Canadian mobile pricing is on the decline according to CRTC, Uber announces record loss, Facebook is facing another class-action lawsuit.
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That’s all the tech news that’s trending today. It’s Friday, August 9th, and I’m your host, Tom Li.
Trending on Google, the CRTC reported that Canadian mobile pricing has decreased between 2016 to 2018. According to the report, plans that include calling, texting, and 5GB data have dropped by 28 per cent in pricing. 2018 saw the steepest decline, with plans falling from $71 to $51 on average. With that said, keep in mind that the reported figure is an average. Many carriers, including Bell and Fido, exceed that pricing. Freedom is the only carrier that offers all the listed benefits within that price bracket.
Trending on Reddit, Uber announced a $5.2 billion loss in Q2 2019, its greatest-ever since it started to disclose its finances in 2017. Out of that figure, $3.9 billion were stock-based I.P.O. payouts to employees, which leaves a quarterly loss of $1.3 billion. While it dampens the drastic figure, the New York Times reported that this is still double of its $878 million loss in Q2 2018. Furthermore, Uber expects to lose up to $3.2 billion by the end of the year.
Lastly, trending on Reddit, Facebook could be facing a hefty fine for another privacy violation, this time over facial recognition data. The class-action lawsuit started in 2015 when Facebook’s face-tagging feature allegedly failed to meet Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, which outlines specific procedures in handling biometric data. In response, Facebook appealed the lawsuit on the grounds that there wasn’t any evidence of damage. Its appeal was recently overturned in court, and if the future verdict is ruled against it, Facebook could face up to $1,000 to $5,000 fine per person in the lawsuit.
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 Tom Li, thanks for listening.