Facebook wasn’t the first social network – remember MySpace and Friendster? And it’s not exactly the last one standing. Twitter’s still a thing. But Facebook is the biggest, most influential social network in the US, at least… and according to new lawsuits filed by the FTC and 48 attorneys general, Facebook abused its market dominance and deep pockets to stay on top by illegally buying up rivals that could have posed a threat.
Also in today’s roundup, Google has some big changes planned for its Chrome web browser, Adobe is almost done supporting Flash, and the upcoming AYA Neo handheld gaming PC is powerful enough to handle Cyberpunk 2077.
Here’s a roundup of recent tech news from around the web.
- State Attorneys General file antitrust suits against Facebook [NPR]
The top prosecutors for 46 states, Washington DC, and Guam have filed antitrust suites against Facebook, alleging that the social network squashes competition by acquire rivals. If the suits are successful, FB could be made to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp, which it had acquired. The US Federal Trade Commission also filed a lawsuit. - Chrome 88 Beta brings extension Manifest V3 w/ changes to ad blocking, privacy, performance [9to5google]
Google is rolling out a major change to the way Chrome extensions work It will improve security but break compatibility with some older extensions. Despite earlier concerns, Manifest V3 won’t prevent ad blockers from working, but they will need updates. - Release notes for Flash Player 32 (the final release) [Adobe]
Flash is finally (almost) dead. Adobe released the last update to Flash Player this week, but recommends you uninstall it. Adobe will stop supporting Flash after Dec 31 and will block Flash content from even running in Flash Player starting Jan 12, 2021. - Amazon’s new redesigned Fire TV interface begins arriving on Fire TV Sticks today [AFTVNews]
Amazon begins rolling out an updated Fire TV user interface, starting with the Fire TV Stick Lite and 3rd-gen Fire TV Stick. - Update: More Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold reviews [Liliputing]
Update: A few more reviews of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold have arrived, and they’re… not great. The first tablet/laptop with a foldable OLED display is certainly an interesting device, but it’s very expensive and software seems partially baked at best. - AYA Neo handheld gaming PC pre-orders begin in China, international crowdfunding campaign could be next [Liliputing]
This handheld gaming PC is already up for pre-order in China and may be coming to other regions through an upcoming crowdfunding campaign. And the reason I’m reminding you about this is that… - Cyberpunk 2077 running on the AYA Neo [AYA Neo / YouTube]
The makers of the AYA Neo have posted a video showing gameplay of the much-anticipated game Cyberpunk 20777 on this little PC with a 7 inch display surrounded by game controllers and an AMD Ryzen 5 4500U processor under the hood.
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The 48 states want their cut of the profit from the monetization of their resident’s data. The lawsuit is their way of collecting “taxes” from Facebook.
No one is talking about European style laws to protect people’s privacy… America is all about the dollar.
I would much prefer that all social media be wiped off the face of the earth and people, in their desperation, resort to actually talking to those around them again.
Although I’d take forcing facebook to federate with Diaspora and moving accounts to Diaspora nodes. Just spinning of instagram and whatsapp won’t change much.
Funny that you make that statement in another social media platform (ie. this comment system).
I’m convinced that the internet as a whole was a mistake.
We’re just trapped in it because everyone else is trapped in it and no one person is powerful enough to change that.
It merely felt like it offered freedom to those who could use it when it was new and hard to use, but now that corporate interests have overtaken the whole thing, that illusion only exists when you agree with those corporate interests on enough things.
Posting this on the internet is like driving around with a bumper sticker that says “cars are bad”.
I have my own personal distaste for many aspects of the internet, mostly centred around privacy and the use of machine learning in content delivery.
I don’t think the internet as a whole is a bad thing, but I think we’re headed towards some major transformations in society which will largely be caused by algorithms that feed us social media content based on the likelihood that we will react to it. I think we can already observe this in the increasing polar division between different social views in society today. It doesn’t help that social media algorithms are camping likeminded people together on their “content walls” by feeding content that is more likely to agree with you.