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In a financial filing on Thursday, T-Mobile revealed that a hacker accessed a trove of personal data belonging to 37 million customers.

The telecom giant said that the “bad actor” started stealing the data, which includes “name, billing address, email, phone number, date of birth, T-Mobile account number and information such as the number of lines on the account and plan features,” since November 25.

In the SEC filing, T-Mobile said it detected the breach more than a month later, on January 5, and that within a day it had fixed the problem that the hacker was exploiting.

The hackers, according to T-Mobile, didn’t breach any company system but rather abused an application programming interface, or API.

“Our investigation is still ongoing, but the malicious activity appears to be fully contained at this time, and there is currently no evidence that the bad actor was able to breach or compromise our systems or our network,” the company wrote.

This is the eighth time T-Mobile was hacked since 2018. The most recent incident was in 2022, when a group of hackers known as Lapsus$ were able to gain access to the company’s internal tools, which gave them the chance to carry out so-called SIM swaps, a type of hack where hackers take over a victim’s phone number and then try to leverage that to reset and access the target’s sensitive accounts such as email or cryptocurrency wallets.

T-Mobile did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

T-Mobile says hacker accessed personal data of 37 million customers by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai originally published on TechCrunch

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Thursday! This week has just flown by, and we’re still reeling from the excitement that a company is leaning into compliments. Compliments? In this day and age? Is there actually hope for us after all?! Well, we have a compliment for ya, Mike — thank you for spreading some joy into our day today! — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

Amazon turned that smile upside down: Shopping for charity is going to not be a thing for Amazon after February. Amid layoffs and other cuts, the delivery giant said it was ending its AmazonSmile program to focus on other philanthropic endeavors of its own, Romain reports.
Give ’em what they want: Mike writes that “German teens went crazy for Slay’s app that gives compliments,” and now venture capitalists are getting in on the fun and backing its next phase.
Storefront builder’s gold mine: Oro, an open source e-commerce platform, is going against the grain of other platforms by targeting businesses. That approach is paying off as the company announces $13 million in new funding. Paul has more.

Startups and VC

People are addicted to credit cards — and it’s no wonder, given the lucrative rewards that many of them offer. But for merchants, credit cards tend to be less appealing, Kyle reports. Merchants are on the hook for interchange fees, or transaction fees a merchant’s bank must pay whenever a customer uses a card to make a purchase. Link comes to the rescue, and the company raised $30 million to help merchants accept direct bank payments. You know, like consumers in Europe have been able to do since the 1990s.

In recent years, working for, or banking with, a traditional financial institution was decidedly uncool. Far cooler was working for or banking with one of the many fintech startups that seemed to thumb their nose at stodgy bank brands, Connie reports. A lot of fintechs “have to fix their business models,” according to fintech-investing VCs.

And we have five more for you:

It’s better than yours: Outrider brings all their autonomous electric trucks to yard, and they’re, like, it’s better than yours, Kirsten reports, as the company raises $73 million to brings its autonomous electric yard trucks into the mainstream.
Someone let the air out of space: Private investment in space companies dropped 58% last year, even with SpaceX and Anduril monster raises, Aria reports.
Feeling the pressure: Brian reports that dry-cleaning robotics startup Presso raised another $8 million.
Call me on my $ell phone: India’s PhonePe tops $12 billion valuation in new funding, Manish reports.
Who needs designers anyway: Scenario lands $6 million for its AI platform that generates game art assets, reports Kyle.

Teach yourself growth marketing: How to boot up an email marketing campaign

In the third article of a five-part series, growth marketing expert Jonathan Martinez (Uber, Postmates, Chime) explains how to create and optimize email campaigns that will “push consumers through your funnel and drive conversions.”

Martinez shares fundamentals for segmenting customers and anticipating where leaks will occur along the funnel you’re developing. Startups that recapture these users can eke out a higher ARR, and every little bit counts.

“It is crucial to distill user segments as much as possible because we must ensure that we’re sending the right messaging to the right consumers.”

Three more from the TC+ team:

Worrying and getting worse: Women-founded startups raised 1.9% of all VC funds in 2022, which represents a drop from 2021, Dominic-Madori reports.
Tearin’ into the decks: Haje’s weekly Pitch Deck Teardown is here. This week he takes a closer look at Scrintal’s $1 million seed deck.
Response is for the birds: Twitter’s data leak response is a lesson in how not to do cybersecurity, reports Carly.

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Big Tech Inc.

We know, it’s hard to put that phone down, and all those distracting dings and buzzes don’t help. Well, Instagram’s got your back with a Quiet Mode that helps you take a break from the app and even tells your peeps you are on DND. Sarah writes that this is just one of several new changes on the app, including some other time management tools and expanded parental controls.

Meanwhile, fast fashion ain’t what it used to be…valued at. Rita reports that Shein is reportedly accepting a lower valuation as it seeks to raise $3 billion in new funding. The company is said to be raising on a $64 billion valuation, down from the $100 billion price tag in April; however, “Shein denies the accuracy of some of the information,” she writes.

And we have five more for you:

We want s’more Smores: Smores, a music discovery app, wants to show you the songs you’ve been dying to hear, but in a way you want it and with a TikTok-like feed, Ivan writes.
One way or another: Over in Europe, Natasha L reports that Meta dodged a €4 billion privacy fine over unlawful ads, while WhatsApp gets its hand slapped for processing data without a lawful basis.
They’re not spending like they used to: Ron reports that analysts cut their 2023 tech spending predictions as the economy forces consumers to scale back.
Is it that time already?: FTX’s new CEO is now saying there’s a possibility for the crypto exchange to restart. Jacquelyn has more.
Someone has a “420” obsession: Elon Musk’s now famous tweet about taking Tesla private could lose him billions as it plays out in trial, Rebecca reports.

Daily Crunch: Amazon cancels charitable donation initiative so it can focus on ‘programs with greater impact’ by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

After cutting off prominent app makers like Tweetbot and Twitterific, Twitter today quietly updated its developer terms to ban third-party clients altogether.

Spotted by Engadget, the “restrictions” section of Twitter’s 5,000-some-word developer agreement was updated with a clause prohibiting “use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications.” Earlier this week, Twitter said that it was “enforcing long-standing API rules” in disallowing clients access to its platform but didn’t cite which specific rules developers were violating. Now we know — retroactively.

As Engadget notes, Twitter clients are a part of Twitter history — Twitterific was created before Twitter had a native iOS app of its own. And they’ve gained a larger following in recent years, thanks in part to their lack of ads.

Twitter’s attitude toward third-party clients has long been permissive and even supportive, with the company going so far as to remove a section from its developer terms that discouraged devs from replicating its core service. But that seems to have changed under CEO Elon Musk’s leadership.

The decision seems unlikely to foster goodwill toward Twitter at a time when the platform faces challenges on a number of fronts. In a blog post, Twitterrific’s Sean Heber called Twitter “increasingly capricious” and a company he “no longer recognize[d] as trustworthy nor want to work with any longer.” Matteo Villa, the developer of Fenix, in an interview with Engadget called the lack of communication “insulting.” (Twitter has no communications department at present.)

Twitter is under immense pressure to turn a profit — or at least break even — as advertisers flee the platform, spurred by unpredictable, fast-changing content policies. The company, which has $12.5 billion in debt, is on the hook for $300 million in its first interest payment and has lost an estimated $4 billion in value since Musk acquired it at the end of October 2022. Fidelity recently slashed the value of its stake in Twitter by 56%.

Cutbacks at Twitter abound. Some employees are bringing their own toilet paper to work after the company reduced janitorial services, the New York Times reported, and Twitter has stopped paying rent for several of its offices. Musk has elsewhere attempted to save around $500 million in costs unrelated to labor, shutting down a data center and launching a fire sale after putting office items up for auction in a bid to recoup costs.

Twitter’s also heavily pushing its Twitter Blue plan (now with an annual option), aiming to make it a profit driver. It plans to lift its ban on political ads, chasing after campaign dollars in the 2024 U.S. elections. And the company is reportedly considering selling usernames through online auctions.

Twitter officially bans third-party clients after cutting off prominent devs by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Tesla CEO Elon Musk oversaw a 2016 video that overstated the capabilities of the automaker’s driver assistance system, Autopilot, according to internal emails viewed by Bloomberg. The emails show that Musk even dictated the opening tagline of the video that claimed the car drove itself. Earlier this week, a deposition from a senior engineer revealed that the car hadn’t been driving itself and had instead been following a pre-determined route along a high-definition map.

False and misleading

Elluswamy’s deposition was taken as evidence in a lawsuit against Tesla for a fatal 2018 crash involving former Apple engineer Walter Huang. The lawsuit alleges that errors by Autopilot, and Huang’s misplaced trust in the capabilities of the system, caused the crash.

State and federal agencies and customers have also called out Tesla for falsely promoting the capabilities its driver assistance systems, Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (which is not actually fully self-driving), even though Tesla does advise its drivers to stay alert and focused while the systems are engaged.

Last July, the California Department of Motor Vehicles accused Tesla of falsely advertising its systems, something a handful of Tesla customers also alleged in a September lawsuit against the company.

Additionally, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is actively investigating two crashes related to Autopilot. Tesla is also potentially facing a criminal investigation from the Department of Justice over its self-driving claims.

Musk oversaw misleading 2016 video saying Tesla drove itself by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

It looks like Dungeons & Dragons just succeeded on a death-saving throw. After weeks of backlash and protests from fans and content creators, Wizards of the Coast — the Hasbro-owned publisher of Dungeons & Dragons — announced that it will now license the tabletop role-playing game’s core mechanics under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This gives the community “a worldwide, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license” to publish and sell works based on Dungeons & Dragons.

“Overall, what we’re going for here is giving good-faith creators the same level of freedom (or greater, for the things in Creative Commons) to create TTRPG content that’s been so great for everyone, while giving us the tools to ensure the game continues to become ever more inclusive and welcoming,” wrote Dungeons & Dragons executive producer Kyle Brink in a blog post.

This is a massive change of heart for the gaming giant. Earlier this month, Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) sent a document with a new open gaming license (OGL) to top Dungeons & Dragons content creators, asking them to sign what they called “OGL 1.1.” Some creators leaked the document in protest, exposing its predatory terms that would suffocate the prolific fan community and collapse some creators’ businesses. The now-retracted OGL 1.1 would have required any Dungeons & Dragons creator earning over $50,000 to write reports to WoTC, and any making over $750,000 to start paying a 25% royalty. These numbers might seem high, but these figures refer to gross revenue, not income — and the industry of third-party Dungeons & Dragons content is so large that the impact would be severe. Other creators worried about a clause in the contract that would allow WoTC to publish their work, potentially without credit or payment.

Over 77,000 creators and fans signed an open letter against these changes, and some went as far as canceling their subscriptions to D&D Beyond, an online platform for the game. Finally, WoTC admitted that they “rolled a 1” — for those uninitiated in TTRPG-speak, that means they screwed up really, really bad.

“There’s no royalty payment, no financial reporting, no license-back, no registration, no distinction between commercial and non-commercial. Nothing will impact any content you have already published under OGL 1.0a. That will always be licensed under OGL 1.0a. Your stuff is your stuff,” Brink wrote in today’s blog post. Later in the post, he affirms again, “You own your content. You don’t give Wizards any license-back, and for any ownership disputes, you can sue for breach of contract and money damages.”

The draft of the new OGL under Creative Commons — known as OGL 1.2 — is a big improvement from the last document. But some fans remain worried about terms that impact virtual tabletops and works already licensed under the original OGL, which dates back to 2000. Virtual tabletop (VTT) software helps people play games like Dungeons & Dragons when they’re not in the same room, and of course, these products exploded during the pandemic. Dungeons & Dragons does not currently have its own VTT, though. As part of the new OGL, WoTC wrote a draft of a brand-new VTT policy.

According to the VTT policy, it’s okay for developers to display content from the Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks. But WoTC is wary of content that is “more like a video game” than a TTRPG.

“What isn’t permitted are features that don’t replicate your dining room table storytelling,” the document says. “If you replace your imagination with an animation of the Magic Missile streaking across the board to strike your target, or your VTT integrates our content into an NFT, that’s not the tabletop experience.”

As far as content published under the original OGL goes, WoTC says that content already published will remain licensed, but moving forward, the old license will be deauthorized.

Tomorrow, WoTC will update the blog post with a link for fans to provide feedback — this survey will remain open until February 3. Then, within the following two weeks, WoTC will issue another update.

“The process will extend as long as it needs to. We’ll keep iterating and getting your feedback until we get it right,” Brink wrote.

This is a promising first step for Dungeons & Dragons to regain its fans’ trust. But when you make a death-saving roll, you have to succeed three times before your character can get back into the fray. Hopefully WoTC leadership keeps making good dice rolls.

Dungeons & Dragons’ publisher will put the game under a Creative Commons license by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

Netflix founder and co-CEO Reed Hastings announced Thursday that he would step down after more than two decades at the company.

While news of his departure comes as a shock, Hastings noted that Netflix has planned its next era of leadership “for many years” in the announcement, which was shared on the company’s blog.

In 2020, Netflix named Ted Sarandos, who has long led content efforts at the company, as co-CEO alongside Hastings. At the time, Netflix characterized the change as formalizing the way that the company was already operating.

Netflix will maintain the co-CEO structure in Hasting’s absence, promoting COO Greg Peters to the tandem role with Sarandos.

“It was a baptism by fire, given COVID and recent challenges within our business,” Hastings said of Sarandos and Peters taking the reins.

“But they’ve both managed incredibly well, ensuring Netflix continues to improve and developing a clear path to reaccelerate our revenue and earnings growth. So the board and I believe it’s the right time to complete my succession.”

Hastings will stay involved with the company as executive chairman of the board, following a precedent shared by other prominent major tech company founders including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Microsoft’s Bill Gates.

Netflix founder Reed Hastings steps down as co-CEO by Taylor Hatmaker originally published on TechCrunch

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important crypto stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12 p.m. PT, subscribe here.

Welcome back to Chain Reaction.

Do you believe in second chances? Well, FTX’s new CEO John J. Ray III hopes so. The disgraced crypto exchange’s new chief is open to the idea of restarting operations and possibly reviving the bankrupt company, according to a new report by WSJ. Time will tell if that happens and works out for both FTX and the company’s customers and creditors.

In other news, if you hadn’t heard of a little eight-letter crypto exchange called Bitzlato before Wednesday, you’re not alone. But apparently the U.S. Department of Justice knew what it was, and followed it so closely that they uncovered enough information to arrest the founder, Anatoly Legkodymov, for allegedly processing over $700 million of illicit funds.

While this arrest brought forth a number of jokes and confusion from crypto community members, who had no idea what Bitzlato was before the announcement, it also brought on a bit of annoyance that the DOJ isn’t taking action toward bigger players in the space.

Events like FTX’s bankruptcy shook the crypto industry, but longtime crypto players didn’t seem to know what Bitzlato was before the DOJ’s announcement. According to data of known wallets from Arkham, a crypto intelligence tool, wallets associated with Bitzlato contain just over $11,000; at its peak, they contained over $6 million, making Bitzlato a very small player in the industry.

All in all, this arrest points to the DOJ — and the U.S. government in general — cracking down on the crypto space. Like the rapper Biggie Smalls once said, “It’s like the more money we come across, the more problems we see.”

More details below.

This week in web3

Solana co-founder sees potential for devs to lead its network in 2023 (TC+)

As the crypto developer ecosystem expands, major ecosystems outside of the top two cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin and Ethereum — are growing, according to a new report. Solana saw the highest number of new developers contributing to the ecosystem, with its developer count rising by 83%, the fastest of any major blockchain. “2023 might just be the year when other devs already building on Solana collectively lead the direction of the network,” Raj Gokal, co-founder of Solana, said to TechCrunch.

DOJ charges founder of crypto exchange Bitzlato for processing $700M of illegal funds

As mentioned above, little-known crypto exchange Bitzlato is in hot water. According to the DOJ, Bitzlato allowed users to trade cryptocurrencies without verifying their identity. The Hong Kong-registered exchange advertised itself to customers by saying that “neither selfies nor passports [are] required.” The government said that this lack of know-your-customer procedures turned Bitzlato into a hotbed for criminal activity.

Ethereum’s shift to proof-of-stake draws increasing institutional interest (TC+)

Ethereum’s shift from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) in September 2022 increased interest in staking across a number of parties — including institutions. The success of the Merge propelled Ethereum from “a smart contract platform lagging behind” into “something that was doing things right,” Diogo Mónica, co-founder and president of Anchorage Digital, a crypto bank last valued at over $3 billion, said to TechCrunch. “Interest from investors grew and the appetite changed dramatically.”

Crypto.com cuts 20% jobs amid ‘significant damage’ to industry from FTX

Crypto exchange Crypto.com is cutting its global workforce by 20%, it said on Friday, as it navigates ongoing economic headwinds and “unforeseeable” industry events. This is the second major layoff at the Singapore-headquartered Crypto.com, which cut 250 jobs in mid-last year. The company did not say which roles were being eliminated in the new round of layoffs but blamed the collapse of FTX, whose misappropriation of customers’ funds and bankruptcy “significantly damaged trust in the industry.”

Crypto in for a ‘choppy year’ of slow capital deployment, investors say (TC+)

While some crypto-focused venture capitalists are bullish for 2023, others see it as a hazardous time. Many investors are trying to put last year’s chaotic market behind them and look forward to the future in a still investor-centric environment. But the competition in the market will heat up as investors write fewer checks and become more selective.

The latest pod

Last week, Chain Reaction launched Season 2 with an episode with Ryan Wyatt, president of Polygon Labs, one of the biggest market shakers and layer-2 blockchains in the crypto space that’s building on top of the Ethereum ecosystem.

Next week, we’ll be releasing our second episode with Mo Shaikh, co-founder and CEO of Aptos, a new-ish layer-1 blockchain that raised a total of $350 million in funding in 2022.

Stay tuned.

Subscribe to Chain Reaction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the latest episodes, and please leave us a review if you like what you hear!

Follow the money

ZK proof-focused startup Ulvetanna raises $15 million in a seed round
Obol Labs raises $12.5 million in a Series A round
The =nil; Foundation raises $22 million to build out a proof-based marketplace
Metahood raises $3 million to build a metaverse-based real estate portal
Sleepagotchi raises $3.5 million to gamify and reward people for sleeping

This list was compiled with information from Messari as well as TechCrunch’s own reporting.

More money, more problems for crypto by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

The clock is ticking for Uber to electrify its fleet, and the rideshare company wants automakers to help by designing cheaper electric vehicles for its drivers.

Lawmakers are setting deadlines for rideshare companies to ditch fossil fuels (California‘s Air Resources Board among them), and Uber has its own electrification deadlines, which range from 2025 to 2030. That’s all well and good, but electric vehicles are still too pricey for most people, including rideshare drivers. 

So, chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi says Uber is in talks with automakers to build EVs that sacrifice speed, or even a wheel or two, to drive down the sticker price. The CEO didn’t name the specific automakers that Uber is apparently working with, but last year the company debuted a rideshare-focused prototype from U.K.-based automaker Arrival.

“Top speeds that many cars have are not necessary for city driving that’s associated with rideshare,” Khosrowshahi said on Thursday at a Wall Street Journal event. “We’re also talking about vehicles that are purpose-built” for delivering things like groceries, he added. “You can imagine smaller vehicles — two-wheelers, three-wheelers — that have trunk space that can get through traffic easier that have a much smaller footprint, both in terms of environmental and also traffic footprint, than let’s say a car.”

The CEO also said the passenger area could change, with riders potentially “facing each other.” (The executive also didn’t say if Uber would cover detailing costs from the bouts of motion sickness I assume this would trigger.)

When it comes to meal and grocery delivery, Uber isn’t the only company to see potential in much smaller vehicles with fewer wheels. Even in markets like the U.S., where auto rickshaws aren’t common, several companies have talked up this idea in recent years, including Arcimoto and ElectraMeccanica.

In race to electrify, Uber wants EVs that sacrifice top speeds, wheels by Harri Weber originally published on TechCrunch

There’s no shortage of tools for brainstorming, collaboration and keeping all your knowledge in one place. Still, judging from the number of new tools that come to market on a regular basis, it seems that people are frustrated with the available tools.

Scrintal recently raised $1 million to build its visual collaborative knowledge base tool and shared its deck for us to take a peek under the hood.

We’re looking for more unique pitch decks to tear down, so if you want to submit your own, here’s how you can do that. 

Slides in this deck

Cover slide
Problem slide part 1
Problem slide part 2
Solution slide part 1
Solution slide part 2
Value proposition slide
User testimonials slide
Traction slide
Revenue slide
 Retention slide
 User profile slide
 Growth projection slide
 Vision slide
 The ask slide
 Contact slide
 Appendices cover slide
 Appendix 1: Why now?
 Appendix 2: Competitive landscape
 Appendix 3: Product and growth model

Three things to love

Scrintal is entering a crowded and chaotic market; without really trying, I can name five or six well-established competitors in that space. The good news is that the company seems to know that and tackles its advantages head-on.

Clarity of value proposition

Promising a 10x increase in work speed is a hell of a claim, and as a would-be investor I’d want to see some proof — but the story is told very well. This value proposition slide comes after a pretty thorough examination of the problem space and the solution the company is building, and puts great clarity around what the tool does and who it does it for.

Storytelling to explain the benefits

Getting your users to tell your story for you is such an obvious storytelling technique, often used in sales decks. It’s remarkably rarely used in VC pitch decks, which I think is a tremendous shame. Here, Scrintal is using its customer testimonials to highlight various selling points and benefits in a way that feels seamless and elegant.

The stats shown on the slide (66% fewer apps used, 50% less time spent, 30% fewer meetings) tell one part of the story. The headlines tell another. The quotes are helpful for filling out the story even further, and even doing a quick skim of the job titles of the people sharing the testimonials helps give an impression of the breadth of how the companies are able to draw benefits from Scrintal.

I presume that the places it says “user name” are redacted and that the “real” deck shows the names and businesses that are using the product, but even without that, it shows how well you can use testimonials and user interviews to your favor.

For startups, this slide is a lesson in how to think creatively about sharing your journey to date with potential investors.

I’m not in love with how much text there is on this slide — you wouldn’t want to use this for a presentation deck — but it’s a great slide for a send-home deck. It adds a lot of context and does so in a way that is super easy to understand even without a voice-over or additional information.

A bold vision

This slide isn’t strictly a vision slide — it does a lot more than that. It shows off what some of the competitor valuations are and explores the nature of the business models of those competitors. It shares the trajectory of its plan (although the step functions from visual OS to machine learning to workspace to visual knowledge base are a little unclear to me). Having said that, in a pitch context, I can see this being a helpful slide to guide some of the conversations with the investors in the right direction.

This slide isn’t a complete slam dunk, however, and there are a few things that could be improved. I wish the vision was clearer: “transform the way 1B+ people create ideas” is pretty fluffy. Yes, the company wants to transform it, but from what to what, and why? It’s also a little confusing to me why the company is talking about the European market only — it’s a big world out there, and the company’s pricing is in U.S. dollars, so seeing the “platform expansion” limit itself is confusing.

In the rest of this teardown, we’ll take a look at three things Scrintal could have improved or done differently, along with its full pitch deck!

Three things that could be improved

One of the big things investors are looking for when evaluating a startup is whether it is able to gradually de-risk what it is doing, stage by stage. A million dollars isn’t a huge fundraising round by most standards, and the company is likely at the earliest stages of its value-creation journey. That means that the deck needs to make something pretty clear: What is it doing in the current stage to prove some of its hypotheses? Sadly, the Scrintal deck is a little lacking on that front.

Pitch Deck Teardown: Scrintal’s $1M seed deck by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

Facebook parent Meta announced today it’s further centralizing various user settings across its suite of apps — Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. As a result, several existing settings will be relocated to Meta’s “Accounts Center” feature, first launched in 2020. Specifically, the changes will see Meta moving settings related to personal details, passwords, security options and ad preferences to this area, which is accessible from the Settings page within each app.

Meta says the update is aimed at making its settings experience easier for consumers to use. But in reality, the constant relocation of apps’ settings — something Facebook, in particular, has been notorious for re-arranging over the years — can lead to consumer confusion. In this case, however, it may not be too difficult to find the newly moved items, as they’re still going to be in the Settings section.

Now over a couple years old, Meta’s Accounts Center was introduced at a time when multiple regulators and governments had been investigating the company for its antitrust behavior. Though the feature in some ways highlights the extensive data collection practices across Meta’s family of apps, it can also be used as a means of demonstrating to lawmakers how Meta is making it simpler for consumers to manage their data — or so the company hopes.

With the update, consumers will be able to make choices about their data that are more consistent across platforms, Meta argues in its announcement about the new features. For instance, users could set their ad topic preferences across both Facebook and Instagram in one place, it says.

In addition to the relocated settings, Meta is updating data about users’ activity from Partners’ control, it adds, now calling this Activity information from ad partners. This is intended to help people see how their activity is sent to other websites and apps to power ads, Meta explains. The company says it’s also making changes aimed at allowing people to better understand their options when it comes to ads shown by Meta on other websites and apps and is exploring different ways of allowing users to customize these experiences — including through options that allow them to see fewer ads of things that don’t interest them.

These latter updates follow the rollout of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) privacy changes on iOS, which impacted Meta’s ad business and its revenues. Since then, companies have been looking to find other ways to continue to personalize ads for their users, as doing so leads to a more effective and profitable ad business. As Meta’s changes are only today being announced, it’s too early to make comments on how these revised tools for configuring the user’s interests and ad preferences could be tied to a larger attempt to workaround ATT using direct user input, but it’s likely that’s been a part of the reasoning here.

Meta says the changes will launch today but “gradually” roll out to Facebook, Messenger and Instagram over the months ahead.

Meta centralizes more user and privacy settings across its apps, announces changes to ads controls by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch