The Netherlands’ Data Protection Authority said Thursday it has fined TikTok 750,000 euros ($885,000) for not offering a privacy statement in Dutch, saying many children who use the popular video sharing app would be unable to understand the information. The agency said that by not offering a Dutch-language privacy statement, “TikTok failed to provide an […]
Tech
Robinhood, the online brokerage that found itself embroiled in this year’s meme stock phenomenon, will go public next week seeking a market valuation of up to $35 billion. The company said in a regulatory filing Monday that it hopes to price 55 million shares in its initial public offering in a range of $38 to […]
When Blue Origin launches people into space for the first time, founder Jeff Bezos will be on board. No test pilots or flight engineers for Tuesday’s debut flight from West Texas, just Bezos, his brother, an 82-year-old aviation pioneer and a teenage tourist. The capsule is entirely automated, unlike Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic rocket plane […]
Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, called this week on the administration of President Joe Biden to greenlight a plan to transmit the internet to people in Cuba via high-altitude balloons when their government has blocked access. CAN INTERNET BE DELIVERED BY BALLOON? Yes. For years, Alphabet — the parent company of Google — worked to […]
President Joe Biden said Friday that social media companies are “killing people” by failing to police misinformation on their platforms about COVID-19 vaccines. Biden’s comments came a day after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared misinformation about the vaccines a threat to public health, and as U.S. officials advised that deaths and serious illness from […]
Earlier this year, social media users were less than thrilled when they found out about Twitter’s new story feature “Fleets.” The new feature, which is an almost identical option to what is available on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, LinkedIn and other social media platforms, was widely ridiculed and ignored. Twitter picked up on the negative feedback from its users and decided to take […]
Instagram head Adam Mosseri acknowledged on Thursday that his platform had indeed mistakenly overlooked racists comments made on the site toward England’s black football players such as Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford, and Jadon Sancho. Instagram head Adam Mosseri quickly issued a statement to clarify the matter. “We have technology to try and prioritize reports and we were […]
Twitter is disappearing its disappearing tweets, called fleets, after they didn’t catch on. The company began testing tweets that vanish after 24 hours last March in Brazil. Fleets were designed to allay the concerns of new users who might be turned off by the public and permanent nature of normal tweets. “However, we haven’t seen […]
Facebook and its subsidiary WhatsApp are developing two separate new updates. The features will support multidevice services on the instant messaging app and enhance experts’ profiles on Facebook groups. WhatsApp announced on Wednesday that it’s testing a multidevice service that works without a phone connected to the internet. “Each companion device will connect to your WhatsApp independently,” said the messaging platform in a statement. The new update enables WhatsApp users to use this service on […]
Microsoft announced on Wednesday the launch of Windows 365, a new service which will allow businesses seamless access to Cloud PCs from anywhere. The new service will work on any modern web browser or through Microsoft’s Remote Desktop app, allowing users to access their Cloud PC from a variety of devices. “Windows 365 provides an instant-on boot experience,” Wangui McKelvey, a general manager for Microsoft 365, said in a statement. Instant […]