Mashable: ‘Why has my Tweet been deleted?’: New Twitter bugs just dropped.. “Another week, another new plague of Twitter bugs and glitches. Over the past few days, Twitter users have reported a wide variety of issues that greatly affect the platform’s functionality. Here are the most pressing ones.”
CNN: Google was beloved as an employer for years. Then it laid off thousands by email. “Google (GOOGL), which for years ranked as the top company to work for in the United States, laid off thousands of workers by e-mail. And not just any employees: Decades-long veterans of the company, at least one employee on health leave, and even an employee in labor with her second child were all cut, with little explanation.”
Deadline: Twitter Responds To All Email Inquiries From The Press With A Poop Emoji, 51-Year-Old Owner Elon Musk Reports. “All inquiries from members of the press directed to Twitter’s official press email now receive the same automatic reply: a poop emoji. Elon Musk, who bought the social media company for $44 billion last year, relayed the update on his own Twitter feed over the weekend.” This is such a stupid waste of pixels I’m ashamed to be typing it. But I want evidence somewhere so that 40 years down the road nobody dismisses this story as apocryphal.
Wired: In Bulgaria, Russian Trolls Are Winning the Information War. “Pro-Russia groups are gaming Facebook’s review process, and moderators are stuck in the middle.”
The Register: Shareholders sue Google, claim it hid anticompetitive ad practices. “Google parent Alphabet is facing a proposed class action lawsuit from investors unhappy that the company’s alleged advertising monopoly, and the subsequent DoJ investigation into this, led to ‘significant losses and damages.'”
CBC: Google says it will volunteer its top execs to testify at parliamentary committee. “Google said it will volunteer some of its top executives to testify at a parliamentary committee that is studying the actions of the Silicon Valley giant after it ran a five-week test that blocked news links to some of its Canadian users.”
Chicago Tribune: TikTok, Twitter fare only slightly better than fringe platforms favored by far right in Wiesenthal Center study of social media. “A report from the Simon Wiesenthal Center scoring social media platforms based on the proliferation of hate speech found that mainstream sites like TikTok and Twitter fared only slightly better than much smaller platforms like Telegram favored by far-right groups.”
Bloomberg: Google Employees Petition Pichai for Better Handling of Job Cuts. “Almost 1,400 employees at Google parent Alphabet Inc. have signed a petition calling for better treatment of staff during the layoff process, after the company announced it was cutting 12,000 jobs.”
CNBC: Google nixes paying out remainder of maternity and medical leave for laid-off employees. “Google is indicating to ex-staffers, who got laid off while on maternity and medical leave, that they won’t get paid for all of their remaining time off, according to former employees and written correspondence shared with CNBC.”
Global News (Canada): Calgary company accuses Google of driving business away with fake listing. “A longtime family-run Calgary company is accusing Google of driving traffic to another business in a bizarre situation. Ryan Schoel, owner of The Costume Shoppe, came across a Google listing that showed his address as Pirate Fashions Canada, even though the photos and phone number were for his business.”
Economic Times (India Times): Google’s ‘castle and moat’ strategy is data hegemony: CCI tells NCLAT. “Fair trade regulator CCI on Thursday alleged that Google has created a digital data hegemony and called for a market space with ‘free, fair and open competition'”.
FTC: FTC Issues Orders to Social Media and Video Streaming Platforms Regarding Efforts to Address Surge in Advertising for Fraudulent Products and Scams. “With fraud on social media surging, the Federal Trade Commission has issued orders to eight social media and video streaming platforms seeking information on how these companies scrutinize and restrict paid commercial advertising that is deceptive or exposes consumers to fraudulent health-care products, financial scams, counterfeit and fake goods, or other fraud.”
CBS 2 Iowa: Iowa newspaper booted from Twitter without explanation. “The Mason City Globe Gazette, in operating for more than 150 years, now does not have a presence on Twitter. It all started Tuesday when Lisa Grouette, Editor of the paper, sat down to share information about a local track team when she discovered she couldn’t.”
Reuters: Swiss Google Workers Stage Walkout as Job Cuts Hit Europe . “Hundreds of Google employees staged a walkout on Wednesday at the company’s office in Zurich, Switzerland, after more than 200 workers were laid off.”
CNBC: Google is bringing A.I. chat to Gmail and Docs. “Google is deepening its push into generative artificial intelligence, introducing features Tuesday that will let users create text in Gmail and Docs using the company’s AI technology.”
