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What's changing?

Platforms have started rolling out new ways for European users to flag illegal online content and dodgy products, which companies will be obligated to take down quickly and objectively.

Amazon opened a new channel for reporting suspected illegal products and is providing more information about third-party merchants.

TikTok gave users an "additional reporting option" for content, including advertising, that they believe is illegal. Categories such as hate speech and harassment, suicide and self-harm, misinformation or frauds and scams, will help them pinpoint the problem.

Then, a "new dedicated team of moderators and legal specialists" will determine whether flagged content either violates its policies or is unlawful and should be taken down, according to the app from Chinese parent company ByteDance.

TikTok says the reason for a takedown will be explained to the person who posted the material and the one who flagged it, and decisions can be appealed.

TikTok users can turn off systems that recommend videos based on what a user has previously viewed. Such systems have been blamed for leading social media users to increasingly extreme posts. If personalized recommendations are turned off, TikTok's feeds will instead suggest videos to European users based on what's popular in their area and around the world.

The DSA prohibits targeting vulnerable categories of people, including children, with ads.

Snapchat said advertisers won't be able to use personalization and optimization tools for teens in the EU and U.K. Snapchat users who are 18 and older also would get more transparency and control over ads they see, including "details and insight" on why they're shown specific ads.

TikTok made similar changes, stopping users 13 to 17 from getting personalized ads "based on their activities on or off TikTok."

Well, that was quick. We had just been discussing the encouraging news that Rockstar had scooped up Cfx.re, a community dedicated to roleplaying within GTA and Red Dead Redemption games, as well as several mods made within that community. The only thing that made this newsworthy at all is that Rockstar has had an awful reputation when it comes to modding communities for its games. In that post, I highlighted the welcome change of the embrace of these mods and wondered aloud if this meant there had been a culture shift at Rockstar towards embracing more of these communities.

Commenters warned me that that was unlikely to be true. Well, it appears you win, commenters, because just days later Rockstar is disappearing another very cool and useful looking mod that serves only to make its game more attractive, especially this far into the sales cycle.

In case you thought Rockstar Games’ acquisition of Grand Theft Auto V creator group Cfx.re meant a brave new era for open modding in the hit open-world game, don’t worry, publisher Take-Two is still going after fan projects it doesn’t like. Case in point is its recent sacking of a mod called Sentient Streets, which used AI technology to generate NPC conversation dialogue on the fly. Take-Two had the mod scoured from both YouTube and NexusMods, leaving its creator confused and discouraged.

The Sentient Streets mod, which was previously covered by a number of sites like IGN and Eurogamer, had a story that revolved around an AI-worshiping death cult and NPCs whose dialogue was randomly generated by a tool called the Inworld Character Engine. YouTube user Bloc, who created the GTA V mod, said a video showing it off had over 100,000 views before it was removed, while the mod itself had apparently been downloaded over 3,000 times before NexusMods, where it was hosted, took it down.

As the post goes on to note, part of the issue here might be the use of a third-party platform called Inworld Character Engine, which populates the dialogue randomly generated by the mod with AI-generated dialogue built off of samples and audio the makers of that engine paid for. There is a chance that part of the concern is over whether Rockstar could find itself in some legal quagmire as a result of not policing this mod into oblivion.

But I doubt it. Rockstar’s reputation towards mods generally makes the case for Occam’s Razor. The least complicated explanation for this is that Rockstar is just Rockstar-ing. Which ultimately just sucks for Rockstar’s modding communities, most of which are made up of folks who are huge fans of the company’s games.

“Knowing that large corporations can issue strikes based on arbitrary reasons, which can cause your work to go in vain in moments, is also discouraging to say the least,” Bloc wrote in their post.

Indeed.

British microchip designing giant Arm has announced it has filed paperwork to sell its shares in the US.

The Cambridge-based company, which designs chips for devices from smartphones to game consoles, plans to list on New York's Nasdaq in September.

Arm did not reveal the number of shares for sale or the price, but its proposed initial public offering (IPO) could be the biggest listing this year.

In March, in a blow to the UK, the firm opted against listing shares in London.

On Monday, Arm announced that it had now publicly filed a registration statement relating to a proposed IPO. It said the number of shares to be offered and the price range for them were yet to be determined.

But the company is reportedly looking for a valuation of between $60bn (£47bn) to $70bn.

Arm was bought in 2016 by Japanese conglomerate Softbank in a deal worth £23.4bn. Prior to the takeover, it was listed in both London and New York for 18 years.

Its chip design instructions and technologies are used by manufacturers like the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and technology giants Apple and Samsung to make their own chips.

Listing a firm on a stock exchange takes it from being a private firm to a public company, with investors able to buy and sell shares of a company's stock on specific exchanges.

Reports previously suggested the firm had sought to raise between $8bn and $10bn through the listing on the technology-heavy Nasdaq platform. Other major technology companies including Google, Apple and Facebook trade on the Nasdaq. 2px presentational grey line

What is an IPO?

Private companies, as a way of raising cash, can start a process to list on a stock exchange.

In an IPO companies offer shares to investors before listing.

The price of the shares is typically set by investment banks hired by the company to run the process.

But once the shares start to be publicly traded, prices are set by supply and demand. The value of the shares, multiplied by how many there are, gives the market value of the company. 2px presentational grey line

Arm was founded in 1990 and has been referred to as the "crown jewel" of the UK's technology sector.

Reports in January said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had restarted talks with Arm's owner about listing on the London Stock Exchange.

But the firm said it did not plan to pursue a UK listing, saying the US was "the best path forward".

The decision raised concerns that the UK market was not doing enough to attract tech company stock offerings, with US exchanges seen to offer higher profiles and valuations.

But Arm's chief executive Rene Haas has said the company will keep its material intellectual property, headquarters and operations in the UK.

The latest filing shows further intent that Softbank is pushing ahead with the multi-billion dollar sale despite difficult conditions in the global financial markets.

The number of stock market listings has fallen sharply since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Shares in major technology companies have also fallen in the wake of the Covid pandemic.

After an acute shortage of semiconductors during the pandemic, the chip-making industry has faced reduced demand.

Arm's sales declined to $2.68bn in the year ended 31 March, hurt by a slump in global smartphone shipments. Sales for the three months to 30 June fell 2.5% to $675m.