The people behind “move fast and break things” are about to get disrupted themselves.

The German regulation body that monitors competition has ordered Facebook to stop some of its core activities, unless it gets more explicit user consent (via the BBC). That includes combining the data Facebook gains about users from external websites into their backend Facebook profiles. As well as combining the accounts of people on Facebook-owned companies, including WhatsApp and Instagram. 

SEE ALSO: Zuckerberg is breaking promises to Instagram and WhatsApp. Be concerned.

While the new orders concern user privacy, the body is actually instituting its terms because they say the way Facebook has consolidated user information across websites and social platforms has given them an unfair competitive advantage.

“The combination of data sources substantially contributed to the fact that Facebook was able to build a unique database for each individual user and thus to gain market power.”

Facebook released a blog post Thursday directly refuting the order, entitled “Why We Disagree With the Bundeskartellamt” (the name of the agency). In the post, it defends its actions on both privacy and competitive grounds. And, Facebook says that the competition agency shouldn’t have jurisdiction over this matter.

“The GDPR specifically empowers data protection regulators – not competition authorities – to determine whether companies are living up to their responsibilities,” Facebook writes. “The Bundeskartellamt’s order threatens to undermine this, providing different rights to people based on the size of the companies they do business with.”

Facebook also included a handy chart to show that it really does face a lot of competition. But the chart does make one wonder into which little box — messages? news? shopping? videos — Facebook places itself. Maybe, all of them?

Facebook has one month to refute and petition for changes to the order. Then, according to the BBC, the government body’s order will become law, and Facebook will be compelled to make changes.

At around 40 million users, according to industry estimates, Germany is far from Facebook’s largest market — that falls to India, at 300 million. But as US Facebook users experienced with the GDPR, it’s difficult for tech companies not to extend the privacy and data collection changes tech companies make in one market to others; why make a change that benefits consumers’ privacy to a part instead of just the whole?

This also isn’t the first time Facebook has been scrutinized on anti-competitive grounds. Lawmakers and consumer groups have recently been beating a drum to “break up Facebook,” arguing that its acquisition of companies like Instagram and WhatsApp constitutes a monopoly. 

The order about combining user data between services is also notable because Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently confirmed his company’s plan to more deeply integrate the backend of Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, and WhatsApp, into one. This was an initiative he emphasized on his company’s Q1 earnings call. And a New York Times report stated that Zuckerberg himself was behind the plan. The Irish Data Protection commission is also scrutinizing this plan.

This time, Zuck might just not get his way.

Twitter is making more money than ever before—even as it loses monthly active users.

On Thursday, the company announced its latest earnings report, and it was loaded with positive financial news. Twitter reported a record-setting revenue of $909 million in the fourth quarter, a 24-percent increase compared to this time last year. The company also announced it earned $3 billion in revenue last year, a 25 percent increase from 2017. 

But even while bringing in record profits, the social media behemoth still faces a major problem: a decline in monthly users.

Twitter reported a total of 321 million monthly users at the end of last year, which means that the microblogging service lost a whopping 5 million users in the last quarter. Twitter’s monthly user base has dropped down the levels it hasn’t seen since the end of 2016. Monthly users have declined on Twitter every quarter since Q1 of last year. It wasn’t exactly growing exponentially before that time either.

One way Twitter will deal with this steady decline in monthly active users is to simply stop reporting them. The company announced that after 2019’s first quarter report, it will no longer report monthly users on the platform.

In place of monthly users, Twitter will report a new metric it’s calling “monetizable daily active users.” 

 According to Twitter’s earnings report, “Monetizable DAU are Twitter users who log in and access Twitter on any given day through Twitter.com or our Twitter applications that are able to show ads.”

The reason for the change is likely due to the fact that this new metric shows user growth on the platform. Twitter reports that it has 126 million monetizable daily active users, which is an increase from 115 million mDAU just one year prior.

To be fair, one of the reasons for the decline in its monthly users is a conscience choice the company made to clean bots and spam accounts from its platform. After one of the service’s biggest purges of these types of accounts last year, Twitter saw its biggest drop in monthly active users. Yet, during this time it also saw its daily active user metric rise.

While Twitter is a much smaller than, say, Facebook with its 1.52 billion daily active users, its latest metrics might actually be the most accurate portrayal of any social network’s user base. A report that came out just last month claims that half of Facebook’s users may very well be fake.

This doesn’t totally absolve Twitter from its problems, however. A health, growing  platform would still record some sort of positive user growth. In fact, Snapchat, a younger and mobile-only platform, just reported a larger daily active userbase than Twitter. There’s also no good excuse for Twitter to be less transparent with its move to no longer report its monthly user numbers in the future.

Twitter recently stated that one of its main priorities going forward is conversation on the platform. With this new information on how the company is focusing on daily active users, it makes sense. Regardless, the social network still desperately needs to figure out a way to grow.

Samsung’s upcoming Feb. 20 Unpacked event is going to be full of new product announcements. 

While we expect the Galaxy S10 to be the headliner, Samsung’s reportedly planning a few other surprise products such as new wireless earbuds that might better compete with Apple’s increasingly popular AirPods.

SEE ALSO: Samsung’s Galaxy S10 might not be as powerful as the iPhone XS

A newly leaked photo from Winfuture.de, a German tech blog that’s reliably published images and information for unreleased consumer tech products before, shows what appears to be Samsung Galaxy Buds wirelessly charging on a Galaxy S10.

The alleged true wireless earbuds look similar to Samsung’s current Gear IconX 2018. However, if you look closely, you can see some new differences. The case appears to be just a bit smaller and there’s an LED indicator on the outside of the case along with a new lip instead of a button that could make the charging case easier to quickly open and close.

Anyone who’s used true wireless earbuds knows how liberating it is to not have wires to deal with. However, the downside is that it’s another thing you have to charge up.

With wireless charging, juicing up Samsung’s wireless earbuds could be as simple as placing them on top of the Galaxy S10. 

It’s a good solution until someone figures out how to wirelessly charge devices over the air (OTA) — there are many smart people working on OTA wireless charging — but not also not a new idea. Huawei’s excellent Mate 20 Pro has the exact same feature.

Of course, being first doesn’t mean much in the consumer tech world. There will be many people, especially in the U.S. where Huawei phones aren’t allowed to be sold, who will get to experience charging their earbuds with their phones for the first time. 

AirPods weren’t the first true wireless earbuds, but they are still considered the best because of their excellent battery life, super compact case, and seamless integration with iOS and Mac devices.

And these will be the points on which the Galaxy Buds (or whatever Samsung calls them) will be judged. Battery life will be the most important thing. Fingers crossed Samsung delivers with competitive pricing as well.