Your personal data can now be protected from being exploited on Facebook – if you pay for it, Meta now announces. However, the background is not a new company idea but a court decision from earlier this year, where the company was convicted of unjustified use of personal data.
From November, users within the EU can buy their way out of ads on Instagram and Facebook. For about 150 kronor a month, the company promises that users’ personal data will not be used in targeted advertising or marketing.
“While people are subscribed, their information will not be used for ads”, Meta writes in a press release.
The payment option comes in the wake of earlier this year having to pay a fine of 390 million euros for breaking the EU’s rules on personal data. The tech giant was then convicted by Ireland’s data protection authority, which determined that the company could not justify the use of personal data to create targeted ads unless they first get their consent. The verdict risked completely undermining the tech giant’s business model, which is mainly based on tailoring ads to users.
“We believe in an ad-supported internet, which gives people access to personalised products and services regardless of their economic status. But we respect the spirit and purpose of these evolving European regulations, and are committed to complying with them”, the company writes in a statement.
Subscriptions will currently only be able to be made by people within the EU, EEA, and Switzerland who are over 18 years old. Meta states that it will “continuing to explore how to provide teens with a useful and responsible ad experience given this evolving regulatory landscape”.
For users who refrain from subscribing, Meta will continue to use their data to customize ads as they do today.
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Google has updated its advertising policy, allowing advertisers to track web users with so-called digital fingerprints.The new policy will come into effect in February.
Digital fingerprinting uses signals such as IP address, location, language, software and operating system to identify devices and users online. This tracking technology is more comprehensive than cookies, as information can be collected without the user’s knowledge or consent. Unlike cookies, which can be easily deleted, digital fingerprint data is stored remotely and cannot be deleted by the user.
The new policy will take effect on February 16, Ghacks.net reports. Another change is that Google has removed a previous rule that prohibited advertisers from sending permanent identifying information, like a cell phone’s unique device ID. This means that advertisers can now identify users based on their devices and pass the information to Google for tracking.
As recently as 2019, Google judged that this type of tracking “undermines users’ freedom of choice and is wrong”, but has since changed its stance. The company now says that techniques to protect user privacy have improved significantly and that more essential services are now funded by advertising.
“Must be used legally and transparently”
The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) was among the first to react to Google’s change in advertising policy, stressing that companies cannot use digital fingerprinting in any way they see fit.
“Like all advertising technology, it must be lawfully and transparently deployed – and if it is not, the ICO will act, it wrote in its blog.
Some content blockers can provide protection against digital fingerprinting, according to Ghacks.net. Even browsers such as Firefox and Brave offer built-in protection against this type of tracking.
Tech giant Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison believes in a future where artificial intelligence becomes an integral part of a borderless mass surveillance society where privacy no longer exists and where everything citizens do is mapped and recorded.
Oracle and Larry Ellison will play a key role in Trump’s AI venture “Stargate” – expected to cost upwards of $500 billion and described by the President himself as “by far the largest AI infrastructure project in history”.
There is no doubt that Ellison is one of the world’s most successful tech moguls – just last fall he overtook Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the world’s second richest man after Elon Musk. But how does he see the future of artificial intelligence and how it will affect our lives?
During a meeting with financial analysts last fall, he predicted a future that critics say is reminiscent of dark dystopian novels like George Orwell’s 1984, where humans are subject to constant mass surveillance and AI is used to map citizens’ every move.
According to Ellison, it is highly likely that in the future, AI models will be used to analyze in real time all the material not only from surveillance cameras, police body cameras, but also from car cameras and doorbells.
– Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.
– Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there’s a problem, AI will report the problem and report it to the appropriate person, he continued.
Oracle’s Larry Ellison says a surveillance system of police body cams, cameras on cars and autonomous drones, all monitored by AI, will constantly record and report on police and citizens, leading everyone to be on their best behavior pic.twitter.com/RAq5XGaNmZ
The multi-billionaire also believes that AI-controlled drones will replace real police officers during car chases and other types of crime and disorder.
– If something happens in a shopping center, a drone goes out there and reaches the scene way faster than a police car.
Technology website Ars Technica’s writer Benji Edwards is one of many who reacted strongly to Ellison’s vision of AI surveillance, saying his comments raise questions about the future of citizens’ privacy and right to privacy.
“Ellison’s vision bears more than a passing resemblance to the cautionary world portrayed in George Orwell’s prescient novel 1984. In Orwell’s fiction, the totalitarian government of Oceania uses ubiquitous ‘telescreens’ to monitor citizens constantly, creating a society where privacy no longer exists and independent thought becomes nearly impossible“, Edwards notes.
“But Orwell’s famous phrase ‘Big Brother is watching you’ would take on new meaning in Ellison’s tech-driven scenario, where AI systems, rather than human watchers, would serve as the ever-vigilant eyes of authority. Once considered a sci-fi trope, automated systems are already becoming a reality: Similar automated CCTV surveillance systems have already been trialed in London Underground and at the 2024 Olympics“, he continues.
“A slave obeys”
He points out that automated surveillance systems have already been implemented in Chinese cities, among others, and that AI software is already available that can sort and organize the data collected on residents using a network of deployed surveillance cameras.
According to many observers, similar and even more advanced solutions may soon become part of everyday life in the United States and other countries, and there are warnings that a “digital dictatorship” is emerging where the surveillance state is so all-encompassing that it is impossible for anyone to escape.
“‘Good Behavior’ as defined by the billionaires who own and control everything. Otherwise known as blind obedience and willful subservience to their every whim and want. Because a slave obeys“, expresses one of many worried voices.
Donald Trump has unveiled a massive AI project called Stargate, which aims to strengthen the country’s dominance in artificial intelligence.
The project is a collaboration between several leading tech companies and is said to involve an unprecedented investment in AI infrastructure in the coming years.
Stargate is a joint venture between US-based OpenAI and Oracle and Japan’s Softbank. An initial investment of USD 100 billion is planned, which may eventually increase to USD 500 billion over the next four years, making it one of the largest single technology investments in history.
The project will focus on building data centers and the necessary power generation for AI development, starting in the state of Texas. Trump himself describes the venture as “the largest AI infrastructure project in history” and according to the President, the project will create at least 100,000 new jobs.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, who attended the press conference with Trump, expressed that “this will be the most important project of this era” and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison revealed that the project is already up and running and data centers are under construction.
– We will see diseases get cured at an unprecedented rate. We will be amazed at how quickly we’re curing this cancer and that one – and heart disease, Altman added, with Ellison agreeing.
– Little fragments of those [cancer] tumors float around in your blood. So you can do early cancer detection. If you can do it using AI, you can do early cancer detection with a blood test and using AI to look at the blood test.
Many tech giants involved
Several other tech giants are involved in Stargate, with Microsoft, Nvidia and UK chipmaker Arm mentioned as key partners, and Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son will serve as chairman of the project.
According to a statement from OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia and OpenAI will “closely collaborate to build and operate this computing system”. Softbank is said to have financial responsibility over Stargate, while OpenAI is responsible for the purely operational running.
Announcing The Stargate Project
The Stargate Project is a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States. We will begin deploying $100 billion immediately. This infrastructure will secure…
The project also has ambitious targets in terms of computing power and energy needs. Stargate is expected to require several gigawatts of electricity consumption, which is equivalent to the energy needs of several major data centers today. One of the biggest challenges for the project is also to design a system that can handle the huge amount of heat that will be generated.
It is further stated that Nvidia’s new Blackwell GPU architecture will play a central role in Stargate. These GPUs offer up to 1.4 exaflops of AI performance, which is said to be crucial for the ambitious machine learning models planned for the project.
“Big money and high quality people”
Donald Trump has also pledged to facilitate the project in various ways and emphasized that the government is strongly committed to ensuring US dominance in AI technology.
– So, put that name down in your books because I think you’re going to hear a lot about it in the future, a new American company that will invest USD 500 billion at least in AI infrastructure in the United States and very, very quickly, moving very rapidly, creating over 100,000 American jobs almost immediately.
– It’s big money and high quality people involved… This grand project is a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential, the President himself proclaimed as the project was unveiled.
AI as a mass surveillance tool?
While expectations for the AI initiative are high, some critics also express concern about Trump’s close relationship with the tech industry and how the US risks moving in a more technocratic direction during his presidency.
Others point out that several of the actors involved seem to advocate a rather totalitarian mass surveillance society. It is noted, for example, that Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest men, recently described a future in which everything citizens do is monitored and recorded with the help of artificial intelligence.
Oracle’s Larry Ellison says a surveillance system of police body cams, cameras on cars and autonomous drones, all monitored by AI, will constantly record and report on police and citizens, leading everyone to be on their best behavior pic.twitter.com/RAq5XGaNmZ
– Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on. Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there’s a problem, AI will report the problem and report it to the appropriate person, he predicted.
Pixelfed, a challenger to Meta’s Instagram, has now been launched as a mobile app.The image sharing platform does not share user data with third parties and is based on open source code.
The platform has been available since 2018 but has previously only been accessible via the web or through third-party app clients.
The Android app launched on January 9, while the iOS app was released earlier this week, Engadget reports.
Unlike Instagram, Pixelfed does not share user data with third parties, nor does it have any advertising. However, the platform is similar to Instagram in both appearance and image sharing functionality but is based on open source code. Furthermore, Pixelfed will also display content in chronological order, which Facebook and Instagram no longer do.
On Monday, the creator, Daniel Supernault, wrote that 11,000 users had joined the platform in the last 24 hours and that more than 78,000 posts have been shared to Pixelfed.
Earlier this week, reports emerged that Meta had blocked links to Pixelfed on Facebook. A representative from the company said it was mistakenly treated as spam and that the posts would be reinstated.
