Facebook is entering the dating game with a new dating feature, a new court ruling could force companies like Uber and Lyft to convert drivers to employees, and LG has announced its G7 smartphone with some new AI features.
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From LinkedIn – In an interesting twist, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this week at Facebook’s F8 developer conference that the company will be launching a dating feature. This will be an opt-in feature that will allow users to build a dating profile and then match them with other people they aren’t already friends with. And for those worried about their family seeing their Tinder-like profile, your friends won’t be able to see that profile. Zuckerberg says that this is being created to build real, long-term relationships and not hook-ups, and to accomplish that, it will have features like linking people together with shared interests or commonly attended events. With an enormous install base, Facebook certainly has a built-in platform for this feature, but the timing is surprising considering the scandals around privacy and personal data that have hit the social media giant of late.
From Reddit – The California Supreme Court has made a ruling that will make it harder for employers to classify their workers as independent contractors rather than employees, and this could have a profound impact on tech companies like Uber, Lyft, and other companies that provide on-demand services. For instance, Uber calls their non-employee drivers “driver partners”, and that makes up the majority of the companies workers. This means that those independent drivers, who may work full-time, do not get any health, retirement, unemployment, or any of the other usual benefits, nor are they subject to minimum wage laws. This court ruling will now force these companies to justify why a worker is a contractor, which could ultimately lead to more employees rather than contractors.
And from Google Trends – LG has announced its G7 ThinQ smartphone, and it’s got a bag of artificial intelligence-related tricks. There is a new Google Assistant button, along with LG specific Google Assistant commands, and a new AI cam that will identify objects in the frame and apply the best filters for the best picture. LG says that this is just the first chapter of its AI smartphone journey, and AI isn’t the only innovation LG is working on. The company says that over the next two years it will also make changes to phone screens like those unicorn bending or rollable display ideas we keep hearing about. Here in Canada the G7 will be available on June 1st, and you can check out our first look at the device on itworldcanada.com.
That’s what’s trending this week. Hashtag Trending is produced by the ITWC Podcast Network. If you enjoy Hashtag Trending, please be sure to give us a rating and a review on Amazon, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever else you get your podcasts from. And if you’re craving more of our content, check out the rest of the ITWC Podcast Network, home to our other podcasts Tech in Sports and Cybersecurity Today.