FACEBOOK LAUNCHES AD CAMPAIGN TO DEFEND PERSONALIZED ADVERTISING AHEAD OF APPLE PRIVACY CHANGE
Facebook is launching a new ad campaign called “Good Ideas Deserve to be Found,” which makes a case for personalized advertising.
The company says the campaign is meant to “help people understand how the personalized ads they see help them discover new things they love, and support businesses in their community.”
It comes as Apple’s privacy changes draw near, which will impact personalized advertising on Apple devices.
COINBASE FILES TO GO PUBLIC VIA DIRECT LISTING
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase on Thursday filed to go public via a direct listing. It includes a placeholder figure of $1 billion, but that's likely to change.
Why it matters: Coinbase could go public at a higher initial valuation than any other U.S. tech company since Facebook.
It was recently valued at over $100 billion via the latest in a series of secondary share sales, which were partially designed to help the company determine a reference price for its direct listing. But the initial secondary share sale, held Jan. 29, valued Coinbase at only $54 billion. In other words, good luck to those trying to determine a valid reference price.
CHINA ENLISTS ANT-BACKED MYBANK IN EXPANDING DIGITAL YUAN TRIAL
Ant Group-backed MYbank and Tencent-backed WeBank will be the first two digital banks to join China’s central bank’s push in issuing electronic forms of its fiat currency, echoing previous reports from Chinese media.
MYbank and WeBank’s services will be added to the People’s Bank of the digital yuan app, which already enabled six state-owned institutions — the Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, the Bank of Communication, and Postal Savings Bank of China. Ant Group and Tencent each hold around 30% share of the two digital lenders.
INDIAN OFFICIALS TO EXAMINE AMAZON AFTER REUTERS PROBE
India’s federal financial crime-fighting agency will examine findings in a Reuters report, which revealed that Amazon.com Inc has for years given preferential treatment to a small group of sellers on its India platform and used them to circumvent the country’s foreign investment rules.
It provided an inside look at the cat-and-mouse game Amazon has played with India’s government, adjusting its corporate structures each time the government imposed new restrictions aimed at protecting small traders.
EPIC GAMES 'ATTEMPTING TO LOCATE' FORMER IOS CHIEF SCOTT FORSTALL TO TESTIFY IN ONGOING LEGAL BATTLE WITH APPLE
Forstall left Apple in 2013, in what was widely reported at the time to have been a forced exit, largely because of the botched early launch of Apple Maps. Since then, Forstall has kept a very low profile and has only made a few media appearances in the past few years, choosing instead to focus on Broadway production. Epic Games now wants to ask Forstall some questions, given his involvement around the launch of the App Store, to use as potential evidence for its case against Apple.
AMAZON ACQUIRES E-COMMERCE PLATFORM SELZ
Global e-commerce marketplace Amazon has bought up Sydney-based e-commerce platform Selz. The platform works in much the same way as Shopify, providing an e-commerce-ready backend for small businesses to utilize when creating their websites.
The acquisition could signal a shift in how Amazon seeks to grow its position in the e-commerce industry – no longer aiming to get all sellers on its marketplace, and instead of working with them behind the scenes to provide a white-label shopping experience powered by Amazon’s platform.
FIREFOX LAUNCHES TOTAL COOKIE PROTECTION
Total Cookie Protection has been built into the platform’s Strict Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) and was announced on Tuesday 23rd February with the release of Firefox 86.
Mozilla refers to the Total Cookie Protection as a ‘major advance’ in confining cookies dropped by websites into new individual ‘cookie jars.’
Mozilla describes the new blocker using a ‘cookie jar’ analogy, whereby every third-party that drops a cookie in your browser will have the accumulated data confined to a cookie jar of its own.
This will prevent tracking companies from following your online actions from site to site.
Standard Enhanced Tracking Protection is the default setting for Firefox users and will block the following trackers:
- Cross-site cookies
- Social media trackers
- Cryptominers
- Tracking content in private windows
- Fingerprinters