A FCC commissioner suggests that the U.S. should ban TikTok, Uber fined $700 million for unpaid VAT taxesin the U.K., and Twitter’s moderation group loses some moderation tools.
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That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Thursday, November 3, and I’m your host, Ashee Pamma.
A U.S. Federal Communications Commissioner suggested that the country should ban TikTok, a popular short video social platform. Commissioner Brendan Carr is one of the five commissioners at the FCC. According to a report by Axios, this is the strongest language Carr has used to urge action on TikTok. The platform has more than 200 million downloads in the U.S. alone, and is quickly becoming an information hub. There have been worries that due to its owner being the Chinese company ByteDance, TikTok could potentially be a national security concern. The FCC doesn’t have the power to regulate TikTok directly, but its suggestions do hold sway in congress.
Source: Axios
Uber will pay $700 million to settle a tax dispute with British authorities. The ruling is an extension of a 2021 recategorization of Uber workers in Britain, in which the British Supreme Court described them as Uber employees as opposed to self-employed as Uber had suggested. As such, the company must pay for VAT taxes for their operation. The back taxes will be paid in the fourth quarter.
Source: Techxplore
Some Twitter employees had allegedly lost certain content and moderation tools after Elon Musk took the helm at the company. This rumor came at the critical time before the U.S. midterm elections. According to a Bloomberg report, the limitation affected most employees on Twitter’s Trust and Safety organization. The report noted that staffers are now unable to take action against accounts that violate Twitter’s hate speech and misinformation policies. Twitter uses third-party moderators and automated content moderation tools for a majority of accounts, while Twitter employees review high profile cases.
Source: CNBC
Privacy-centric messaging app Signal says that it would rather exit the India market than to compromise its encryption. The statement was released in response to the government of India’s new regulation that would grant it a way to intercept user messages. Signal, which doesn’t store any messaging data, has flatly refused to comply. The India government has also enacted regulations that require encrypted services to store communications. Signal isn’t alone in disagreeing with the regulations. Meta’s WhatsApp had filed a lawsuit against the Indian government, alleging that the data retention laws violate India’s own privacy laws.
Source: The Verge
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 briefings or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Thursday morning. If you have a suggestion or a tip, drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thank you for listening, I’m Ashee Pamma.