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Elon Musk’s Twitter Dissolves Trust And Safety Council

Twitter has disbanded its Trust and Safety Council which was a group of about 100 independent civil, human rights, and other organizations formed in 2016 to confront hate speech, exploitation of children, suicidal behavior, self-harm, and other issues on the platform.

The council was supposed to meet with representatives from Twitter on Monday night. According to multiple members, Twitter notified the group through the use of email that it would be disbanding soon before the meeting.

The council members, who offered The Associated Press images of the e-mail from Twitter, were speaking on the subject of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.

“Our work to make Twitter a safe, informative place will be moving faster and more aggressively than ever before and we will continue to welcome your ideas going forward about how to achieve this goal,” said the email, which was signed “Twitter.”
Source: india.com

The volunteer organization provided expert knowledge and direction over how Twitter can indeed better combat hate, bullying, and other harms, but it lacked judgment authority and did not look into specific content disputes.

“Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council was a group of volunteers who over many years gave up their time when consulted by Twitter staff to offer advice on a wide range of online harms and safety issues,” tweeted council member Alex Holmes. “At no point was it a governing body or decision making.”
Source: india.com

Twitter, headquartered in San Francisco, clarified the meeting with the committee in an email on Thursday, promising an open discussion and Q&A with Twitter staff, which include Ella Irwin, the new head of trust and safety.

This happened on the very day that three Trust and Safety council members stepped down in a public announcement posted on Twitter, claiming that contrary to Elon Musk’s claims, the safety, and well-being of Twitter’s users are on the decline.

After Musk criticized them and Twitter’s previous management for supposedly not doing enough to prevent child sexual abuse on the platform, those former council members have become the target of online predators.

Musk wrote on Twitter that It is a crime that they have refused to act on exploitation and abuse for years.

Concerns were raised by some remaining Trust and Safety council members, who wrote an e-mail to Twitter demanding that the company stop misrepresenting its role on Monday.

Suhani Jain

I am a student pursuing my bachelor’s in information technology. I have a interest in writing so, I am working a freelance content writer because I enjoy writing. I also write poetries. I believe in the quote by anne frank “paper has more patience than person

Amazon Launches Inspire, a TikTok-Style Shopping Feed

Amazon.com Inc. has introduced a feed Inspire, modeled after TikTok that will enable customers to purchase goods from a selected feed of images and videos.

The newest tech business to attempt to copy TikTok is Amazon. The world’s largest online retailer debuted Inspire on Thursday. Inspire is a short-form video and picture stream that enables users to browse and purchase things from content made by influencers, businesses, and other users.

According to Amazon, Inspire will progressively roll out to US users through December and is exclusively accessible through the Amazon Shopping mobile app.

The launch comes after testing conducted earlier this year when it was discovered that Amazon was exploring a TikTok-like shopping stream in its app, which at the time had a separate navigation button at the bottom.

The Inspire feed now will require tapping a light bulb icon rather than the diamond logo that was observed in testing. According to Amazon, as Inspire gathers more information about the user’s preferences by monitoring their engagement and likes, the feed will eventually become more individually tailored.

In order to further enhance the product, the retailer intends to add more shoppable elements to Inspire as well as extra in-app functionality and content.

Mae Badiyan, Practically Pursia, and other Amazon Influencers have already been invited to post on Inspire by the corporation. The Amazon Influencer Program will allow the creators to profit from user purchases.

Amazon noted, “Inspire was designed to make it easy to explore new products, discover ideas, and seamlessly shop content created by other customers, influencers, and brands they love.”

Inspire, which specializes in short-form video content but also supports photographs, functions somewhat like a cross between Instagram and TikTok. Similar to Instagram, one may double-tap and give a red heart “like”. Scrolling Inspire is also similar to TikTok’s vertical video feed, where users may swipe up and down.

Amazon has been attempting to make it simpler for customers to explore products rather than only search for specific items, as the company has traditionally used static product photos and information to create a unified catalog. Despite these efforts, the majority of clients leave the vast internet marketplace quickly.

When it comes to combining product discovery and purchase under one roof, Amazon is perhaps one of the few businesses that might meaningfully challenge TikTok. The problem is convincing customers to make purchases using the short-form video app, but TikTok has already demonstrated its ability to generate sales of everything from cleaning supplies to makeup.

Despite partial bans on the platform in a number of USA states due to cybersecurity concerns, TikTok also seems to be stepping into the e-commerce market.

As it looks to establish its own product fulfillment facilities, the Chinese video-sharing site may directly compete with Amazon in the US, according to an October Axios article. The report stated that TikTok might be considering e-commerce as a potential key source of revenue based on recent job postings that have been listed.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Apple to Start Encrypting iCloud Backups

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Suhani Jain

On Wednesday, Apple introduced its plans to enable users to encrypt additional types of iCloud info on its servers, such as full backups, photos, and notes.

The Advanced Data Protection feature will inhibit Apple from viewing the material of a portion of the most confidential or sensitive data stored on its web server and will prevent Apple from providing the information of an encoded backup to law enforcement.

According to Apple, encoded backups would be opt-in and available in the United States even before the end of this year.

Although Apple initially encrypted much of the data it contains on servers, the whole device backups containing text messages, contacts, as well as other necessary details were not end-to-end encoded, and Apple originally had access to the information of the backups.

The move will impress security advocates, who have originally defined unencrypted iCloud backups as a weak link in Apple’s privacy policy. It also implies that if Apple’s servers were ever hacked, user data would not be revealed.

It could offend law enforcement, which has relied on Apple’s policy of not encrypting backups to get contents in investigations even though Apple’s iMessage and devices are encrypted.

The FBI criticized Apple’s new feature in a statement on Wednesday, saying that it would “hinder” the bureau’s ability to “protect the American people from criminal acts,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Source: cnbc.com

Apple notably battled the FBI’s endeavor to persuade it to unlock an encrypted iPhone utilized by a terrorist in San Bernardino, California, through the courts. Apple stated at the time that an iCloud backup on its servers was an alternative for obtaining the same data.

Encryption is generally opposed by law enforcement officials around the world since it enables suspects to go dark and refuses to acknowledge law enforcement access to potential evidence that they might have earlier access to under lower levels of security.

In an interview in 2018, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that one major consideration in Apple’s decision-making regarding end-to-end encrypted iCloud backups is the fact that customer expects Apple to be able to assist them to recover their data. If users forget their passwords and have Advanced Data Protection enabled, Apple will be unable to reinstate the account since it lacks the required encryption key.

On Wednesday, Apple further introduced two additional security features. Users will have the option to use a physical key as second-factor authentication for Apple ID logins soon. Another update enables users who are vulnerable to major security risks to verify that their text messages are not being intercepted.

Last year, Apple introduced a system to inspect for inappropriate content including child sexual abuse content that used a complex system that would still enable

Apple encrypts user photos on its servers during an evident attempt to appease law enforcement. Privacy advocates argued that the system would mainly enable Apple to scan people’s hard drives. According to The Wall Street Journal, the system’s development has been halted.

Suhani Jain

Apple lets developers charge up to $10,000 per app

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Sandhya Gupta

Apple is making another move to provide greater flexibility and quell criticism of the service by altering the price strategy for the Apple App Store to allow developers to charge a wider array of amounts.

Apple updated the App Store pricing structure on Tuesday, making it possible for developers to charge anywhere between 29 cents and $10,000 for their apps. Additionally, new options for pricing across numerous countries and currencies will be available to developers.

Apple noted, “These newly announced tools, which will begin rolling out today and continue throughout 2023, will create even more flexibility for developers to price their products while staying approachable to the hundreds of millions of users Apple serves worldwide. And, in turn, help developers continue to thrive on the App Store.”

The company noted, “Under the updated App Store pricing system, all developers will have the ability to select from 900 price points, which is nearly 10 times the number of price points previously available for most apps. his includes 600 new price points to choose from, with an additional 100 higher price points available upon request.”

The departure from Apple’s long-standing 99-cent price limit occurs as the Silicon Valley giant defends itself against claims that it has a monopolistic hold on the App Store, which serves as the only entry point for iPhones.

The change significantly alters the App Store, which Apple introduced in 2008 with a focus on simplicity. In recent years, the platform has come under further fire from regulators and developers who claim that the company’s standards are excessively onerous.

Apple is under fire for the limitations and costs it imposes on developers, notably the 30% commission it charges for some of the apps available on the App Store.

Apple and small devs in the USA reached a settlement in a $100 million class-action suit last year, and one of the terms of the deal included raising prices. Apple also simplified the process for developers to challenge app rejections at the time, as well as adjustments to App Store search.

Political pressure is also being applied on Apple in the US and Europe to loosen its grip on the App Store, which has been criticized by companies like Spotify, Epic Games, and Twitter. A California judge dismissed Epic’s complaint that Apple was operating like a monopoly through the App Store in 2021.

The judge, however, disallowed Apple from forbidding developers from incorporating “external links or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms” in their apps.

New EU regulations that go into effect in May 2023 will compel Apple to allow third-party app stores and other payment methods on its iOS operating system. The Digital Markets Act will also forbid the iPhone from giving Apple’s own services, such as Apple Music or the Safari browser, a competitive advantage.

Apple’s new pricing flexibility does not solve the central issues of sideloading and third-party apps brought up in the last couple of antitrust lawsuits against the corporation. In response to requests for greater transparency, Apple has been adamant that sideloading iOS applications will lead to security issues, while conveniently omitting the fact that macOS supports user-loaded apps.

Unless compelled to do so by the courts or legislators, Apple is unlikely to abandon its App Store gatekeeping, as it did with its price tier adjustments.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Google to shut down Duplex AI for web

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Suhani Jain

Google has announced the disappearance of its Duplex on the Web service which is a tool powered by AI that was released in 2019 to assist users with a wide variety of online tasks such as purchasing airline tickets or improving the efficiency of the check-in process for flights on airline websites.

“Any automation features enabled by Duplex on the Web will no longer be supported after this date,” said the update.
“As we continue to improve the Duplex experience, we’re responding to the feedback we’ve heard from users and developers about how to make it even better,” a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch.
“By the end of this year, we’ll turn down Duplex on the Web and fully focus on making AI advancements to the Duplex voice technology that helps people most every day,” the spokesperson added.
Source: business-standard.com

The service was first officially confirmed at Google I/O 2019 as just an extension to its call-automation Duplex technology. As well as, while its use case was primarily limited to purchasing movie tickets, the facility subsequently expanded to also include data breach protection and check additional help or aid on e-commerce online sites.

Google has not clarified the reason why it is closing down the service, but as per TechCrunch, the cost of training and fine-tuning resource-intensive AI models might be the reason. Besides that, if website owners prevent the crawler from indexing their content, the performance of Duplex on the Web may decrease badly.

The company plans to invest less in improving Google Assistant and Google Assistant-powered services for non-Google devices.

Google positions it as an assistant that can aid you with mundane activities which include bookings and reservations, where it can contact the location and handle the bookings for you.

In 2019, Google introduced Duplex for the web which was an offshoot of the assistant which would assist you in filling out web application forms to make the user experience more seamless.

Suhani Jain

The Pixel 7 Finally Gets Its Free VPN in Google’s Latest Drop

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Sandhya Gupta

At the “Made by Google” event earlier this year, Google unveiled the Pixel and Pixel 7 Pro smartphones. The company launched free VPN services for its mobile devices via the Google One app in addition to the flagship phones and the Pixel watch.

Despite all of the wonderful features the Pixel 7 offers, up until now, it hasn’t received some of the most highly anticipated abilities. The most recent Pixel release from Google contains some of the much-heralded features of the new Pixel 7 including a free VPN via Google One.

Google has finally provided private browsing after previewing it at its Pixel presentation in October. Users of the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro will now get free, no-cost, subscription-free access to this VPN via the Google One app. Before this only users of Google’s $9.99/month 2TB subscription were permitted to use it.

One’s internet activity is encrypted and their IP address is hidden when using a VPN by Google One. A VPN offers users safety while utilizing a public network and also prevents location tracking. Users of the Google One application can select “Use VPN” to immediately protect their location and browsing history.

Apple offers a comparable solution for iPhones called Private Relay, but it isn’t free for iPhone 14 users and requires a membership to either its iCloud+ or Apple One services. Private Relay, however, only shields user traffic that travels through Apple’s own internet browser, Safari.

With the most recent version, the Recorder app now has speaker labels that will give people in the recording their own labels automatically. Additionally, the software will insert a line break anytime the speaker in transcriptions changes.

The devices will also have Clear Calling activated, which will aid in lowering background noise and enhancing human voice quality. Pixel 7 will be able to distinguish between several speakers and create line breaks when necessary when users record lectures or conferences.

Owners of Pixel Watches will receive Sleep Profiles, a Fitbit Premium feature, even if they aren’t subscribed to Fitbit Premium. To assess one’s sleep, this tool keeps track of ten distinct factors, including the length of your sleep, interruptions, and regularity of bedtime.

New additions for other Pixel smartphones are included in this Pixel drop as well. The upcoming single portal for privacy and security settings will feature action cards with tips on how to make your software as secure as possible.

In January, phones using the Pixel Buds Pro will also get spatial audio. Google noted, “you can also turn on spatial audio with wired headphones.”

In a subsequent update, Google confirmed that the Pixel Watch Fall Detection will arrive in 2023 and that the redesigned tiles for sunset/sunrise and favorite contacts would be available.

Google just unveiled a ranking of the top games and applications available in India’s Google Play Store. Quest has been named the “Best App of 2022” in this yearly update to Google’s top applications and games. While the battle royale game Apex Legends Mobile has been chosen as the “Best Game of 2022.”

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

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