Facebook finds itself the subject of yet more unflattering allegations, this time claiming the company gouged people in third world countries by charging them for services it had said would be free when making deals with cellular carries in the areas. Internal documents are said to have surfaced indicating that after promising to let low-income citizens in places like Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines use a pared-down version of Facebook along with some Internet browsing without incurring data charges, the Meta Platforms company wound up charging, in total, millions of dollars a month. Read more

Intel is building a new $20 billion chip foundry in Ohio, where CEO Patrick Gelsinger says the company envisions investing more than $100 billion over the next decade to create a complex of up to eight plants. The move is part of a U.S. effort to increase domestic production of computer chips, alleviating supply chain shortages and reducing reliance on foreign suppliers. The new build, located near Columbus, is an economic boon for Ohio, creating 7,000 construction jobs and eventually employment for about 3,000 people in two flagship factories, and potentially many more jobs through the satellite suppliers nearby. Read more

The European Parliament has added amendments to the EU’s proposed Digital Services Act that will further strengthen consumer protections and make it more difficult for Big Tech to continue tactics for surveillance advertising and microtargeting. The new amendments, advanced at a plenary session last week, are significant in part because they apply to digital services more broadly than the original DSA, which targets “gatekeeper” companies like Google and Facebook. Parliament had already endorsed a full ban on the profiling of minors as well as limiting the use of special category data for ad serving. Read more

TikTok is testing the waters with a paid subscription mode for creators, joining Facebook, Clubhouse and others. Although TikTok remains tight-lipped about the experiment, it seems designed to keep TikTok influencers on the ByteDance platform rather than leaving for more lucrative pastures. Last week, Instagram announced a test allowing creators to charge from 99 cents to $99 per month for exclusive content, while Twitter in September debuted Super Follows, with rates of $2.99 to $9.99 per month. A creator with 13,000 followers that gets a 2 percent take rate at $4.99 per month can make $900 a month. YouTube and Snapchat also offer monetization options. Read more

Netflix stock dropped 20 percent Thursday on news that the streaming platform’s subscriber growth is slowing. Netflix missed its target only slightly, adding 8.3 million subscribers in Q4, versus its projected 8.5 million. But that missed target is combined with escalating content costs and a forecast that 2.5 million subscribers will be added in the first three months of 2022 as opposed to 4 million in Q1 2021. A significant portion of Q4’s subscribers growth was in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, up 3.5 million. Netflix added 1.2 million subs in the U.S. and Canada, only a slight improvement year over year. Read more