WASHINGTON: The US Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to approve a bill aimed at allowing news organizations to band together to negotiate with Alphabet Inc's Google and Meta's Facebook and win more revenue.

The bill passed the committee by a vote of 15 to 7, according to a congressional aide. It must now go to the Senate for their approval. A similar bill is before the US House of Representatives.

The bill is aimed at giving news and broadcast organizations more clout after years of criticism that big tech companies use their content to attract traffic and ad revenue without fairly compensating the publishers, many of which struggle financially.

The bill, led by Democrat Amy Klobuchar, attracted some Republican support, with Senators John Kennedy and Lindsey Graham sponsoring it. Other Democrats, like Senator Alex Padilla, expressed reservations about it.

The bill hit a speed bump earlier this month when Senator Ted Cruz won backing for a plan to include provisions to address what he considers the platforms stifling conservative voices.

On Thursday Klobuchar won support for an amendment that specified that prices for use of content was the issue.

“The goal of the bill is to allow local news organizations to get compensation when major titans, monopolies like Facebook and Google, access their content,” she said at a committee session to vote on the bill.

Unlike other bills aimed at reining in big tech, some progressive groups oppose this measure, including Public Knowledge, on the grounds that it favors big broadcasters like News Corp, Sinclair and Comcast/NBCU.

Also opposing the bill are two technology industry trade groups that Facebook and Google belong to: the Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice.

LONDON: The King Salman Center for Disability Research and Saudi Research & Media Group announced on Thursday the launch of cutting-edge haptic technology that allows people with hearing disabilities to experience the Kingdom’s national anthem.

The two companies have teamed up to design a wearable “hearing flag” that enables people to “feel” the song as part of a campaign celebrating Saudi Arabia’s 92nd National Day.

The flag features multi-force sensors woven into the fabric of a Saudi Arabian flag, to create an immersive experience that brings music to life in a way that can be felt physically on the body.

“Using the ‘hearing flag,’ people can immerse themselves in sound through real-time touch haptics which recreate the sensation of sound on the body,” said the two companies in a statement.

King Salman Center for Disability Research tweeted from its official account: “Have you heard of a sound that gives life? Have you heard of a flag that sings to the nation?”

The campaign, which is a partnership between the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, highlights how Saudi National Day “symbolizes the spirit of cooperation and empowerment of all members of society.”

To promote the initiative, King Salman Center for Disability Research and SRMG also launched an emotional campaign film across social media platforms depicting people’s first encounters with the flag and their own national anthem.

The flag, born out an idea by SRMG, was produced by London-based wearable technology brand CuteCircuit, which pioneers smart textile and interactive fashion.

RIYADH: Snapchat has launched a new augmented reality activation to celebrate Saudi Arabia’s 92nd National Day.

Last year, the platform introduced a first-of-its-kind activation, which saw the Snap Map of Saudi Arabia appearing in bright green to represent the national flag and the Kingdom highlighted from other countries, marking the first time Snap recolored a Middle East territory on the map.

Along with the color change, Snap also marked cultural and heritage sites — such as AlUla, Tabuk Castle, Alkhobar Water Tower, Rijal Almaa, Masmak Fort and Nassif House — on the map, allowing users to explore the Kingdom.

This year, the platform is building on the theme “This is our home,” by enabling users to access a world lens and explore the future of Saudi Arabia.

Users in the Kingdom will be able to learn about Saudi’s existing landmarks and future projects, including the Red Sea Project, a luxury destination that is set to customize experiences to the needs of each visitor, as well as NEOM’s new-age Oxagon city.

Users will also have the chance to explore Qiddiya, an entertainment megaproject to be established in Riyadh, as well as NEOM’s The Line project, which will see Saudi’s first smart linear city being built without cars, streets or carbon emissions.

Saudis can show their national spirit through the Face Lens experience and snap a photo with celebratory decorations featuring fireworks and confetti.

“Saudi Snapchatters are among the most engaged globally and in celebration of National Day we wanted to provide our community with a unique opportunity to mark this special day,” said Abdulla Alhammadi, regional business lead at Snap Inc.

“In addition to shedding light on several mega-projects that are set to shape the future of the Kingdom, this activation allows Snapchatters to express their love for the nation and celebrate National Day through an AR-powered and engaging experience,” he said.

Snapchat was ranked as the second most used social media platform in the Kingdom, according to the latest Arab Youth Survey.

LONDON: Meta Platforms Inc’s WhatsApp said on Thursday that it was working to keep users in Iran connected after the country restricted access to the app and social media platform Instagram. WhatsApp “will do anything” within its technical capacity to keep the service accessible and that it was not blocking Iranian phone numbers, the messaging service said in a tweet. Iran on Wednesday restricted access to Instagram and WhatsApp, two of the last remaining social networks in the country, amid protests over the death of a woman in police custody, according to residents and Internet watchdog NetBlocks. Last week’s death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by morality police in Tehran for “unsuitable attire,” has unleashed anger over issues including freedom in the Islamic Republic and an economy reeling from sanctions. Protesters in Tehran and other Iranian cities torched police stations and vehicles earlier on Thursday as public outrage over the death showed no signs of abating, with reports of security forces coming under attack.

LONDON: Microsoft President and Vice Chairman Brad Smith has hinted that the tech giant is adopting a different approach to tackling disinformation and fake news.

While other companies focus their efforts on removing fake content, and telling users what is true and what is not, Microsoft wants to avoid any suggestion that it is trying to censor speech online.

“I don’t think that people want governments to tell them what’s true or false. And I don’t think they’re really interested in having tech companies tell them either,” Smith said in an interview on Wednesday.

The comments highlight Microsoft’s stance compared with other firms, and show that the corporation is committed to tracking and disrupting digital propaganda efforts.

Although details are still being worked out, Smith indicated that Microsoft’s main objective is to be “transparent.” The idea is to track disinformation campaigns and make their existence public.

“It turns out that if you tell people what’s going on, then that knowledge inspires both action and conversation about the steps that global governments need to take to address these issues,” said Tom Burt, corporate vice president for customer security and trust.

Microsoft’s approach, which favors freedom of speech and rests on the belief that “all news is news,” is ambitious, even though it could turn out to be a disproportionate solution for a society already struggling to cope with widespread misinformation online.

In a recent study, Pew Research Center revealed that 33 percent of TikTok users, one of the world’s most used social media app with over 1 billion active profiles, said they take their news from the platform.

However, analysts at NewsGuard, a company that rates the credibility of news and information websites, discovered that around one in five of the platform’s suggested videos includes false content.

Since Microsoft owns popular platforms such as Bing, MSN and LinkedIn, experts warn of a possible backlash over its reluctance to identify fake news, particularly as “debate over truth has become a politicized topic, with US lawmakers alleging that social media companies stifle right-wing voices,” as US journalist Margi Murphy pointed out.

Meta and Twitter have been at the center of intense scrutiny over their role in fighting online disinformation, and their efforts to flag and take down false or misleading posts from their platforms have faced heavy criticism.

Smith said that Microsoft is committed to providing the public with more information about who is speaking, what they are saying, and helping people to come to their own conclusion about whether the information is genuine.

“We have to be very thoughtful and careful because — and this is also true of every democratic government — fundamentally, people quite rightly want to make up their own mind and they should,” he said.

“Our whole approach needs to be to provide people with more information, not less, and we cannot trip over and use what others might consider censorship as a tactic.”

LONDON: Meta was sued on Wednesday for allegedly building a secret workaround that allowed the company to bypass privacy features Apple introduced earlier last year to protect iPhone users from having their internet activity tracked.

Two Meta users filed the lawsuit in San Francisco, where a similar claim was made last week accusing the tech giant “of skirting Apple’s 2021 privacy rules and violating state, and federal laws limiting the unauthorized collection of personal data.”

The accusations are based on a study published by Felix Krause last August. Krause, a former Google employee, argued that Meta exploits the “in-app browser” — a feature that allows Facebook and Instagram users to visit a third-party website without leaving the platform — to “inject” a tracking code that allows the monitoring of all user interactions.

The practice, called Javascript injection, which in most cases is considered a type of malicious attack, enables the tech giant to follow users throughout the web after they click links on the Facebook and Instagram apps.

“This allows Meta to intercept, monitor and record its users’ interactions and communications with third parties, providing data to Meta that it aggregates, analyzes and uses to boost its advertising revenue,” the claimant read.

In response to the allegation, Meta admitted that the Facebook app tracks browser activity, but refuted claims that user data was being unlawfully collected.

The lawsuit contends that Meta’s collection of user information via the Facebook and Instagram apps enables the company to get around Apple’s privacy regulations, which requires all third-party applications to acquire user consent before tracking users’ online and offline activity.

Starting with iOS 14.5, Apple introduced App Monitoring Transparency, which enables users to choose whether or not to enable app tracking when they first open an app. The feature, according to Meta, has impacted the company’s revenue by more than $10 billion so far.