Amazon goes on a hiring spree to keep up with online orders, Apple gets slapped with a $1.23 billion fine, and TikTok tells its moderators to suppress posts from “ugly people”.
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Online orders are coming in fast, too fast for Amazon to keep up with. That’s why the e-commerce giant is looking to hire 100,000 people across the U.S. and temporarily raising pay by $2 an hour through the end of April for hourly employees. These are the employees that work at Amazon’s warehouses, delivery centres and Whole Foods grocery stores. According to reports, hourly workers in the U.K. and other European countries will get a similar raise. Redditors commenting on the story, some of whom claim to work for companies like FedEx and UPS, are noting how business has either remained the same or increased because of Amazon’s struggles trying to keep up with demand.
Moving on, a lot of chatter on social media about France’s national competition regulator slapping Apple with a record $1.23 billion fine for anti-competitive practices after nearly a decade of investigations. The competition regulator said in its decision that two of Apple’s wholesalers, Tech Data and Ingram Micro, were fined 63 million and 76 million euros respectively for unlawfully agreeing on prices. In its decision, the regular said “Apple and its two wholesalers have agreed not to compete with each other and to prevent distributors from competing with each other, thereby sterilizing the wholesale market for Apple products.”
And lastly, social media is still buzzing about a story in The Intercept about TikTok moderators being told to suppress content made by users deemed too ugly, poor, or disabled for the platform, according to internal documents obtained by the publication. In addition to the suppression, the investigation piece highlights instances of political censorship as well, and various closed-door meetings with influencers where this type of practice was performed regularly.
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 Alex Coop, thanks for listening.