Daily Archives: January 13, 2025

Billion-pound lawsuit against Apple over App Store opens in UK

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The complaint, filed in May 2021, accuses Apple of breaching European and UK competition laws by “its exclusion of any other app stores from iOS devices” like iPhones and iPads.

It claims that some 20 million Apple users may have been overcharged by the company “due to its ban on rival app store platforms”.

The complainants says a “30 percent surcharge” that the company “imposes” on apps purchased through Apple’s App Store comes at “expense of ordinary consumers”.

The case, which Apple has called “meritless”, has been brought by Kings College London academic Rachael Kent and the law firm Hausfeld & Co.

The trial is set to last seven weeks at the Competition Appeal Tribunal in London.

At the heart are accusations that Apple used the App Store to exclude competitors, forcing users to use its system and boosting profits in the process.

“The 30 percent surcharge relates to most of the applications that you’re going to be using when you’re downloading and making in-app purchases on the App Store,” Kent told AFP, citing dating platform Tinder as an example.

However, it does not apply to applications offering physical products such as the delivery services Deliveroo and Uber Eats, the academic specifies.

Any user who purchased applications or subscriptions in the British version of the App Store between 1 October 2015 and 15 November 2024 may be entitled to compensation from Apple, believes Kent, a lecturer in the digital economy.

The claim seeks total estimated damages of £1.5 billion (EUR1.8 billion).

According to British law, in this type of class action, all potentially affected persons are included in the procedure by default, and may benefit from possible compensation, unless they voluntarily opt out.

[…]

Source: Billion-pound lawsuit against Apple over App Store opens in UK – Euractiv

A 30% surcharge is ridiculous, especially when you are rabid about not allowing anyone else have a marketplace – yes, they do allow 3rd party marketplaces but the prices for that are extortionate.

Meta’s right-wing surrender to Trump also includes an end to DEI programs and trans Messenger themes

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Meta isn’t stopping at moderation changes. According to both Axios and The New York Times, the company is also pulling the plug on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. That includes removing diversity hiring goals, eliminating the chief diversity officer position and no longer prioritizing minority-owned businesses as vendors, per The Times‘ reporting.

When asked to comment on ending DEI initiatives, Meta confirmed the reporting was accurate.

Internally, the company is apparently pinning the decision on a shifting “legal and policy landscape,” according to a memo to employees Axios acquired.

“The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI,” Janelle Gale, Meta’s VP of Human Resources says in the memo. “The term ‘DEI’ has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.”

The current Supreme Court is not exactly friendly towards systemic attempts to address issues of race, gender and sexuality, but in the context of Meta’s other recent changes, it seems like there’s more going on than the company being afraid of a possible lawsuit.

At the same time that Mark Zuckerberg was announcing that Meta was abandoning third-party fact checking and changing what kind of speech it allows on its platform, 404 Media reports that the company removed the Trans and Non-binary themes from Messenger, and posts it made announcing them. The company also added Trump supporter and UFC CEO Dana White to its board this week, a confirmation of Zuckerberg’s continuing UFC fandom but also a signal that it’s eager to listen to conservative voices. It all seems to add up to less of a reaction to the current climate and more like the way people in charge want to be doing business going forward.

Source: Meta’s right-wing reinvention also includes an end to DEI programs and trans Messenger themes

Google brings back digital fingerprinting to track users for advertising

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Google is tracking your online behavior in the name of advertising, reintroducing a data collection process that ingests all of your online signals (from IP address to complex browser information) and pinpoints unique users or devices, also known as “digital fingerprinting.”

The company’s updated platform program policies include relaxed restrictions on advertisers and personalized ad targeting across a range of devices, an outcome of a larger “advertising ecosystem shift” and the advancement of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) like on-device processing and trusted execution environments, in the words of the company.

A departure from its longstanding pledge to user choice and privacy, Google argues these technologies offer enough protection for users while also creating “new ways for brands to manage and activate their data safely and securely.” The new feature will be available to advertisers beginning Feb. 16, 2025.

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Contrary to other data collection tools like cookies, digital fingerprinting is difficult to spot, and thus even harder for even privacy-conscious users to erase or block. On Dec. 19, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) — a data protection and privacy regulator — labeled Google “irresponsible” for the policy change, saying the shift to fingerprinting is an unfair means of tracking users, reducing choice and control over their personal information. The watchdog also warned that the move could encourage riskier advertiser behavior.

“Google itself has previously said that fingerprinting does not meet users’ expectations for privacy, as users cannot easily consent to it as they would cookies. This in turn means they cannot control how their information is collected. To quote Google’s own position on fingerprinting from 2019: ‘We think this subverts user choice and is wrong,'” wrote ICO executive director of regulatory risk Stephen Almond.

The ICO warned that it will intervene if Google cannot demonstrate existing legal requirements for such tech, including options to secure freely-given consent, ensure fair processing, and uphold the right to erasure: “Businesses should not consider fingerprinting a simple solution to the loss of third-party cookies and other cross-site tracking signals.”

Source: Google brings back digital fingerprinting to track users for advertising | Mashable

Bad Likert Judge: A Novel Multi-Turn Technique to Jailbreak LLMs by Misusing Their Evaluation Capability

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Text-generation large language models (LLMs) have safety measures designed to prevent them from responding to requests with harmful and malicious responses. Research into methods that can bypass these guardrails, such as Bad Likert Judge, can help defenders prepare for potential attacks.

The technique asks the target LLM to act as a judge scoring the harmfulness of a given response using the Likert scale, a rating scale measuring a respondent’s agreement or disagreement with a statement. It then asks the LLM to generate responses that contain examples that align with the scales. The example that has the highest Likert scale can potentially contain the harmful content.

We have tested this technique across a broad range of categories against six state-of-the-art text-generation LLMs. Our results reveal that this technique can increase the attack success rate (ASR) by more than 60% compared to plain attack prompts on average.

Source: Bad Likert Judge: A Novel Multi-Turn Technique to Jailbreak LLMs by Misusing Their Evaluation Capability