Roundup – Twitter butts-heads with Indian government, and US senators to launch TikTok probe

Amazon forced to share more data with rivals after EU deal

Amazon will share more data with rivals and offer buyers a wider choice of products, as part of a deal with EU antitrust regulators. Details are being shared with Amazon’s rivals to ensure they remove competition concerns before the European Commission can announce an agreement.

As part of the deal, Amazon will allow third-party sellers on its marketplace to access more information to increase online sales. Regulators will announce the market test next week prior to a deal that will be formally agreed in the summer. Timings and details of the deal may change but nothing that will cease an agreement.

https://publicnewstime.com/news/economy/amazon-to-share-more-data-with-rivals-after-eu-deal/

Twitter launches legal dispute against Indian government

Twitter has appealed against an Indian government order to take down content. A source familiar with the filing said the company challenged some orders by the government as they “demonstrate excessive use of powers and are disproportionate.”

India’s tech ministry threatened Twitter last month with “serious consequences”, including initiating criminal proceedings against its executives, if the company failed to comply with the agency’s orders to remove some tweets and block accounts, the source said. While the company has blocked access to the content in India for now, it is seeking judicial review of some of the orders.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/06/tech/twitter-legal-action-india-government-blocked-content-intl-hnk/index.html

Russian lawmakers impose stricter fines for foreign tech

On Tuesday, Russian lawmakers approved a bill ensuring harsher penalties, including fines, for foreign social media firms with more than 500,000 users that fail to open an office in Russia. Moscow has long sought to exert greater control over technology firms, and disputes over content and data have intensified since it sent armed forces into Ukraine. Fines could be as high as 10% of a company’s turnover in Russia from the previous year, rising to up to 20% for repeat violations.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-lawmakers-approve-harsher-fines-foreign-tech-firms-without-offices-2022-07-05/

Amazon Unveils ML-Powered Coding Assistant CodeWhisperer

Amazon has launched its ML-powered coding CodeWhisperer which provides code recommendations based on developers’ comments in natural language and their code in the integrated development environment (IDE), the machine learning-powered service increases developer productivity. The recommendations can be implemented exactly as-is or can be improved upon and altered as necessary.

Developers may use CodeWhisperer to accelerate the development process, however, the programming languages, frameworks, software libraries, and cloud services must be kept up-to-date. It also strengthens security by assisting programmers to find vulnerabilities and can determine whether a code recommendation resembles specific set of data. CodeWhisperer is compatible with Python, Java, and JavaScript.

https://www.infoq.com/news/2022/07/aws-codewhisperer-coding/

Senators call for FTC probe into TikTok over US data access

The US Senate Intelligence Committee chair and top Republican have called on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate social media app TikTok and Chinese parent ByteDance due to “repeated misrepresentations” over its handling of US data. The request followed a Buzzfeed report saying the short video app permitted TikTok engineers and executives in China to repeatedly access private data of US users. The senators said such access raised questions over TikTok’s claims to lawmakers and users that the data was protected. The company responded to the Senators by reiterating “TikTok has never shared US user data with the Chinese government, nor would we if asked”.

https://ground.news/article/two-senators-call-for-ftc-probe-into-tiktok-over-us-data-access_71f8ad