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On Monday, at its Worldwide Developer Conference in San Jose, Apple introduced a privacy-focused login tool called “Sign in with Apple.” Like similar products from Facebook and Google, Apple’s login tool will authenticate you into various apps made by third-party developers. But unlike the Facebook and Google products, Apple’s is designed to share as little data with developers as possible. If offers fine-grained permission controls to let you opt out of sharing your full name or email address, for example. And if you do choose to share your email address, Apple will generate a random alias for you and forward it to your real account.

When Craig Federighi introduced the idea on stage, it struck me as a powerful and attractive alternative to the status quo. The only question, to my mind, was whether developers would adopt it. Facebook announced an anonymous login tool several years ago, but never shipped it, in part due to a lack of developer interest. (The whole point of making users log in to your app or website is, after all, to collect data about them.) Snap launched a similarly privacy-focused login tool last year, but adoption has been slow.

Later on Monday, it became apparent that Apple had already considered the possibility that its privacy-focused login tool would prove to be a dud with developers. And so the company simply made it mandatory for anyone that offers Google or Facebook login in the App Store. (Developers that use their own in-house login systems do not have to offer Apple login.) Sean Hollister reports:

On the one hand... of course! It’s Apple’s platform, and if Apple thinks developers should do something, that’s the company’s decision to make. Plus, there’s a genuine argument to be made that offering Apple single sign-in is doing the right thing by users — who will no doubt already be logged into their own iPhones and iPads, and are one thumbprint or glance away from adding an extra level of security to that sign-in with a biometric Touch ID or Face ID login. On the other hand, this is a terrifying example of the power Apple wields over developers. Apple just announced this feature, and now every developer that got comfy with Facebook, Google, etc. is going to have to add (and find space to add) a button and the underlying code at some undetermined point later this year, or else abandon single sign-in entirely, or risk their livelihood getting cut off?

The timing of Apple’s announcement was remarkable — it came on the same day that we learned the Justice Department has been authorized to investigate Apple for potential violations of antitrust law. And it’s not just the Justice Department looking into the issue. Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that a customer could sue Apple on antitrust grounds for using its monopoly to drive up prices. This week, a group of iOS developers sued the company alleging anticompetitive practices. And on other issues where critics have raised antitrust concern, such as the company’s ban on many third-party parental control apps, Apple said this week that it would back off.

On the whole, I’m glad Apple built a login tool. With Snap’s similar tool launching a year ago, you could argue that we are seeing the dawn of a new era of authentication products built on the idea of gathering as little data as possible, rather than the reverse. Having a privacy-minded tech company building an identity product puts positive competition on its data-hungry rivals. And isn’t competition the thing that people like me are always begging for from the marketplace?

But when a company with Apple’s power in the marketplace makes a feature mandatory, it all starts to feel less like competition — and more like brute force. Perhaps there is no user privacy-focused login tool compelling enough to get most developers to adopt Apple login voluntarily. But that’s the free market at work — and I’d rather have the onus on Apple to make its products more compelling, rather than on developers to bend to its will.

In January, for reasons I found to be completely justified, Apple revoked the enterprise certificates that Facebook and Google rely upon to run their businesses. But still, I said, Apple’s power over other tech giants ought to worry the rest of us:

Tim Cook and his lieutenants dictate the terms of an enormous economy, and can change that economy on a whim. Today Apple may have acted out of consistency with its privacy principles, to the benefit of some consumers. (And to the detriment of anyone who was counting on that $20 gift card!) But as Apple faces more pressure to serve as, as Roose put it, de facto privacy regulator, we may find ourselves uncomfortable with its monopolistic power.

Here Apple as our de facto privacy regulator has shown its face again. I don’t know how precisely to weigh the value of more private login tools against the cost of making an entire developer ecosystem captive to the policy whims of the world’s biggest company. But perhaps that’s where our actual regulators — which is to say, Congress — should intervene. As the House of Representatives begins an inquiry into our tech giants, I hope they will.

Democracy

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says it’s time to regulate Big Tech

Some uncharacteristically big talk from the Speaker of the House:

“Today, everything is connected to the Internet; it is the foundation on which our economy, democracy & attention rest,” Pelosi said. “Unwarranted, concentrated economic power in the hands of a few is dangerous to democracy – especially when digital platforms control content. The era of self-regulation is over,” Pelosi said.

A Facebook Source Leaked Shawn Brooks’s Name. What’s Next?

Max Read considers the implication of an apparent leak from a Facebook employee of the name of the person who posted the fake drunk Pelosi video:

Over the last few years, reporting has documented increasingly sharp political divisions at companies like Facebook and Google. Employees on both the right and the left seem to feel, with varying degrees of legitimacy, that the rich and powerful companies they work for are failing at upholding the responsibilities of their power. Heated debates about global politics routinely play out, sometimes to the point of disciplinary action, on company message boards — among employees who likely have some level of privileged access to information that users assume to be private. We know those internal debates exist because employees have been willing to provide private message board threads to journalists. How long until committed, radicalized, or just plain angry employees decide to provide private user data — of politicians, or activists, or political groups — to journalists as well?

This Chinese Artist Criticized Google and Xi Jinping. Now He’s Facing Government Harassment.

Ryan Gallagher reports on the sad case of Chinese dissident artist Badiucao, who had planned an exhibition critical of Google and its plans for a Chinese search engine. But Chinese authorities learned his real name, which had been a closely guarded secret, and reportedly began to harass his family.

The Chinese dissident artist Badiucao had been busy preparing an exhibition in Hong Kong to celebrate Free Expression Week, a series of events organized by rights groups. His show was partly inspired by Google’s plan to build a censored search engine in China, and was set to include work that the artist had created skewering the U.S. tech giant for cooperating with the Communist Party regime’s suppression of internet freedom. But just days before the exhibition was set to launch last year, at a high-profile event featuring members of Russian punk-activist group Pussy Riot, it was canceled by organizers. Badiucao had received threats from the Chinese government and soon went into hiding.

New York’s Privacy Bill Is Even Bolder Than California’s

Issie Lapowsky takes a look at a new privacy initiative under consideration in New York:

The New York Privacy Act, introduced last month by state senator Kevin Thomas, would give residents there more control over their data than in any other state. It would also require businesses to put their customers’ privacy before their own profits. The bill is still seeking a cosponsor in the state assembly, but Thomas says he is confident that he has majority support in the senate and hopes to pass the bill this summer. The Committee on Consumer Protection, which Thomas chairs, is scheduled to hold a hearing on the bill Tuesday.

Google, Amazon, and Facebook all spent record amounts last year lobbying the US government

Dinner party conversation starter: has this lobbying been effective or not? Whose lobbying has been most effective? Whose isn’t working at all? Rani Molla has some data:

The greatest growth in lobbying came from Google, which increased its lobbying spend nearly 18 percent to $21.2 million. Facebook’s spend grew nearly 10 percent to $12.6 million. Apple, which has increasingly criticized its ad-funded competitors for their data practices and touted its hardware security bona fides, was the only one of these companies to decrease lobbying spending last year:

Key Google Roles Vacant as Regulatory Pressure Mounts ($)

Google might be spending more, but it has no chief lobbyist, Ashley Gold reports. The timing isn’t great given the likelihood of an antitrust investigation:

As regulators ramp up their antitrust scrutiny of Google, the tech giant’s global policy team is still adapting to a sweeping reorganization instituted by its new public policy chief, Karan Bhatia, a former longtime General Electric executive. Some key roles remain unfilled, most notably the top U.S. lobbyist job, which has been vacant since November. Google also has yet to announce who will lead policy for the company at YouTube and for the European region.

Elsewhere

Facebook Investors’ Votes Signal Support for Change at Top

Two thirds of Facebook shareholders voted to oust Mark Zuckerberg as Facebook’s chairman, Kurt Wagner reports. Unfortunately, their votes aren’t enough to make a difference:

A proposal to restructure Facebook’s voting process and eliminate a class of super-voting shares that give Zuckerberg his control was supported by roughly 82% of the votes cast by shareholders other than Zuckerberg himself. That’s around the same support a similar proposal received last year at Facebook’s meeting. A proposal to replace Zuckerberg as Facebook’s chairman garnered 67% of the votes cast – excluding those from Zuckerberg. Ultimately, shareholders knew going into the meeting that their efforts to limit Zuckerberg’s control would fail. The company recommended voting down these proposals, and Zuckerberg’s majority voting power ensured they wouldn’t pass.

YouTube won’t stop recommending videos with children, despite pedophilia problem

After this week’s report from the New York Times about how YouTube algorithms effectively auto-generate playlists of scantily clad children for child predators to enjoy, some called for YouTube to stop recommending videos of children. But YouTube says no, reports Julia Alexander.

YouTube Bans Kids From Live-Streaming Video Unless Accompanied by an Adult

But in the wake of the child predator controversy, YouTube will now require adults to accompany children who want to broadcast themselves live. (I don’t understand how this addresses the problem at all?)

YouTube prison channels have more than 2.1 million subscribers

Americans are very curious about the carceral state that has sprung up around them, Peter Holley reports:

Collectively, the four most popular prison channels on YouTube have more than 2.1 million subscribers and about 342 million page views. Devoted fans routinely leave thousands of comments under high-traffic videos and correspond with the channel’s hosts via email and fan mail. Run by a handful of charismatic former convicts, the channels offer a rare window into a myth-filled world defined by trite television tropes and Hollywood screenplays. Part how-to guides and part horror, their videos teach viewers how to bathe and use the bathroom in prison, defend against sexual assault, negotiatewith gang members and make prison-style pizza using ramen noodles, trash bags and Doritos.

3 senior Facebook security workers are out amid investigations into finances and misconduct allegations

Rob Price finds more wild shenanigans on Facebook’s security team:

Three senior employees of Facebook’s on-site corporate security contractor have left the firm amid investigations into potential financial irregularities and allegations of misconduct. […] Facebook launched an investigation into finances relating to the Allied Universal contact, which is worth $110 million a year, as well as the firm’s allocation of bonus points for employees that can be redeemed for gadgets, flights, hotel rooms, and other items, sources told Business Insider.

Apple’s Real User Indicator will tell developers when a new account may actually be a bot

Apple has joined the effort to detect fake accounts, Nick Statt reports:

Apple says it’s building a new tool it calls Real User Indicator that could cut down on the number of bots secretly signing up for new accounts with mobile, desktop, and web services. The feature, announced during the company’s Platforms State of the Union event at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), is designed to check for traits more consistent with bots than people. It then informs an app developer of the situation, so the developer can then take further action to verify the authenticity of the new account.

The Revolution That Wasn’t: why conservatives are winning the internet

Sean Illing talks to Jen Schradie, whose new book, The Revolution That Wasn’t, argues that the internet created a “digital activism gap.”

SCHRADIE: It would be great to see Facebook reformed and it would be great if we created a non-profit, open-source, social media substitution for Facebook. I would be happy to participate in that and I think we’d be far better off. Ultimately, though, if we want digital technology to be in the hands of the people, we’re going to have to address social class inequalities. This is the inequality driving all other inequalities, and we have to address it.

Launches

Instagram will now let advertisers put more ‘influencer’ ads in your feed

Inevitable and likely quite profitable move from Instagram here:

Instagram is rolling out a change that will let advertisers promote posts from “influencers,” or users who work with brands to promote services or products. This will widen the reach of those “branded” posts beyond just an influencer’s own following. And for consumers, that means you’ll likely soon be seeing sponsored posts for influencers you don’t follow.

Takes

Why I’m Not Cheering the Tech Backlash

Kara Swisher is leery of the brewing regulations against Big Tech:

The very same agencies and legislators now screaming for blood have for decades ignored any sensible regulation of Silicon Valley, afraid of killing the golden geeks. Just a year ago most could not have cared less about the ballooning power of tech over so many aspects of American life. More to the point, they have stayed stubbornly ignorant of how all this tech stuff actually works. Now, though, they are coming in with guns blazing in a way that looks thoughtless and is likely to prove pointless. They remind me of a legal-pad-carrying Avengers team that’s going to take a lot of what’s good about tech down with what’s bad. The obviously planted leaks about the unclear parameters of the Justice Department investigations could be the harbinger of a disorganized and possibly draconian crusade that could reduce this industry, one of our national treasures, to a pile of rubble.

Google Chrome, the perfect antitrust villain?

Fun piece from Alex Danco about how the decision to ban ad blockers in Chrome could come back to haunt Google:

This decision may be come to be seen as a critical misstep by Google, because it exposes two crucial and overlapping things: Chrome’s reach gives Google the power to influence how all web browsing works, far beyond what most people realize. Using that power to clamp down on ad-blocking (which consumers explicitly like) when your primary business is serving ads sure smells like the right ingredients for an antitrust complaint that might actually get somewhere.

And finally ...

When bills pile up, young people turn to strangers on Venmo

Suhauna Hussein investigates how the peer-to-peer payments app has become a lifeline for struggling young folks:

The services frame themselves as tools that make it easy for their millennial and Gen Z user base to pay back a bar tab or split the cost of lunch. But some straddling tight budgets are also turning to payment apps as crowdfunding tools for bills, emergencies and the costs of daily life.

Lucky for us, the trend culminated in a viral tweet:

millennial culture is just passing around the same $20 to whoever needs it at the time forever — cullan (@queenofyelling) April 24, 2019

Talk to me

Send me tips, comments, questions, and your Venmo requests: casey@theverge.com.