Meta hit with ~$275M GDPR penalty for Facebook data-scraping breach

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

The penalty relates to an inquiry which was opened by the DPC on April 14, 2021, following media reports of more than 530M Facebook users’ personal data — including email addresses and mobile phone numbers — being exposed online.

At the time, Facebook tried to play down the breach — claiming the data that had been found floating around online was “old data” and that it had fixed the issue that led to the personal data being exposed.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/28/facebook-gdpr-penalty/

Tumblr to add support for ActivityPub, the social protocol powering Mastodon and other apps

Image Credits: MARTIN BUREAU/AFP / Getty Images

Tumblr will add support for ActivityPub, the open, decentralized social networking protocol that today is powering social networking software like Twitter alternative Mastodon, the Instagram-like Pixelfed, video streaming service PeerTube, and others. The news was revealed in response to a Twitter user’s complaint about Mastodon’s complexities. Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg — whose company acquired Tumblr from Verizon in 2019 — suggested the user “come to Tumblr” as the site would soon “add activitypub for interconnect.”

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/21/tumblr-to-add-support-for-activitypub-the-social-protocol-powering-mastodon-and-other-apps/

DeviantArt provides a way for artists to opt out of AI art generators

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

DeviantArt’s new protection will rely on an HTML tag to prohibit the software robots that crawl pages for images from downloading those images for training sets. Artists who specify that their content can’t be used for AI system development will have “noai” and “noimageai” directives appended to the HTML page associated with their art. In order to remain in compliance with DeviantArt’s updated terms of service, third parties using DeviantArt-sourced content for AI training will have to ensure that their data sets exclude content that has the tags present, Levy says.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/11/deviantart-provides-a-way-for-artists-to-opt-out-of-ai-art-generators/

Unity and IronSource’s $4.4B merger is now complete

Image Credits: Unity

It’s worth noting that in the intervening weeks since Unity and ironSource first announced their plans, AppLovin entered the conversation in a big way when it tabled a $20 billion offer for Unity, on the condition that Unity ended plans to merge with AppLovin’s rival, ironSource. After consideration, Unity ultimately rejected that offer, with its board noting that AppLovin’s offer wasn’t a “superior proposal.”

https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/07/unity-and-ironsources-4-4b-merger-is-now-complete/

Mastodon’s microblogging app saw a record number of downloads after Musk’s Twitter takeover

Image Credits: Mastodon

There’s no doubt this rapid growth in Mastodon app downloads is directly tied to the Musk Twitter takeover. However, Mastodon’s growth isn’t the only sign that some Twitter users are abandoning the platform.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/31/mastodons-microblogging-app-saw-a-record-number-of-downloads-after-musks-twitter-takeover/

AI music generators could be a boon for artists — but also problematic

Image Credits: DALL-E 2 / OpenAI

“Assuming Dance Diffusion one day reaches the point where it can generate coherent whole songs, it seems inevitable that major ethical and legal issues will come to the fore. They already have, albeit around simpler AI systems. In 2020, Jay-Z ‘s record label filed copyright strikes against a YouTube channel, Vocal Synthesis, for using AI to create Jay-Z covers of songs like Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” After initially removing the videos, YouTube reinstated them, finding the takedown requests were “incomplete.” But deepfaked music still stands on murky legal ground.”

https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/07/ai-music-generator-dance-diffusion/