Meta to lay off 11,000 workers, Elon Musk removes Twitter’s “days of rest” to push 24/7 work culture, ability to select individual songs on Amazon music removed unless users pay $9/month.
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That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Thursday, November 10, and I’m your host, Tom Li.
Meta announced in a staff memo that the company is planning to lay off more than 11,000 employees or 13 per cent of its workforce. The company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that he mistimed significant investments in the company and said that the layoffs were “the last resort”. The layoffs will impact the recruiting team and Reality Labs, the division responsible for the company’s metaverse projects, Zuckerberg said. The company is also cutting discretionary spending and extending its hiring freeze through the first quarter of 2023.
Source: Business Insider
After cutting off 3700 employees last week, and backpedalling on that decision by asking some laid-off staff to return to work, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk is now pushing more reforms, to the dismay of his employees. The company’s “days of rest” which are monthly days off for employees to rest and recharge, have now been removed to further a 24/7 work culture. Bloomberg also reported that Musk plans to eliminate the company’s remote work policy.
Source: MoneyWise
Amazon recently added 98 million songs to Amazon Music’s library, for Prime members to access free of charge and without ads. But the music can only be played in shuffle mode and users cannot choose individual songs from artists, albums or playlists, unless they pay US$9/month extra for Amazon Music Unlimited. Amazon Music users have taken it to Twitter to complain about the new changes.
Source: Business Insider
According to independent researchers, Apple collects extremely detailed information about users even when they turn off tracking. The iPhone analytics guarantees if the user turns it off, Apple will “disable the sharing of Device Analytics altogether.” However, the researchers found that the analytics control and other privacy settings had no obvious effect on Apple’s data collection—the tracking remained the same whether iPhone Analytics was switched on or off. This violates Apple’s very own description of how privacy protection works.
Source: Gizmodo
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