Apple has paid the Irish government €14.3bn (£12.7bn), money that the European Commission ruled the tech giant owed due to illegal tax breaks. Ireland's Finance ministry said the payment was a significant milestone, although Dublin insists Apple was not given any special tax treatment. In 2016 the Commission ruled the below 1% effective tax rate the firm paid in Ireland amounted to illegal state aid.
A windfall tax could be levied on tech giants such as Google, Amazon and Facebook to pay for public interest journalism, Jeremy Corbyn is expected to announce. The Labour leader will call for radical reform of the media landscape in a speech at the Edinburgh TV Festival.
The chairman of the U.K. Parliament's media committee says the government office that investigated the Cambridge Analytica scandal has fined Facebook £500,000 for failing to safeguard users' data.
Facebook, Google and Microsoft push users away from privacy-friendly options on their services in an unethical way, according to a report by the Norwegian Consumer Council. It studied the privacy settings of the firms and found a series of dark patterns, including intrusive default settings and misleading wording.
Tensions soared between a handful of leading MEPs and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as the 34-year-old billionaire avoided answering detailed questions on the company’s data policies during a meeting in the European Parliament on Tuesday evening. Zuckerberg gave general responses to the MEPs, who came to the meeting ready to grill the CEO over Facebook’s recent data scandal, its advertising policy, and whether the social media giant is a monopoly.
Most Facebook users in the US remain loyal, despite the recent data sharing scandal involving a political consultancy firm, a poll suggests. Facebook admitted last month that the data of 87 million users had been improperly shared with the UK-based firm, Cambridge Analytica.
UK Members of Parliament have urged Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to speak to them after evidence given by his chief technology officer was deemed unsatisfactory. A parliamentary committee said Mr Schroepfer had failed to fully answer 40 points put to him as part of an inquiry into fake news.
Popular messaging service Whatsapp is banning under-16s from using its platform in the European Union. Users must currently be at least 13, but the firm is changing the rules ahead of the introduction of new EU data privacy regulations in May.
Facebook has changed its terms of service, meaning 1.5 billion members will not be protected under tough new privacy protections coming to Europe. The move comes as the firm faces a series of questions from lawmakers and regulators around the world over its handling of personal data.
Facebook has begun asking users in the UK to allow the platform to use facial recognition technology to identify them in photos and videos. The technology has been used in most parts of the world for six years, but was initially removed in the EU in 2012 following protests from regulators and privacy advocates.