Today’s most interesting stories in technology, media and entertainment:
Four US Senators are going after Facebook over privacy concerns: Chuck Schumer of New York and Al Franken of Minnesota are especially concerned about “instant personalization,” a feature that provides Facebook partners like Yelp and Pandora with instant access to user information. While Facebook allows users to turn the feature off, the senators want the social network to make it so that users have to opt in before their information is shared with other companies. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will meet with Senator Schumer this week to discuss the situation.
The Supreme Court is getting involved in regulating video game sales: The high court recently took on a case that would decide whether or not California’s law against selling violent games to minors is in fact legal. While two lower courts have written that the law is unconstitutional, if the Supreme Court finds that it does not restrict freedom of speech, the decision could have a major impact on the future of the video game industry.
Facebook Gets Their iPad Video Working: While Facebook has yet to release an app specifically for the iPad, the social network is making sure videos uploaded to the site will play on the popular tablet. Rather than code video uploads with HTML5, Facebook is transcoding user uploads based on the playback device, which, in the case of the iPad, means videos will play as Quicktime files. The move to make video available on the iPad is a big decision for Facebook and comes at a time when many content hosts and providers have to choose whether to switch to HTML5, continue to work with Flash (and ignore the iPad) or figure out other ways.
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