Meta Unleashes New Web Crawling Bots With Sneaky Ways Of Avoiding A Rule That Blocks Scraping Of Online Content

A consumer watchdog body of the European Union complained and accused major video game companies of misleading gamers into spending money. Epic Games, Electronic Arts, Roblox, and four other companies were hit with the complaint on Thursday (September 12). The complaint was sent by The European Consumer Organization (BEUC) and 22 of its members from across 17 countries and was filed with the European Commission and the European Network of Consumer Authorities. The four other companies include Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard, Mojang Studios, Supercell, and Ubisoft. In the complaint, the organization says their alert “exposes how the video game industry maximizes consumers’ spending by using premium in-game currencies.” The BEUC and its members suggest that “consumers cannot see the real cost of digital items” which can lead to “overspending.” EU’s BEUC says there’s a lack of price transparency in video game sector “The lack of price transparency of premium in-game currencies and the need to buy extra currency in bundles pushes consumers to spend more.

Google is now embarking on preservation efforts as they’ll be adding links to archived websites through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machines. The search giant began the process on Wednesday (September 11) with users now able to view archived versions of webpages directly through Google Search, rather than having to go to a separate website or tool. The Internet Archive was founded in 1996 and it provides a digital library, with free access to collections of digitized materials including websites and software applications.

The social networking startup Bluesky will now allow people to share their video creations of up to 60 seconds through its platform. The company announced the news on Wednesday (Sep, 11), calling it a feature that has had “much anticipation.” The native support means the app can start to compete more comprehensively with rivals like Elon Musk’s X, the decentralized service Mastodon and Instagram Threads. Bluesky is the decentralized social app that was created by the former CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey and it was developed in parallel with Twitter (now X) for some time.

The United Kingdom government has introduced a bill that allows cryptocurrency and other digital holdings to be considered personal property. Before the bill was passed in Parliament on Wednesday (September 11) digital assets were not definitively included in the scope of English and Welsh property law. This meant owners of cryptocurrency like Bitcoin would be left in a legal gray area if their assets were to be interfered with.

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