Ivan Mehta reports via TechCrunch: Instagram head Adam Mosseri said today that a Threads API is in the works. This will give developers a chance to create different apps and experiences around Threads. Mosseri was responding to journalist Casey Newton, who was conversing with a user about a TweetDeck-like experience for Threads. The Instagram head expressed apprehension about publishers posting a bunch of content and in turn, overshadowing creator content.

"We're working on it. My concern is that it'll mean a lot more publisher content and not much more creator content, but it still seems like something we need to get done," Mosseri said in a post. Later, an engineer working on Threads said that the team would start with endpoints for publishing content for the API. [...]

While Mosseri is concerned about publishers pushing an overwhelming amount of content through API integration, creators also need different tools to post various types of content. It also makes it easier for developers to design features suited for a specific platform if there is the option for an API integration.

LinkedIn, the business-focused social network owned by Microsoft, on Wednesday said it now has more than 1 billion members and is adding more AI features for paying users. From a report: Crossing the billion-users mark puts LinkedIn -- where members maintain a resume-like profile of their education, work experience and professional skills -- in the top-tier of social media networks that include rivals such as Meta Platforms. About 80% of recent members are signing up from outside of the United States, the company has said.

LinkedIn has a free tier of membership but also offers subscriptions. Members of its $39.99-a-month tier will get new AI features that can tell a user, who may be plowing through dozens of job postings, whether they're a good candidate based on the information in their profile. The system can also recommend profile changes to make the user more competitive for a job.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: They say you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. But when it comes to tackling a tricky task, researchers have found that getting angry can also be a powerful motivator. The experiments suggest people who are angry perform better on a set of challenging tasks than those who are emotionally neutral. "These findings demonstrate that anger increases effort toward attaining a desired goal, frequently resulting in greater success," said Dr Heather Lench, the first author of the study.

The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (PDF), details how researchers at Texas A&M University conducted experiments involving more than 1,000 people, and analyzed survey data from more than 1,400 people, to explore the possible impact of anger on people in various circumstances. In one experiment, students were shown images previously found to elicit anger, desire, amusement, sadness or no particular emotion at all. Participants were subsequently asked to solve a series of anagrams. The results reveal that for a challenging set of anagrams, those who were angry did better than those in the other possible emotional states -- although no difference was seen for easy anagrams.

The researchers say one explanation could be down to a link between anger and greater persistence, with the team finding those who were angry spent more time on the difficult set of anagrams. In another experiment, participants who were angry did better at dodging flags in a skiing video game than those who were neutral or sad, and were on a par with those who felt amusement or desire. "This pattern could indicate that general physical arousal had a benefit for game scores, as this would be greater in anger, amused, and desire conditions compared to the sad and neutral conditions," the researchers write. However, no such differences in performance was found when it came to an easier video game.

China's popular social media platforms are requiring "self-media" accounts with over 500,000 followers to disclose real-name information, prompting concerns over increased doxxing and privacy among some users. Reuters reports: China's most popular social media platforms on Tuesday announced that "self-media" accounts with more than 500,000 followers will be asked to display real-name information, a controversial measure that has prompted concerns over doxxing and privacy among some users. "Self-media" includes news and information not necessarily approved by the government, a genre of online content regulators have cracked down on in recent years to "purify" China's cyberspace. [...]

Rumors of the new policy had prompted lively debate among users. Some, like former state media editor Hu Xijin, have defended the measure as necessary in order to force influential accounts to use more responsible speech. Others, however, have expressed concerns that the measure would make doxxing easier and platforms would further remove online users' anonymity in the future.

The new measures will remove the anonymity of thousands of influencers on social media platforms that are used daily by hundreds of millions of Chinese. Several of the platforms said that accounts with over 1 million followers would be affected first and those that do not comply would face restrictions in their online traffic and income as a consequence.

Pete Syme reports via Insider: A British software company is giving Meta 30 days to stop using the name Threads in the UK because it owns the trademark. Threads Software Limited says its lawyers wrote to the Facebook and Instagram parent company on Monday. If Meta doesn't stop using the name Threads, Threads Software Limited says it will seek an injunction from the courts.

The British company trademarked Threads in 2012 for its intelligent messaging hub, which can store a company's emails, tweets, and voice over internet protocol phone calls in a cloud database. In a press release, it said it had declined the four offers that Meta's lawyers made to purchase its domain name "threads.app." Then when Meta launched Threads, its social media app designed to compete with Elon Musk's X, the British company says it was removed from Facebook. John Yardley, the managing director of Threads Software Limited, said the business "faces a serious threat from one of the largest technology companies in the world."

"We recognize that this is a classic 'David and Goliath' battle with Meta," said Yardley. "And whilst they may think they can use whatever name they want, that does not give them the right to use the Threads brand name."

The creator economy is probably bigger than you think. The Washington Post reports it's "now a global industry valued at $250 billion, with tens of millions of workers, hundreds of millions of customers and its own trade association and work-credentialing programs." Millions have ditched traditional career paths to work as online creators and content-makers, using their computers and phones to amass followers and build businesses whose influence now rivals the biggest names in entertainment, news and politics... In the United States, the video giant YouTube estimated that roughly 390,000 full-time jobs last year were supported by its creators' work — four times the number of people employed by General Motors, America's biggest automaker...

This spring, analysts at Goldman Sachs said that 50 million people now work as creators around the world. The analysts expect the industry's "total addressable market," an estimate of consumer demand, will jump from $250 billion this year to $480 billion by 2027. For comparison, the global revenue from video games, now at about $227 billion, is expected to climb to roughly $312 billion by 2027, analysts at the financial giant PwC estimated in June. YouTube's report estimated that its creators contributed $35 billion to [U.S.] gross domestic product last year, a figure that would rank the group's combined output ahead of U.S. furniture manufacturing but behind rail transportation, according to industry data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis....

Payments from advertisers to creators in the United States have more than doubled since 2019, to $5 billion, estimates from the market research firm Insider Intelligence show... Megan Pollock, a branding executive at Panasonic North America, said that the company now devotes about 10 percent of its marketing budget to creators and that she expects further increases amid a long-term shift away from traditional ad campaigns.
Other interesting details from the article:

• Last month people watched 53 million hours of video a day just on Twitch. But 74% of that went to the top 10,000 streamers (according to data from the analytics firm StreamElements).

• "Creators' incomes are determined by giant tech and advertising companies that can change the rules in an instant, and a single mistake can unravel their careers."

• When America's youth are asked what they want to be when they grow up, "Influencer" is now one of the most popular answers — ranking higher than "astronaut" and "professional athlete"

According to Bloomberg the U.S. Labor Department's "OSHA" regulatory agency has "cited Amazon for exposing workers to ergonomic risks at several facilities." But how widespread is the problem?

29% of America's warehouse workers are working for Amazon, a team of researchers estimates. And "More than two-thirds of Amazon warehouse workers surveyed by researchers reported that they took unpaid time off to recover from pain or exhaustion sustained on the job." The new national study, published Wednesday by the University of Illinois Chicago's Center for Urban Economic Development, found that 69% of workers surveyed stayed home without pay to recover, including 34% who did so three or more times. The data suggests "injury and pain at Amazon are far more widespread" than previously known, said Beth Gutelius, research director at the center and a leading expert on logistics and warehouse work.

The report is based on a 98-question online survey that gathered responses from 1,484 warehouse workers in 451 facilities across 42 states, the researchers said. It was conducted between April and August and measured the percentage of workers who took time off during the previous month. Amazon employs hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers in the U.S.

Amazon spokesperson Maureen Lynch Vogel said the report was "not a 'study' — it's a survey done on social media, by groups with an ulterior motive." She recommended that people read the safety data Amazon submits each year to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, "which shows that rates in our buildings have improved significantly, and we're slightly above the average in some areas and slightly below the average in others."
41% of the workers surveyed reported being injured while working at an Amazon warehouse, according to the article. And "the share rises to 51% for people who have worked at the company for more than three years."

"For the last two decades, our social networking and social media platforms have been universes unto themselves," writes the Verge's editor-at-large: Each has its own social graph, charting who you follow and who follows you. Each has its own feed, its own algorithms, its own apps, and its own user interfaces (though they've all pretty much landed on the same aesthetics over time). Each also has its own publishing tools, its own character limits, its own image filters. Being online means constantly flitting between these places and their ever-shifting sets of rules and norms. Now, though, we may be at the beginning of a new era. Instead of a half-dozen platforms competing to own your entire life, apps like Mastodon, Bluesky, Pixelfed, Lemmy, and others are building a more interconnected social ecosystem.

If this ActivityPub-fueled change takes off, it will break every social network into a thousand pieces. All posts, of all types, will be separated from their platforms. We'll get new tools for creating those posts, new tools for reading them, new tools for organizing them, and new tools for moderating them and sharing them and remixing them and everything else besides.
He's talking about a decades-old concept called POSSE: Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere. ("Sometimes the P is also 'Post,' and the E can be 'Elsewhere.' The idea is the same either way." The idea is that you, the poster, should post on a website that you own. Not an app that can go away and take all your posts with it, not a platform with ever-shifting rules and algorithms. Your website. But people who want to read or watch or listen to or look at your posts can do that almost anywhere because your content is syndicated to all those platforms... [Y]our blog becomes the hub for everything, your main home on the internet.
The article argues that for now, "the best we have are tools like Micro.blog, a six-year-old platform for cross-posters." But the article ultimately envisions a future with not just new posting tools, but also new reading tools "with different ideas about how to display and organize posts."

Scharon Harding reports via Ars Technica: On Thursday, Leica Camera released the first camera that can take pictures with automatically encrypted metadata and provide features such as an editing history. The company believes this system, called Content Credentials, will help photojournalists protect their work and prove authenticity in a world riddled with AI-manipulated content.

Leica's M11-P can store each captured image with Content Credentials, which is based on the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity's (C2PA's) open standard and is being pushed by the Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI). Content Credentials, announced in October, includes encrypted metadata detailing where and when the photo was taken and with what camera and model. It also keeps track of edits and tools used for edits. When a photographer opts to use the feature, they'll see a Content Credentials logo in the camera's display, and images will be signed through the use of an algorithm.

The feature requires the camera to use a specialized chipset for storing digital certificates. Credentials can be verified via Leica's FOTOS app or on the Content Credentials website. Leica's announcement said: "Whenever someone subsequently edits that photo, the changes are recorded to an updated manifest, rebundled with the image, and updated in the Content Credentials database whenever it is reshared on social media. Users who find these images online can click on the CR icon in the [pictures'] corner to pull up all of this historical manifest information as well, providing a clear chain of providence, presumably, all the way back to the original photographer." The M11-P's Content Credentials is an opt-in feature and can also be erased. As Ars has previously noted, an image edited with tools that don't support Content Credentials can also result in a gap in the image's provenance data.

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has announced the creation of a 39-member advisory body to address issues in the international governance of artificial intelligence. From a report: Members include tech company executives, government officials from Spain to Saudi Arabia, and academics from countries such as the U.S., Russia and Japan. Sony Chief Technology Officer Hiroaki Kitano, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati and Microsoft Chief Responsible AI Officer Natasha Crampton are among the executives representing technology companies.

Representatives also come from six continents with diverse backgrounds ranging from U.S.-based AI expert Vilas Dhar to Professor Yi Zeng fom China and Egyptian lawyer Mohamed Farahat. "The transformative potential of AI for good is difficult even to grasp," Guterres said in a statement. "And without entering into a host of doomsday scenarios, it is already clear that the malicious use of AI could undermine trust in institutions, weaken social cohesion and threaten democracy itself," he said.

"Threads is officially a success," writes long-time Slashdot reader destinyland. 9to5Mac reports: During Meta's quarterly earnings call today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg offered an update on the Threads, saying that the service has "just under" 100 million monthly active users. When Threads launched in July, the app quickly rocketed to having 100 million users within just a few days. While that growth is believed to have slowed down, as expected when something takes off so quickly, Zuckerberg says the service is currently at almost 100 million active users. Note the difference in terms, too. Having 100 million "users" is one thing, while having 100 million monthly active users is quite different -- and more impressive.

The number is also impressive when you consider that Threads isn't available to the millions of people who live in the European Union. As noted by The Verge, Zuckerberg also reiterated today that Meta's goal is to turn Threads into a "billion-person public conversations app" that is "a bit more positive" than some of the competition. According to Zuckerberg, Threads is on the way to achieving that goal.

"Privacy advocate Alexander Hanff has filed a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) challenging YouTube's use of JavaScript code to detect the presence of ad blocking extensions in the browsers of website visitors," writes long-time Slashdot reader Dotnaught. "He claims that under Europe's ePrivacy Directive, YouTube needs to ask permission to run its detection script because it's not technically necessary. If the DPC agrees, it would be a major win for user privacy." The Register reports: Asked how he hopes the Irish DPC will respond, Hanff replied via email, "I would expect the DPC to investigate and issue an enforcement notice to YouTube requiring them to cease and desist these activities without first obtaining consent (as per [Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)] standard) for the deployment of their -spyware- detection scripts; and further to order YouTube to unban any accounts which have been banned as a result of these detections and to delete any personal data processed unlawfully (see Article 5(1) of GDPR) since they first started to deploy their -spyware- detection scripts."

Hanff's use of strikethrough formatting to acknowledges the legal difficulty of using the term "spyware" to refer to YouTube's ad block detection code. The security industry's standard defamation defense terminology for such stuff is PUPs, or potentially unwanted programs. Hanff, who reports having a Masters in Law focused on data and privacy protection, added that the ePrivacy Directive is lex specialis to GPDR. That means where laws overlap, the specific one takes precedence over the more general one. Thus, he argues, personal data collected without consent is unlawful under Article 5(1) of GDPR and cannot be lawfully processed for any purpose.

With regard to YouTube's assertion that using an ad blocker violates the site's Terms of Service, Hanff argued, "Any terms and conditions which restrict the legal rights and freedoms of an EU citizen (and the point of Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive is specifically to protect the fundamental right to Privacy under Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union) are void under EU law." Therefore, in essence, "Any such terms which restrict the rights of EU persons to limit access to their terminal equipment would, as a result, be void and unenforceable," he added.

Hyundai said this week that it will set up "mobile clinics" at five U.S. locations to provide anti-theft software upgrades for vehicles now regularly targeted by thieves using a technique popularized on TikTok and other social media platforms. From a report: The South Korean automaker will hold the clinics, which will run for two to three days on or adjacent to weekends, in New York City; Chicago; Minneapolis; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Rochester, New York. The clinics will take place between Oct. 28 and Nov. 18. Hyundai said it will also support single-day regional clinics run by dealerships before the end of 2023, although it didn't name locations or dates.

Pebble, the first of the would-be Twitter replacements to emerge after Elon Musk bought Twitter, is shutting down. The social media platform -- previously known as T2 to indicate a desire to build a Twitter clone -- was founded by former Twitter employees Sarah Oh and Gabor Cselle. Steven Vaughan-Nichols writes via ZDNet: Pebble was an early-stage, Twitter-like social network. Its goal was to become the "place to have the authentic conversations we've always wanted to have." Its founders, who were largely Twitter alumni, designed Pebble to look and feel like pre-Musk Twitter, with a 280-character limit and direct messaging. I rather liked it, but it appears I was in the minority. Pebble was always a bit rough around the edges, and it never made it past about 20,000 users.

In what was still a surprising announcement, Pebble revealed its plans to shut down operations on November 1, 2023. In a letter to users, Pebble said: "The painful truth, however, is that we were not growing quickly enough for investors to believe that we will break out. Combine that with a crowded space of alternatives -- and the uphill climb is even steeper. In order to continue to build out a complete Pebble, we would have needed more investment, and more time." That was not to be -- and Pebble's backers ran out of money and time.

A spokesperson for the platform stated: "While we are immensely proud of what we achieved with our dedicated team and an incredible community, the reality is that our growth rate was not meeting the expectations set by our investors." With the digital landscape burgeoning with alternative platforms, Pebble was competing in an increasingly crowded marketplace. As the platform prepares for its final curtain call, the team behind Pebble is shifting its focus to showing gratitude to its supportive community. They are exploring potential avenues to ensure that the connections formed on Pebble can continue in another guise. Further details are expected to be shared soon.

SonicSpike shares a report from Politico: An agency set up under Donald Trump to protect elections and key U.S. infrastructure from foreign hackers is now fighting off increasingly intense threats from hard-right Republicans who argue it's gone too far and are looking for ways to rein it in. These lawmakers insist work by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to combat online disinformation during elections singles out conservative voices and infringes upon free speech rights -- an allegation the agency vehemently denies and the Biden administration is contesting in court. The accusations started in the wake of the 2020 election and are ramping up ahead of 2024, with lawmakers now calling for crippling cuts at the agency. "CISA has blatantly violated the First Amendment and colluded with Big Tech to censor the speech of ordinary Americans," Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which oversees CISA, said in a statement to POLITICO.

The fight over CISA underscores yet another way Trump's election fraud claims are reverberating into 2024. And though the hard right doesn't have enough votes to defund CISA today, the growing backlash against it has supporters worried that a hard-right faction could hobble the agency in the years ahead -- undermining its efforts not just to secure future elections, but also protect key U.S. and federal networks from major hacks. CISA had broad bipartisan support in Congress when lawmakers passed legislation creating the agency in 2018. At the ceremony where Trump signed it into law, he called it "very, very important legislation" to protect the U.S. against both nation-state hackers and cybercriminals. But when Chris Krebs, the then-head of CISA, debunked Trump's 2020 election fraud claims, the president fired him. And since the GOP assumed control of the House in 2022, like-minded Republicans have been ratcheting up their scrutiny of the agency. [...]

Conservatives now argue that activity has become a smokescreen for left-leaning government censorship. In Congress and within the courts, they contend that pressure from federal agencies like CISA led social media companies to limit the spread of information perceived as damaging to Joe Biden's campaign, such as stories relating to Hunter Biden. In a sign of trouble for an agency once boasting strong bipartisan support, 108 Republicans supported the failed push to cut CISA's budget last month -- a near majority within the conference. Backers of the budget cut included a swathe of increasingly influential hard-right lawmakers, like Jordan and James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee. Those with direct oversight over CISA also backed the vote, such as the chief of the Homeland Security Committee, Mark Green (R-Tenn.), and another panel member, August Pfluger (R-Texas).

Since disclosing a security breach of its support systems Friday, Okta has shed more than $2 billion from its market valuation "Okta shares slumped more than 11% Friday after the company said an unidentified hacking group was able to access client files through a support system," reports CNBC. "The company did not provide more details beyond a set of technical identifiers. The company's stock continued to fall in Monday trading, ultimately closing down 8.1%." From the report: Okta is a lesser-known name but forms a critical part of cybersecurity systems at major corporations. The identity management company boasts more than 18,000 customers who use its products to provide a single login point for many different platforms that a given company uses. Zoom, for example, uses Okta to give "seamless" access through a single login to the company's Google Workspace, ServiceNow, VMware and Workday platforms. Okta said it had communicated with all affected clients in Friday's announcement. At least one of those clients said it had alerted Okta about a potential breach weeks earlier. [...]

Okta has also been at the center of other higher-profile incidents. Earlier this year, for example, casino giants Caesars and MGM were both affected by hacks. Caesars was forced to pay millions in ransom to the hacking group, sources told CNBC. MGM had to shut down critical systems that the company acknowledged would have a material effect on its bottom line in an SEC filing. The direct and indirect losses from those incidents totaled over $100 million. Both those attacks targeted MGM and Caesars' Okta installations, using a sophisticated social engineering attack that went through IT help desks. Three other companies were also targeted by the hacking group, an Okta executive told Reuters.

Okta has also been a target before. A hacking group purportedly accessed numerous Okta systems in a March attempt. That group, Lapsus$, has been tied to hacking attacks at Uber and Grand Theft Auto maker Rockstar Games, a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive, according to a report from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has used a system called Giant Oak Search Technology (GOST) to help the agency scrutinize social media posts, determine if they are "derogatory" to the U.S., and then use that information as part of immigration enforcement, according to a new cache of documents reviewed by 404 Media. The documents peel back the curtain on a powerful system, both in a technological and a policy sense -- how information is processed and used to decide who is allowed to remain in the country and who is not.

GOST's catchphrase included in one document is "We see the people behind the data." A GOST user guide included in the documents says GOST is "capable of providing behavioral based internet search capabilities." Screenshots show analysts can search the system with identifiers such as name, address, email address, and country of citizenship. After a search, GOST provides a "ranking" from zero to 100 on what it thinks is relevant to the user's specific mission. The documents further explain that an applicant's "potentially derogatory social media can be reviewed within the interface." After clicking on a specific person, analysts can review images collected from social media or elsewhere, and give them a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down." Analysts can also then review the target's social media profiles themselves too, and their "social graph," potentially showing who the system believes they are connected to.

DHS has used GOST since 2014, according to a page of the user guide. In turn, ICE has paid Giant Oak Inc., the company behind the system, in excess of $10 million since 2017, according to public procurement records. A Giant Oak and DHS contract ended in August 2022, according to the records. Records also show Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the State Department, the Air Force, and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service which is part of the U.S. Treasury have all paid for Giant Oak services over the last nearly ten years. The FOIA documents specifically discuss Giant Oak's use as part of an earlier 2016 pilot called the "HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] PATRIOT Social Media Pilot Program." For this, the program would "target potential overstay violators from particular visa issuance Posts located in countries of concern." "The government should not be using algorithms to scrutinize our social media posts and decide which of us is 'risky.' And agencies certainly shouldn't be buying this kind of black box technology in secret without any accountability. DHS needs to explain to the public how its systems determine whether someone is a 'risk' or not, and what happens to the people whose online posts are flagged by its algorithms," Patrick Toomey, Deputy Director of the ACLU's National Security Project, told 404 Media in an email. The documents come from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by both the ACLU and the ACLU of Northern California. Toomey from the ACLU then shared the documents with 404 Media.

Meta Platforms was sued by California and a group of more than two dozen states over claims that its social-media platforms Instagram and Facebook exploit youths for profit and feed them harmful content. From a report: The suit, filed in federal court in California, adds to growing scrutiny of social media giants over how they serve their youngest users.

"In 2023, the state of our digital privacy is: Very Creepy." That's the verdict from Mozilla's first-ever "Annual Consumer Creep-o-Meter," which attempts to set benchmarks for digital privacy and identify trends: Since 2017, Mozilla has published 15 editions of *Privacy Not Included, our consumer tech buyers guide. We've reviewed over 500 gadgets, apps, cars, and more, assessing their security features, what data they collect, and who they share that data with. In 2023, we compared our most recent findings with those of the past five years. It quickly became clear that products and companies are collecting more personal data than ever before — and then using that information in shady ways...

Products are getting more secure, but also a lot less private. More companies are meeting Mozilla's Minimum Security Standards like using encryption and providing automatic software updates. That's good news. But at the same time, companies are collecting and sharing users' personal data like never before. And that's bad news. Many companies now view their hardware or software as a means to an end: collecting that coveted personal data for targeted advertising and training AI. For example: The mental health app BetterHelp shares your data with advertisers, social media platforms, and sister companies. The Japanese car manufacturer Nissan collects a wide range of information, including sexual activity, health diagnosis data, and genetic information — but doesn't specify how.

An increasing number of products can't be used offline. In the past, the privacy conscious could always buy a connected device but turn off connectivity, making it "dumb." That's no longer an option in many cases. The number of connected devices that require apps and can't be used offline are increasing. This trend, coupled with the first, means it's harder and harder to keep your data private.
Privacy policies also need improvement. "Legalese, ambiguity, and policies that sprawl across multiple documents and URLs are the status quo. And it's getting worse, not better. Companies use these policies as a shield, not an actual resource for consumers." They note that Toyota has more than 10 privacy policy documents, and that it would actually take five hours to read all the privacy documents the Meta Quest Pro VR headset.

In the end they advise opting out of data collection when possible, enabling security features, and "If you're not comfortable with a product's privacy, don't buy it. And, speak up. Over the years, we've seen companies respond to consumer demand for privacy, like when Apple reformed app tracking and Zoom made end-to-end encryption a free feature."

You can also take a quiz that calculates your own privacy footprint (based on whether you're using consumer tech products like the Apple Watch, Nintendo Switch, Nook, or Telegram). Mozilla's privacy advocates award the highest marks to privacy-protecting products like Signal, Sonos' SL Speakers, and the Pocketbook eReader (an alternative to Amazon's Kindle. (Although 100% of the cars reviewed by Mozilla "failed to meet our privacy and security standards.")

The graphics on the site help make its point. As you move your mouse across the page, the cartoon eyes follow its movement...

"Mark Zuckerberg is making good on his promise to accelerate the use of Threads," reports Business Insider: The Meta CEO insisted in July that the app was not in its final form. "I'm highly confident that we're gonna be able to pour enough gasoline on this to help it grow," Zuckerberg said. Since then, Threads has rolled out a host of major new features, including a web version, keyword search, voice posts, and the ability to edit posts, even as it avoids promoting news. Smaller things, too, like being able to follow updates in individual threads at the tap of a bell icon, a way to mass follow people mentioned in a post, and even tag people's Instagram accounts, are now available... More Threads features are said to be on the way, like polls.
But Insider also reports that "As the app has matured quickly in recent weeks, users have started to return and downloads have continued to rise." So far in October, Threads has hovered around 33 million daily active users and 120 million monthly active users, according to data from Apptopia, up from about 25 million daily users and 100 million monthly users in July... Since the app launched on July 6, it's been downloaded 260 million times, Apptopia data shows, with downloads in September almost double the downloads in August...

Although the entire team working on Threads remains small by Meta standards, around 50 people, the company was surprised by the interest in the app and "really wants it to work," an employee said. To that end, Threads is now being integrated to an extent with Facebook and Instagram, two of the most popular apps in the world. There is a direct link to Threads on each user's Instagram page, a post on Threads can be sent in Instagram DMs, and as of this week, Threads is being promoted within the Instagram app feed via a small carousel of select posts under the header "Threads for you...."
It's not just Instagram, according to BGR. "If you've been posting some especially strange messages Threads, thinking that only the few people who follow you will see them, I have some bad news for you..." As spotted by TechCrunch, users on Facebook have noticed something new on their News Feed: content from Threads. It appears that Meta is now showing Facebook users a new "For You from Threads" section on the News Feed that contains recommended content from the sibling social media platform.