Internet & Websites News - Page 3

A video posted to the TikTok account @daddystrange333 shows a man aboard a plane being accused by flight attendants of sending lewd images of himself to passengers.

@daddystrange333 explains that she was aboard a flight when she noticed that she had an AirDrop request on his phone. The man that was seated next to @daddystrange333 that she was speaking to told her not to open the request, but she was curious as she could see that the AirDrop request was coming from a man she calls "Larry". @daddystrange333 realized that Larry was sending the images with his iPad, and once she accepted the request, she immediately notified staff aboard the flight.

Flight attendants approached Larry and asked him if he sent explicit images of himself to passengers, to which he agreed to doing by nodding. The flight attendants then followed up by asking him why he would do that, and he said he was "just having a little fun". @daddystrange333 can then be heard saying directly to Larry, "It's sexual harassment, disgusting, it is assault". Before the video ends, Larry can be heard apologizing for his actions.

Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Meta is releasing a new online clothing store for avatars where users will be able to purchase outfits.

Zuckerberg, along with Instagram's vice president of fashion partnerships, Eva Chen, took to Instagram Live to announce "Meta Avatar Store" is coming to Facebook next week and will allow users to explore a virtual store across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. Users will be able to purchase digital clothes for their avatars, and it will feature notable brands of clothing such as Prada, Balenciaga, and Thom Browne. According to TechCrunch, the price for these outfits has yet to be revealed.

Meta has been very public about its push to create a product that directly competes with Byte Dance's hit app TikTok.

A leaked internal meme from Meta revealed that Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta executives want to roll out several changes to Facebook to make the application more like TikTok. The redesign overhaul would concentrate on Facebook's main feed section and change it, so the feed shows content from pages, users, and people that the account isn't following. The memo described this algorithm change as "Discovery Engine".

Now, Instagram is testing a new TikTok-style redesign of its main feed, which Mark Zuckerberg shared on his personal Instagram account story, where he wrote, "We want to make it easier to discover content and connect with friends." Adding that Instagram is currently working on full-screen photos appearing in the feed and that some individuals will start seeing "this test soon". It seems that Meta as a whole is pivoting towards a more TikTok-style user interface.

Facebook has been busted for receiving sensitive medical information from hospital websites, raising the question if the social media giant has broken federal law.

Ars Technica, partnered with The Markup, a non-profit that focuses on data-driven journalism and the impacts of technology throughout society, investigated the websites of the top 100 hospitals across the United States and found that 33 of them featured a tracker called the Meta Pixel. This tracker is designed to send Facebook a packet of data whenever an individual clicks the "Schedule Online Now" button.

An example of what this packet of data can contain is the University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center website, where the Meta Pixel will send Facebook a data packet that contains the doctor's name, and the search term the team used to identify the patient, which was "pregnancy termination".

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has sat down with Twitter employees to answer a series of questions regarding his acquisition of Twitter and any potential coming changes.

Elon Musk has previously explained in small portions what he believes Twitter should transform into. He has mentioned implementing an expansion of freedom of speech on the platform and rolling back some of the current moderation. Musk has previously said that he is against permanent bans and that he would unban former President Donald Trump and other banned accounts while also removing any form of content moderation that is outside of the written law.

Musk was asked for his thoughts on freedom of speech at the recent meeting, where he explained that for Twitter, there is "freedom of speech or freedom of reach". The Tesla CEO then used an example of an individual being able to legally able to "walk into the middle of Times Square and deny the Holocaust", but that doesn't mean that individuals message should be reached by millions of other people. Adding that he believes people should have the right to say "pretty outrageous things that are within the bounds of the law".

Elon Musk has sat down with Twitter staff and answered a series of questions regarding what he believes Twitter will become under his control.

Musk entered into a $44 billion acquisition of the world's second largest social media platform, and since then Twitter employees have been concerned about what his acquisition means for their positions (once its gone through) and how handing over the reins to the company will impact it.

Now Musk has sat down for an all-hands meeting where he explained that he personally uses Twitter to express himself, "Some people use their hair to express themselves. I use Twitter" and that there is a line between being able to express ones self and how many people that expression reaches. Notably, Musk praised China's platform WeChat and how that platform is the center point for social media as users "basically live on WeChat".

TikTok has announced that it will be rolling out a new feature that is designed to stop young users from infinitely scrolling the app.

The new feature, which is very similar to what is currently present on Netflix and Instagram, will prompt users aged between 13 and 17 years old if they spend more than 100 minutes on the app in a 24-hour period. Notably, TikTok also announced that it will be rolling out an insight tool that will allow users to be able to see your screen time summary each day, how many times the app was opened, and more.

This new feature is similar to Netflix's "are you still there?" screen prompt and is intended to add a level of protection to the platform that will help prevent phone addiction. Separately, Asurion, a private insurance company that provides insurance for smartphones, tablets, and consumer electronics, recently published a study that found that the average American checks their phone 353 times a day.

Podcast listeners weren't able to put on their favorite podcasts as all of the shows hosted on Spotify's Megaphone platform went offline.

A spokesperson for Spotify told The Verge that the music streaming platform, unfortunately, suffered from an issue "related to our SSL certificate". The spokesperson explained that throughout the duration of the outage, Spotify users weren't able to access any podcast hosted by Megaphone publishers. Podcasts such as The Joe Rogan Experience, The Ringer, and more were temporarily unavailable from 8PM ET on Monday until 6AM Tuesday.

Notably, Megaphone is a service that adds advertisements into podcasts, and Spotify purchased the company for $235 million in 2020. Furthermore, Engadget explains that an SSL certificate is used to verify an authentic connection between a server and browser or application, and as the publication points out, Spotify is a large technology company that relies on secure connections. Having its SSL certificate expire and not be renewed for several hours is the equivalent of an MLB player dropping stock-standard fly-ball.

Apple takes in a considerable amount of money per year for Google to be the default search engine on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac... but that could soon change, with Apple reportedly gearing up to unveil a new search engine competitor.

In a fresh series of tweets, industry veteran (amongst a laundry list of achievements, companies and websites founded, and connections in the tech industry) Robert Scoble teased "oh, and a new search engine is coming too. Will Siri finally get "smart?" Hmmm". The series of tweets were all about Apple's new AR headset tease at its WWDC 2022 event.

Scoble was asked if the "New search engine is your guess or you've actually heard through the grapevine from sources" to which he replied: "Heard it from many places. Had dinner six years ago with head of Siri at Apple and he laid out why Siri would need to be rebuilt. We haven't seen that rebuild yet. It will come with the headset".

TikTok's Live Creator page has published a new video that teases an upcoming feature that will allow creators to receive donations from viewers.

The upcoming feature is called "Live Subscription" and will introduce TikTok live streamers and viewers to a new program that allows fans to initiate a monthly subscription to a creator to receive a range of perks that will differentiate them from "normal" viewers. These perks are similar to perks seen on streaming platforms such as Twitch, such as subscriber-only chat, custom emotes, badges, and more.

Within TikTok's video, the company states that creators will be able to have a "predictable monthly income", which, if executed properly, will be a massive leg-up for the company as making money directly from TikTok has been extremely difficult since the platform's creation. TechCrunch reports that TikTok's subscription packages will also be similar to Twitch's in terms of pricing, with the basic package being priced at $4.99 a month and multiple tiers that range up to $24.99 a month.