of services that caters to pirates directly. These "piracy as a service" (PaaS) companies offer tools that allow people to start a pirate site with minimal effort. "PaaS encompasses a suite of often off-the-shelf services that make it easy for would-be pirates without any technical knowledge to create, operate, and monetize a fully functioning pirate operation," MPA writes. [...] Actual pirate sites themselves are also mentioned, including the usual suspects The Pirate Bay, RARBG and YTS. In addition to torrent sites, the MPA also lists direct download hubs, streaming portals and linking sites, including Uptobox.com, Fmovies.to and Egy.best. Various dedicated piracy apps get a mention as well, and the MPA further includes a long list of unauthorized IPTV services. The anti-piracy group says that it has identified more than a thousand pirate IPTV platforms, so the list provided to the USTR is certainly not exhaustive. In fact, the MPA says that all companies, sites, and services are part of a broader piracy problem. Those flagged in the MPA's report are just examples of some of the worst offenders, nothing more. A list of all sites and services that are highlighted and categorized in MPA's notorious markets submission (PDF) can be found in the article.

A new study suggests that a billboard-like constellation of about 50 satellites, costing $65 million all in, could shine ads to every corner of the Earth for months -- and potentially make money while doing so. TechCrunch reports: The study, from Russian researchers at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), presents a fairly compelling case that is bolstered by the recent controversy around SpaceX's highly visible Starlink satellites. The paper's proposal involves sending up a constellation of about 50 satellites at a 12U CubeSat volume -- think about the size of a full paper grocery bag. The satellites would enter a sun-synchronous orbit, meaning they'll always be in direct sunlight as they pass around the Earth. Once in orbit, they would deploy large, parabolic reflectors that would bounce sunlight down toward the Earth. These could be tilted to best present the sunlight to a target area they are passing over, and from the ground would appear to be a group of stars moving in synchrony for a period of perhaps three to five minutes. (To be clear, the image at top is just for illustration -- it would be much dimmer in reality.)

The 50 satellites could rearrange themselves in patterns, from letters to simple graphics -- not fast, but fast enough that the shape could evolve over their visible time, or change advertisers between target cities. They would deorbit after 1-3 months, depending on several factors. I've asked the researchers for clarification on the lifetime, display length and a few other details and will update this post if I hear back. The physical possibility of doing this doesn't seem outlandish at all considering how visible existing satellites can be in these orbits, and the precision with which they can be arranged already. So with that established, a good deal of the paper is dedicated to an economic analysis. After all, we probably could have launched a Nike logo to space in the '90s (and there were attempts) if the world came together on it... but why would they? The thing has to make financial sense.

The cost of the mission is estimated at $65 million, most of which goes to manufacturing the 50 satellites ($48.7 million), then to testing, support and engineering ($11.5 million), and of course launch ($4.8 million). That seems reasonable enough in theory. But it gets a little fuzzy in the income estimates. A complicated equation for determining which cities, in which regions and at what times of the year would make more money suggests that winter provides the greatest ROI. You might think: but people stay inside during the winter. Yes, but not in the tropics and much of south and southeast Asia, where winter brings longer nights but nothing like the inclement weather of northern latitudes. And it happens some of the most densely populated cities in the world are there. Their most optimistic estimate puts net income at around $111 million, over three months and 24 displays -- that works out to around $4.6 million per ad. Super Bowl ads cost more than that, and only last 30 seconds -- though of course they're in 4K and full color with sound. But the money and appetite for stunt advertising is definitely there.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Alphabet's Google will pay $85 million to resolve a consumer privacy suit by Arizona claiming the technology giant surreptitiously collects data on users' whereabouts for targeted advertising. The settlement comes as Google is facing similar complaints by a group of state attorneys general, including Texas, Indiana and Washington D.C., in their respective state courts, over user location data. Arizona accused Google in a May 2020 complaint of violating the state's Consumer Fraud Act by gathering location data even after users opt out of a feature that records location history through other settings such as "Web & App Activity." Google, in its defense, had argued that the state consumer protection law requires that alleged fraud is connected to a sale or advertisement. In January, an Arizona state judge denied Google's request to dismiss the case. The settlement represents the largest amount per individual user Google has paid in "a privacy and consumer-fraud lawsuit of this kind," Attorney General Mark Brnovich's office said in a statement on Tuesday. "I am proud of this historic settlement that proves no entity, not even big tech companies, is above the law."

Meanwhile, a Google spokesperson said Arizona's suit was based on old product policies that the company changed years ago. "We provide straightforward controls and auto delete options for location data, and are always working to minimize the data we collect," they said. "We are pleased to have this matter resolved and will continue to focus our attention on providing useful products for our users."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Consumer Reports: A Consumer Reports investigation finds that TikTok, one of the country's most popular apps, is partnering with a growing number of other companies to hoover up data about people as they travel across the internet. That includes people who don't have TikTok accounts. These companies embed tiny TikTok trackers called "pixels" in their websites. Then TikTok uses the information gathered by all those pixels to help the companies target ads at potential customers, and to measure how well their ads work. To look into TikTok's use of online tracking, CR asked the security firm Disconnect to scan about 20,000 websites for the company's pixels. In our list, we included the 1,000 most popular websites overall, as well as some of the biggest sites with domains ending in ".org," ".edu," and ".gov." We wanted to look at those sites because they often deal with sensitive subjects. We found hundreds of organizations sharing data with TikTok.

If you go to the United Methodist Church's main website, TikTok hears about it. Interested in joining Weight Watchers? TikTok finds that out, too. The Arizona Department of Economic Security tells TikTok when you view pages concerned with domestic violence or food assistance. Even Planned Parenthood uses the trackers, automatically notifying TikTok about every person who goes to its website, though it doesn't share information from the pages where you can book an appointment. (None of those groups responded to requests for comment.) The number of TikTok trackers we saw was just a fraction of those we observed from Google and Meta. However, TikTok's advertising business is exploding, and experts say the data collection will probably grow along with it.

After Disconnect researchers conducted a broad search for TikTok trackers, we asked them to take a close look at what kind of information was being shared by 15 specific websites. We focused on sites where we thought people would have a particular expectation of privacy, such as advocacy organizations and hospitals, along with retailers and other kinds of companies. Disconnect found that data being transmitted to TikTok can include your IP address, a unique ID number, what page you're on, and what you're clicking, typing, or searching for, depending on how the website has been set up. What does TikTok do with all that information? "Like other platforms, the data we receive from advertisers is used to improve the effectiveness of our advertising services," says Melanie Bosselait, a TikTok spokesperson. The data "is not used to group individuals into particular interest categories for other advertisers to target." If TikTok receives data about someone who doesn't have a TikTok account, the company only uses that data for aggregated reports that they send to advertisers about their websites, she says. There's no independent way for consumers or privacy researchers to verify such statements. But TikTok's terms of service say its advertising customers aren't allowed to send the company certain kinds of sensitive information, such as data about children, health conditions, or finances. "We continuously work with our partners to avoid inadvertent transmission of such data," TikTok's Bosselait says. What can you do to protect your personal information? Consumer Reports recommends using privacy-protecting browser extensions like Disconnect, changing your browser's privacy settings to block trackers, and trying a more private browser like Firefox and Brave.

Already the world's biggest gambling nation in terms of loss per person, Australia has seen a shift in betting behavior since the pandemic-forced closure of public venues. From a report: Gamblers' losses on poker machines shrank for the first time during the pandemic, but at a rate far slower than an unprecedented increase in money lost on apps, data showed. That means more players are being exposed to an industry that is harder to regulate than traditional gambling. Australia's gambling industry has been in the spotlight in recent years, with public inquiries lashing its biggest casino operators due to lapses in money laundering protections. Online gambling has also been the focus of inquiries, but with its increasing prevalence, the government has answered consumer advocates with a pledge to take a deeper look.

App providers are mostly foreign such as London-listed Flutter Entertainment -- owner of the most popular betting app in Australia, Sportsbet -- and Entain, owner of third-ranked app Ladbrokes. Unlike venues, they benefit from marketing methods such as text message-based promotions falling outside the scope of gambling advertising restrictions. Gamblers' loss on poker machines was A$11.4 billion ($7.3 billion USD) in 2021, shrinking A$1.1 billion or 17% from 2019, the year before lockdowns began, showed data from Monash University's School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine. But gamblers' loss in online sports betting swelled A$3.2 billion or 80% to A$7.1 billion in the same period, showed figures supplied by industry consultancy H2 Gambling Capital, which excluded credit often rewarded in promotions.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Earlier this year, the International Organization for Migration reported that more than 3 million refugees fleeing war-torn Ukraine were "at heightened risk of exploitation." Human trafficking cases, they warned, involved refugees more likely to leave home suddenly without secure financial resources and "less likely to be identified in the immediate aftermath of mass displacement." Since February, the European Union announced (PDF) that the number is even larger, counting more than 5.4 million people who "have arrived in the European Union since the beginning of the war in Ukraine." "All relevant stakeholders have recognized that the threat of trafficking in human beings is high and imminent," EU's human trafficking plan states. Since women and children represent the majority of refugees fleeing, the plan says they are believed to be most at risk.

To respond, the EU began monitoring online and offline human trafficking risks, and experts called for countries across Europe to start working together to shield refugees during this uncertain time of conflict. This week, the EU's law enforcement agency focused on cybercrimes, Europol, reported that it had done exactly that by coordinating the first online EU-wide hackathon. By bringing together law enforcement authorities from 20 countries to aid in their investigations, the hackathon targeted criminal networks using social platforms and websites to map out the online criminal landscape of human trafficking across Europe. In particular, Europol noted in its report, "investigators targeted human traffickers attempting to lure Ukrainian refugees."

"The Internet and human trafficking are interlinked," Europol stated in its report, which identified 30 online platforms "related to vulnerable Ukrainian refugees," 10 specifically targeting refugees for human trafficking. Europol identified 80 persons/usernames (with 30 possibly exploiting Ukrainian refugees), 11 suspected human traffickers (five believed to be targeting Ukrainian refugees), and 45 possible victims, 25 of which were Ukrainian. Countries involved in the hackathon were Austria, Albania, Belgium, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Netherlands, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine. Online platforms probed during the hackathon included "a wide range of websites" and "social media, dating platforms, advertising and aid platforms, forums and messaging applications."

TikTok says it plans to ban all fundraising activity soon -- only six weeks before the November midterm elections. The Verge reports: In a blog post, TikTok's president of global business solutions, Blake Chandlee, said the company would immediately turn off all advertising and monetization features, like gifting and tipping, for politicians and parties on the platform. Additionally, accounts belonging to governments, politicians, and political parties will have to apply for verification. Over the next few weeks, TikTok expects to roll out a sweeping ban on campaign fundraising altogether. The ban will prohibit politicians and parties from using the platform to direct viewers to their campaign websites to make donations. TikTok spokesperson Jamie Favazza told The Verge on Tuesday that the company plans to enforce these new rules "through a combination of technology and human moderation."

"We will work with governments, politicians, and political parties to verify their account either when they submit a verification request, or if we identify an account we believe belongs to a government, politician, or political party, we will confirm the authenticity of the account and begin the verification process."

New submitter cj9er writes: Considering all the privacy issues in today's online climate (all the issues with Meta right now), what is the best high-end smartphone to select?

Apple: No way they don't sell your data... Sure, they have privacy for third-party apps, but what about the data they collect from the phone itself? Consider what the revenue is on a single smartphone (say $150), how do you think they have all that cash on hand?

Google: Yeah right, Pixel is probably collecting [data] 24/7 considering their main business is selling ads on Search. They have developed the Pixel line because they probably realized they were missing out on the direct collection of data from their own hardware (cut out the middle players using Android).

Samsung: Their TVs even collect and sell data on you. I don't really understand the price premium on Galaxy phones anyways.

I have kept my data and Wi-Fi turned off on my phones for years. Initially it was for battery reasons but now add in data collection. Ultimately, if we could turn off the GPS feature at will on our phones, maybe we could prevent all tracking (except for cellular triangulation). If we then think about safety, GPS is great and now with satellite-tracking on Apple phones, even better. But then what is going on behind the scenes 99.99% of the rest of the time when you don't require those options for safety reasons?

What phone manufacturer can be trusted?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Meta was sued for allegedly building a secret work-around to safeguards that Apple launched last year to protect iPhone users from having their internet activity tracked. In a proposed class-action complaint filed Wednesday in San Francisco federal court, two Facebook users accused the company of skirting Apple's 2021 privacy rules and violating state and federal laws limiting the unauthorized collection of personal data. A similar complaint was filed in the same court last week. The suits are based on a report by data privacy researcher Felix Krause, who said that Meta's Facebook and Instagram apps for Apple's iOS inject JavaScript code onto websites visited by users. Krause said the code allowed the apps to track "anything you do on any website," including typing passwords.

According to the suits, Meta's collection of user data from the Facebook app helps it circumvent rules instituted by Apple in 2021 requiring all third-party apps to obtain consent from users before tracking their activities, online or off. Meta has said it expected to miss out on $10 billion in ad revenue in 2022 because of Apple's changes. The Facebook app gets around Apple privacy rules by opening web links in an in-app browser, rather than the user's default browser, according to Wednesday's complaint. "This allows Meta to intercept, monitor and record its users' interactions and communications with third parties, providing data to Meta that it aggregates, analyzes, and uses to boost its advertising revenue," according to the suit. A Meta spokesperson said the allegations are "without merit" and the company will defend itself. "We have designed our in-app browser to respect users' privacy choices, including how data may be used for ads," the company said in an emailed statement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Mark Zuckerberg's pivot into the metaverse has cost him dearly in the real world. Even in a rough year for just about every US tech titan, the wealth erased from the chief executive officer of Meta stands out. His fortune has been cut in half and then some, dropping by $71 billion so far this year, the most among the ultra-rich tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. At $55.9 billion, his net worth ranks 20th among global billionaires, his lowest spot since 2014 and behind three Waltons and two members of the Koch family.

It was less than two years ago when Zuckerberg, 38, was worth $106 billion and among an elite group of global billionaires, with only Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates commanding bigger fortunes. His wealth swelled to a peak of $142 billion in September 2021, when the company's shares reached as high as $382. The following month, Zuckerberg introduced Meta and changed the company's name from Facebook And it's been largely downhill from there as it struggles to find its footing in the tech universe.

Its recent earnings reports have been dismal. It started in February, when the company revealed no growth in monthly Facebook users, triggering a historic collapse in its stock price and slashing Zuckerberg's fortune by $31 billion, among the biggest one-day declines in wealth ever. Other issues include Instagram's bet on Reels -- its answer to TikTok's short-form video platform -- even though it's worth less in advertising revenue, while the industry overall has been affected by lower marketing spending due to concerns over an economic slowdown. The stock is also being dragged down by the company's investments in the metaverse, said Laura Martin, senior internet analyst at Needham & Co. Zuckerberg has said he expects the project will lose "significant" amounts of money in the next three to five years. In the meantime, Meta "has to get these users back from TikTok," said Martin. It's also hampered by "excessive regulatory scrutiny and intervention," she said. Meta is "down about 57% this year, far more than the declines of 14% for Apple, 26% for Amazon and 29% for Google parent Alphabet," adds Bloomberg. "Meta is even narrowing the gap in 2022 losses with Netflix, which is down about 60%."

The Economist notes this business cycle is hurting ad revenue for Alphabet's Google and Meta's Facebook."Last quarter Meta reported its first-ever year-on-year decline in revenues. Snap, a smaller rival, is laying off a fifth of its workforce." But for both companies, "the cyclical problem may not be the worst of it," since they're finally facing some real competition.

"They might once have hoped to offset the digital-ad pie's slower growth by grabbing a larger slice of it. No longer." Although the two are together expected to rake in around $300bn in revenues this year, sales of their four biggest rivals in the West will amount to almost a quarter as much... What is more, as digital advertising enters a period of transformation, the challengers look well-placed to increase their gains. The noisiest newcomer to the digital-ad scene is TikTok. In the five years since its launch the short-video app has sucked ad dollars away from Facebook and Instagram, Meta's two biggest properties. So much so that the two social networks are reinventing themselves in the image of their Chinese-owned rival.... But Meta and Google may have more to worry about closer to home, where a trio of American tech firms are loading ever more ads around their main businesses.

Chief among them is Amazon, forecast to take nearly 7% of worldwide digital-ad revenue this year, up from less than 1% just six years ago. The company started reporting details of its ad business only in February, when it revealed sales in 2021 of $31bn. As Benedict Evans, a tech analyst, points out, that is roughly as much as the ad sales of the entire global newspaper industry. Amazon executives now talk of advertising as one of the company's three "engines", alongside retail and cloud computing.

Next in line is Microsoft, expected to quietly take more than 2% of global sales this year — slightly more than TikTok. Its search engine, Bing, has only a small share of the search market, but that market is a gigantic one. Microsoft's social network, LinkedIn, is unglamorous but its business-to-business ads allow it to monetise the time users spend on it at a rate roughly four times that of Facebook, estimates Andrew Lipsman of eMarketer. It generates more revenue than some medium-sized networks including Snap's Snapchat and Twitter.

The most surprising new adman is Apple. The iPhone-maker used to rail against intrusive digital advertising. Now it sells many ads of its own.... As digital ads work their way into more corners of the economy, "a new order is going to materialise", believes Mr Lipsman. He thinks Amazon will overtake Meta in total advertising revenue, possibly within five years.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from PC Magazine: Craigslist emerged in 1995 to connect strangers through a free, web-based platform that has endured as rivals services like Zillow, Facebook Marketplace, and countless dating apps emerged with advanced features and slick interfaces. These platforms survive on advertising and subscription revenue. Craigslist, of course, has none of that. Over the years, the OG online marketplace has all but refused to modernize; its mobile app only came out in 2019 after nearly 25 years in business. Why does the website still look the same after so many decades? That was the main question I had when I sat down for a video call with craigslist founder Craig Newmark, who joined me from the New York City apartment he shares with his wife, Eileen Whelpley.

Newmark stepped down as CEO of craigslist in 2000 after others told him he wasn't cut out for management, he says. Jim Buckmaster has been at the helm since, though Newmark remains a partial owner. He now works on philanthropy full time, supporting groups like the Coalition Against Online Violence, which helps combat harassment against female journalists. Still, the 69-year-old entrepreneur is a billionaire (or near-billionaire since he's given away millions). Our chat yielded much more than expected, from Costco hotdogs to Hello Kitty and his childhood Sunday School lessons. It's clear that the website is the purest and most enduring expression of Craig Newmark, a humble tech mogul who marches to the beat of his own drum. Here's what Newmark had to say when asked about the site's appearance:

Why does the website still look the pretty much the same today as when you founded it? There's even a new CEO. What's going on?
Because that serves people better. I've learned that people want stuff that is simple and fast and gets the job done. People don't need fancy stuff. Sometimes you just want to get through the day.

Well, you can still have simplicity with a modern font or a new UI. The definition of simplicity on the web has changed over the years. Is it just that you're making enough money and there's a desire to keep it the way it is?
I'll challenge the premise that the idea of simplicity has changed. The deal is that people still use the site in great numbers. And again, it helps people get something done. It's fast and easy for people, and that's a big deal.

And maybe you also don't care too much about aesthetics (of the website, for example)?
For me as an engineer, simple as beautiful. Functional is beautiful.

How would you feel if craigslist dramatically changed in its appearance or its function?
I'm okay if the spirit is maintained. I like a very simple site with its use and functionality obvious when you look at it. Now maybe there's a better way to do that, that no one has come up with yet. If it's really better, I can't object to that. If it's genuinely better, I will say something. But again, I can't legitimately try to exert serious influence. Jim's boss.

In summary, what is your most concise answer to why craigslist still looks the same today?
People tell me it gets the job done. They want it done. As I like to put it, a nerd's got to do what a nerd's got to do.

Google lost most of the first round of its battle to topple a record $4.3 billion European Union antitrust fine that struck at the heart of the US tech giant's power over the Android mobile-phone ecosystem. From a report: In a boost for EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager, judges upheld the vast majority of the European Commission's arguments, but cut the penalty to 4.1 billion euros after finding faults in some of the regulator's analysis and that Google's right to a fair hearing had partly been infringed. "The General Court largely confirms the commission's decision that Google imposed unlawful restrictions on manufacturers of Android mobile devices and mobile network operators in order to consolidate the dominant position of its search engine," the Luxembourg-based EU tribunal said in a statement. The Android case is one of a trio of decisions that have been the centerpiece of Vestager's bid to rein in the growing dominance of Silicon Valley. She's fined Alphabet's Google more than 8 billion euros and has since opened new probes into the company's suspected stranglehold over digital advertising.