What’s changing?
Platforms have started rolling out new ways for European users to flag illegal online content and dodgy products, which companies will be obligated to take down quickly and objectively.
Amazon opened a new channel for reporting suspected illegal products and is providing more information about third-party merchants.
TikTok gave users an “additional reporting option” for content, including advertising, that they believe is illegal. Categories such as hate speech and harassment, suicide and self-harm, misinformation or frauds and scams, will help them pinpoint the problem.
Then, a “new dedicated team of moderators and legal specialists” will determine whether flagged content either violates its policies or is unlawful and should be taken down, according to the app from Chinese parent company ByteDance.
TikTok says the reason for a takedown will be explained to the person who posted the material and the one who flagged it, and decisions can be appealed.
TikTok users can turn off systems that recommend videos based on what a user has previously viewed. Such systems have been blamed for leading social media users to increasingly extreme posts. If personalized recommendations are turned off, TikTok’s feeds will instead suggest videos to European users based on what’s popular in their area and around the world.
The DSA prohibits targeting vulnerable categories of people, including children, with ads.
Snapchat said advertisers won’t be able to use personalization and optimization tools for teens in the EU and U.K. Snapchat users who are 18 and older also would get more transparency and control over ads they see, including “details and insight” on why they’re shown specific ads.
TikTok made similar changes, stopping users 13 to 17 from getting personalized ads “based on their activities on or off TikTok.”
This is the coolest part of this, and I’m thinking this change is what prompted Google to show blank home screens if you opted out of watch history.
We should always be able to control what media were presented with. I think YouTube recommendations and tiktok are two of the worst culprits of this.
Oh definitely. The fact that in the past Youtube was able to provide recommendations even if you had your watch history turned off, is a sign that turning off watch history didn’t do jack shit in the past.
I just assumed they established those recommendations by other means, such as your subscriptions (doesn’t involve watch history) or location (also doesn’t involve watch history), but I think you’re right. They could easily do what tiktok is planning for:
That they turned it off completely strikes me as them throwing a hissy fit to get you to turn it back on, like they’ve done with other services in the past. Previously if you owned a Pixel phone, but turned off all tracking info in your phone settings, then simple tasks in virtual assistant would turn off, like weather updates, direction requests via maps, ect. They wouldn’t work and instead it would respond with “please turn on browser and app history in privacy settings”.
I expect most people to acquiesce because they’ll think they “broke” something, but really Google has zero incentive to provide any service if they are unable to tailor ads and media to you from your usage data, because they can’t charge half of what they could otherwise to serve you ads.