The LAPD admits to using facial recognition since 2009, House Democrats are calling for big changes among the big four, and Facebook bans QAnon.
It’s all the tech news that’s popular right now. Welcome to Hashtag Trending! It’s Thursday, October 8, and I’m your host Baneet Braich.
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After saying for years that it wasn’t using facial recognition, the LA PD is admitting it has used it 30,000 times since 2009. They have been using features like a “smart car” equipped with face recognition and real-time face recognition cameras. According to the LA Times, hundreds of officers are running images of suspects from surveillance cameras and other sources against a massive database of mug shots taken by law enforcement. Although the department has been vague about the technology we now know it’s quite popular.
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House Democrats are saying that Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, Apple enjoy ‘monopoly power’ and big changes are needed. After a 16-month investigation into competitive practices at Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google, the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust has released its findings and how to reform laws in the digital age. It says Congress suggests take up changes to antitrust laws that could result in parts of the businesses of the big four being separated. For example, this could include a scenario such as forcing Google to divest and separate from YouTube, or Facebook doing the same with Instagram and WhatsApp. However, Republicans have voiced objections to the bigger proposals such as structural separations.
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Facebook is banning QAnon across its platforms. The change is an update on the policy from August where it initially only removed accounts related to the QAnon conspiracy theory that discussed violence. “Starting today, we will remove Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts for representing QAnon. We’re starting to enforce this updated policy today and are removing content accordingly, but this work will take time and will continue in the coming days and weeks.” Facebook says they will be taking down entire accounts and not just individual posts the conspiracy theory is tied to.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. I’m Baneet Braich, thanks for listening.