Meta Threatens to Block Canadian News Sites; Amazon Could Face £900m Payout to UK Customers

In today's ExchangeWire news digest: Meta warns it may block the sharing of Canadian news sites on Facebook; fresh legal action against Amazon could see the giant pay £900m to UK customers; and a team at ByteDance planned to use TikTok to track specific US citizens.

 

Meta warns it may block the sharing of Canadian news sites

Facebook-parent Meta has warned it may block news sharing in Canada over the country’s proposed Online News Act. The act, which would obligate Meta to pay news outlets for their content, has been described by the company as incorrectly presuming it “unfairly benefits from its relationship with publishers”.

Meta previously banned news from being shared in Australia over a similar law, only reversing its decision after the legislation was amended. 

 

UK shoppers could claim compensation from Amazon

A legal claim against Amazon could mean that UK shoppers could receive a share of £900m in compensation from the e-commerce giant. The proposed claim, which is being led by consumer-rights champion Julie Hunter, alleges Amazon breached competition law and caused customers to miss out on better-value deals.

 

ByteDance allegedly planned to use TikTok to track American citizens

A report from Forbes has alleged that a China-based team at ByteDance planned to use the TikTok app to track the locations of specific American users. The team behind the monitoring project, ByteDance’s Internal Audit and Risk Control department, frequently investigates potential misconduct by current and former employees. Forbes’ report, however, reveals at least two cases in which the team planned to track a US citizen with no employment history at ByteDance.

Maureen Shanahan, TikTok’s director of global communications, said that the app collects approximate location data based on users’ IP addresses to  “among other things, help show relevant content and ads to users, comply with applicable laws, and detect and prevent fraud and inauthentic behaviour”.

 

Industry Issue

For this week's Industry Issue, we're delighted to feature a question from Satoshi Kawasaki, who asked:

In a premium OTT environment, what should the industry guarantee to marketers from a brand safety perspective?

- Relevancy between ads and content

- Quality of the other ads appearing before and after 

- Avoid over-saturation across devices

- Careful audit of the ads creative and message

Let us know your thoughts by voting in our LinkedIn poll, and subscribe to The Stack, our Friday newsletter to see Satoshi's analysis of the results.

 

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Fact of the Day

21% - the number of Canadians who catch up with the news on Facebook each week (as of 2022).

Source: Statista

 

Last week's tech teasers

Last week's tech teasers were all about Apple. Find out how well you know the iPhone maker below:

• 4.6 million shares - the amount of shares Apple included in its December 1980 IPO ?
• USD$800 (~£712.35) - the amount Apple’s third co-founder, Ronald Wayne, sold his share of the company for 12 days after it was founded ?
• 3 days - the length of time it took for for Apple’s iPhone 3G S to sell one million units after its release ⏲️
• 26% - the amount by which Meta’s shares fell after the company revealed the impact of Apple’s privacy changes on its revenue ?
• 984,000 - the number of games on Apple’s app store? ?