Starting early next year, Sony plans to capitalize on the rise in popularity of VTubers—virtual YouTube (and sometimes Twitch) celebrities—and our slow but steady transition to a life spent entirely in VR. The company will be introducing a new and relatively affordable motion capture system that relies on just six…
Twitter’s long-running effort to fight COVID-19 misinformation is at an end, at least for now. As Twitter users and CNNnoticed, the social media firm has quietly updated its transparency site to reveal that it stopped enforcing its COVID misinformation policy on November 23rd. It’s not clear if the company will restore any accounts banned for sharing misinformation as part of Elon Musk’s planned amnesty, but this indicates that the company won’t suspend further users or delete content including falsehoods about the coronavirus or vaccines.
Twitter started cracking down on COVID-19 misinformation in January 2020, as the disease began spreading worldwide. The social network has since banned over 11,200 accounts, pulled over 97,600 examples of false content and “challenged” 11.7 million accounts through efforts like warning labels. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy even pointed to the company’s policy as an example of how other technology platforms could fight bogus medical claims.
The company has effectively disbanded its communications team and isn’t available for comment. However, Musk has routinely voiced his opposition to bans and some COVID-19 safety measures. Tesla defied early pandemic lockdowns by keeping factories open despite shelter-in-place orders. Musk also insisted during an April 2020 earnings call that these lockdowns were “forcibly imprisoning people,” and threatened to move Tesla’s headquarters from California to Texas in response. While the entrepreneur supports vaccination, he opposes mandates and voiced support for the anti-mandate occupiers that shut down the Canadian capital city of Ottawa for weeks.
The news comes amid reports Twitter is scaling back other teams dedicated to catching toxic behavior. Bloombergsources claim Musk has gutted the team dedicated to fighting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) as part of his wide-ranging layoffs, cutting it from roughly 20 specialists to less than 10. The contacts say that the unit was already strained before, but is now “overwhelmed” despite Musk’s assertion that fighting child exploitation is “priority #1.” This could put Twitter in legal jeopardy as it’s frequently required by law to remove CSAM — the UK’s Online Safety Bill lets regulators fine companies if they don’t move quickly to pull offending content.
The cutbacks may have also limited Twitter’s ability to fend off bots and other fake accounts. The tech giant struggled to curb spam obscuring news of Chinese protests after Musk laid off Twitter’s anti-propaganda team, for example.
Chinese citizens have been protesting the government’s aggressive lockdown measures in cities across the country.
Google and iHeartMedia have settled a misleading advertising suit filed against them by the FTC and seven different states over Pixel 4 ad reads.
Dry ice can be used as an efficient method for both removing dents and cleaning your car to near-assembly line quality. Here’s how it works.
Your Samsung Galaxy Fold 4 is an expensive phone, so it’s a good idea to take steps to recover it if the phone gets lost. We’ll show you how to do that.
The Monopoly Man, AKA Rich Uncle Pennybags, has been a staple at big tech hearings on Capitol Hill. As much as these hearings often lead to no tangible action on actually addressing the tech industry’s missteps, at their worst those hearings allow CEOs like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg to appear like the smartest man in…
Twitter has dropped its covid-19 misleading information policy that used to prohibit users from spreading misinformation about the virus. Over 11,000 Twitter users were banned under the platform’s previous policy, and nearly 100,000 posts involving content that included covid misinformation was removed between January…
The Orion spacecraft’s record-setting distance from Earth made for stunning photography, apparently. NASA has shared a photo taken by the Artemis I vehicle on Monday showing both Earth and the Moon in the background. Much like some Apollo photography or Voyager 1’s “Pale Blue Dot,” the picture puts humanity’s home in perspective — our world is just one small planet in a much larger cosmos.
Orion took the snapshot around its maximum distance from Earth of 268,563 miles. That’s the farthest any human-oriented spacecraft has traveled, beating even Apollo 13’s record of 248,655 miles from 1970. Notably, Artemis I represents the first time explorers intended to travel this far out — Apollo 13 only ventured so far from Earth because NASA’s emergency flight plan required the Moon as a slingshot.
Ars Technicanotes that this early Artemis flight has so far surpassed NASA’s expectations. While the mission team has only completed 31 out of 124 core objectives so far, it’s adding goals like extended thruster tests. About half of the remaining activities are in progress, with the rest largely dependent on returning to Earth.
Orion is expected to splash down off the San Diego coast on December 11th. The Artemis program has dealt with numerous delays, and now isn’t expected to land humans on the Moon until 2025 or 2026. NASA originally hoped for a lunar landing in 2024. Still, Artemis I’s current performance suggests the space agency’s efforts are finally paying off.
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