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Democratic Senators Urge Meta to Halt Launch of Metaverse App for Teens, Citing Company’s ‘Failure to Protect’ Young Users
Two Democratic Senators are pressuring Meta to halt plans to open the Metaverse to teenagers by lowering the age limit to its “Horizon Worlds” app, criticizing the company’s past handling of youth data and privacy.
In a joint letter to Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumental demanded the company scrap plans to expand access to the app — a virtual reality program set in the Metaverse — for teens aged 13 to 17 as soon as this month. Currently, the app only allows users aged 18 and up.
In a statement to Insider, a Meta spokesperson said its Quest VR platform — the virtual reality headset needed to access Horizon — “has always been designed for people ages 13+” and thus ” it makes sense” for the company to expand to younger demographics.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Meta plans to release the Horizon Worlds app to teens in order to expand its user base. In an internal memo cited by the Journal, Horizon vice president Gabriel Aul told staff that improving user retention among youth users was a top priority.
In their letter, Markey and Blumenthal harped on Meta’s past endeavors regarding children and young adults, arguing that the company poses a threat to the well-being of American teens.
FTC Set to Fine BetterHelp $7.8 Million for Sending Facebook Your Mental Health Data
The Federal Trade Commission is poised to ban the mental health app BetterHelp from sharing medical information with Facebook, Snapchat, and other online advertisers. A proposed order issued Thursday includes a $7.8 million fine and limits the ways BetterHelp can share mental health data going forward. It’s part of a new push by the FTC to reign in the internet’s rampant problems with health privacy.
“When a person struggling with mental health issues reaches out for help, they do so in a moment of vulnerability and with an expectation that professional counseling services will protect their privacy,” said Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in a press release. “Instead, BetterHelp betrayed consumers’ most personal health information for profit.”
The FTC says BetterHelp pushed its users to hand over sensitive health information so it could turn around and target them with ads, making false promises about privacy along the way.
This isn’t the first time mental health apps landed in hot water over their data practices. Talkspace in particular is accused of some alarming privacy problems, but numerous mental health app privacy investigations, including into BetterHelp, have uncovered the mishandling of medical data and widespread misrepresentations about the privacy truth.
Actor Tim Robbins Backs Woody Harrelson on Ending COVID Protocols: ‘Time to End This Charade’
“The Shawshank Redemption” actor Tim Robbins blasted COVID-19 protocols on Twitter Thursday, calling them a “charade” and declaring it’s time to end them.
The politically outspoken actor publicly expressed support for fellow Hollywood actor Woody Harrelson’s recent anti-vaccine statements that he made in a New York Times interview last week. Sharing an article about the actor’s statements, Robbins tweeted, “Woody is right. Time to end this charade. @sagaftra @ActorsEquity.”
Harrelson expressed his frustrations with Hollywood coronavirus safety measures in the interview, telling the Times they’re “absurd.”
When asked what’s absurd about them, he responded, “The fact that they’re still going on! I don’t think that anybody should have the right to demand that you’re forced to do the testing, forced to wear the mask and forced to get vaccinated three years on.”
ChatGPT Is Exciting, but Microsoft’s Influence Is Cause for Concern
The artificial intelligence dream has landed in our everyday lives, and the ethical discussions around AI have ramped up as a consequence, especially concerning how much data these AI services are collecting from users. After all, where there is mass storage of possibly sensitive information, there are cybersecurity and privacy concerns.
Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which is newly equipped with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and is currently being rolled out, has brought its own set of concerns, as Microsoft hasn’t had the best track record when it comes to respecting its customers’ privacy.
Microsoft has occasionally been challenged about its management and access to user data, although notably less so than its contemporaries like Apple, Google and Facebook, even though it deals in a great deal of user information — including when it sells targeted ads.
Microsoft isn’t the only company under scrutiny over how it collects and handles user data when it comes to AI chatbots. OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, also disclosed that it reviews user conversations.
Tech companies would do well to pay extra attention to make sure our personal data is as secure as possible — or lose the trust of their customers and potentially kill off their fledgling AI ambitions.
After Dobbs, Democrats Roll Out Health and Location Data Protections
Democrats introduced a bill Thursday to protect sensitive health and location data from being sold to online advertisers.
The Upholding Protections for Health and Online Location Data (UPHOLD) Privacy Act aims to resolve lingering concerns over the online safety of abortion-seeking patients. Introduced by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the bill would ban the use of personally identifiable health data from being used for targeted advertising and bar the sale of precision location data to data brokerages.
Following the reversal of Roe v. Wade last June, privacy groups feared that companies collecting and selling sensitive health and precise geolocation data could put reproductive healthcare patients at risk, especially in states that restrict abortion access. In May, a Vice report seemingly confirmed these fears, identifying a data firm that sold location data related to visits to Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics.
‘Spy Balloon in Your Phone’: Growing Calls to Ban TikTok Threaten Its Future
The Chinese spy balloon that hovered over the U.S. last month did not just damage relations between Beijing and Washington, it also cast a shadow over the future of TikTok.
Last week, a U.S. congressional committee backed legislation that would give the U.S. president the power to ban the Chinese-owned social video app. The Republican chair of the committee, Michael McCaul, said the incident had reinforced fears of Chinese state surveillance, describing TikTok as a “spy balloon in your phone”.
It came days after Canada announced it would join the U.S. in barring TikTok from government mobile devices because of security concerns. The EU’s executive arm and the European Parliament have also banned the app from staff phones.
It is unclear how a U.S.-wide ban on TikTok would be implemented and the bill provides few guidelines or limitations. “It means that they can do whatever they think they need to do to prevent citizens from engaging with a company that meets the relevant criteria,” said American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) senior policy counsel Jenna Leventoff.
Big Lies, Big Data and the Rise of Bigger Brother
The Guardian’s Oliver Wainwright recently discussed a new “international socialist conspiracy” that has taken the world by storm. “Fringe forces of the far left,” he noted, “are plotting to take away our freedom to be stuck in traffic jams, to crawl along clogged ring roads and trawl the streets in search of a parking spot.” The name of this “chilling global movement?” he asked, sarcastically and somewhat contemptuously: The “15-minute city (FMC).” Wainwright believes these cities are simply part of a “mundane planning theory.” He’s wrong.
Also known as smart cities, FMCs are places where everything imaginable, from your place of work to your favorite pizzeria, is accessible either by foot or bike (not by car, though; they will be verboten) in 15 minutes or less. What’s so bad about this? On first inspection, very little. We are, after all, creatures of comfort. We live in a world where the mantra “Too Long, Didn’t Read (TL;DR)” now reigns supreme. We crave convenience; we crave expediency. However, expediency isn’t always a good thing; sometimes it’s downright dangerous.
This is especially true when people, either consciously or otherwise, trade their freedom for ease of access to certain services. FMCs may make it easier for citizens to get from A to B, but these creations will also make it easier for those in power to spy on us, harvest our data and enable Big Brother to become Bigger Brother.
As I write this, FMCs are being actively championed by the World Economic Forum (WEF), the group behind the “Great Reset” and the idea of owning nothing, having absolutely no privacy and being very happy. This fact alone should concern all readers.
Chinese City Claims to Have Destroyed 1 Billion Pieces of Personal Data Collected for COVID Control
A Chinese city says it has destroyed a billion pieces of personal data collected during the pandemic, as local governments gradually dismantle their coronavirus surveillance and tracking systems after abandoning the country’s controversial zero-COVID policy.
The one billion pieces of data were collected for purposes including COVID tests, contact tracing and the prevention of imported cases — and they were only the first batch of such data to be disposed, the statement said.
China collects vast amounts of data on its citizens — from gathering their DNA and other biological samples to tracking their movements on a sprawling network of surveillance cameras and monitoring their digital footprints.
But since the pandemic, state surveillance has pushed deeper into the private lives of Chinese citizens, resulting in unprecedented levels of data collection. Following the dismantling of zero-COVID restrictions, residents have grown concerned over the security of the huge amount of personal data stored by local governments, fearing potential data leaks or theft.
Dozens of Medical Groups Launch Effort to Battle Health Misinformation
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Alarmed by the increasing spread of medical misinformation, 50 U.S. medical and science organizations have announced the formation of a new group that aims to debunk fake health news.
To tackle the problem, the coalition noted that all member organizations will work towards ensuring that all patients can “have equitable access to and confidence in the accurate, understandable and relevant information necessary to make personally appropriate health decisions.”
To that end, the coalition’s founders say they will strive to improve health and scientific literacy; fact-check and correct misinformation and disinformation, and boost public trust in fact-based science.
