Huawei gets cut from Britain’s largest mobile carrier, Tumblr is going to war with adult content, and Apple dropping prices?
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All three of today’s stories come from LinkedIn.
First up: Britain’s largest wireless phone carrier is banning Huawei. BT is removing the Chinese phone company’s equipment from its 3G and 4G mobile networks. The British company stated that this process has actually been happening since 2016 when it acquired cell phone network EE. However, Huawei is not likely to be included in its 5G core either. This comes after pressure from the U.S. to shun the Chinese company over security concerns. Britain’s head of foreign intelligence said this week that using Huawei for the 5G network is “something Britain needed to discuss.” New Zealand and Australia both recently stopped using Huawei’s equipment for their telecom operators as well over concerns of Chinese government involvement.
Next up: Social media site Tumblr is going to war against adult content. Earlier this week it announced that it is eliminating pornography and almost all nudity from its website starting December 17th. The announcement comes after Tumblr was briefly removed from the Apple app store following the discovery of child pornography on the site. The site is using a mix of machine learning algorithm and human moderation to flag and hide posts that it believes violate its terms of policy. However, there have been complaints about the algorithm already, with items like cartoon drawings, raw chicken and boots being flagged. In a blog post, Tumblr’s CEO acknowledged that the algorithm is not perfect and mistakes will certainly be made.
Finally: Apple is dropping the price of its iPhone (ten) XR. Well at least for a short while and only as part of a trade-in promo. However, the rare promo shows that Apple continues to struggle with the sales of its newest phones. The company started offering the promo Sunday night on its website. Offering a discount of $300 for the XR if customers traded in at least an iPhone 7 Plus. Apple rarely offers these types of deals but according to Bloomberg marketing staff were reassigned to help increase sales shortly after the iPhone XS when on sale. iPhones continues to not meet sales expectations. And as a long time Apple customer I have to admit, I’ve recently decided to make the move away from the iPhone myself. It will be interesting to see how things play out for the tech giant.