Exclusive-Meta says EU antitrust regulators are discriminating against its business model
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Meta Platforms on Friday criticised EU antitrust regulators for moving the goalpost as the U.S. company seeks to comply with an order targeting its pay-or-consent business model.
The tech giant said the European Commission had discriminated against its business model and that it had nevertheless engaged constructively in discussions and introduced extensive changes.
"We are confident that the range of choices we offer people in the EU doesn't just comply with what the EU's rules require - it goes well beyond them," a Meta spokesperson said.
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Fast Company
20 minutes ago
- Fast Company
WhatsApp just got banned on Capitol Hill. Here's how you can make the Meta messaging platform more secure
The U.S. House of Representatives' Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), Catherine Szpindor, informed congressional staffers this week that WhatsApp is now banned from government phones. The move came after the CAO's Office of Cybersecurity deemed the Meta-owned app to be 'high-risk to users'—a claim that WhatsApp quickly rebutted. But the CAO is correct. While WhatsApp is one of the more secure messaging apps out there, it does have some privacy and security risks. Users can mitigate some of these risks, but others are beyond their control. Here's why WhatsApp is now banned in the U.S. House of Representatives and how you can make the app more secure on your phone. What the Office of Cybersecurity said, exactly The news that the CAO's Office of Cybersecurity had announced a ban on WhatsApp this week came from Axios. On Tuesday, the publication published parts of an internal CAO memo it received, which was sent to congressional staffers on Monday, announcing that WhatsApp was now verboten on government phones. The memo stipulated that 'House staff are NOT allowed to download or keep the WhatsApp application on any House device, including any mobile, desktop, or web browser versions of its products.' It went on to add: 'If you have a WhatsApp application on your House-managed device, you will be contacted to remove it.' The reason? According to the memo, 'The Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high-risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use.' The CAO didn't provide further details in the memo regarding the above risks. Still, it's easy to interpret some of the things that may have made the CAO leery about the continued use of WhatsApp by Congressional staffers. WhatsApp's transparency issue WhatsApp, like competing secure messaging apps including Apple's iMessages and Signal, is end-to-end encrypted, meaning that no parties other than the ones in the chat, even including Meta, can read the chat messages. But WhatsApp collects a lot more metadata from each chat than other secure messaging apps do, and it sends this info to Meta A chat's metadata includes information such as the identities of the chat participants, IP addresses, phone numbers, and the timestamps of messages. No one knows exactly what Meta does with this metadata. Still, it is shared with Meta's other platforms, including Instagram and Facebook. It is likely used to help the company build social graphs of users, leveraged for advertising purposes, and analyzed by the company to understand who is using their apps, and when and where. This opaqueness is likely some of the 'lack of transparency' risk that the CAO was referring to. As for the 'absence of stored data encryption,' the CAO may have been referring to the default method by which WhatsApp backs up a user's chats. While WhatsApp chats are end-to-end encrypted, if a user backs up those chats to the cloud, the backup itself is not end-to-end encrypted by default. This means that if a bad actor gains access to a WhatsApp user's cloud backup, they could read all of that user's messages. It's no wonder the CAO's Office of Cybersecurity finds this worrying. WhatsApp also doesn't have other privacy and security features on by default, including the ability to lock the app behind biometrics and requiring two-step verification when a WhatsApp account is installed on another phone. If you don't work in the House of Representatives, you can still keep WhatsApp on your phone. But you might want to mitigate its privacy and security risks. Here's how. How to make WhatsApp more secure on your phone Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do about WhatsApp's metadata problem. Meta designs WhatsApp so that the metadata of your chats is sent directly to the company. There's no way you can turn this data collection off. But you can make the app more secure on your phone by following some simple steps, including: End-to-end encrypt your WhatsApp backups: In WhatsApp, go to Settings>Chats>Chat Backup>End-to-End Encrypted Backup and turn this option on. Now your chat backups saved in the cloud will be end-to-end encrypted. Lock WhatsApp: You can set WhatsApp to refuse to open without further authentication by locking the app. This means that even if someone has access to your unlocked phone, they won't be able to open WhatsApp unless they know your phone's PIN, or have your face or fingerprint. To lock WhatsApp, go to WhatsApp's Settings>Privacy>App Lock and toggle the feature on. Enable two-step verification: If someone logs into your WhatsApp account on their phone, they'll be able to see your messages. That's why you should set up two-step verification for your account. This will require a PIN that you set to be entered whenever an attempt is made to log into your WhatsApp account on a new device. If the PIN isn't entered correctly, the new device won't have access to your account. To enable two-step verification, go to WhatsApp's Settings>Account>Two-Step Verification and toggle the feature on. Apps the CAO suggests using instead When reached for comment on the CAO's decision to ban WhatsApp, the organization's chief administrative officer, Catherine Szpindor, told Fast Company, 'Protecting the People's House is our topmost priority, and we are always monitoring and analyzing for potential cybersecurity risks that could endanger the data of House Members and staff. We routinely review the list of House-authorized apps and will amend the list as deemed appropriate.' In the past, the CAO has banned or imposed partial bans on various foreign apps, including those from ByteDance, such as TikTok. But the CAO has also previously announced bans or restrictions on apps made by American companies, including Microsoft Copilot and the free versions of ChatGPT. As for Meta, a company spokesperson told Fast Company that it disagrees with the CAO's characterization of WhatsApp 'in the strongest possible terms.' The spokesperson also asserted that, when it comes to end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp offers 'a higher level of security than most of the apps on the CAO's approved list that do not offer that protection.' In the Office of Cybersecurity's memo, the agency provided guidance on alternative secure messaging apps that House staffers could use now that WhatsApp had been banned. According to Axios, those apps include Apple's iMessage and FaceTime, Microsoft Teams, Wickr, and Signal.
New York Times
27 minutes ago
- New York Times
The Narrowing of Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's Philanthropy
At a Silicon Valley off-site meeting in February for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan were asked to reassure their staff about their philanthropy's approach to diversity, equity and inclusion. Dr. Chan, a pediatrician, spoke first. She told employees that words such as D.E.I. would be de-emphasized internally, according to four attendees, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the confidential meeting. But, Dr. Chan insisted in lengthy remarks, the charitable organization's commitment would not change. Then Mr. Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, chimed in. Their philanthropy was going to hire the best talent for the job, he said bluntly. Within days, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative ended diversity-based recruiting and laid off or reassigned employees who ran diversity initiatives, scrubbing its website of all references. A few months later, a school for low-income students that Dr. Chan had founded announced it was closing. The philanthropy also axed its work in housing, its most progressive remaining project. The moves capped a startling retrenchment for an organization that had once set out to be a sprawling left-of-center philanthropic endeavor. Mr. Zuckerberg, 41, and his wife, Dr. Chan, 40, had started the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2015 using the wealth from their social networking empire to form a 'new kind of philanthropy' and pledging to fix American education, transform U.S. public policy and 'cure all disease.' 'Our hopes for your generation focus on two ideas: advancing human potential and promoting equality,' Mr. Zuckerberg and Dr. Chan wrote in an open letter about the effort to their newborn daughter, Max, at the time. They added, 'We must participate in policy and advocacy to shape debates.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Trump Backs Meta in Dispute Over Canada's Digital Services Tax
This story was originally published on Social Media Today. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Social Media Today newsletter. It looks like Mark Zuckerberg is finally seeing some return for his support for U.S. President Donald Trump, though not quite in the way he would have hoped. Today, President Trump has announced that the U.S. will cease all trade discussions with Canada in response to the Canadian government seeking to impose what amounts to unfair taxes on U.S. technology platforms, including Meta. Well, really, primarily Meta, though the 'taxes' in this case are not really new. Back in 2023, Canadian officials introduced the 'Online News Act,' which is ostensibly designed to address imbalances in the local news ecosystem, by forcing large online platforms, like Meta and Google, to pay Canadian publishers for news content that's shared across their platforms. But both Meta and Google pushed back against the bill, saying that the proposed regulations don't accurately reflect the state of the modern news ecosystem, but the Canadian government pushed ahead anyway, which eventually saw Meta block all Canadian news outlets in its apps. That ban remains in place, which means that Meta's not currently paying any of these imposed costs put in place by the bill. In order to address this, last year, Canadian officials introduced an alternative 'Digital Services Tax,' which will see digital services operating in the region that bring in more than $20 million per annum charged a 3% tax on their local earnings (above that $20m threshold). That means that Meta, even if it isn't using local news publisher content, will still have to pay to operate in the region. The first payments are due next week. Which has now seemingly been brought to the attention of Trump, who's responded with reciprocal penalties for what he sees as penalties that unfairly target U.S. tech platforms. As per Trump (via Truth Social): 'We have just been informed that Canada, a very difficult Country to TRADE with, including the fact that they have charged our Farmers as much as 400% Tariffs, for years, on Dairy Products, has just announced that they are putting a Digital Services Tax on our American Technology Companies, which is a direct and blatant attack on our Country. They are obviously copying the European Union, which has done the same thing, and is currently under discussion with us, also. Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately.' Trump further noted that the White House will let Canada know the tariff that they'll have to pay 'to do business with the United States' within seven days. Which is another addition to the tariffs and penalties that Trump has already imposed on Canada trade, and as such, it seems unlikely that this will have much impact on the Canadian government's actions on this front. But still, it does seem surprising that Trump's only just realized that this bill exists, given that Meta blocked news in its apps in Canada almost two years ago, and that the Digital Services Tax was announced last year. But even so, this is the exact reason why Zuck and Co. have sought to cosy up to the second Trump Administration, in order to call on the White House to push back against penalties like this, as well as regulations in Europe, which it believes unfairly focus on its business. Indeed, over the past few years, EU regulators have fined Meta, on average, around $1 billion per year due to breaches of its increasingly complex Digital Services Act. Zuckerberg has repeatedly criticized these penalties, noting in an interview earlier this year that: 'The EU has fined the tech companies more than $30 billion over the last, I think it was like 10 or 20 years, so when you think about it, what it really adds up to is this kind of EU-wide policy for how they want to deal with American tech. It's almost like a tariff, and I think the US government basically gets to decide how they're going to deal with it.' Zuckerberg says that the American technology industry is 'a bright spot in the American economy,' and as such, it's of strategic advantage for the U.S. Government to defend that. Which is where he's hoping his fealty to Trump will benefit Meta, in pushing back against EU regulations specifically. And while Canada is a lesser consideration on this front, the fact that Trump is taking a stand would clearly be music to the ears of Meta's executive team. But will Trump be as willing to push back against EU penalties? The Trump administration has flagged that it will take a stand. Earlier this year, for example, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) publicly criticized the European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA), which he says is 'incompatible with America's free speech tradition.' Vice President JD Vance also criticized EU regulations, while Trump himself has also threatened European imports with tariffs in penalty for tech regulations that harm U.S. companies. Though Trump has stopped short of taking specific action against European regulators as yet. In this sense, Canada is a softer target, and one that Trump is already beating up on with other tariffs and penalties. So it's not quite what Meta wants, but if it does end up saving the company from more penalties, and big fines from such, it could still be worth the PR hit that Zuckerberg has taken in re-aligning Meta's approach in line with Trump's wishes. But it's the EU rules that Meta really wants the White House to push back on. And with European officials looking to impose even more fines on the company, we'll see if Meta gets the full benefit of its new political allegiance. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
