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Four Republican U.S. lawmakers requested on Tuesday that Facebook Inc, Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google turn over any studies they have done on how their services affect children’s mental health.

The request follows a joint hearing last week of two House Energy and Commerce subcommittees at which the companies’ chief executives discussed their content moderation practices in the wake of the siege on the Capitol in January.

Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the committee’s ranking Republican, had asked the CEOs at the hearing whether their companies had conducted internal research concerning children’s mental health.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said he believed the company had, while Twitter’s Jack Dorsey said he did not believe so. Google’s Sundar Pichai said the company consulted with outside experts and invested “a lot of time and effort in these areas.”

In letters to the companies on Tuesday, McMorris Rodgers asked for copies of any relevant research or internal communications as well as information on any contractors and partners involved. They also requested any research the companies had done about how competitors’ products affect mental wellness of people under 18 years old.

The requests also cover Google’s YouTube Kids service and Facebook’s Instagram, which is developing a version for people under 13 years old.

The other lawmakers who signed the letter were ranking Republicans on various subcommittees, including Robert Latta, Gus Bilirakis and Morgan Griffith.

They asked for the companies to respond by April 16.

Four Republican U.S. lawmakers requested on Tuesday that Facebook Inc, Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google turn over any studies they have done on how their services affect children’s mental health.

Four Republican U.S. lawmakers requested on Tuesday that Facebook Inc, Twitter Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google turn over any studies they have done on how their services affect children’s mental health. The request follows a joint hearing last week of two House Energy and Commerce subcommittees at which the companies’ chief executives discussed their content moderation practices in the wake of the siege on the Capitol in January. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the committee’s ranking Republican, had asked the CEOs at the hearing whether their companies had conducted internal research concerning children’s mental health. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said he believed the company had, while Twitter’s Jack Dorsey said he did not believe so. Google’s Sundar Pichai said the company consulted with outside experts and invested “a lot of time and effort in these areas.” In letters to the companies on Tuesday, McMorris Rodgers asked for copies of any relevant research or internal communications as well as information on any contractors and partners involved. They also requested any research the companies had done about how competitors’ products affect mental wellness of people under 18 years old. The requests also cover Google’s YouTube Kids service and Facebook’s Instagram, which is developing a version for people under 13 years old. The other lawmakers who signed the letter were ranking Republicans on various subcommittees, including Robert Latta, Gus Bilirakis and Morgan Griffith. They asked for the companies to respond by April 16.

US lawmakers press Big Tech for internal research on kids' mental health

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/google">Google</a> Maps has announced a new feature in which the drivers will be guided through the most eco-friendly path.

The app will now show the routes after estimating which path generates the lowest carbon emissions on the basis of traffic, slopes and other factors.

This feature will be launched later this year in the US initially and will then be followed by a launch of this feature in other countries.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/google-collects-data-in-incognito-mode-consumers-allege-in-lawsuit-370408" hreflang="en">Google collects data in incognito mode, consumers allege in lawsuit</a>

Google has decided to put in more efforts in its commitment to help combat climate change in its day-to-day happenings and through its most commonly used apps and features.

This feature will be set on automatic mode and unless the drivers opt out of it, Google will only show the most eco-friendly route.&nbsp;

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/colour-coded-google-to-redesign-search-for-better-user-experience-359236" hreflang="en">Colour coded: Google to redesign 'search' for better user experience</a>

These routes will be more eco-friendly but will take almost the same time to reach the destination. Google will also offer alternate routes and will let users choose the route based on emissions.

"What we are seeing is for around half of routes, we are able to find an option more eco-friendly with minimal or no time-cost tradeoff," Russell Dicker, a director of product at Google said.

Google has assured that the calculation of emissions is done by testing across different types of vehicles and road types and takes insights from the US government's National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL).

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/asian-americans-and-blacks-experienced-increased-online-harassment-in-2020-survey-372852" hreflang="en">Asian Americans and Blacks experienced increased online harassment in 2020: Survey</a>

This decision has been taken after a study at California State University concluded that people were more inclined to consider carbon emissions while selecting a route.

Google will also be warning drivers travelling through low emissions zones where some vehicles are restricted in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom.

The Maps will also now be bringing the toggle option for car, bikes, and other transport options under one section soon.

Google Maps has announced a new feature in which the drivers will be guided through the most eco-friendly path. The app will now show the routes after estimating which path generates the lowest carbon emissions on the basis of traffic, slopes and other factors.

Google Maps has announced a new feature in which the drivers will be guided through the most eco-friendly path. The app will now show the routes after estimating which path generates the lowest carbon emissions on the basis of traffic, slopes and other factors. This feature will be launched later this year in the US initially and will then be followed by a launch of this feature in other countries. Also read | Google collects data in incognito mode, consumers allege in lawsuit Google has decided to put in more efforts in its commitment to help combat climate change in its day-to-day happenings and through its most commonly used apps and features. This feature will be set on automatic mode and unless the drivers opt out of it, Google will only show the most eco-friendly route. Also read | Colour coded: Google to redesign 'search' for better user experience These routes will be more eco-friendly but will take almost the same time to reach the destination. Google will also offer alternate routes and will let users choose the route based on emissions. "What we are seeing is for around half of routes, we are able to find an option more eco-friendly with minimal or no time-cost tradeoff," Russell Dicker, a director of product at Google said. Google has assured that the calculation of emissions is done by testing across different types of vehicles and road types and takes insights from the US government's National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL). Also read | Asian Americans and Blacks experienced increased online harassment in 2020: Survey This decision has been taken after a study at California State University concluded that people were more inclined to consider carbon emissions while selecting a route. Google will also be warning drivers travelling through low emissions zones where some vehicles are restricted in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. The Maps will also now be bringing the toggle option for car, bikes, and other transport options under one section soon.

Google Maps to suggest more 'eco-friendly' routes

Amazon is the world's biggest online market. It is now facing fire for exploiting its workers. Some shocking details have emerged on the working conditions at Amazon. The delivery drivers have to consent to surveillance or they could be fired.

The workers are forced to urinate in bottles. Because they don't get access to bathrooms. The company is denying all this. But its story isn't adding up.

Cameras powered by artificial intelligence to snoop on them, no bathrooms, bottles to urinate, and bags to defecate in. Usually, hostages or prisoners live through such conditions. But in the US, Amazon drivers are living through this nightmare.

It began with a tweet from a lawmaker.

Mark Pocan pointed out that Amazon workers are being forced to urinate in bottles at work. Amazon's denial was swift.

In a tweet, the company declared, "You don't really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us."

Amazon should have thought twice before putting out that tweet. Because it didn't take much time for a reporter to dig out images of those bottles.

A report revealed how Amazon drivers deliver up to 300 packages a day on a 10-hour shift.

If they take too long they can be written up and fired.

Amazon denied all these claims in public. It said this never happens. But Amazon's internal documents show it happens and the company knows all about it. A confidential document, posted by an online publication lists the "violations and defects" of Amazon employees.

Public urination and public defecation are listed under unprofessional behaviour.

A letter from a logistics area manager complains about the discovery of unsanitary bags from drivers.

To make matters worse, the workers are now being subjected to surveillance. Reports say Amazon delivery drivers now have to consent to AI surveillance in their vans.

Cameras are being installed to track drivers. Under the new rules, Amazon can collect photos to verify the identity of drivers along with the location of the vehicle and driver movements. They can record potential traffic violations. Even detect if the driver is distracted or drowsy.

For one of the drivers, named Vic, the surveillance proved to be too much. He narrated his ordeal to a news agency.

He described how Amazon first began surveillance of the driver by tracking his route. Then Amazon demanded pictures at the beginning of each shift. After the arrival of AI cameras, Vic decided to leave his job.

Some tweets don't age well. Amazon is learning it the hard way. Its denial of exhausting and exploitative working conditions has led to a PR fiasco.

Amazon is the world's biggest online market. It is now facing fire for exploiting its workers. Some shocking details have emerged on the working conditions at Amazon.

Amazon is the world's biggest online market. It is now facing fire for exploiting its workers. Some shocking details have emerged on the working conditions at Amazon. The delivery drivers have to consent to surveillance or they could be fired. The workers are forced to urinate in bottles. Because they don't get access to bathrooms. The company is denying all this. But its story isn't adding up. Cameras powered by artificial intelligence to snoop on them, no bathrooms, bottles to urinate, and bags to defecate in. Usually, hostages or prisoners live through such conditions. But in the US, Amazon drivers are living through this nightmare. It began with a tweet from a lawmaker. Mark Pocan pointed out that Amazon workers are being forced to urinate in bottles at work. Amazon's denial was swift. In a tweet, the company declared, "You don't really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us." Amazon should have thought twice before putting out that tweet. Because it didn't take much time for a reporter to dig out images of those bottles. A report revealed how Amazon drivers deliver up to 300 packages a day on a 10-hour shift. If they take too long they can be written up and fired. Amazon denied all these claims in public. It said this never happens. But Amazon's internal documents show it happens and the company knows all about it. A confidential document, posted by an online publication lists the "violations and defects" of Amazon employees. Public urination and public defecation are listed under unprofessional behaviour. A letter from a logistics area manager complains about the discovery of unsanitary bags from drivers. To make matters worse, the workers are now being subjected to surveillance. Reports say Amazon delivery drivers now have to consent to AI surveillance in their vans. Cameras are being installed to track drivers. Under the new rules, Amazon can collect photos to verify the identity of drivers along with the location of the vehicle and driver movements. They can record potential traffic violations. Even detect if the driver is distracted or drowsy. For one of the drivers, named Vic, the surveillance proved to be too much. He narrated his ordeal to a news agency. He described how Amazon first began surveillance of the driver by tracking his route. Then Amazon demanded pictures at the beginning of each shift. After the arrival of AI cameras, Vic decided to leave his job. Some tweets don't age well. Amazon is learning it the hard way. Its denial of exhausting and exploitative working conditions has led to a PR fiasco.

Some tweets don't age well, Amazon is getting the taste of this

Chinese telecommunication giant Huawei Technologies Co has suspended downloads of sportswear brands Nike and Adidas from its app store amid the Xinjiang cotton controversy.

Anger with Nike Inc and Adidas erupted on Chinese social media late on Wednesday after China's netizens spotted a statement from the former&nbsp;saying it was "concerned" about reports of forced labour in Xinjiang and that it does not use cotton from the region.

Topics around the Nike statement were among the highest trending on China's Twitter-like social media Weibo on Thursday, and the social media backlash had a wider fallout.

Since then, although the Chinese government has not singled out any particular company, a nationwide consumer boycott against foreign brands -- including H&amp;M, Nike, Adidas and Burberry -- has swept the country.

To this end, on Monday morning, Nike and Adidas apps on Huawei’s app store were not available to download.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/entertainment/lifestyle/news-nike-faces-social-media-storm-in-china-over-xinjiang-statement-372985">Also read |&nbsp;Nike faces social media storm in China over Xinjiang statement</a>

As of Monday, however, the brands could still be found on major Chinese e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, JD.com and Pinduoduo. And consumer demand continued to be on the higher side.

The brands’ social media accounts are still accessible, along with the Chinese version of its website.

Swedish retailer H&amp;M was one of the hardest-hit brands in the Xinjiang boycott. A number of major Chinese tech firms have erased the clothing company’s virtual presence from their platforms.

The social media fallout comes as relations between the United States and China have deteriorated in recent years.

In the latest development, the United States, the European Union, Britain and Canada on Monday imposed sanctions on Chinese officials for alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang. China retaliated with sanctions on European lawmakers and institutions.

(with inputs)

Chinese telecommunication giant Huawei Technologies Co has suspended downloads of sportswear brands Nike and Adidas from its app store amid the Xinjiang cotton controversy.

Chinese telecommunication giant Huawei Technologies Co has suspended downloads of sportswear brands Nike and Adidas from its app store amid the Xinjiang cotton controversy. Anger with Nike Inc and Adidas erupted on Chinese social media late on Wednesday after China's netizens spotted a statement from the former saying it was "concerned" about reports of forced labour in Xinjiang and that it does not use cotton from the region. Topics around the Nike statement were among the highest trending on China's Twitter-like social media Weibo on Thursday, and the social media backlash had a wider fallout. Since then, although the Chinese government has not singled out any particular company, a nationwide consumer boycott against foreign brands -- including H&M, Nike, Adidas and Burberry -- has swept the country. To this end, on Monday morning, Nike and Adidas apps on Huawei’s app store were not available to download. Also read | Nike faces social media storm in China over Xinjiang statement As of Monday, however, the brands could still be found on major Chinese e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, JD.com and Pinduoduo. And consumer demand continued to be on the higher side. The brands’ social media accounts are still accessible, along with the Chinese version of its website. Swedish retailer H&M was one of the hardest-hit brands in the Xinjiang boycott. A number of major Chinese tech firms have erased the clothing company’s virtual presence from their platforms. The social media fallout comes as relations between the United States and China have deteriorated in recent years. In the latest development, the United States, the European Union, Britain and Canada on Monday imposed sanctions on Chinese officials for alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang. China retaliated with sanctions on European lawmakers and institutions. (with inputs)

Huawei removes Nike and Adidas from its app store amid Xinjiang row

Facebook said on Monday it planned two new undersea cables to connect Singapore, Indonesia and North America in a project with Google and regional telecommunication companies to boost internet connection capacity between the regions.

"Named Echo and Bifrost, those will be the first two cables to go through a new diverse route crossing the Java Sea and they will increase overall subsea capacity in the trans-pacific by about 70 per cent," Facebook Vice President of Network Investments, Kevin Salvadori said.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/facebook-google-ceos-suggest-ways-to-reform-key-internet-law-372984" hreflang="en">Facebook, Google CEOs suggest ways to reform key internet law</a>

The cables, according to the executive, will be the first to directly connect North America to some of the main parts of Indonesia and will increase connectivity for the central and eastern provinces of the world's fourth most populous country.

Salvadori said "Echo" is being built in partnership with Alphabet's Google and Indonesian telecommunications' company XL Axiata and should be completed by 2023.

Bifrost, which is being done in partnership with Telin, a subsidiary of Indonesia's Telkom, and Singaporean conglomerate Keppel is due to be completed by 2024.

The two cables, which will need regulatory approval, follow previous investments by Facebook to build up connectivity in Indonesia, one of its top five markets globally.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/hacktivism-adding-to-woes-of-cybersecurity-at-alarming-rate-373454" hreflang="en">'Hacktivism' adding to woes of cybersecurity at alarming rate</a>

While 73 per cent&nbsp;of Indonesia's population of 270 million are online, the majority access the web through mobile data, with less than 10 per cent using a broadband connection, according to a 2020 survey by the Indonesian Internet Providers Association.

Swathes of the country, remain without any internet access.

Facebook said last year it would deploy 3,000 km (1,8641 miles) of fibre in Indonesia across twenty cities in addition to a previous deal to develop public Wi-Fi hot spots.

Aside from the Southeast Asian cables, Facebook was continuing with its broader subsea plans in Asia and globally, including with the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN), Salvadori said.

"We are working with partners and regulators to meet all of the concerns that people have, and we look forward to that cable being a valuable, productive transpacific cable going forward in the near future," he said.

The 12,800 km PLCN, which is being funded by Facebook and Alphabet, had met U.S government resistance over plans for a Hong Kong conduit. It was originally intended to link the United States, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Philippines.

Facebook said earlier this month it would drop efforts to connect the cable between California and Hong Kong due to "ongoing concerns from the U.S. government about direct communication links between the United States and Hong Kong".

Facebook said on Monday it planned two new undersea cables to connect Singapore, Indonesia and North America in a project with Google and regional telecommunication companies to boost internet connection capacity between the regions.

Facebook said on Monday it planned two new undersea cables to connect Singapore, Indonesia and North America in a project with Google and regional telecommunication companies to boost internet connection capacity between the regions. "Named Echo and Bifrost, those will be the first two cables to go through a new diverse route crossing the Java Sea and they will increase overall subsea capacity in the trans-pacific by about 70 per cent," Facebook Vice President of Network Investments, Kevin Salvadori said. Also read| Facebook, Google CEOs suggest ways to reform key internet law The cables, according to the executive, will be the first to directly connect North America to some of the main parts of Indonesia and will increase connectivity for the central and eastern provinces of the world's fourth most populous country. Salvadori said "Echo" is being built in partnership with Alphabet's Google and Indonesian telecommunications' company XL Axiata and should be completed by 2023. Bifrost, which is being done in partnership with Telin, a subsidiary of Indonesia's Telkom, and Singaporean conglomerate Keppel is due to be completed by 2024. The two cables, which will need regulatory approval, follow previous investments by Facebook to build up connectivity in Indonesia, one of its top five markets globally. Also read| 'Hacktivism' adding to woes of cybersecurity at alarming rate While 73 per cent of Indonesia's population of 270 million are online, the majority access the web through mobile data, with less than 10 per cent using a broadband connection, according to a 2020 survey by the Indonesian Internet Providers Association. Swathes of the country, remain without any internet access. Facebook said last year it would deploy 3,000 km (1,8641 miles) of fibre in Indonesia across twenty cities in addition to a previous deal to develop public Wi-Fi hot spots. Aside from the Southeast Asian cables, Facebook was continuing with its broader subsea plans in Asia and globally, including with the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN), Salvadori said. "We are working with partners and regulators to meet all of the concerns that people have, and we look forward to that cable being a valuable, productive transpacific cable going forward in the near future," he said. The 12,800 km PLCN, which is being funded by Facebook and Alphabet, had met U.S government resistance over plans for a Hong Kong conduit. It was originally intended to link the United States, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Philippines. Facebook said earlier this month it would drop efforts to connect the cable between California and Hong Kong due to "ongoing concerns from the U.S. government about direct communication links between the United States and Hong Kong".

Facebook ties up with Google for project to lay down new undersea cables

OAKLAND, Calif. — Google tried to copy Amazon’s playbook to become the shopping hub of the internet, with little success. Now it is trying something different: the anti-Amazon strategy.

Google is trying to present itself as a cheaper and less restrictive option for independent sellers. And it is focused on driving traffic to sellers’ sites, not selling its own version of products as Amazon does.

In the last year, Google eliminated fees for merchants and allowed sellers to list their wares in its search results for free. It is also trying to make it easier for small, independent shops to upload their inventory of products to appear in search results and buy ads on Google by teaming up with Shopify, which powers online stores for 1.7 million merchants who sell directly to consumers.

But like Google’s many attempts during its two-decade quest to compete with Amazon, this one shows little sign of working. Google has nothing as alluring as the $295 billion that passed through Amazon’s third-party marketplace in 2020. The amount of goods people buy on Google is “very small” by comparison — probably around $1 billion, said Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of Marketplace Pulse, a research company.

Amazon is a fixture in the lives of many Americans. It has usurped Google as the starting point for shoppers and has become equally essential for marketers. Amazon’s global advertising business grew 30% to $17.6 billion in 2020, trailing only Google and Facebook in the United States.

But as the pandemic has forced many stores to go online, it has created a new opening for Google to woo sellers who feel uneasy about building their businesses on Amazon.

Christina Stang, 33, opened Fritzy’s Roller Skate Shop near Pacific Beach in San Diego last March. Shelter-in-place orders forced her to set up an online storefront on Shopify.

She got lucky. She was sitting on a huge supply of skates when demand surged as skating videos became popular on TikTok during the pandemic.

She linked her Shopify account to Google’s retail software and started buying so-called smart shopping ads. Working within an allotted budget, Google’s algorithms pick where to place ads and what products to feature. In 2020, she spent $1,800 on the ads, which were viewed 3.6 million times and led to $247,000 in sales, she said.

She considered selling her products on Amazon’s marketplace, but she worried what Amazon’s fees would mean for her already-thin profit margins. She also liked that Google redirected people to her carefully curated website rather than keeping them inside its own store as Amazon does.

“I could sell on Amazon and not make any real money but have a bigger online presence,” Stang said. “It didn’t seem like a great idea.”

Recently, however, she has experienced one of the drawbacks of being stuck in the middle of the partnership between Google and Shopify. Her shop has been unable to list any products since January because Google suspended her account. It said her shipping costs appeared more expensive on Google than on her Shopify-powered website, even though they were no different.

Shopify told her that it was a Google issue. Google’s customer service representatives recommended that she hire a web designer. She continues to manage without Google, but it has tainted her largely positive experience.

“This has completely cut me off at the knees,” she said. “I’m a small business, and I don’t have hundreds or thousands of dollars to resolve this.”

Sellers often complain about Amazon’s fees — which can account for one-quarter of every sale, not including the cost of advertising — and the pressure to spend more to succeed. Merchants on Amazon do not have a direct relationship with their customers, limiting their ability to communicate with them and to generate future business. And because everything is contained within the Amazon world, it is harder to create a unique look and feel that express a brand’s identity the way companies can on their own websites.

But since 2002, when it started a price comparison site called Froogle, a confusing play on the word “frugal” that required a rebranding five years later, Google has struggled to chart a cohesive vision for its shopping experience.

It tried to challenge Amazon directly by piloting its own same-day delivery service, but it shuttered the project as costs ballooned. It tried to forge partnerships with traditional retail giants, only to see the alliances wilt from a lack of sales. It built its own marketplace to make it easier for shoppers to buy the things they find on Google but was not able to break consumers from their Amazon habit.

Last year, Google brought in Bill Ready, a former chief operating officer at PayPal, to fill a new senior position and spearhead an overhaul of its shopping strategy.

Around the time of his hiring, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, warned senior executives that the new approach could mean a short-term crimp in advertising revenue, according to two people familiar with the conversations, who requested anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss them publicly. He asked teams to support the e-commerce push because it was a company priority.

When the pandemic spurred huge demand for online shopping, Google eliminated fees, allowing retailers to list products for free and walking back a 2012 decision to allow only advertisers to display goods on its shopping site.

Three months after hiring Ready, Google said the free listings would show up on its main search results. Then Google said customers could buy products directly from merchants on Google with no commissions. It also said Google would open its platform to third parties like Shopify and PayPal so that sellers could continue to use their existing tools to manage inventory and orders and processing payments.

The partnership with Shopify was especially meaningful because hundreds of thousands of small businesses have flocked to the software platform during the pandemic. About 9% of U.S. online shopping sales took place on storefronts powered by Shopify as of October, according to research firm eMarketer. That was up from 6% the prior year and second only to Amazon’s share of 37%.

Harley Finkelstein, Shopify’s president, said Google and Shopify were developing new ways for merchants to sell through Google services, such as experiments to allow customers to buy items directly on YouTube and to display what products stores are carrying in Google Maps.

Ready walked a fine line when it came to Amazon, which is a big buyer of ads on Google, but he made it clear he believed Amazon’s dominance in e-commerce posed a threat to other merchants.

“Nobody wants to live in a world where there is only one place to buy something, and retailers don’t want to be dependent on gatekeepers,” he said in an interview.

Google said it had increased the number of sellers appearing in its results by 80% in 2020, with the most significant growth coming from small and midsize businesses. And existing retailers are listing more products.

Overstock.com, a seller of discount furniture and home bedding, said it had paid to list products on Google in the past. But now that listings are free, Overstock is adding low-margin products, too.

“When all shopping starts and stops at Amazon, that’s bad for the industry,” said Jonathan E. Johnson, Overstock’s chief executive. “It’s nice to have another 800-pound tech gorilla in this space.”

What remains unclear is whether increasing the number of merchants and listings on Google will ultimately change online shopping habits.

BACtrack, a maker of breathalyzers, has more than doubled its advertising spending on Amazon in the last two years because that is where the customers are, it said, while it has spent 6% less advertising its products on Google.

“It seems like more and more people are skipping Google and going straight to Amazon,” said Keith Nothacker, chief executive of BACtrack.

OAKLAND, Calif. — Google tried to copy Amazon’s playbook to become the shopping hub of the internet, with little success. Now it is trying something different: the anti-Amazon strategy.

OAKLAND, Calif. — Google tried to copy Amazon’s playbook to become the shopping hub of the internet, with little success. Now it is trying something different: the anti-Amazon strategy. Google is trying to present itself as a cheaper and less restrictive option for independent sellers. And it is focused on driving traffic to sellers’ sites, not selling its own version of products as Amazon does. In the last year, Google eliminated fees for merchants and allowed sellers to list their wares in its search results for free. It is also trying to make it easier for small, independent shops to upload their inventory of products to appear in search results and buy ads on Google by teaming up with Shopify, which powers online stores for 1.7 million merchants who sell directly to consumers. But like Google’s many attempts during its two-decade quest to compete with Amazon, this one shows little sign of working. Google has nothing as alluring as the $295 billion that passed through Amazon’s third-party marketplace in 2020. The amount of goods people buy on Google is “very small” by comparison — probably around $1 billion, said Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of Marketplace Pulse, a research company. Amazon is a fixture in the lives of many Americans. It has usurped Google as the starting point for shoppers and has become equally essential for marketers. Amazon’s global advertising business grew 30% to $17.6 billion in 2020, trailing only Google and Facebook in the United States. But as the pandemic has forced many stores to go online, it has created a new opening for Google to woo sellers who feel uneasy about building their businesses on Amazon. Christina Stang, 33, opened Fritzy’s Roller Skate Shop near Pacific Beach in San Diego last March. Shelter-in-place orders forced her to set up an online storefront on Shopify. She got lucky. She was sitting on a huge supply of skates when demand surged as skating videos became popular on TikTok during the pandemic. She linked her Shopify account to Google’s retail software and started buying so-called smart shopping ads. Working within an allotted budget, Google’s algorithms pick where to place ads and what products to feature. In 2020, she spent $1,800 on the ads, which were viewed 3.6 million times and led to $247,000 in sales, she said. She considered selling her products on Amazon’s marketplace, but she worried what Amazon’s fees would mean for her already-thin profit margins. She also liked that Google redirected people to her carefully curated website rather than keeping them inside its own store as Amazon does. “I could sell on Amazon and not make any real money but have a bigger online presence,” Stang said. “It didn’t seem like a great idea.” Recently, however, she has experienced one of the drawbacks of being stuck in the middle of the partnership between Google and Shopify. Her shop has been unable to list any products since January because Google suspended her account. It said her shipping costs appeared more expensive on Google than on her Shopify-powered website, even though they were no different. Shopify told her that it was a Google issue. Google’s customer service representatives recommended that she hire a web designer. She continues to manage without Google, but it has tainted her largely positive experience. “This has completely cut me off at the knees,” she said. “I’m a small business, and I don’t have hundreds or thousands of dollars to resolve this.” Sellers often complain about Amazon’s fees — which can account for one-quarter of every sale, not including the cost of advertising — and the pressure to spend more to succeed. Merchants on Amazon do not have a direct relationship with their customers, limiting their ability to communicate with them and to generate future business. And because everything is contained within the Amazon world, it is harder to create a unique look and feel that express a brand’s identity the way companies can on their own websites. But since 2002, when it started a price comparison site called Froogle, a confusing play on the word “frugal” that required a rebranding five years later, Google has struggled to chart a cohesive vision for its shopping experience. It tried to challenge Amazon directly by piloting its own same-day delivery service, but it shuttered the project as costs ballooned. It tried to forge partnerships with traditional retail giants, only to see the alliances wilt from a lack of sales. It built its own marketplace to make it easier for shoppers to buy the things they find on Google but was not able to break consumers from their Amazon habit. Last year, Google brought in Bill Ready, a former chief operating officer at PayPal, to fill a new senior position and spearhead an overhaul of its shopping strategy. Around the time of his hiring, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, warned senior executives that the new approach could mean a short-term crimp in advertising revenue, according to two people familiar with the conversations, who requested anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss them publicly. He asked teams to support the e-commerce push because it was a company priority. When the pandemic spurred huge demand for online shopping, Google eliminated fees, allowing retailers to list products for free and walking back a 2012 decision to allow only advertisers to display goods on its shopping site. Three months after hiring Ready, Google said the free listings would show up on its main search results. Then Google said customers could buy products directly from merchants on Google with no commissions. It also said Google would open its platform to third parties like Shopify and PayPal so that sellers could continue to use their existing tools to manage inventory and orders and processing payments. The partnership with Shopify was especially meaningful because hundreds of thousands of small businesses have flocked to the software platform during the pandemic. About 9% of U.S. online shopping sales took place on storefronts powered by Shopify as of October, according to research firm eMarketer. That was up from 6% the prior year and second only to Amazon’s share of 37%. Harley Finkelstein, Shopify’s president, said Google and Shopify were developing new ways for merchants to sell through Google services, such as experiments to allow customers to buy items directly on YouTube and to display what products stores are carrying in Google Maps. Ready walked a fine line when it came to Amazon, which is a big buyer of ads on Google, but he made it clear he believed Amazon’s dominance in e-commerce posed a threat to other merchants. “Nobody wants to live in a world where there is only one place to buy something, and retailers don’t want to be dependent on gatekeepers,” he said in an interview. Google said it had increased the number of sellers appearing in its results by 80% in 2020, with the most significant growth coming from small and midsize businesses. And existing retailers are listing more products. Overstock.com, a seller of discount furniture and home bedding, said it had paid to list products on Google in the past. But now that listings are free, Overstock is adding low-margin products, too. “When all shopping starts and stops at Amazon, that’s bad for the industry,” said Jonathan E. Johnson, Overstock’s chief executive. “It’s nice to have another 800-pound tech gorilla in this space.” What remains unclear is whether increasing the number of merchants and listings on Google will ultimately change online shopping habits. BACtrack, a maker of breathalyzers, has more than doubled its advertising spending on Amazon in the last two years because that is where the customers are, it said, while it has spent 6% less advertising its products on Google. “It seems like more and more people are skipping Google and going straight to Amazon,” said Keith Nothacker, chief executive of BACtrack.

Google aims to be the anti-Amazon of e-commerce. It has a long way to go

He had already been banned from Twitter, but on his podcast he could give full voice to his hateful conspiracy theories.

The podcaster argued that the man in Atlanta who had confessed to killing eight people at massage parlors last week, including six women of Asian descent, was the one who had truly been victimized — the casualty of a supposed Jewish plot.

“Your heart goes out to the guy,” he said.

The remarks, emblematic of a long-standing online network of white supremacists and pro-Nazi groups, weren’t hidden in some dark corner of the internet, but could be found on Google Podcasts, the search giant’s official podcast app that was released for Android in 2018 and expanded to Apple devices last year.

As leading social networks like Facebook and Twitter have taken some steps to limit hate speech, misinformation and incitements to violence in recent months, podcasts — historically fueled by a spirit of good-natured anarchy — stand as one of the last remaining platforms for the de-platformed.

After Twitter last November suspended the account of Steve Bannon, the onetime adviser to former President Donald Trump, for suggesting that several officials be beheaded, he continued to enjoy large audiences with his podcast, available on both Apple and Google’s services.

But even in the world of podcasting, Google Podcasts — whose app has been downloaded more than 19 million times, according to Apptopia — stands alone among major platforms in its tolerance of hate speech and other extremist content. A recent nonexhaustive search turned up more than two dozen podcasts from white supremacists and pro-Nazi groups, offering a buffet of slurs and conspiracy theories. None of the podcasts appeared on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher.

Google Podcasts is also one of the few remaining homes of Alex Jones, the “Infowars” broadcaster, who was banned in 2018 from Apple, Spotify and Stitcher for repeated violations of their policies on hate speech and harassment. Google, citing its own policies, terminated Jones’ YouTube account. Last year, it removed the Infowars app from the Google Play Store for spreading misinformation about the coronavirus.

But Jones’ programs are still available on Google Podcasts.

Told of the white supremacist and pro-Nazi content on its platform and asked about its policy, a Google spokesperson, Charity Mhende, compared Google Podcasts to Google Search. She said that the company did not want to “limit what people are able to find,” and that it only blocks content “in rare circumstances, largely guided by local law.”

That hands-off approach to moderation recalls the original position of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, which have become more vigilant in recent years in their attempts to rein in the spread of harmful content.

Both Facebook and Twitter barred Trump from posting after the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol that left five dead and more than 100 injured.

On Thursday, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, joined the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter in testifying before Congress about the spread of extremism and disinformation. He said in written testimony that Google was committed to “providing trustworthy content and opportunities for free expression across our platforms, while limiting the reach of harmful misinformation,” but did not mention podcasts.

Jessica Fjeld, the assistant director of the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, said she was surprised that Google had taken such a “hard-line” posture against regulating its platform.

She compared Google Podcasts’ positioning to that of Parler, the largely unregulated social network that was a hotbed for disinformation and extremist groups before the largest tech companies turned away from it.

“Google is perfectly well aware of how to moderate content if it cares to,” said Fjeld. “It seems like they’ve made a decision to embrace an audience that wants more offensive content rather than constrain that content for the sake of safety and respect.”

Google Podcasts, like most other podcast players, including Apple’s, doesn’t host content on its own servers. (Spotify and Audible are prominent exceptions to this rule). Instead, it aggregates RSS feeds — a standardized web format that allows users to receive regularly updated content — that are hosted by third parties.

When Apple bans a podcast, such as Jones’, it removes the RSS feed from its directory. Google Podcasts says it’s unwilling to take that step except in a narrow set of cases.

The services’ content policy compares its function to Google Search’s aggregation of links. Unless a podcast violates the rules that apply to links appearing in Google Search, most of which are based on legal restrictions, it will remain on Google Podcasts. Google does draw distinctions when it comes to which podcasts it will promote, and thus make easier to find. It says it does not recommend content that is “inappropriate, insensitive, or offensive in nature,” and goes on to cite specific areas of concern, including content that is harassing, hateful, deceptive or dangerous.

Though the company likens its podcast platform to search, Google Podcast’s own product description notes significant differences, including the ability to manipulate playback speed, create playlists and download and store content.

But there is at least one connection between Google Podcasts and Google Search. In 2019, Google began integrating podcasts into search results using its own platform, making it possible to play content directly from the results page. All podcasts, including those featuring hate speech, currently benefit from this feature under Google’s policy.

In the early days, content moderation in podcasting was virtually nonexistent. Apple, the industry’s largest and most influential player, which added support for podcasts to iTunes in 2005, at first paid little attention to the nascent ecosystem, opting to serve largely as a delivery vehicle.

The company’s benign neglect was a boon for many creators. Popular comedians (Adam Carolla, Marc Maron) and public radio exiles (Kaitlin Prest, “The Heart”; Nick van der Kolk, “Love + Radio”) took advantage of the medium’s low barrier to entry to find audiences. Many prized freedom of expression, unburdened by the Federal Communications Commission that regulates radio and television broadcasters.

“Everyone who had an idea had a place to explore it,” said Johanna Zorn, a longtime public radio producer and the co-founder of the Third Coast International Audio Festival. “There was suddenly a variety of voices and experiences that would never have existed otherwise.”

But not all of those voices, part of a chorus of more than 1 million podcasts in existence today, were virtuous. And with more popularity — 80 million Americans listened to a podcast at least once a week in 2020, according to Edison Research — came more scrutiny.

Many provocative podcasts, including several hosted by fringe and far-right figures, exist on nearly all the platforms. But the decision to ban Jones signaled a new willingness among leading services to take action against content they consider beyond the pale.

Noah Shanok, the co-founder and former CEO of Stitcher, which was the first podcast platform to ban Jones, said he believes that podcasts provide a unique form of passive, “lean back” entertainment that benefits from curation.

“The more you move in that direction, the more onus there is to police content,” he said.

Experts debate whether dangerous speech poses the same threat on podcasts that it does on social media. Keri Hoffman, CEO of PRX, a nonprofit network that distributes “This American Life” and other popular programs, noted that while social media allows users to send near-real-time messages to potentially billions of users, podcasts, which take more work to discover, have more limited reach.

“If radio was like talking into a great big pipe, podcasts are like talking into a cocktail straw,” she said.

But the insular, self-selecting nature of podcast communities presents its own challenges.

Michael Edison Hayden, a senior investigative reporter with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that podcasts were a “fundamental building block” of the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, helping organizers who had been banned from more mainstream platforms cultivate a national following.

“Podcasts were instrumental in radicalizing and galvanizing that movement,” he said.

For Hoffman, the health of the ecosystem depends on finding some balance between free expression and safety.

“I really believe the openness of podcasting has been key to its success story so far, and will be in the future,” she said. “But there have to be some guardrails.”

He had already been banned from Twitter, but on his podcast he could give full voice to his hateful conspiracy theories. The podcaster argued that the man in Atlanta who had confessed to killing eight people at massage parlors last week, including six women of Asian descent, was the one who had truly been victimized — the casualty of a supposed Jewish plot.

He had already been banned from Twitter, but on his podcast he could give full voice to his hateful conspiracy theories. The podcaster argued that the man in Atlanta who had confessed to killing eight people at massage parlors last week, including six women of Asian descent, was the one who had truly been victimized — the casualty of a supposed Jewish plot. “Your heart goes out to the guy,” he said. The remarks, emblematic of a long-standing online network of white supremacists and pro-Nazi groups, weren’t hidden in some dark corner of the internet, but could be found on Google Podcasts, the search giant’s official podcast app that was released for Android in 2018 and expanded to Apple devices last year. As leading social networks like Facebook and Twitter have taken some steps to limit hate speech, misinformation and incitements to violence in recent months, podcasts — historically fueled by a spirit of good-natured anarchy — stand as one of the last remaining platforms for the de-platformed. After Twitter last November suspended the account of Steve Bannon, the onetime adviser to former President Donald Trump, for suggesting that several officials be beheaded, he continued to enjoy large audiences with his podcast, available on both Apple and Google’s services. But even in the world of podcasting, Google Podcasts — whose app has been downloaded more than 19 million times, according to Apptopia — stands alone among major platforms in its tolerance of hate speech and other extremist content. A recent nonexhaustive search turned up more than two dozen podcasts from white supremacists and pro-Nazi groups, offering a buffet of slurs and conspiracy theories. None of the podcasts appeared on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Google Podcasts is also one of the few remaining homes of Alex Jones, the “Infowars” broadcaster, who was banned in 2018 from Apple, Spotify and Stitcher for repeated violations of their policies on hate speech and harassment. Google, citing its own policies, terminated Jones’ YouTube account. Last year, it removed the Infowars app from the Google Play Store for spreading misinformation about the coronavirus. But Jones’ programs are still available on Google Podcasts. Told of the white supremacist and pro-Nazi content on its platform and asked about its policy, a Google spokesperson, Charity Mhende, compared Google Podcasts to Google Search. She said that the company did not want to “limit what people are able to find,” and that it only blocks content “in rare circumstances, largely guided by local law.” That hands-off approach to moderation recalls the original position of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, which have become more vigilant in recent years in their attempts to rein in the spread of harmful content. Both Facebook and Twitter barred Trump from posting after the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol that left five dead and more than 100 injured. On Thursday, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, joined the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter in testifying before Congress about the spread of extremism and disinformation. He said in written testimony that Google was committed to “providing trustworthy content and opportunities for free expression across our platforms, while limiting the reach of harmful misinformation,” but did not mention podcasts. Jessica Fjeld, the assistant director of the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, said she was surprised that Google had taken such a “hard-line” posture against regulating its platform. She compared Google Podcasts’ positioning to that of Parler, the largely unregulated social network that was a hotbed for disinformation and extremist groups before the largest tech companies turned away from it. “Google is perfectly well aware of how to moderate content if it cares to,” said Fjeld. “It seems like they’ve made a decision to embrace an audience that wants more offensive content rather than constrain that content for the sake of safety and respect.” Google Podcasts, like most other podcast players, including Apple’s, doesn’t host content on its own servers. (Spotify and Audible are prominent exceptions to this rule). Instead, it aggregates RSS feeds — a standardized web format that allows users to receive regularly updated content — that are hosted by third parties. When Apple bans a podcast, such as Jones’, it removes the RSS feed from its directory. Google Podcasts says it’s unwilling to take that step except in a narrow set of cases. The services’ content policy compares its function to Google Search’s aggregation of links. Unless a podcast violates the rules that apply to links appearing in Google Search, most of which are based on legal restrictions, it will remain on Google Podcasts. Google does draw distinctions when it comes to which podcasts it will promote, and thus make easier to find. It says it does not recommend content that is “inappropriate, insensitive, or offensive in nature,” and goes on to cite specific areas of concern, including content that is harassing, hateful, deceptive or dangerous. Though the company likens its podcast platform to search, Google Podcast’s own product description notes significant differences, including the ability to manipulate playback speed, create playlists and download and store content. But there is at least one connection between Google Podcasts and Google Search. In 2019, Google began integrating podcasts into search results using its own platform, making it possible to play content directly from the results page. All podcasts, including those featuring hate speech, currently benefit from this feature under Google’s policy. In the early days, content moderation in podcasting was virtually nonexistent. Apple, the industry’s largest and most influential player, which added support for podcasts to iTunes in 2005, at first paid little attention to the nascent ecosystem, opting to serve largely as a delivery vehicle. The company’s benign neglect was a boon for many creators. Popular comedians (Adam Carolla, Marc Maron) and public radio exiles (Kaitlin Prest, “The Heart”; Nick van der Kolk, “Love + Radio”) took advantage of the medium’s low barrier to entry to find audiences. Many prized freedom of expression, unburdened by the Federal Communications Commission that regulates radio and television broadcasters. “Everyone who had an idea had a place to explore it,” said Johanna Zorn, a longtime public radio producer and the co-founder of the Third Coast International Audio Festival. “There was suddenly a variety of voices and experiences that would never have existed otherwise.” But not all of those voices, part of a chorus of more than 1 million podcasts in existence today, were virtuous. And with more popularity — 80 million Americans listened to a podcast at least once a week in 2020, according to Edison Research — came more scrutiny. Many provocative podcasts, including several hosted by fringe and far-right figures, exist on nearly all the platforms. But the decision to ban Jones signaled a new willingness among leading services to take action against content they consider beyond the pale. Noah Shanok, the co-founder and former CEO of Stitcher, which was the first podcast platform to ban Jones, said he believes that podcasts provide a unique form of passive, “lean back” entertainment that benefits from curation. “The more you move in that direction, the more onus there is to police content,” he said. Experts debate whether dangerous speech poses the same threat on podcasts that it does on social media. Keri Hoffman, CEO of PRX, a nonprofit network that distributes “This American Life” and other popular programs, noted that while social media allows users to send near-real-time messages to potentially billions of users, podcasts, which take more work to discover, have more limited reach. “If radio was like talking into a great big pipe, podcasts are like talking into a cocktail straw,” she said. But the insular, self-selecting nature of podcast communities presents its own challenges. Michael Edison Hayden, a senior investigative reporter with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that podcasts were a “fundamental building block” of the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, helping organizers who had been banned from more mainstream platforms cultivate a national following. “Podcasts were instrumental in radicalizing and galvanizing that movement,” he said. For Hoffman, the health of the ecosystem depends on finding some balance between free expression and safety. “I really believe the openness of podcasting has been key to its success story so far, and will be in the future,” she said. “But there have to be some guardrails.”

On Google podcasts, a buffet of hate

A unique cyber threat is re-emerging at&nbsp;a time when the US&nbsp;agencies and&nbsp;thousands of companies are fighting off major hacking campaigns originating in Russia and China.

This threat is called&nbsp;hacktivism that refers to&nbsp;activist hackers looking to make a political point.

Three major hacks show the power of this new wave of "hacktivism",&nbsp;the exposure of AI-driven video surveillance being conducted by the startup Verkada, a collection of January&nbsp;6 riot videos from the right-wing social network Parler, and disclosure of the Myanmar military junta's high-tech surveillance apparatus.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/south-asia/myanmar-deploys-ai-indonesian-president-calls-for-asean-meeting-on-coup-crisis-371577">Myanmar deploys AI; Indonesian president calls for ASEAN meeting on coup crisis</a>

And the US&nbsp;government’s response shows that officials regard the return of&nbsp;hacktivism&nbsp;with alarm. An indictment last week accused 21-year-old Tillie Kottmann, a Swiss hacker who took credit for the Verkada breach, of a broad conspiracy.

"Wrapping oneself in an allegedly altruistic motive does not remove the criminal stench from such intrusion, theft and fraud," Seattle-based Acting US&nbsp;Attorney Tessa Gorman said.

According to a US counter-intelligence strategy released a year ago, "ideologically motivated entities such as hacktivists, leaktivists, and public disclosure organizations," are now viewed as "significant threats," alongside five countries, three terrorist groups, and "transnational criminal organizations."

Earlier waves of&nbsp;hacktivism, notably by the amorphous collective known as Anonymous in the early 2010s, largely faded away under law enforcement pressure. But now a new generation of youthful hackers, many angry about how the cybersecurity world operates and upset about the role of tech companies in spreading propaganda, are joining the fray.

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/who-are-the-anonymous-and-what-have-they-done-so-far-303021/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

And some former Anonymous members are returning to the field, including Aubrey Cottle, who helped revive the group’s Twitter presence last year in support of the Black Lives Matter protests.

Anonymous followers drew attention for disrupting an app that the Dallas police department was using to field complaints about protesters by flooding it with nonsense traffic. They also wrested control of Twitter hashtags promoted by police supporters.

"What’s interesting about the current wave of the Parler archive and Gab hack and leak is that the&nbsp;hacktivism&nbsp;is supporting antiracist politics or antifascism politics,” said Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist at McGill University, Montreal, who wrote a book on Anonymous.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/anonymous-hacktivists-launch-cyberwar-against-minneapolis-police-department-over-george-floyds-murder-302409">'Anonymous': Hacktivists launch cyberwar against Minneapolis Police Department over George Floyd's murder</a>

Gab, a social network favoured by white nationalists and other right-wing extremists, has also been hurt by the hacktivist campaign and had to shut down for brief periods after breaches.

Disrupting&nbsp;QAnon

Most recently, Cottle has been focused on QAnon and hate groups.

"QAnon trying to adopt Anonymous and merge itself into Anonymous proper, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back," said Cottle, who has held a number of web development and engineering jobs, including a stint at Ericsson.

He found email data showing that people in charge of the 8kun image board, where the persona known as Q posted, were in steady contact with major promoters of QAnon conspiracies .

The new-wave hacktivists also have a preferred place for putting materials they want to make public - Distributed Denial of Secrets, a transparency site that took up the mantle of WikiLeaks with less geopolitical bias. The site’s collective is led by Emma Best, an American known for filing prolific freedom of information requests.

Best’s two-year-old site coordinating access by researchers and media to a hoard of posts taken from Gab by unidentified hackers. In an essay this week, Best praised Kottmann and said leaks would keep coming, not just from hacktivists but insiders and the ransomware operators who publish files when companies don’t pay them off.

"Indictments like Tillie's show just how scared the government is, and just how many corporations consider embarrassment a greater threat than insecurity," Best wrote https://ddosecrets.substack.com/p/hacktivism-leaktivism-and-the-future.

The events covered by the Kottmann indictment took place from November 2019 through January 2021. The core allegation is that the Lucerne software developer and associates broke into a number of companies, removed computer code and published it. The indictment also said Kottmann spoke to the media about poor security practices by the victims and stood to profit, if only by selling shirts saying things like “venture anticapitalist” and “catgirl hacker.”

But it was only after Kottmann publicly took credit for breaching Verkada and posted alarming videos from inside big companies, medical facilities and a jail that Swiss authorities raided their home at the behest of the US&nbsp;government. Kottmann uses non-binary pronouns.

"This move by the US&nbsp;government is clearly not only an attempt to disrupt the freedom of information but also primarily to intimidate and silence this newly emerging wave of hacktivists and leaktivists," Kottmann said in an interview with Reuters.

Kottmann and their lawyer declined to discuss the US&nbsp;charges of wire fraud for some of Kottmann's online statements, aggravated identity theft for using employee credentials, and conspiracy, which together are enough for a lengthy prison sentence.

The FBI declined an interview request. If it seeks extradition, the Swiss would determine whether Kottmann’s purported actions would have violated that country’s laws.

Disdain

Kottmann was open about their disdain for the law and corporate powers-that-be. “Like many people, I’ve always been opposed to intellectual property as a concept and specifically how it’s used to limit our understanding of the systems that run our daily lives,” Kottmann said.

A European friend of Kottmann’s known as "donk_enby," a reference to being non-binary in gender, is another major figure in the&nbsp;hacktivism&nbsp;revival. Donk grew angry about conspiracy theories spread by QAnon followers on the social media app Parler that drove protests against COVID-19 health measures.

Following a Cottle post about a leak from Parler in November, Donk dissected the iOS version of Parler’s app and found a poor design choice. Each post bore an assigned number, and she could use a program to keep adding 1 to that number and download every single post in sequence.

After the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riots, Donk shared links to the web addresses of a million Parler video posts and asked her Twitter followers to download them before rioters who recorded themselves inside the building deleted the evidence. The trove included not just footage but exact locations and timestamps, allowing members of Congress to catalogue the violence and the FBI to identify more suspects.

Popular with far-right figures, Parler has struggled to stay online after being dropped by Google and Amazon. Donk's actions alarmed users who thought some videos would remain private, hindering its attempt at a comeback.

In the meantime, protesters in Myanmar asked Donk for help, leading to file dumps that prompted Google to pull its blogging platform and email accounts from leaders of the Feb. 1 coup. Donk's identification of numerous other military contractors helped fuel sanctions that continue to pile up.

One big change from the earlier era of hacktivism is that hackers can now make money legally by reporting the security weaknesses they find to the companies involved, or taking jobs with cybersecurity firms.

But some view so-called bug bounty programs, and the hiring of hackers to break into systems to find weaknesses, as mechanisms for protecting companies who should be exposed.

"We're not going to hack and help secure anyone we think is doing something extremely unethical," said John Jackson, an American researcher who works with Cottle on above-ground projects. "We're not going to hack surveillance companies and help them secure their infrastructure."

A unique cyber threat is re-emerging at a time when the US agencies and thousands of companies are fighting off major hacking campaigns originating in Russia and China.

A unique cyber threat is re-emerging at a time when the US agencies and thousands of companies are fighting off major hacking campaigns originating in Russia and China. This threat is called hacktivism that refers to activist hackers looking to make a political point. Three major hacks show the power of this new wave of "hacktivism", the exposure of AI-driven video surveillance being conducted by the startup Verkada, a collection of January 6 riot videos from the right-wing social network Parler, and disclosure of the Myanmar military junta's high-tech surveillance apparatus. Also read| Myanmar deploys AI; Indonesian president calls for ASEAN meeting on coup crisis And the US government’s response shows that officials regard the return of hacktivism with alarm. An indictment last week accused 21-year-old Tillie Kottmann, a Swiss hacker who took credit for the Verkada breach, of a broad conspiracy. "Wrapping oneself in an allegedly altruistic motive does not remove the criminal stench from such intrusion, theft and fraud," Seattle-based Acting US Attorney Tessa Gorman said. According to a US counter-intelligence strategy released a year ago, "ideologically motivated entities such as hacktivists, leaktivists, and public disclosure organizations," are now viewed as "significant threats," alongside five countries, three terrorist groups, and "transnational criminal organizations." Earlier waves of hacktivism, notably by the amorphous collective known as Anonymous in the early 2010s, largely faded away under law enforcement pressure. But now a new generation of youthful hackers, many angry about how the cybersecurity world operates and upset about the role of tech companies in spreading propaganda, are joining the fray. And some former Anonymous members are returning to the field, including Aubrey Cottle, who helped revive the group’s Twitter presence last year in support of the Black Lives Matter protests. Anonymous followers drew attention for disrupting an app that the Dallas police department was using to field complaints about protesters by flooding it with nonsense traffic. They also wrested control of Twitter hashtags promoted by police supporters. "What’s interesting about the current wave of the Parler archive and Gab hack and leak is that the hacktivism is supporting antiracist politics or antifascism politics,” said Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist at McGill University, Montreal, who wrote a book on Anonymous. Also read| 'Anonymous': Hacktivists launch cyberwar against Minneapolis Police Department over George Floyd's murder Gab, a social network favoured by white nationalists and other right-wing extremists, has also been hurt by the hacktivist campaign and had to shut down for brief periods after breaches. Disrupting QAnon Most recently, Cottle has been focused on QAnon and hate groups. "QAnon trying to adopt Anonymous and merge itself into Anonymous proper, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back," said Cottle, who has held a number of web development and engineering jobs, including a stint at Ericsson. He found email data showing that people in charge of the 8kun image board, where the persona known as Q posted, were in steady contact with major promoters of QAnon conspiracies . The new-wave hacktivists also have a preferred place for putting materials they want to make public - Distributed Denial of Secrets, a transparency site that took up the mantle of WikiLeaks with less geopolitical bias. The site’s collective is led by Emma Best, an American known for filing prolific freedom of information requests. Best’s two-year-old site coordinating access by researchers and media to a hoard of posts taken from Gab by unidentified hackers. In an essay this week, Best praised Kottmann and said leaks would keep coming, not just from hacktivists but insiders and the ransomware operators who publish files when companies don’t pay them off. "Indictments like Tillie's show just how scared the government is, and just how many corporations consider embarrassment a greater threat than insecurity," Best wrote https://ddosecrets.substack.com/p/hacktivism-leaktivism-and-the-future. The events covered by the Kottmann indictment took place from November 2019 through January 2021. The core allegation is that the Lucerne software developer and associates broke into a number of companies, removed computer code and published it. The indictment also said Kottmann spoke to the media about poor security practices by the victims and stood to profit, if only by selling shirts saying things like “venture anticapitalist” and “catgirl hacker.” But it was only after Kottmann publicly took credit for breaching Verkada and posted alarming videos from inside big companies, medical facilities and a jail that Swiss authorities raided their home at the behest of the US government. Kottmann uses non-binary pronouns. "This move by the US government is clearly not only an attempt to disrupt the freedom of information but also primarily to intimidate and silence this newly emerging wave of hacktivists and leaktivists," Kottmann said in an interview with Reuters. Kottmann and their lawyer declined to discuss the US charges of wire fraud for some of Kottmann's online statements, aggravated identity theft for using employee credentials, and conspiracy, which together are enough for a lengthy prison sentence. The FBI declined an interview request. If it seeks extradition, the Swiss would determine whether Kottmann’s purported actions would have violated that country’s laws. Disdain Kottmann was open about their disdain for the law and corporate powers-that-be. “Like many people, I’ve always been opposed to intellectual property as a concept and specifically how it’s used to limit our understanding of the systems that run our daily lives,” Kottmann said. A European friend of Kottmann’s known as "donk_enby," a reference to being non-binary in gender, is another major figure in the hacktivism revival. Donk grew angry about conspiracy theories spread by QAnon followers on the social media app Parler that drove protests against COVID-19 health measures. Following a Cottle post about a leak from Parler in November, Donk dissected the iOS version of Parler’s app and found a poor design choice. Each post bore an assigned number, and she could use a program to keep adding 1 to that number and download every single post in sequence. After the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riots, Donk shared links to the web addresses of a million Parler video posts and asked her Twitter followers to download them before rioters who recorded themselves inside the building deleted the evidence. The trove included not just footage but exact locations and timestamps, allowing members of Congress to catalogue the violence and the FBI to identify more suspects. Popular with far-right figures, Parler has struggled to stay online after being dropped by Google and Amazon. Donk's actions alarmed users who thought some videos would remain private, hindering its attempt at a comeback. In the meantime, protesters in Myanmar asked Donk for help, leading to file dumps that prompted Google to pull its blogging platform and email accounts from leaders of the Feb. 1 coup. Donk's identification of numerous other military contractors helped fuel sanctions that continue to pile up. One big change from the earlier era of hacktivism is that hackers can now make money legally by reporting the security weaknesses they find to the companies involved, or taking jobs with cybersecurity firms. But some view so-called bug bounty programs, and the hiring of hackers to break into systems to find weaknesses, as mechanisms for protecting companies who should be exposed. "We're not going to hack and help secure anyone we think is doing something extremely unethical," said John Jackson, an American researcher who works with Cottle on above-ground projects. "We're not going to hack surveillance companies and help them secure their infrastructure."

'Hacktivism' adding to woes of cybersecurity at alarming rate

In a shocking revelation, a writer has revealed that during his time working undercover at an <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/amazon">Amazon</a> facility, he found many employees urinating in bottles as they were too afraid to take a bathroom break.

Working undercover at an Amazon facility, James Bloodworth said the employees are tired and frustrated due to the poor working environment provided in the facilities.

Workers have revealed that employees are being forced to take 14-hour long shifts with little or no bathroom breaks.

Amazon imposes strict targets and penalises people who fail to achieve the set goals. The pressure is such that employees end up peeing in bottles to save time from taking a bathroom break.

The issue came to light when Amazon's Dave Clark took a dig at Bernie Sanders on Twitter, inviting him to Birmingham to appreciate "his push for a progressive workplace".

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
1/3 I welcome <a href="https://twitter.com/SenSanders?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SenSanders</a> to Birmingham and appreciate his push for a progressive workplace. I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, but that’s not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace <a href="https://t.co/Fq8D6vyuh9">https://t.co/Fq8D6vyuh9</a>
— Dave Clark (@davehclark) <a href="https://twitter.com/davehclark/status/1374853182484963332?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 24, 2021</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>
<a class="close-mark close-div" href="#" id="jqclosemark">×</a></div>

He also took the opportunity to boast about the wages and work environment. "a $15 minimum wage, health care from day one, career progression, and a safe and inclusive work environment," he tweeted.

However, this was met with backlash from Representative&nbsp;Mark Pocan, who tweeted back, saying, "Paying workers $15/hr doesn't make you a "progressive workplace" when you union-bust &amp; make workers urinate in water bottles."

Amazon News, which is the official account for all Amazon-related news, has denied these accusations. "You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us," Amazon News tweeted. "The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one."

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
1/2 You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one.
— Amazon News (@amazonnews) <a href="https://twitter.com/amazonnews/status/1374911222361956359?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 25, 2021</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>
<a class="close-mark close-div" href="#" id="jqclosemark">×</a></div>

However, James Bloodworth, the author of 'Hired' — which talks about the poor work conditions in Amazon — assured that the reports of employees urinating&nbsp;in bottles is true. "I was the person who found the pee in the bottle. Trust me, it happened," he tweeted.

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Look at the stat and consider the context <a href="https://t.co/9bSy3Jv7hC">https://t.co/9bSy3Jv7hC</a> <a href="https://t.co/DLlxdb7DV3">pic.twitter.com/DLlxdb7DV3</a>
— James Bloodworth (@J_Bloodworth) <a href="https://twitter.com/J_Bloodworth/status/1375006795220017153?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 25, 2021</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>
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&nbsp;

In a shocking revelation, a writer has revealed that during his time working undercover at an Amazon facility, he found many employees urinating in bottles as they were too afraid to take a bathroom break.

In a shocking revelation, a writer has revealed that during his time working undercover at an Amazon facility, he found many employees urinating in bottles as they were too afraid to take a bathroom break. Working undercover at an Amazon facility, James Bloodworth said the employees are tired and frustrated due to the poor working environment provided in the facilities. Workers have revealed that employees are being forced to take 14-hour long shifts with little or no bathroom breaks. Amazon imposes strict targets and penalises people who fail to achieve the set goals. The pressure is such that employees end up peeing in bottles to save time from taking a bathroom break. The issue came to light when Amazon's Dave Clark took a dig at Bernie Sanders on Twitter, inviting him to Birmingham to appreciate "his push for a progressive workplace". 1/3 I welcome @SenSanders to Birmingham and appreciate his push for a progressive workplace. I often say we are the Bernie Sanders of employers, but that’s not quite right because we actually deliver a progressive workplace https://t.co/Fq8D6vyuh9 — Dave Clark (@davehclark) March 24, 2021 × He also took the opportunity to boast about the wages and work environment. "a $15 minimum wage, health care from day one, career progression, and a safe and inclusive work environment," he tweeted. However, this was met with backlash from Representative Mark Pocan, who tweeted back, saying, "Paying workers $15/hr doesn't make you a "progressive workplace" when you union-bust & make workers urinate in water bottles." Amazon News, which is the official account for all Amazon-related news, has denied these accusations. "You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us," Amazon News tweeted. "The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one." 1/2 You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us. The truth is that we have over a million incredible employees around the world who are proud of what they do, and have great wages and health care from day one. — Amazon News (@amazonnews) March 25, 2021 × However, James Bloodworth, the author of 'Hired' — which talks about the poor work conditions in Amazon — assured that the reports of employees urinating in bottles is true. "I was the person who found the pee in the bottle. Trust me, it happened," he tweeted. Look at the stat and consider the context https://t.co/9bSy3Jv7hC pic.twitter.com/DLlxdb7DV3 — James Bloodworth (@J_Bloodworth) March 25, 2021 ×

'Employees pee in bottles': Undercover writer reveals Amazon's poor work conditions

Lawmakers grilled the leaders of Facebook, Google and Twitter on Thursday about the connection between online disinformation and the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, causing Twitter’s CEO to publicly admit for the first time that his product had played a role in the events that left five people dead.

When a Democratic lawmaker asked the executives to answer with a “yes” or a “no” whether the platforms bore some responsibility for the misinformation that had contributed to the riot, Jack Dorsey of Twitter said “yes.” Neither Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook nor Sundar Pichai of Google would answer the question directly.

The roughly five-hour hearing before a House committee marked the first time lawmakers directly questioned the CEOs regarding social media’s role in the January riot. The tech bosses were also peppered with questions about how their companies helped spread falsehoods around COVID-19 vaccines, enable racism and hurt children’s mental health.

It was also the first time the executives had testified since President Joe Biden’s inauguration. Tough questioning from lawmakers signaled that scrutiny of Silicon Valley’s business practices would not let up, and could even intensify, with Democrats in the White House and leading both chambers of Congress.

The CEOs have become Capitol Hill regulars in recent years. Zuckerberg has testified seven times since 2018. Dorsey has appeared five times and Pichai has testified four times since then. But these hearings, regarding disinformation, antitrust and data privacy, have not led to regulations. Though there is bipartisan animus toward the companies, there is still little agreement on how specifically to hold the internet giants to account. Dozens of privacy, speech and antitrust bills have gone nowhere in the past few years.

“It will be very challenging to translate these concerns into legislation,” said Alexandra Givens, CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a tech think tank.

At the heart of the hearing were questions about whether the companies had a financial incentive to keep users engaged — and clicking on ads — by feeding them divisive, extreme and hateful content. Lawmakers from both parties said Congress should reconsider a law that shields the platforms from lawsuits over content posted by their users.

“You’re not passive bystanders,” said Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “You’re making money.”

Lawmakers, who compared the business practices of social media companies to tobacco and alcohol companies, grew frustrated at times with what they said was the executives’ evasiveness.

Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., asked the tech CEOs to answer yes or no: Did their platforms contribute to the spread of misinformation before the riot?

Zuckerberg and Pichai dodged the question. Dorsey was more direct.

“Yes,” he said. “But you also have to take into consideration the broader ecosystem. It’s not just about the technology platforms we use.”

Doyle pressed the other executives.

“How is it possible for you not to at least admit that Facebook played a leading role in facilitating the recruitment, planning and execution of the attack on the Capitol?” he asked Zuckerberg.

“I think that the responsibility here lies with the people who took the actions to break the law and do the insurrection,” Zuckerberg said. He added that people who spread the misinformation bore responsibility as well.

“But your platforms supercharged that,” Doyle said.

Later, while still participating in the videoconference hearing, Dorsey tweeted a single question mark with a poll that had two options: “Yes” or “No.” When asked about his tweet by a lawmaker, he said “yes” was winning.

The January riot at the Capitol has made the issue of disinformation deeply personal for lawmakers. The riot was fueled by false claims from President Donald Trump and others that the election had been stolen, which were rampant on social media.

Some of the participants had connections to QAnon and other online conspiracy theories. And prosecutors have said that groups involved in the riot, including the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, coordinated some of their actions on social media.

Lawmakers also criticized the platforms for the way they have enabled the spread of misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic and the vaccines for COVID-19. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., who represents part of Silicon Valley, told Dorsey that Twitter should “eliminate all COVID misinformation — and not label or reduce its spread, but remove it.”

Republicans criticized the companies for the amplification of toxic content that particularly harmed children. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., said social media was her “greatest fear” as a parent. “I’ve monitored where your algorithms lead them. It’s frightening. I know I’m not alone,” Rodgers said.

The Republican members also focused on decisions by the social media platforms to ban Trump and his associates after the Jan. 6 riots. The bans hardened views by conservatives that the companies are left-leaning and are inclined to squelch conservative voices.

“We’re all aware of Big Tech’s ever-increasing censorship of conservative voices and their commitment to serve the radical progressive agenda,” said Rep. Bob Latta of Ohio, the ranking Republican on the panel’s technology subcommittee.

The company leaders defended their businesses, saying they had invested heavily in hiring content moderators and in technology like artificial intelligence, used to identify and fight disinformation.

Zuckerberg argued against the notion that his company had a financial incentive to juice its users’ attention by driving them toward more extreme content. He said Facebook didn’t design “algorithms in order to just kind of try to tweak and optimize and get people to spend every last minute on our service.”

He added later in the hearing that elections disinformation was spread in messaging apps, where amplification and algorithms don’t aid in spread of false content. He also blamed television and other traditional media for spreading election lies.

The companies showed fissures in their view on regulations. Facebook has vocally supported internet regulations in a major advertising blitz on television and in newspapers. In the hearing, Zuckerberg suggested specific regulatory reforms to a key legal shield, known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, that has helped Facebook and other Silicon Valley internet giants thrive.

The legal shield protects companies that host and moderate third-party content, and says companies like Google and Twitter are simply intermediaries of their user-generated content. Democrats have argued that with that protection, companies aren’t motivated to remove disinformation. Republicans accuse the companies of using the shield to moderate too much and to take down content that doesn’t represent their political viewpoints.

“I believe that Section 230 would benefit from thoughtful changes to make it work better for people,” Zuckerberg said in the statement.

He proposed that liability protection for companies be conditional on their ability to fight the spread of certain types of unlawful content. He said platforms should be required to demonstrate that they have systems in place for identifying unlawful content and removing it. Reforms, he said, should be different for smaller social networks, which wouldn’t have the same resources like Facebook to meet new requirements.

Pichai and Dorsey said they supported requirements of transparency in content moderation but fell short of agreeing with Zuckerberg’s other ideas. Dorsey said that it would be very difficult to distinguish a large platform from a smaller one.

Lawmakers did not appear to be won over.

“There’s a lot of smugness among you,” said Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio. “There’s this air of untouchable-ness in your responses to many of the tough questions that you’re being asked.” 
&nbsp;

Lawmakers grilled the leaders of Facebook, Google and Twitter on Thursday about the connection between online disinformation and the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, causing Twitter’s CEO to publicly admit for the first time that his product had played a role in the events that left five people dead.

Lawmakers grilled the leaders of Facebook, Google and Twitter on Thursday about the connection between online disinformation and the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, causing Twitter’s CEO to publicly admit for the first time that his product had played a role in the events that left five people dead. When a Democratic lawmaker asked the executives to answer with a “yes” or a “no” whether the platforms bore some responsibility for the misinformation that had contributed to the riot, Jack Dorsey of Twitter said “yes.” Neither Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook nor Sundar Pichai of Google would answer the question directly. The roughly five-hour hearing before a House committee marked the first time lawmakers directly questioned the CEOs regarding social media’s role in the January riot. The tech bosses were also peppered with questions about how their companies helped spread falsehoods around COVID-19 vaccines, enable racism and hurt children’s mental health. It was also the first time the executives had testified since President Joe Biden’s inauguration. Tough questioning from lawmakers signaled that scrutiny of Silicon Valley’s business practices would not let up, and could even intensify, with Democrats in the White House and leading both chambers of Congress. The CEOs have become Capitol Hill regulars in recent years. Zuckerberg has testified seven times since 2018. Dorsey has appeared five times and Pichai has testified four times since then. But these hearings, regarding disinformation, antitrust and data privacy, have not led to regulations. Though there is bipartisan animus toward the companies, there is still little agreement on how specifically to hold the internet giants to account. Dozens of privacy, speech and antitrust bills have gone nowhere in the past few years. “It will be very challenging to translate these concerns into legislation,” said Alexandra Givens, CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a tech think tank. At the heart of the hearing were questions about whether the companies had a financial incentive to keep users engaged — and clicking on ads — by feeding them divisive, extreme and hateful content. Lawmakers from both parties said Congress should reconsider a law that shields the platforms from lawsuits over content posted by their users. “You’re not passive bystanders,” said Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “You’re making money.” Lawmakers, who compared the business practices of social media companies to tobacco and alcohol companies, grew frustrated at times with what they said was the executives’ evasiveness. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., asked the tech CEOs to answer yes or no: Did their platforms contribute to the spread of misinformation before the riot? Zuckerberg and Pichai dodged the question. Dorsey was more direct. “Yes,” he said. “But you also have to take into consideration the broader ecosystem. It’s not just about the technology platforms we use.” Doyle pressed the other executives. “How is it possible for you not to at least admit that Facebook played a leading role in facilitating the recruitment, planning and execution of the attack on the Capitol?” he asked Zuckerberg. “I think that the responsibility here lies with the people who took the actions to break the law and do the insurrection,” Zuckerberg said. He added that people who spread the misinformation bore responsibility as well. “But your platforms supercharged that,” Doyle said. Later, while still participating in the videoconference hearing, Dorsey tweeted a single question mark with a poll that had two options: “Yes” or “No.” When asked about his tweet by a lawmaker, he said “yes” was winning. The January riot at the Capitol has made the issue of disinformation deeply personal for lawmakers. The riot was fueled by false claims from President Donald Trump and others that the election had been stolen, which were rampant on social media. Some of the participants had connections to QAnon and other online conspiracy theories. And prosecutors have said that groups involved in the riot, including the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, coordinated some of their actions on social media. Lawmakers also criticized the platforms for the way they have enabled the spread of misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic and the vaccines for COVID-19. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., who represents part of Silicon Valley, told Dorsey that Twitter should “eliminate all COVID misinformation — and not label or reduce its spread, but remove it.” Republicans criticized the companies for the amplification of toxic content that particularly harmed children. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., said social media was her “greatest fear” as a parent. “I’ve monitored where your algorithms lead them. It’s frightening. I know I’m not alone,” Rodgers said. The Republican members also focused on decisions by the social media platforms to ban Trump and his associates after the Jan. 6 riots. The bans hardened views by conservatives that the companies are left-leaning and are inclined to squelch conservative voices. “We’re all aware of Big Tech’s ever-increasing censorship of conservative voices and their commitment to serve the radical progressive agenda,” said Rep. Bob Latta of Ohio, the ranking Republican on the panel’s technology subcommittee. The company leaders defended their businesses, saying they had invested heavily in hiring content moderators and in technology like artificial intelligence, used to identify and fight disinformation. Zuckerberg argued against the notion that his company had a financial incentive to juice its users’ attention by driving them toward more extreme content. He said Facebook didn’t design “algorithms in order to just kind of try to tweak and optimize and get people to spend every last minute on our service.” He added later in the hearing that elections disinformation was spread in messaging apps, where amplification and algorithms don’t aid in spread of false content. He also blamed television and other traditional media for spreading election lies. The companies showed fissures in their view on regulations. Facebook has vocally supported internet regulations in a major advertising blitz on television and in newspapers. In the hearing, Zuckerberg suggested specific regulatory reforms to a key legal shield, known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, that has helped Facebook and other Silicon Valley internet giants thrive. The legal shield protects companies that host and moderate third-party content, and says companies like Google and Twitter are simply intermediaries of their user-generated content. Democrats have argued that with that protection, companies aren’t motivated to remove disinformation. Republicans accuse the companies of using the shield to moderate too much and to take down content that doesn’t represent their political viewpoints. “I believe that Section 230 would benefit from thoughtful changes to make it work better for people,” Zuckerberg said in the statement. He proposed that liability protection for companies be conditional on their ability to fight the spread of certain types of unlawful content. He said platforms should be required to demonstrate that they have systems in place for identifying unlawful content and removing it. Reforms, he said, should be different for smaller social networks, which wouldn’t have the same resources like Facebook to meet new requirements. Pichai and Dorsey said they supported requirements of transparency in content moderation but fell short of agreeing with Zuckerberg’s other ideas. Dorsey said that it would be very difficult to distinguish a large platform from a smaller one. Lawmakers did not appear to be won over. “There’s a lot of smugness among you,” said Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio. “There’s this air of untouchable-ness in your responses to many of the tough questions that you’re being asked.”

US lawmakers grill tech CEOs on Capitol riot, getting few direct answers

Think you can live without the internet and your devices for 24 hours? Well, you may be eligible for a $2,400 reward.

Reviews(dot)org, a comparison website for products is offering the amount to one person who survives 24 hours without using any technology. The company calls it a “Digital Detox” challenge, and announced it earlier in March.

If chosen, the person is expected to not use any personal technology for 24 hours - mobile phones, television, video games, computers, or even wearable technology. From the day of being selected, the person will have a 14-day window to do the detox on the day of their choice.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/facebook-google-ceos-suggest-ways-to-reform-key-internet-law-372984" hreflang="en">Facebook, Google CEOs suggest ways to reform key internet law</a>

However, the company is allowing participants to curate their own “tech-less care package”, consisting of items essential to a tech-free entertainment.&nbsp; They could invest in an array of things, ranging from board games to typewriters - basically anything not electronic.

Once the challenge is complete, the user will be required to submit screen time reports to win the prize. The company is accepting applications upto March 26.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/twitter-ceo-jack-dorseys-first-tweet-sold-for-29-million-as-nft-372474" hreflang="en">Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's first Tweet sold for $2.9 million as NFT</a>

Such challenges sponsored by websites are common on the internet, especially in the era of technology dependency. In 2019, the same portal hired five people to watch 30 movies on Disney+ for 30 days.

Other companies are no stranger to such challenges. In 2018, the mammoth Amazon offered its warehouse and customer service employees $5,000 if they quit technology voluntarily.

Think you can live without the internet and your devices for 24 hours? Well, you may be eligible for a $2,400 reward. Reviews(dot)org, a comparison website for products is offering the amount to one person who survives 24 hours without using any technology.

Think you can live without the internet and your devices for 24 hours? Well, you may be eligible for a $2,400 reward. Reviews(dot)org, a comparison website for products is offering the amount to one person who survives 24 hours without using any technology. The company calls it a “Digital Detox” challenge, and announced it earlier in March. If chosen, the person is expected to not use any personal technology for 24 hours - mobile phones, television, video games, computers, or even wearable technology. From the day of being selected, the person will have a 14-day window to do the detox on the day of their choice. Also read: Facebook, Google CEOs suggest ways to reform key internet law However, the company is allowing participants to curate their own “tech-less care package”, consisting of items essential to a tech-free entertainment. They could invest in an array of things, ranging from board games to typewriters - basically anything not electronic. Once the challenge is complete, the user will be required to submit screen time reports to win the prize. The company is accepting applications upto March 26. Also read: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's first Tweet sold for $2.9 million as NFT Such challenges sponsored by websites are common on the internet, especially in the era of technology dependency. In 2019, the same portal hired five people to watch 30 movies on Disney+ for 30 days. Other companies are no stranger to such challenges. In 2018, the mammoth Amazon offered its warehouse and customer service employees $5,000 if they quit technology voluntarily.

This company will pay you $2,400 to disregard technology for 24 hours

Michael Pierre was sitting in his Brooklyn, New York, apartment last summer when he received a text on his iPhone from an unknown number, then immediately lost service. Worried his phone was being hacked, he quickly checked his most valued app: Coinbase, a cryptocurrency company where he had stored digital coins worth $100,000.

Pierre could not log in. Panicked, he emailed Coinbase for help. The company later told him that an “attacker” had reset his password and drained his account. Pierre said he was shocked because he had expected Coinbase’s security to detect suspicious activity and stop the theft.

“I was thinking about retirement, family, having money for those rainy days,” he said. “And within a couple of minutes, it was all taken away from me.”

Pierre, 47, a lawyer and onetime Coinbase employee, began urging his former colleagues to investigate the episode and to compensate him for the missing cryptocurrencies, which would be worth more than $400,000 today. He received little assistance, he said. So in January, he sued Coinbase, accusing the company of negligent security measures and failing to protect his money.

His cautionary tale is one of dozens from Coinbase customers around the world who say that their accounts were plundered by attackers or that they were locked out of their life savings without warning or reason — and that the company failed to detect the issues and did little to help. As Coinbase prepares to go public in the next few weeks, cementing its status as one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency enterprises, its users’ experiences show how the company sometimes still struggles to address basic customer service complaints.

That raises questions for Coinbase at a crucial moment. No major cryptocurrency company has gone public before, and some investors have speculated that Coinbase could be valued at as much as $100 billion. Its listing would also underline how cryptocurrencies have surged in popularity in the pandemic. The price of Bitcoin, the best-known digital currency, has broken records since November.

Coinbase’s going public is “seminal” for the cryptocurrency industry, said David Silver, a lawyer who represents digital currency investors. But he added that if the company wanted to be “the Goldman Sachs of crypto,” it “needs to maintain quality customer support.”

In a statement, Casper Sorensen, Coinbase’s vice president for customer experience, said the company was grappling with a “24/7 crypto economy, which, combined with a substantial increase in demand, has created a unique set of customer experience challenges.” To address those, the company said it had added 2,000 customer support employees in recent months and decreased wait times for help.

Coinbase added that it had never been hacked. It said 0.004% of its users had experienced “account takeovers” in the past year, where someone breached their devices and then gained access to their Coinbase accounts. The company said it educated its users on how to keep their accounts secure.

Coinbase declined to comment on any individual cases or litigation.

Compared with banks and regular money, digital currencies and financial exchanges carry an extra degree of risk. Unlike money transferred through a bank, Bitcoin can be traded instantly, and transactions cannot be reversed or, often, traced to an individual, making it easier to steal. Many laws that protect people’s money and require banks to maintain tight security do not apply to digital currencies.

Coinbase was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong, who is the chief executive, and others. At the time, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies had just started emerging as a way to decentralize finance by allowing people to send money to each other across the globe without the need for a bank.

But trading Bitcoin without help from an institution proved tricky. So Armstrong created Coinbase as a “currency exchange” — essentially, a place where people could buy, sell and transfer cryptocurrencies through what is known as a digital wallet. The company would take a fee each time a customer placed an order.

Today, Coinbase has 43 million customers, according to its offering prospectus. It turned a $322 million profit last year, while its revenue more than doubled to $1.27 billion. In December, it filed to go public. It plans a direct listing, in which no new shares are issued.

As Coinbase has grown, it has fielded customer complaints. The concerns have centered on two main issues, according to legal documents and interviews with more than a dozen Coinbase users, as well as social media posts and surveys of customers: that the company’s security was fooled by attackers who infiltrated their accounts and then stole their money, or that they were suddenly barred from their accounts, either because of a technical glitch or seemingly for no reason at all.

Coinbase rarely bars users from their accounts, it said, but it may do so if it is investigating a violation of its terms of service or suspicious activity.

Losing account access can be crippling because some people use Coinbase as a de facto bank where they deposit their paychecks. The frustrations have been compounded because the company is often unresponsive to entreaties for assistance, users said.

The issues have become so prevalent that a forum about Coinbase on Reddit has been flooded with requests from people seeking help for unlocking their accounts. One Reddit user, who posted that he lives in Vietnam, has left dozens of comments asking for help getting back into his account, which he said has been frozen for more than a year.

“I need to unlock my account,” wrote the Reddit user, whose handle is kuromodzz. “Please reply my emails and give me solutions. I can’t lose my money!”

Gonçalo Maia, 24, a web developer from Lisbon, Portugal, said he was blocked from his Coinbase account, which has about 27,000 euros, or $32,000, in January. In response, he set up a Coinbase-related group on the messaging platform Discord. It has since attracted more than 300 people, many of whom bemoan how they cannot get into their accounts. Some said they had since been unable to afford food and pay their rent.

“They are hurting people,” said Maia, adding that many feel “hopeless.”

After The New York Times asked Coinbase about Maia’s account, he received an email from the company saying he had violated its terms of service and would not be allowed to use its platform. Maia said he did not know what he did wrong. He added that he was happy that Coinbase was letting him withdraw his frozen funds first.

Christine Duhaime, a financial crimes expert, said that Coinbase and other cryptocurrency exchanges should have to act the same as large banks, which need legal reasons to freeze assets and are obligated to quickly investigate missing or stolen funds. Coinbase’s listing, she said, could be a step toward aligning the crypto world with laws governing traditional financial institutions.

“Coinbase, by going public and being subject to greater regulatory oversight, is moving more into the light, where there is, or will be, greater visibility and comfort,” she said.

One of Coinbase’s most frustrating aspects, some users said, is that a real person does not appear to be reading their complaints.

“There’s nobody on the other side,” said Cheryl Hung, a marketing consultant in Los Angeles.

Hung said she and her fiance, Paul Hwang, started investing in cryptocurrencies in 2019 and picked Coinbase because it was a “big, reputable company” with security. But in January, someone stole $26,000 of cryptocurrencies from their account. They said they did not have any idea of how that happened.

“We just lost all the money we could have been using to work on a house or move our life forward,” Hwang said.

The couple asked Coinbase for help, but they said they received perfunctory email responses. Trying Coinbase’s phone line got an automated response. After the Times inquired about their case, Hung said they got another email from the company with more information about their account.

Coinbase said real customer support agents respond to inquiries.

For most Coinbase users, legal recourse is also limited. Under the company’s terms of service, users agree to settle disputes through private arbitration or small claims court, rather than pursuing a class-action lawsuit.

That did not deter Pierre from suing. Pierre, who worked for Coinbase between 2017 and 2018, said he initially found the decentralized format of digital currencies “exciting.” But after he lost his Coinbase savings, he said he saw the value in traditional, regulated institutions like banks to fall back on “for times like this.”

“I’m less excited now,” he said.

Michael Pierre was sitting in his Brooklyn, New York, apartment last summer when he received a text on his iPhone from an unknown number, then immediately lost service.

Michael Pierre was sitting in his Brooklyn, New York, apartment last summer when he received a text on his iPhone from an unknown number, then immediately lost service. Worried his phone was being hacked, he quickly checked his most valued app: Coinbase, a cryptocurrency company where he had stored digital coins worth $100,000. Pierre could not log in. Panicked, he emailed Coinbase for help. The company later told him that an “attacker” had reset his password and drained his account. Pierre said he was shocked because he had expected Coinbase’s security to detect suspicious activity and stop the theft. “I was thinking about retirement, family, having money for those rainy days,” he said. “And within a couple of minutes, it was all taken away from me.” Pierre, 47, a lawyer and onetime Coinbase employee, began urging his former colleagues to investigate the episode and to compensate him for the missing cryptocurrencies, which would be worth more than $400,000 today. He received little assistance, he said. So in January, he sued Coinbase, accusing the company of negligent security measures and failing to protect his money. His cautionary tale is one of dozens from Coinbase customers around the world who say that their accounts were plundered by attackers or that they were locked out of their life savings without warning or reason — and that the company failed to detect the issues and did little to help. As Coinbase prepares to go public in the next few weeks, cementing its status as one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency enterprises, its users’ experiences show how the company sometimes still struggles to address basic customer service complaints. That raises questions for Coinbase at a crucial moment. No major cryptocurrency company has gone public before, and some investors have speculated that Coinbase could be valued at as much as $100 billion. Its listing would also underline how cryptocurrencies have surged in popularity in the pandemic. The price of Bitcoin, the best-known digital currency, has broken records since November. Coinbase’s going public is “seminal” for the cryptocurrency industry, said David Silver, a lawyer who represents digital currency investors. But he added that if the company wanted to be “the Goldman Sachs of crypto,” it “needs to maintain quality customer support.” In a statement, Casper Sorensen, Coinbase’s vice president for customer experience, said the company was grappling with a “24/7 crypto economy, which, combined with a substantial increase in demand, has created a unique set of customer experience challenges.” To address those, the company said it had added 2,000 customer support employees in recent months and decreased wait times for help. Coinbase added that it had never been hacked. It said 0.004% of its users had experienced “account takeovers” in the past year, where someone breached their devices and then gained access to their Coinbase accounts. The company said it educated its users on how to keep their accounts secure. Coinbase declined to comment on any individual cases or litigation. Compared with banks and regular money, digital currencies and financial exchanges carry an extra degree of risk. Unlike money transferred through a bank, Bitcoin can be traded instantly, and transactions cannot be reversed or, often, traced to an individual, making it easier to steal. Many laws that protect people’s money and require banks to maintain tight security do not apply to digital currencies. Coinbase was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong, who is the chief executive, and others. At the time, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies had just started emerging as a way to decentralize finance by allowing people to send money to each other across the globe without the need for a bank. But trading Bitcoin without help from an institution proved tricky. So Armstrong created Coinbase as a “currency exchange” — essentially, a place where people could buy, sell and transfer cryptocurrencies through what is known as a digital wallet. The company would take a fee each time a customer placed an order. Today, Coinbase has 43 million customers, according to its offering prospectus. It turned a $322 million profit last year, while its revenue more than doubled to $1.27 billion. In December, it filed to go public. It plans a direct listing, in which no new shares are issued. As Coinbase has grown, it has fielded customer complaints. The concerns have centered on two main issues, according to legal documents and interviews with more than a dozen Coinbase users, as well as social media posts and surveys of customers: that the company’s security was fooled by attackers who infiltrated their accounts and then stole their money, or that they were suddenly barred from their accounts, either because of a technical glitch or seemingly for no reason at all. Coinbase rarely bars users from their accounts, it said, but it may do so if it is investigating a violation of its terms of service or suspicious activity. Losing account access can be crippling because some people use Coinbase as a de facto bank where they deposit their paychecks. The frustrations have been compounded because the company is often unresponsive to entreaties for assistance, users said. The issues have become so prevalent that a forum about Coinbase on Reddit has been flooded with requests from people seeking help for unlocking their accounts. One Reddit user, who posted that he lives in Vietnam, has left dozens of comments asking for help getting back into his account, which he said has been frozen for more than a year. “I need to unlock my account,” wrote the Reddit user, whose handle is kuromodzz. “Please reply my emails and give me solutions. I can’t lose my money!” Gonçalo Maia, 24, a web developer from Lisbon, Portugal, said he was blocked from his Coinbase account, which has about 27,000 euros, or $32,000, in January. In response, he set up a Coinbase-related group on the messaging platform Discord. It has since attracted more than 300 people, many of whom bemoan how they cannot get into their accounts. Some said they had since been unable to afford food and pay their rent. “They are hurting people,” said Maia, adding that many feel “hopeless.” After The New York Times asked Coinbase about Maia’s account, he received an email from the company saying he had violated its terms of service and would not be allowed to use its platform. Maia said he did not know what he did wrong. He added that he was happy that Coinbase was letting him withdraw his frozen funds first. Christine Duhaime, a financial crimes expert, said that Coinbase and other cryptocurrency exchanges should have to act the same as large banks, which need legal reasons to freeze assets and are obligated to quickly investigate missing or stolen funds. Coinbase’s listing, she said, could be a step toward aligning the crypto world with laws governing traditional financial institutions. “Coinbase, by going public and being subject to greater regulatory oversight, is moving more into the light, where there is, or will be, greater visibility and comfort,” she said. One of Coinbase’s most frustrating aspects, some users said, is that a real person does not appear to be reading their complaints. “There’s nobody on the other side,” said Cheryl Hung, a marketing consultant in Los Angeles. Hung said she and her fiance, Paul Hwang, started investing in cryptocurrencies in 2019 and picked Coinbase because it was a “big, reputable company” with security. But in January, someone stole $26,000 of cryptocurrencies from their account. They said they did not have any idea of how that happened. “We just lost all the money we could have been using to work on a house or move our life forward,” Hwang said. The couple asked Coinbase for help, but they said they received perfunctory email responses. Trying Coinbase’s phone line got an automated response. After the Times inquired about their case, Hung said they got another email from the company with more information about their account. Coinbase said real customer support agents respond to inquiries. For most Coinbase users, legal recourse is also limited. Under the company’s terms of service, users agree to settle disputes through private arbitration or small claims court, rather than pursuing a class-action lawsuit. That did not deter Pierre from suing. Pierre, who worked for Coinbase between 2017 and 2018, said he initially found the decentralized format of digital currencies “exciting.” But after he lost his Coinbase savings, he said he saw the value in traditional, regulated institutions like banks to fall back on “for times like this.” “I’m less excited now,” he said.

Coinbase users say crypto startup ignored their pleas for help

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg laid out steps to reform a key internet law on Wednesday, saying that companies should have immunity from liability only if they follow best practices for removing damaging material from their platforms. 
 
In testimony prepared for a joint hearing before two House Energy and Commerce subcommittees on Thursday, Zuckerberg acknowledged the calls from lawmakers for changes to a law called Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives companies like Facebook immunity from liability over content posted by users. 
 
The hearing titled `Disinformation Nation: Social media`s role in promoting extremism and misinformation` is designed to address concerns Democrats have had about the spread of misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic and the presidential election. 
 
It is also likely to discuss ways to hold tech platforms accountable by reforming the internet law. The chief executives of Google and Twitter will also testify at the hearing. 
 
Google`s Sundar Pichai will make suggestions to reform the law but, unlike Zuckerberg, will not advocate for adoption of a set of best practices, according to his testimony. Twitter`s Jack Dorsey will lay out steps the platform has taken to tackle misinformation. 
 
Zuckerberg and Pichai will also urge caution as Congress considers reforming the law. 
 
"Platforms should not be held liable if a particular piece of content evades its detection -- that would be impractical for platforms with billions of posts per day," Zuckerberg wrote in his testimony. 
 
Google`s Pichai also struck a similar note saying "without Section 230, platforms would either over-filter content or not be able to filter content at all." 
 
Pichai instead proposed solutions such as developing content policies that are clear and accessible, notifying people when their content is removed and giving them ways to appeal content decisions. 
 
There are several pieces of legislation from Democrats to reform Section 230 that are doing the rounds in Congress. Several Republican lawmakers have also been pushing separately to scrap the law entirely.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg laid out steps to reform a key internet law on Wednesday, saying that companies should have immunity from liability only if they follow best practices for removing damaging material from their platforms.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg laid out steps to reform a key internet law on Wednesday, saying that companies should have immunity from liability only if they follow best practices for removing damaging material from their platforms. In testimony prepared for a joint hearing before two House Energy and Commerce subcommittees on Thursday, Zuckerberg acknowledged the calls from lawmakers for changes to a law called Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives companies like Facebook immunity from liability over content posted by users. The hearing titled `Disinformation Nation: Social media`s role in promoting extremism and misinformation` is designed to address concerns Democrats have had about the spread of misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic and the presidential election. It is also likely to discuss ways to hold tech platforms accountable by reforming the internet law. The chief executives of Google and Twitter will also testify at the hearing. Google`s Sundar Pichai will make suggestions to reform the law but, unlike Zuckerberg, will not advocate for adoption of a set of best practices, according to his testimony. Twitter`s Jack Dorsey will lay out steps the platform has taken to tackle misinformation. Zuckerberg and Pichai will also urge caution as Congress considers reforming the law. "Platforms should not be held liable if a particular piece of content evades its detection -- that would be impractical for platforms with billions of posts per day," Zuckerberg wrote in his testimony. Google`s Pichai also struck a similar note saying "without Section 230, platforms would either over-filter content or not be able to filter content at all." Pichai instead proposed solutions such as developing content policies that are clear and accessible, notifying people when their content is removed and giving them ways to appeal content decisions. There are several pieces of legislation from Democrats to reform Section 230 that are doing the rounds in Congress. Several Republican lawmakers have also been pushing separately to scrap the law entirely.

Facebook, Google CEOs suggest ways to reform key internet law

Abu Dhabi state fund Mubadala Investment Co and Abu Dhabi Catalyst Partners, part-owned by Mubadala, said on Tuesday they had invested a combined $150 million in messaging app Telegram.

Mubadala invested $75 million in five-year, pre-initial public offering (IPO) bonds of Telegram, while Abu Dhabi Catalyst Partners invested a further $75 million.

"Telegram's user base has reached a critical mass that places it amongst global tech giants," Mubadala executive Faris Sohail Faris al-Mazrui said in a statement.

"Telegram is well-positioned for an inflexion point that will transform it into a leading global technology company."

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/final-nail-in-coffin-telegram-again-trolls-whatsapp-over-new-privacy-update-356104">Final nail in coffin: Telegram again trolls Whatsapp over new privacy update</a>

Telegram, already headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, will open an office in Abu Dhabi following the new investment, Mubadala said.

Abu Dhabi Catalyst Partners is a Mubadala joint venture with U.S. investment company Falcon Edge Capital.

Mubadala, which manages more than $230 billion in assets, is UAE's second-biggest state investor after Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

Both have invested in technology, with Mubadala contributing $15 billion to SoftBank's $100 billion Vision Fund in 2017.

Mubadala last year bought a 1.85 per cent&nbsp;stake in Reliance Industries' digital unit, Jio Platforms, for $1.2 billion.

Tapping&nbsp;Telegram

Telegram, along with messaging app Signal, have seen an increase in users this year amid privacy concerns with larger rival Facebook-owned WhatsApp.

The encrypted messaging app's&nbsp;Russia-born founder Pavel Durov&nbsp;said on his&nbsp;Telegram&nbsp;channel Tuesday that the app had over 500 million monthly active users in the first weeks of January.

Telegram&nbsp;is a popular social media platform in a number of countries, particularly in the former Soviet Union and Iran, and is used both for private communications and sharing information and news.

Durov said&nbsp;Telegram&nbsp;has become a "refuge" for those seeking a private and secure communications platform and assured new users that his team "takes this responsibility very seriously."

Telegram&nbsp;was founded in 2013 by brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov, who also founded Russia's social media network VKontakte.

&nbsp;

Abu Dhabi state fund Mubadala Investment Co and Abu Dhabi Catalyst Partners, part-owned by Mubadala, said on Tuesday they had invested a combined $150 million in messaging app Telegram.

Abu Dhabi state fund Mubadala Investment Co and Abu Dhabi Catalyst Partners, part-owned by Mubadala, said on Tuesday they had invested a combined $150 million in messaging app Telegram. Mubadala invested $75 million in five-year, pre-initial public offering (IPO) bonds of Telegram, while Abu Dhabi Catalyst Partners invested a further $75 million. "Telegram's user base has reached a critical mass that places it amongst global tech giants," Mubadala executive Faris Sohail Faris al-Mazrui said in a statement. "Telegram is well-positioned for an inflexion point that will transform it into a leading global technology company." Also read| Final nail in coffin: Telegram again trolls Whatsapp over new privacy update Telegram, already headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, will open an office in Abu Dhabi following the new investment, Mubadala said. Abu Dhabi Catalyst Partners is a Mubadala joint venture with U.S. investment company Falcon Edge Capital. Mubadala, which manages more than $230 billion in assets, is UAE's second-biggest state investor after Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Both have invested in technology, with Mubadala contributing $15 billion to SoftBank's $100 billion Vision Fund in 2017. Mubadala last year bought a 1.85 per cent stake in Reliance Industries' digital unit, Jio Platforms, for $1.2 billion. Tapping Telegram Telegram, along with messaging app Signal, have seen an increase in users this year amid privacy concerns with larger rival Facebook-owned WhatsApp. The encrypted messaging app's Russia-born founder Pavel Durov said on his Telegram channel Tuesday that the app had over 500 million monthly active users in the first weeks of January. Telegram is a popular social media platform in a number of countries, particularly in the former Soviet Union and Iran, and is used both for private communications and sharing information and news. Durov said Telegram has become a "refuge" for those seeking a private and secure communications platform and assured new users that his team "takes this responsibility very seriously." Telegram was founded in 2013 by brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov, who also founded Russia's social media network VKontakte.

Abu Dhabi state fund invests $150 million in Telegram messaging app

Twitter's top boss Jack Dorsey recently sold the first-ever Tweet on the platform for a little over $2.9 million on Monday. The tweet, posted by Dorsey&nbsp;said, ''just setting up my twttr'' and was sold as a unique digital signature on a website that sells tweets as "non-fungible tokens" (NFTs).

NFTs are digital files that basically serve as digital signatures to ascertain ownership of pictures, videos, and other media on the web.

Dorsey pushed out the tweet in March, 2006. Reuters reported he had received offers going as high as $88,888.88 just minutes after posting a link of the listing, which was posted on a tweets marketplace called "Valuables by Cent".

The tweet was bought using the cryptocurrency Ether for 1630.5825601 ETH, which amounted to $2,915,835.47 at the time of sale, the company’s CEO Cameron Hejazi confirmed on Monday.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/business-economy/jack-dorsey-to-convert-proceeds-from-auction-of-first-tweet-to-bitcoin-369277" hreflang="en">Jack Dorsey to convert proceeds from auction of first tweet to bitcoin</a>

Sina Estavi has been confirmed as the buyer of the tweet.&nbsp;Estavi, based in Malaysia, is the CEO of a blockchain company called Bridge Oracle.

Many believe that the tweet was put up for sale in December 2020, with the listing gaining traction after Dorsey tweeted about the same. The 15-year-old tweet by Dorsey is one of the platform's most famous tweets ever!

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/world/bid-for-first-tweet-of-twitter-co-founder-jack-dorsey-reaches-usd-25-million-368677" hreflang="en">Bid for first tweet of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey reaches USD 2.5 million&nbsp;</a>

Valuables by Cent was launched over three months ago and compares buying tweets to buying an autographed baseball card. "There is only one unique signed version of the tweet, and if the creator agrees to sell, you can own it forever", the company was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Dorsey plans to convert the proceeds into bitcoin which will then be donated to Africa’s fight against COVID-19. Twitter boss received 95 per cent of the proceeds while Cent received 5 per cent.

Twitter's top boss Jack Dorsey recently sold the first-ever Tweet on the platform for a little over $2.9 million on Monday. The tweet, posted by Dorsey said, ''just setting up my twttr'' and was sold as a unique digital signature on a website that sells tweets as "non-fungible tokens" (NFTs).

Twitter's top boss Jack Dorsey recently sold the first-ever Tweet on the platform for a little over $2.9 million on Monday. The tweet, posted by Dorsey said, ''just setting up my twttr'' and was sold as a unique digital signature on a website that sells tweets as "non-fungible tokens" (NFTs). NFTs are digital files that basically serve as digital signatures to ascertain ownership of pictures, videos, and other media on the web. Dorsey pushed out the tweet in March, 2006. Reuters reported he had received offers going as high as $88,888.88 just minutes after posting a link of the listing, which was posted on a tweets marketplace called "Valuables by Cent". The tweet was bought using the cryptocurrency Ether for 1630.5825601 ETH, which amounted to $2,915,835.47 at the time of sale, the company’s CEO Cameron Hejazi confirmed on Monday. Also read: Jack Dorsey to convert proceeds from auction of first tweet to bitcoin Sina Estavi has been confirmed as the buyer of the tweet. Estavi, based in Malaysia, is the CEO of a blockchain company called Bridge Oracle. Many believe that the tweet was put up for sale in December 2020, with the listing gaining traction after Dorsey tweeted about the same. The 15-year-old tweet by Dorsey is one of the platform's most famous tweets ever! Also read: Bid for first tweet of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey reaches USD 2.5 million Valuables by Cent was launched over three months ago and compares buying tweets to buying an autographed baseball card. "There is only one unique signed version of the tweet, and if the creator agrees to sell, you can own it forever", the company was quoted as saying by Reuters. Dorsey plans to convert the proceeds into bitcoin which will then be donated to Africa’s fight against COVID-19. Twitter boss received 95 per cent of the proceeds while Cent received 5 per cent.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's first Tweet sold for $2.9 million as NFT

While technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) could help the world deal with dangerous climate and environmental change, fake news on social media about global warming and biodiversity loss has emerged as a barrier in the climate change mitigation efforts, a group of scientists has warned.&nbsp;

The report, published in Ambio, a journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, concludes that inequality and environmental challenges are deeply linked. Reducing inequality will increase trust within societies.&nbsp;

Trust is essential for governments to make long-term decisions, the report argues. Social media and access to reliable knowledge is also highlighted as a barrier to progress.&nbsp;

"As the pressure of human activities accelerates on Earth, so too does the hope that technologies such as artificial intelligence will be able to help us deal with dangerous climate and environmental change," said Co-author Victor Galaz, Deputy Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre.&nbsp;

"That will only happen however, if we act forcefully in ways that redirects the direction of technological change towards planetary stewardship and responsible innovation."&nbsp;

Human actions are threatening the resilience and stability of Earth's biosphere -- the wafer-thin veil around Earth where life thrives, according to the report published for the first Nobel Prize Summit, a digital gathering to be held in April to discuss the state of the planet in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.&nbsp;

"In a single human lifetime, largely since the 1950s, we have grossly simplified the biosphere, a system that has evolved over 3.8 billion years. Now just a few plants and animals dominate the land and oceans," said lead author Carl Folke, Director of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics and Chair of the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University.&nbsp;

"Our actions are making the biosphere more fragile, less resilient and more prone to shocks than before."&nbsp;

(With inputs from agencies)&nbsp;

While technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) could help the world deal with dangerous climate and environmental change, fake news on social media about global warming and biodiversity loss has emerged as a barrier in the climate change mitigation efforts, a group of scientists has warned.

While technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) could help the world deal with dangerous climate and environmental change, fake news on social media about global warming and biodiversity loss has emerged as a barrier in the climate change mitigation efforts, a group of scientists has warned. The report, published in Ambio, a journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, concludes that inequality and environmental challenges are deeply linked. Reducing inequality will increase trust within societies. Trust is essential for governments to make long-term decisions, the report argues. Social media and access to reliable knowledge is also highlighted as a barrier to progress. "As the pressure of human activities accelerates on Earth, so too does the hope that technologies such as artificial intelligence will be able to help us deal with dangerous climate and environmental change," said Co-author Victor Galaz, Deputy Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre. "That will only happen however, if we act forcefully in ways that redirects the direction of technological change towards planetary stewardship and responsible innovation." Human actions are threatening the resilience and stability of Earth's biosphere -- the wafer-thin veil around Earth where life thrives, according to the report published for the first Nobel Prize Summit, a digital gathering to be held in April to discuss the state of the planet in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. "In a single human lifetime, largely since the 1950s, we have grossly simplified the biosphere, a system that has evolved over 3.8 billion years. Now just a few plants and animals dominate the land and oceans," said lead author Carl Folke, Director of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics and Chair of the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University. "Our actions are making the biosphere more fragile, less resilient and more prone to shocks than before." (With inputs from agencies)

Fake news on social media barrier hampering climate fight 

Video conferencing platform Zoom on Monday released a new video Software Development Kit (SDK) to enable developers to leverage the platform's HD video, audio and interactive features to build video-based applications and desktop experiences with native user interfaces.&nbsp;

With the ability to build the reliability and scale-ready performance of Zoom's video-first unified communications platform into their products and applications, developers can leverage the Video SDK to create new and exciting experiences.&nbsp;

Using the Video SDK, developers can drive customer engagement and provide new opportunities for revenue without being tied to the Zoom Meetings user interface, Zoom said.&nbsp;

"Video-based customer experiences will play an increasingly large role in customer engagement as we move into the future," Natalie Mullin, Product Marketing Manager at Zoom, wrote in a blog post.&nbsp;

According to industry analyst Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research, "Video usage is at an all-time high. The next wave of video-based experiences will be driven by embedding video directly into business and consumer applications that seamlessly improve workflows and enhance social interaction."&nbsp;

"Zoom's Video SDKs are easy to work with, and enable nimble development of fully customizable video-based applications."&nbsp;

For example, developers can integrate Zoom's functionality into social media applications to create reliable and engaging communications experiences, such as on-the-go live streaming with interactive chat.&nbsp;

Using Zoom's HD video and audio and interactive features, developers can build desktop gaming apps that offer new opportunities for audience engagement.&nbsp;

(With inputs from agencies)&nbsp;

Video conferencing platform Zoom on Monday released a new video Software Development Kit (SDK) to enable developers to leverage the platform's HD video, audio and interactive features to build video-based applications and desktop experiences with native user interfaces.

Video conferencing platform Zoom on Monday released a new video Software Development Kit (SDK) to enable developers to leverage the platform's HD video, audio and interactive features to build video-based applications and desktop experiences with native user interfaces. With the ability to build the reliability and scale-ready performance of Zoom's video-first unified communications platform into their products and applications, developers can leverage the Video SDK to create new and exciting experiences. Using the Video SDK, developers can drive customer engagement and provide new opportunities for revenue without being tied to the Zoom Meetings user interface, Zoom said. "Video-based customer experiences will play an increasingly large role in customer engagement as we move into the future," Natalie Mullin, Product Marketing Manager at Zoom, wrote in a blog post. According to industry analyst Zeus Kerravala, principal analyst at ZK Research, "Video usage is at an all-time high. The next wave of video-based experiences will be driven by embedding video directly into business and consumer applications that seamlessly improve workflows and enhance social interaction." "Zoom's Video SDKs are easy to work with, and enable nimble development of fully customizable video-based applications." For example, developers can integrate Zoom's functionality into social media applications to create reliable and engaging communications experiences, such as on-the-go live streaming with interactive chat. Using Zoom's HD video and audio and interactive features, developers can build desktop gaming apps that offer new opportunities for audience engagement. (With inputs from agencies)

Zoom unveils new SDK to help developers leverage video services 

Brazil’s consumer watchdog slapped a $2 million fine on Apple for not including chargers in the iPhone 12 series. The watchdog alleges that Apple engaged in misleading advertising and sold a device without a charger on unfair terms.

In October 2020, Apple had announced that no charger or earphones would ship with the iPhone 12 series. The company says this was done to address environmental concerns, implying that the phones only have the device and the wire in the box.

"Apple needs to understand that in&nbsp;Brazil&nbsp;there are solid consumer protection laws and institutions. It needs to respect these laws and these institutions," Procon-SP Executive Director Fernando Capez was quoted as saying by news agency IANS.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/technology/apple-doesnt-want-people-to-use-android-whatsapp-ceo-alleges-370403" hreflang="en">Apple doesn't want people to use Android, WhatsApp CEO alleges</a>

In the US, the iPhone 12 Mini costs $729. In Brazil, the same phone is valued at $1,200. The company claims that such measures are a way to limit the company’s carbon footprint. According to Apple, 2 million metric tonnes of carbon will be reduced through this measure, which they claim is the same as removing 450,000 cars in a year.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="http://13.235.153.162/technology/uk-launches-competition-probe-into-apples-app-store-monopoly-368041" hreflang="en">UK launches competition probe into Apple's App Store monopoly</a>

Many companies are embracing Apple’s move and have now stopped shipping chargers with phones. But critics believe this is another tactic to continue charging customers the same price for lesser services, and is based on the flawed assumption that everyone already owns a device from the same company.

The American giant was fined by Procon-SP, a consumer protection regulator.&nbsp;Apple has not responded to the fine yet.

Brazil’s consumer watchdog slapped a $2 million fine on Apple for not including chargers in the iPhone 12 series. The watchdog alleges that Apple engaged in misleading advertising and sold a device without a charger on unfair terms.

Brazil’s consumer watchdog slapped a $2 million fine on Apple for not including chargers in the iPhone 12 series. The watchdog alleges that Apple engaged in misleading advertising and sold a device without a charger on unfair terms. In October 2020, Apple had announced that no charger or earphones would ship with the iPhone 12 series. The company says this was done to address environmental concerns, implying that the phones only have the device and the wire in the box. "Apple needs to understand that in Brazil there are solid consumer protection laws and institutions. It needs to respect these laws and these institutions," Procon-SP Executive Director Fernando Capez was quoted as saying by news agency IANS. Also read: Apple doesn't want people to use Android, WhatsApp CEO alleges In the US, the iPhone 12 Mini costs $729. In Brazil, the same phone is valued at $1,200. The company claims that such measures are a way to limit the company’s carbon footprint. According to Apple, 2 million metric tonnes of carbon will be reduced through this measure, which they claim is the same as removing 450,000 cars in a year. Also read: UK launches competition probe into Apple's App Store monopoly Many companies are embracing Apple’s move and have now stopped shipping chargers with phones. But critics believe this is another tactic to continue charging customers the same price for lesser services, and is based on the flawed assumption that everyone already owns a device from the same company. The American giant was fined by Procon-SP, a consumer protection regulator. Apple has not responded to the fine yet.

Brazilian regulator fines Apple for shipping iPhones without chargers

Facebook&nbsp;Inc has fixed a technical issue that caused a global outage of its services after more than a million people reported problems with its photo-sharing app Instagram.

The issue had also affected the company's online messaging services Whatsapp and Messenger, with #whatsappoutage trending on Twitter in many countries, including India.

A&nbsp;Facebook&nbsp;spokesperson said the company had resolved the issue, which prevented access to its services.

Over one million people had reported problems with Instagram, while nearly 20,000 users posted about issues with WhatsApp, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.

Downdetector tracks outages by collating status reports from a series of sources, including user-submitted errors on its platform. The outages might be affecting a larger number of users.

Take a look at some reactions below:

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Whole India right now <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/whatsappoutage?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#whatsappoutage</a> <a href="https://t.co/IQgBwneNXm">pic.twitter.com/IQgBwneNXm</a>
— SH (@sumukh_herlekar) <a href="https://twitter.com/sumukh_herlekar/status/1372970120121774080?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 19, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Before yesterday's <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WhatsappOutage?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WhatsappOutage</a>, I had a notification (since many days) for accepting the new privacy policy of WhatsApp. I had not tapped on it to accept it. 
 
After the outage, I can not see the notification. Is anyone else also experiencing anything similar.
— Nikhil Pingle (@nikhilpingle) <a href="https://twitter.com/nikhilpingle/status/1373122157413273605?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 20, 2021</a></blockquote>
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I am enjoying the disconnect. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/whatsappoutage?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#whatsappoutage</a>
— Srishti Mahajan (@mahajan_srishti) <a href="https://twitter.com/mahajan_srishti/status/1372968960983846912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 19, 2021</a></blockquote>
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And I thought there was some prob with my data and wifi. 
WhatsApp msgs weren't delivering. 
Checked insta and it wasn't loading. 
Restarted my phone too. 
Twitter to the rescue finally ! 😅<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/whatsapp?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#whatsapp</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/whatsappoutage?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#whatsappoutage</a>
— Abhijeet ಅಭಿಜೀತ್ (@panneerpepper) <a href="https://twitter.com/panneerpepper/status/1372969229947789312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 19, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Instagram &amp; WhatsApp are down. Is everybody feeling like their life has come to a standstill or is it just me? 😂 
What about the students who had their tests on whatsapp groups? RIP 😆<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WhatsAppDown?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WhatsAppDown</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/InstagramDown?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#InstagramDown</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Instagram?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Instagram</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Whatsapp?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Whatsapp</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Outage?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Outage</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/InstagramOutage?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#InstagramOutage</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WhatsappOutage?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WhatsappOutage</a>
— Shreya Narang (@narangshreyaa) <a href="https://twitter.com/narangshreyaa/status/1372967311930355715?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 19, 2021</a></blockquote>
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&nbsp;

Facebook Inc has fixed a technical issue that caused a global outage of its services after more than a million people reported problems with its photo-sharing app Instagram.

Facebook Inc has fixed a technical issue that caused a global outage of its services after more than a million people reported problems with its photo-sharing app Instagram. The issue had also affected the company's online messaging services Whatsapp and Messenger, with #whatsappoutage trending on Twitter in many countries, including India. A Facebook spokesperson said the company had resolved the issue, which prevented access to its services. Over one million people had reported problems with Instagram, while nearly 20,000 users posted about issues with WhatsApp, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com. Downdetector tracks outages by collating status reports from a series of sources, including user-submitted errors on its platform. The outages might be affecting a larger number of users. Take a look at some reactions below: Whole India right now #whatsappoutage pic.twitter.com/IQgBwneNXm — SH (@sumukh_herlekar) March 19, 2021 × Before yesterday's #WhatsappOutage, I had a notification (since many days) for accepting the new privacy policy of WhatsApp. I had not tapped on it to accept it. After the outage, I can not see the notification. Is anyone else also experiencing anything similar. — Nikhil Pingle (@nikhilpingle) March 20, 2021 × I am enjoying the disconnect. #whatsappoutage — Srishti Mahajan (@mahajan_srishti) March 19, 2021 × And I thought there was some prob with my data and wifi. WhatsApp msgs weren't delivering. Checked insta and it wasn't loading. Restarted my phone too. Twitter to the rescue finally ! 😅#whatsapp#whatsappoutage — Abhijeet ಅಭಿಜೀತ್ (@panneerpepper) March 19, 2021 × Instagram & WhatsApp are down. Is everybody feeling like their life has come to a standstill or is it just me? 😂 What about the students who had their tests on whatsapp groups? RIP 😆#WhatsAppDown #InstagramDown #Instagram #Whatsapp #Outage #InstagramOutage #WhatsappOutage — Shreya Narang (@narangshreyaa) March 19, 2021 ×

Global outage of Facebook services including WhatsApp causes mayhem on Twitter

Aerospace firms on Thursday credited NASA with a successful test of engines on a Boeing-built rocket for Artemis missions that aim to return US&nbsp;astronauts to the moon by 2024, more than half a century since the last lunar walk.

NASA simulated a launch by firing the engines of the core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket while it was anchored to a tower at its Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.

The four RS-25 engines roared to life for the full eight minutes of the test and filled the surrounding area and sky with clouds of white smoke. After the engines cut off, NASA employees could be heard applauding on the space agency`s live-streaming video, and many aerospace firms publicly congratulated NASA on a successful test.

A previous test in January ended after about a minute - well short of the roughly four minutes engineers needed to gather enough data.

The Space Launch System is now expected to go to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for integration with Lockheed Martin Corp`s Orion spacecraft.

NASA aims to send an uncrewed spacecraft to orbit the moon in November and return U.S. astronauts to the moon by 2024, but the SLS program is three years behind schedule and nearly $3 billion over budget.

President Joe Biden has tapped former Democratic senator and astronaut Bill Nelson to run the U.S. space agency, according to two people familiar with the decision.

It was a much-sought-after victory for Boeing after multiple setbacks.

Boeing lost a race for its Starliner crew capsule to be the first to carry astronauts from U.S. soil to the International Space Station in nearly a decade to Elon Musk`s SpaceX.

Jeff Bezos` Blue Origin is also racing to send its own crewed mission to space for the first time.

Aerospace firms on Thursday credited NASA with a successful test of engines on a Boeing-built rocket for Artemis missions that aim to return US astronauts to the moon by 2024, more than half a century since the last lunar walk.

Aerospace firms on Thursday credited NASA with a successful test of engines on a Boeing-built rocket for Artemis missions that aim to return US astronauts to the moon by 2024, more than half a century since the last lunar walk. NASA simulated a launch by firing the engines of the core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket while it was anchored to a tower at its Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The four RS-25 engines roared to life for the full eight minutes of the test and filled the surrounding area and sky with clouds of white smoke. After the engines cut off, NASA employees could be heard applauding on the space agency`s live-streaming video, and many aerospace firms publicly congratulated NASA on a successful test. A previous test in January ended after about a minute - well short of the roughly four minutes engineers needed to gather enough data. The Space Launch System is now expected to go to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for integration with Lockheed Martin Corp`s Orion spacecraft. NASA aims to send an uncrewed spacecraft to orbit the moon in November and return U.S. astronauts to the moon by 2024, but the SLS program is three years behind schedule and nearly $3 billion over budget. President Joe Biden has tapped former Democratic senator and astronaut Bill Nelson to run the U.S. space agency, according to two people familiar with the decision. It was a much-sought-after victory for Boeing after multiple setbacks. Boeing lost a race for its Starliner crew capsule to be the first to carry astronauts from U.S. soil to the International Space Station in nearly a decade to Elon Musk`s SpaceX. Jeff Bezos` Blue Origin is also racing to send its own crewed mission to space for the first time.

NASA completes major test on rocket that could take humans back to the moon

Facebook's AI reality: Scroll images on a computer screen by just thinking about it

Social networking giant Facebook is planning to develop a new version of its subsidiary Instagram for kids under 13 years of age, where parents would have transparency or control over the accounts of their children.&nbsp;

Earlier, Facebook-owned&nbsp;Instagram&nbsp;unveiled technology Tuesday aimed at preventing underage children from creating accounts and blocking adults from contacting young users they don't know.

It was the latest move responding to concerns about inappropriate contact between adults and children on the platform, which like most services sets an age minimum of 13.

Instagram&nbsp;will begin using artificial intelligence to determine a user's age at signup in an effort to find underage users.

"While many people are honest about their age, we know that young people can lie about their date of birth. We want to do more to stop this from happening, but verifying people's age online is complex and something many in our industry are grappling with," a blog post said.

"To address this challenge, we're developing new artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to help us keep teens safer and apply new age-appropriate features."

Additionally, the California giant said it would introduce a new feature that prevents adults from sending messages to people under 18 who don't follow them, to prevent unwanted contact.

"This feature relies on our work to predict peoples' ages using machine learning technology, and the age people give us when they sign up,"&nbsp;Instagram&nbsp;said.

Instagram&nbsp;is also looking at ways to make it more difficult for adults who have been exhibiting "potentially suspicious behaviour" to interact with teens, including restricting these adults from seeing suggested teen accounts.

The image-focused network indicated it will alert teens to potentially suspect behaviour by adults, including the sending of large numbers of private messages.

"We'll use this tool to alert the recipients... and give them an option to end the conversation, or block, report, or restrict the adult,"&nbsp;Instagram&nbsp;said.

This is not the first time that Mark Zuckerberg owned company has tried to experiment for its young users. In 2017, the company launched an ad-free version of its Messenger chat platform for kids between the ages of 6 and 12.

However, this idea was discontinued after the Children`s health advocates criticized it as harmful for kids.

Similarly&nbsp;in 2019, a bug in the Messenger Kids app allowed children to join groups with strangers, leaving thousands of kids in chats with unauthorized users. Facebook quietly closed those unauthorized chats, after started to affect a number of users

Social networking giant Facebook is planning to develop a new version of its subsidiary Instagram for kids under 13 years of age, where parents would have transparency or control over the accounts of their children.

Social networking giant Facebook is planning to develop a new version of its subsidiary Instagram for kids under 13 years of age, where parents would have transparency or control over the accounts of their children. Earlier, Facebook-owned Instagram unveiled technology Tuesday aimed at preventing underage children from creating accounts and blocking adults from contacting young users they don't know. It was the latest move responding to concerns about inappropriate contact between adults and children on the platform, which like most services sets an age minimum of 13. Instagram will begin using artificial intelligence to determine a user's age at signup in an effort to find underage users. "While many people are honest about their age, we know that young people can lie about their date of birth. We want to do more to stop this from happening, but verifying people's age online is complex and something many in our industry are grappling with," a blog post said. "To address this challenge, we're developing new artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to help us keep teens safer and apply new age-appropriate features." Additionally, the California giant said it would introduce a new feature that prevents adults from sending messages to people under 18 who don't follow them, to prevent unwanted contact. "This feature relies on our work to predict peoples' ages using machine learning technology, and the age people give us when they sign up," Instagram said. Instagram is also looking at ways to make it more difficult for adults who have been exhibiting "potentially suspicious behaviour" to interact with teens, including restricting these adults from seeing suggested teen accounts. The image-focused network indicated it will alert teens to potentially suspect behaviour by adults, including the sending of large numbers of private messages. "We'll use this tool to alert the recipients... and give them an option to end the conversation, or block, report, or restrict the adult," Instagram said. This is not the first time that Mark Zuckerberg owned company has tried to experiment for its young users. In 2017, the company launched an ad-free version of its Messenger chat platform for kids between the ages of 6 and 12. However, this idea was discontinued after the Children`s health advocates criticized it as harmful for kids. Similarly in 2019, a bug in the Messenger Kids app allowed children to join groups with strangers, leaving thousands of kids in chats with unauthorized users. Facebook quietly closed those unauthorized chats, after started to affect a number of users

Facebook building a version of Instagram for children under 13

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/google">Google</a> is cutting in half its commission on developers’ first $1 million in app sales, following a similar move by <a href="https://www.wionews.com/topics/apple">Apple</a> that is aimed at appeasing developers and regulators who accuse the companies of abusing their dominance of the smartphone industry.

Google said that starting July 1, it would take 15% of the first $1 million developers take in from certain app sales, down from 30%. Google will still charge 30% after the first $1 million.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/google-collects-data-in-incognito-mode-consumers-allege-in-lawsuit-370408" hreflang="en">Google collects data in incognito mode, consumers allege in lawsuit</a>

Apple last year said it was halving its App Store commission to 15% on companies that earn less than $1 million a year in app sales.

The dual actions reverse years of resistance by the companies to change their app commissions, which have become important to their growth.

Rivals have intensified their criticism of the rates, saying they are artificially high because the companies have a duopoly on the distribution of mobile apps. Regulators around the world have begun investigating the commissions as part of larger antitrust probes, and lawmakers in several states are considering bills that would make it more difficult for Apple and Google to impose the fees.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/i-pity-you-after-timnit-gebru-google-fires-top-ai-researcher-margaret-mitchell-364958" hreflang="en">'I pity you': After Timnit Gebru, Google fires top AI researcher Margaret Mitchell</a>

Apple has been largely the focus of the criticism because it forces developers to use its App Store to reach iPhone users. Google’s Android software allows users to download apps outside of its flagship Play Store. Still, Android is the dominant smartphone operating system around the world, underpinning roughly 85% of the world’s smartphones, according to IDC, a market research firm.

Google said its change would halve the fees for 99% of Android developers. But while Apple’s and Google’s moves have earned them positive headlines, they will likely have little impact on the companies’ bottom lines, because most of their app revenues come from larger developers.

Apple’s new policy, for instance, will affect roughly 98% of the companies that pay Apple a commission, but those developers accounted for less than 5% of App Store revenues last year, according to estimates from Sensor Tower, an app analytics firm.

Google is cutting in half its commission on developers’ first $1 million in app sales, following a similar move by Apple that is aimed at appeasing developers and regulators who accuse the companies of abusing their dominance of the smartphone industry.

Google is cutting in half its commission on developers’ first $1 million in app sales, following a similar move by Apple that is aimed at appeasing developers and regulators who accuse the companies of abusing their dominance of the smartphone industry. Google said that starting July 1, it would take 15% of the first $1 million developers take in from certain app sales, down from 30%. Google will still charge 30% after the first $1 million. Also read | Google collects data in incognito mode, consumers allege in lawsuit Apple last year said it was halving its App Store commission to 15% on companies that earn less than $1 million a year in app sales. The dual actions reverse years of resistance by the companies to change their app commissions, which have become important to their growth. Rivals have intensified their criticism of the rates, saying they are artificially high because the companies have a duopoly on the distribution of mobile apps. Regulators around the world have begun investigating the commissions as part of larger antitrust probes, and lawmakers in several states are considering bills that would make it more difficult for Apple and Google to impose the fees. Also read | 'I pity you': After Timnit Gebru, Google fires top AI researcher Margaret Mitchell Apple has been largely the focus of the criticism because it forces developers to use its App Store to reach iPhone users. Google’s Android software allows users to download apps outside of its flagship Play Store. Still, Android is the dominant smartphone operating system around the world, underpinning roughly 85% of the world’s smartphones, according to IDC, a market research firm. Google said its change would halve the fees for 99% of Android developers. But while Apple’s and Google’s moves have earned them positive headlines, they will likely have little impact on the companies’ bottom lines, because most of their app revenues come from larger developers. Apple’s new policy, for instance, will affect roughly 98% of the companies that pay Apple a commission, but those developers accounted for less than 5% of App Store revenues last year, according to estimates from Sensor Tower, an app analytics firm.

Google reduces some app commissions amid criticism

Prime Minister Narendra Modi formally inaugurated the Integrated Check Post of the <a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/pm-modi-thanks-imran-khan-niazi-for-respecting-sentiments-of-india-260939">Kartarpur Corridor</a> on Saturday.

Modi was accompanied by Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, Union Ministers Hardeep Singh Puri and Harsimrat Kaur Badal and actor and Gurdaspur lawmaker Sunny Deol at the inauguration.

The Integrated Check Post or the passenger terminal building is where pilgrims will get clearance to travel through the newly-built corridor.

The check post will facilitate Indian pilgrims to visit Gurudwara Kartapur Sahib in Pakistan.

The opening of the corridor, which connects Dera Baba Nanak shrine in Gurdaspur district of Punjab to Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan, comes days before the 550th birth anniversary of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev, on November 12.

Before heading for Dera Baba Nanak, the Prime Minister paid obeisance at historic Ber Sahib Gurdwara at Sultanpur Lodhi.

At the gurdwara, PM Modi was received by former Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee chief Jagir Kaur, who is in-charge of celebrations of the 550th birth anniversary of Sikhism`s founder Guru Nanak Dev. The Prime Minister was presented a `siropa` (robe of honour) by Kaur on behalf of the SGPC.&nbsp;

 
&nbsp;

Prime Minister Narendra Modi formally inaugurated the Integrated Check Post of the Kartarpur Corridor on Saturday. Modi was accompanied by Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, Union Ministers Hardeep Singh Puri and Harsimrat Kaur Badal and actor and Gurdaspur lawmaker Sunny Deol at the inauguration.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi formally inaugurated the Integrated Check Post of the Kartarpur Corridor on Saturday. Modi was accompanied by Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, Union Ministers Hardeep Singh Puri and Harsimrat Kaur Badal and actor and Gurdaspur lawmaker Sunny Deol at the inauguration. The Integrated Check Post or the passenger terminal building is where pilgrims will get clearance to travel through the newly-built corridor. The check post will facilitate Indian pilgrims to visit Gurudwara Kartapur Sahib in Pakistan. The opening of the corridor, which connects Dera Baba Nanak shrine in Gurdaspur district of Punjab to Gurdwara Kartarpur Sahib in Pakistan, comes days before the 550th birth anniversary of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev, on November 12. Before heading for Dera Baba Nanak, the Prime Minister paid obeisance at historic Ber Sahib Gurdwara at Sultanpur Lodhi. At the gurdwara, PM Modi was received by former Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee chief Jagir Kaur, who is in-charge of celebrations of the 550th birth anniversary of Sikhism`s founder Guru Nanak Dev. The Prime Minister was presented a `siropa` (robe of honour) by Kaur on behalf of the SGPC.

E-commerce firm Pinduoduo's founder Colin Huang departs

Alphabet Inc's&nbsp;Google has announced&nbsp;that it will&nbsp;cut the service fee it charges developers on its app store by half on the first $1 million they earn in revenue in a year, after a similar move by rival Apple Inc last year.

Both the companies have come under fire from large firms such as Microsoft Corp, Spotify Technology SA, as well as startups and smaller companies, that allege the fees deprive consumers of choices and push up app prices.

Also read|&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/four-more-us-states-join-texas-led-antitrust-lawsuit-against-google-371008" hreflang="en">Four more US states join Texas-led antitrust lawsuit against Google</a>

Google&nbsp;said in a blog post on Tuesday that it would cut app store fees to 15 per cent&nbsp;from 30 per cent&nbsp;effective July 1, a move that would impact most of the developers on its app store.&nbsp;

In contrast, Apple said in November it planned to lower its commissions only for developers who make $1 million or less in proceeds in a year from its app store.

Fortnite creator Epic Games said in a statement to Reuters that&nbsp;Google's move only alleviates some of the financial burden of developers.

"Whether it's 15 per cent&nbsp;or 30 per cent, for apps obtained through the&nbsp;Google&nbsp;Play Store, developers are forced to use&nbsp;Google's in-app payment services," Epic said.

Epic has been at loggerheads with Apple since August when the game maker tried to avoid paying fees on the iPhone maker's app store by launching its own in-app payment system, which prompted Apple to ban Fortnite from its store.

Data analytics firm Sensor Tower estimated that it could have cost&nbsp;Google&nbsp;about $587 million&nbsp;or about 5 per cent&nbsp;of the $11.6 billion it earned from&nbsp;Google&nbsp;Play last year had the service fee cut come into effect in 2020.

Alphabet Inc's Google has announced that it will cut the service fee it charges developers on its app store by half on the first $1 million they earn in revenue in a year, after a similar move by rival Apple Inc last year.

Alphabet Inc's Google has announced that it will cut the service fee it charges developers on its app store by half on the first $1 million they earn in revenue in a year, after a similar move by rival Apple Inc last year. Both the companies have come under fire from large firms such as Microsoft Corp, Spotify Technology SA, as well as startups and smaller companies, that allege the fees deprive consumers of choices and push up app prices. Also read| Four more US states join Texas-led antitrust lawsuit against Google Google said in a blog post on Tuesday that it would cut app store fees to 15 per cent from 30 per cent effective July 1, a move that would impact most of the developers on its app store. In contrast, Apple said in November it planned to lower its commissions only for developers who make $1 million or less in proceeds in a year from its app store. Fortnite creator Epic Games said in a statement to Reuters that Google's move only alleviates some of the financial burden of developers. "Whether it's 15 per cent or 30 per cent, for apps obtained through the Google Play Store, developers are forced to use Google's in-app payment services," Epic said. Epic has been at loggerheads with Apple since August when the game maker tried to avoid paying fees on the iPhone maker's app store by launching its own in-app payment system, which prompted Apple to ban Fortnite from its store. Data analytics firm Sensor Tower estimated that it could have cost Google about $587 million or about 5 per cent of the $11.6 billion it earned from Google Play last year had the service fee cut come into effect in 2020.

Google announces cut in app store fee by half on developers' first $1 million in sales

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has reached a deal with <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/just-111-facebook-users-spread-half-of-covid-vaccine-doubts-370729">Facebook </a>in Australia with the US social media giant agreeing to pay News Corp Australia for its content.

Watch:

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/facebook-to-pay-over-privacy-dispute-367079/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/facebook-set-to-label-all-covid-related-posts-to-battle-misinformation-370595">Facebook</a> and News Corp announced the three-year content deal, just weeks after Australia passed a law aimed at making tech platforms pay for news content.

The agreement makes News Corp the first major media outlet to strike a deal with Facebook under the new law which allows&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/amid-tussle-with-facebook-australia-passes-law-requiring-tech-firms-to-pay-for-news-366055">Australian</a> government arbitrator to set fee limits&nbsp;if companies fail to do so. However, neither the terms of the agreement nor the value of the deal has been disclosed.

"The agreement with Facebook is a landmark in transforming the terms of trade for journalism, and will have a material and meaningful impact on our Australian news businesses," News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson said.

News Corp controls about 70 per cent of newspaper circulation in Australia, including The Australian, the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun. It also owns news.com.au.

News Corp was among the media companies calling for the government to make Facebook and Google pay for the media links that drive viewers to their platforms.

Facebook last month had blocked all news in Australia causing outrage as non-media Facebook pages, including for emergency services, government health departments and charities were blocked.

However, the tech giant later lifted the news blackout and agreed to negotiate paid arrangements with the Australian media leading PM Morrison's government to soften rules.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has reached a deal with Facebook in Australia with the US social media giant agreeing to pay News Corp Australia for its content. Watch: Facebook and News Corp announced the three-year content deal, just weeks after Australia passed a law aimed at making tech platforms pay for news content.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has reached a deal with Facebook in Australia with the US social media giant agreeing to pay News Corp Australia for its content. Watch: Facebook and News Corp announced the three-year content deal, just weeks after Australia passed a law aimed at making tech platforms pay for news content. The agreement makes News Corp the first major media outlet to strike a deal with Facebook under the new law which allows Australian government arbitrator to set fee limits if companies fail to do so. However, neither the terms of the agreement nor the value of the deal has been disclosed. "The agreement with Facebook is a landmark in transforming the terms of trade for journalism, and will have a material and meaningful impact on our Australian news businesses," News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson said. News Corp controls about 70 per cent of newspaper circulation in Australia, including The Australian, the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun. It also owns news.com.au. News Corp was among the media companies calling for the government to make Facebook and Google pay for the media links that drive viewers to their platforms. Facebook last month had blocked all news in Australia causing outrage as non-media Facebook pages, including for emergency services, government health departments and charities were blocked. However, the tech giant later lifted the news blackout and agreed to negotiate paid arrangements with the Australian media leading PM Morrison's government to soften rules.

News Corp inks content deal with Facebook in Australia

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