Uber will ban unruly passengers, Huawei is once again on the SD Association list, Google to ban marijuana selling apps.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. It’s Thursday, May 30th, and I’m your host, Tom Li.
Trending on Google, unruly Uber passengers, not drivers, will lose access to the app. In an announcement made on Thursday, Uber said it’s looking to update its community guideline to shut out riders with a significantly below average rating. Before ban strikes, Uber says the offending passenger would receive numerous notifications of their standing and urge them to change their behavior. If the passenger’s rating doesn’t improve after these warnings, then Uber would apply a permanent ban. While Uber has yet to disclose the rating threshold, it’s a good idea to put on your best behavior.
Trending on Google again, Huawei was temporarily banned from the SD Association. In recent weeks, the Chinese telecom company has been under fire from various U.S. tech companies after being placed on an Entity list due to a recent executive order from Trump. Following the executive order, Google, Microsoft, and many others have limited their business relations with Huawei. It was also rejected from standard organizations like the SD Association, which means it could no longer produce SD storage cards. But for reasons unknown, Huawei has been recently added back onto the SD Association list, possibly due to the 90 day grace period granted by the U.S.
Lastly, from my Feedly lineup, Google has revised its Play Store content policy to prohibit the distribution of marijuana. The updated policy is a bit strange: it’s still okay for apps to promote marijuana use, but any transaction of weed would land the app in the ban zone. Therefore, as long as the existing marijuana purchase apps don’t actually make transactions, they’re still good to live in the Google Play Store.
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.
