Tag Archives: region|US

X is back in Brazil after a five-week ban

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X is coming back online in Brazil after officials lifted a ban that took the service offline for five weeks. Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes said Tuesday that regulators could “take steps to resume the platform's service” as the company had complied with the court’s demands.

The order for now ends a long-running dispute between Elon Musk’s X and Moraes. Moraes had demanded X block certain accounts in Brazil, which the company had described as “censorship orders.” The dispute also ensnared Starlink, which had its Brazilian bank accounts frozen after X initially refused to cooperate with the Supreme Court’s demands. The company eventually relented by blocking the accounts in question and paying close to $5 million in fines.

“X is proud to return to Brazil. Giving tens of millions of Brazilians access to our indispensable platform was paramount throughout this entire process,” the company wrote in a statement. “We will continue to defend freedom of speech, within the boundaries of the law, everywhere we operate.”

While the standoff is now over, X’s outage in Brazil helped boost at least one rival: Bluesky. The service, which began as a project at Twitter under former CEO Jack Dorsey, said it added more than 2 million new users in the days immediately following the ban.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/x-is-back-in-brazil-after-a-five-week-ban-231406758.html?src=rss

The White House has started posting on Reddit

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Social media can play a critical role in spreading information (and misinformation) during a crisis. In an effort to promote the former and curb the latter, the White House has started getting active on Reddit. 

The profile was created on January 7, 2021, the day after insurrectionists stormed the Capitol in Washington DC. However, today was the first time the account did any public posting. All of the posts from the White House profile today have been sharing information related to relief efforts in response to Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, which have been causing devastation along the east coast of the US. So far, the content shared on Reddit is very similar to what the official White House team is posting on X.

While today is the debut of a non-partisan White House account, federal officials have taken to the subreddits in the past. Barack Obama hosted an AMA on the platform during his tenure, but it was under his own account rather than through the auspices of the office.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/the-white-house-has-started-posting-on-reddit-230533023.html?src=rss

Lyft promises upfront hourly rates and traffic delay pay for its drivers

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Contract employees of ride sharing apps and services aren’t known for having the steadiest or even sanest of pay rates. Lyft just announced some new earnings improvements for its drivers that will help cover their expenses when rides take longer than they should and show them how much they’ll earn before they pick up a fare.

Lyft announced the new driver earnings improvements on its official blog. The new earnings improvements aim to “tackle drivers’ biggest frustrations, and make it more rewarding” for Lyft drivers.

One of the biggest improvements affects how drivers are paid if they are stuck in traffic or go out of their way to help a rider. Lyft is implementing a new “5-minute-delay pay” structure that will increase a driver’s pay if any ride takes five minutes longer than expected. “Out-of-your-way pay” covers drivers who have to drive out of the normal coverage area only to turn around and drive all the way back without any fares.

Lyft is also implementing a new earnings dashboard on the mobile app for drivers. The new interface will also show drivers’ daily, weekly and yearly earnings and the estimated hourly rate for each ride “so drivers don’t have to make the mental calculation,” according to the post.

Drivers who drive electric vehicles for Lyft are also seeing some new benefits. EV drivers can choose only to receive rides that fall within their vehicle’s battery range and find nearby charging stations on the Lyft drivers app.

Of course, these new policies and changes won’t solve Lyft drivers’ problems overnight. It’ll take time to see if they make a dent (the good kind of dent).

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/lyft-promises-upfront-hourly-rates-and-traffic-delay-pay-for-its-drivers-220142458.html?src=rss

Mastodon’s new notifications won’t blow up your phone after a viral post anymore

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Following 11 months of testing, Mastodon is releasing one of its biggest updates of the year. In a blog post attributed to CEO and founder Eugen Rochko, the non-profit detailed its 4.3 release on Tuesday, promising improvements for nearly every part of the social media experience.

Perhaps most significantly, Mastodon has overhauled how notifications work. To start, the platform will now group boosts and favorites together so that users aren’t bombarded with notifications when one of their posts goes viral. At the same time, Mastodon is introducing new filters to make it easier to ignore notifications from people you don’t follow, newly created accounts and those who send you unsolicited private mentions. With the new feature, you can choose to see those notifications, prevent them from ever reaching your phone or send them to a separate inbox for later viewing.

Separately, Mastodon is introducing a new set of notifications designed to inform users if a server moderator made a decision that affects their account. Specifically, if a mod takes direct action against your account, you receive an in-app message “you can’t miss.” The platform will also notify users when they lose followers due to moderator decisions and offer the option to export a list of affected accounts.

Alongside those changes, Mastodon has redesigned a few different parts of its app. Starting with the compose window, the company says the new interface makes it easier to rearrange media, as well as see content warnings and word filters.

Elsewhere, Mastodon has refreshed its web client, tweaking the software’s color palette, iconography and link previews. Utility emails, including those users receive following a password reset, have gotten a once-over, too. On the interface front, Mastodon has reworked confirmation dialogues to better describe how muting and blocking will affect the user. For example, if you’re about to block a server, the app will detail exactly how many followers you stand to lose from that decision.

On the subject of followers, Mastodon has added a new recommendation carousel that users will see after scrolling past the first post on their feed that’s older than four hours. At the same time, the company has tweaked recommendations to make them more relevant to people. Rounding things out, Mastodon has refreshed website embeds and made it easier to follow the author of a trending news article.

The enhancements come after X recently changed how its block button works, a move some have argued has made the platform even less desirable to use. Rochko doesn’t mention X specifically – or Meta and Bluesky, for that matter – but does point to a general desire to make Mastodon more attractive to everyday users.

“One of [our] ongoing efforts is to make Mastodon easy and delightful to use. We’ve invested a significant amount of money and time into working with professional designers and performing user testing over the last few years, but we really ramped up our efforts in 2023,” he wrote. “Mastodon is quite a large application, and our resources remain very constrained compared to our corporate competitors, but we’ve made significant progress on improving the look and feel of Mastodon across the board.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/mastodons-new-notifications-wont-blow-up-your-phone-after-a-viral-post-anymore-211215016.html?src=rss

Short sellers accuse Roblox of inflating user stats and enabling child exploitation

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A research company published a damning report about Roblox on Tuesday, accusing the company of inflating its active user counts and enabling predatory behavior on the platform. Although Hindenburg Research has a somewhat notorious reputation, the report at least raises questions about the platform’s safety and viability.

First, Hindenburg Research is known for taking deep dives into public companies’ practices, finding sketchy behavior and publishing it. However, as noted by Simon Carless, a gaming industry veteran and author of the GameDiscoverCo newsletter, Hindenburg also tends to short-sell the companies’ downfalls, literally betting that its research will lead to their failures. Reuters notes that Hindenburg has previously sunk the share prices of Super Micro Computer and stocks owned by investor Carl Icahn, India’s Gautam Adani.

So, despite making some eyebrow-raising points in the report, you may want to take Hindenburg with more than a few grains of salt. On the other hand, some of its investigations have led to SEC investigations.

As for the specific claims, the researchers say Roblox’s stock price is partly based on misleading data. Hindenburg states that Roblox is inflating stats like user numbers and engagement, conflating daily active users with visitors. “Our research indicates that Roblox is lying to investors, regulators, and advertisers about the number of ‘people’ on its platform, inflating the key metric by 25-42%+,” Hindenburg Research wrote. “We also show how engagement hours, another key metric, is inflated by an estimated 100%+.”

Hindenburg quotes former Roblox employees in its report. One claims the company can track users with alt accounts, but its public user tracking doesn’t adjust for those. “If I have 10 alts [alternate accounts], because I’m farming Pet Simulator on 10 accounts and all of those are running a script on different virtual machines in my computer — they’re all still coming out of the same IP address,” Hindenburg quotes the former employee as saying. “I made all 10 of those accounts. Their names are similar. Their account creation times are similar…I’m still one player, not 10.”

“De-alting” Roblox’s numbers, which means adjusting for alt accounts to get a more accurate picture of player count, would allegedly lead to much lower numbers. One of the former Roblox employees reportedly told Hindenburg, “Let’s say if that number [DAUs] is not de-alted, I think the actual one would be like anywhere between 30 to 20% lower…”

A Roblox spokesperson provided Engadget with a published statement denying Hindenburg’s claims. The company noted that it regularly includes a note to investors explaining how its operating metrics are calculated — and has done so since its initial public filing.

“The financial claims made by Hindenburg are misleading,” Roblox wrote. “The authors are short sellers and have an agenda irrespective of the substance of Roblox’s business model and results.”

Carless also advises taking the researchers’ claims with grains of salt. “Our view on this is that there’s no systemic ‘bad behavior’ by Roblox here,” the former game developer and GDC co-runner wrote. “The game is giant and chaotic, so of course there are going to be bots and weird behavior all over the place.”

Speaking with Reuters, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter went even further, accusing Hindenburg of getting gaming metrics all wrong. “There are many interesting points in that report, but they seem to misunderstand a lot about how games work,” Pachter reportedly said. He said the research firm measured engagement based on a “session.” However, gamers typically log on multiple times daily, playing various games. “The Hindenburg test looks like it measured session length for a single game for each user,” Pachter said.

Hindenburg’s report also accuses Roblox of “compromising child safety in order to report growth to investors.” It even goes as far as accusing the platform of allowing pedophiles to flourish on the platform.

“For the second quarter of 2024, in a push toward profitability, Roblox reported a 2% year-over-year decline in its trust and safety expenses,” Hindenburg wrote, highlighting the company’s shift to AI moderation. “Core to the problem is that Roblox’s social media features allow pedophiles to efficiently target hundreds of children, with no up-front screening to prevent them from joining the platform.”

Roblox’s child safety problems have been reported before.

Hindenburg said it tried to set up an account under “Jeffrey Epstein,” only to find the username was taken, “along with 900+ variations.” One account, “JeffEpsteinSupporter,” reportedly had multiple badges for spending time in children’s games. Others had disturbing usernames alluding to grooming or raping minors. Even if those accounts were made by attention-starved teens or young adults using edgelord attempts at “humor,” those allegations, if true, represent a colossal moderation failure.

Roblox wrote that it takes user trust and child safety seriously. “Every day, tens of millions of users of all ages have safe and positive experiences on Roblox, abiding by the company’s Community Standards,” the company wrote in a statement. “Roblox takes any content or behavior on the platform that doesn’t abide by its standards extremely seriously, and Roblox has a robust set of proactive and preventative safety measures designed to catch and prevent malicious or harmful activity on the platform.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/short-sellers-accuse-roblox-of-inflating-user-stats-and-enabling-child-exploitation-205635537.html?src=rss

Viewers don’t trust candidates who use generative AI in political ads, study finds

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Artificial intelligence is expected to have an impact on the upcoming US election in November. States have been trying to protect against misinformation by passing laws that require political advertisements to disclose when they have used generative AI. Twenty states now have rules on the books, and according to new research, voters have a negative reaction to seeing those disclaimers. That seems like a pretty fair response: If a politician uses generative AI to mislead voters, then voters don't appreciate that. The study was conducted by New York University’s Center on Technology Policy and first reported by The Washington Post.

The investigation had a thousand participants watch political ads from fictional candidates. Some of the ads were accompanied by a disclaimer that AI was used in the creation of the spot, while others had no disclaimer. The presence of a disclaimer was linked to viewers rating the promoted candidate as less trustworthy and less appealing. Respondents also said they would be more likely to flag or report the ads on social media when they contained disclaimers. In attack ads, participants were more likely to express negative opinions about the candidate who sponsored the spot rather than the candidate being attacked. The researchers also found that the presence of an AI disclaimer led to worse or unchanged opinions regardless of the fictional candidate's political party.

The researchers tested two different disclaimers inspired by two different state requirements for AI disclosure in political ads. The text tied to Michigan's law reads: "This video has been manipulated by technical means and depicts speech or conduct that did not occur." The other disclaimer is based on Florida's law, and says: "This video was created in whole or in part with the use of generative artificial intelligence." Although the approach of Michigan's requirements is more common among state laws, study participants said they preferred seeing the broader disclaimer for any type of AI use.

While these disclaimers can play a part in transparency about the presence of AI in an ad, they aren't a perfect failsafe. As many as 37 percent of the respondents said they didn't recall seeing any language about AI after viewing the ads.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/viewers-dont-trust-candidates-who-use-generative-ai-in-political-ads-study-finds-194532117.html?src=rss

Uber starts offering $18 shuttle rides between Manhattan and LaGuardia Airport

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Uber has come up with a relatively low-cost way of getting to and from a New York City airport: a shuttle bus. Starting today, the company is offering rides between LaGuardia Airport and transit hubs in Manhattan for $18 a pop. For the first month of the service, Uber is offering half-price rides for $9, The Wall Street Journal reports.

This would be far cheaper than a cab for a solo traveler. It's also more expensive, but perhaps less of a hassle, than taking public transit — there’s a free shuttle between the airport and the subway. 

One route will take passengers between Penn Station and the airport, and the other will run between Port Authority, Grand Central Terminal and LaGuardia. If you're Manhattan-bound, you’ll still need to make your way to your home, hotel or Airbnb after you get to the drop-off point.

The vans can transport 14 passengers at a time. The service will run between 5AM and 10:45PM ET every day with trips leaving every half hour or so. You can book a spot in a shuttle up to seven days in advance and bring a personal item and a 50-pound bag on board. Before you get on the van, you'll need to show the driver a QR code and PIN that Uber sends you. An Uber shuttle-fleet partner called EPS is operating the rides, but the shuttles have Uber branding.

Uber shuttles have been available in various locations since 2019, but this is the first time the company is offering such trips to and from an airport. Earlier this year, Uber started running shuttles to and from concerts and sports games. It plans to offer shuttles to more airports in the coming months and years.

The company announced the service as part of its Go-Get Zero event, at which it highlighted some new sustainability efforts. Among those is a new EV-only option that will debut in 40 cities in which Uber has enough electric vehicle drivers available.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/uber-starts-offering-18-shuttle-rides-between-manhattan-and-laguardia-airport-193520618.html?src=rss

Microsoft’s ill-fated Surface Duo 2 recieves one final security patch

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Pour one out for the Surface Duo 2. As Windows Central points out, Microsoft has pushed out what will almost certainly go down as the device’s final software update, a security patch, ahead of its October 21 end-of-support date.

When Microsoft debuted the Surface Duo 2 in October 2021, the company pledged to provide three years of software updates for the dual-screen device. Since then, the company has released just one platform update for the Duo 2, upgrading it from Android 11 to Android 12L. By comparison, Surface Duo users were more fortunate. They got to see their devices make the jump from Android 10 to Android 11 and then later to Android 12L. I’ll note here that the latest version of Google’s mobile operating system is Android 15.

By modern standards, the Duo 2’s run is particularly bad. Some Android manufacturers, including Google and Samsung, now promise to provide up to seven generations of platform updates. Consider also that Microsoft priced the Surface Duo 2 at $1,500 on release. Most of all, it’s a shame since software was always the Achilles heel of the Duo line. As Engadget Deputy Editor Cherlynn Low noted in her review of the device back in 2021, the device offered more compelling hardware but was still plagued by an inconsistent user experience.

Of course, none of this is surprising if you’ve been following Microsoft in recent months. As the company has shifted its attention to AI, its Surface portfolio has seemingly fallen to the wayside. In fact, according to a report Business Insider published last year, part of the reason Panos Panay left Microsoft was because the company had canceled some of his unit’s more ambitious projects.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/microsofts-ill-fated-surface-duo-2-foldable-recieves-one-final-security-patch-192001469.html?src=rss

The Boring Company’s Vegas Loop is a comedy of trespassing errors

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The Vegas Loop, underground tunnels built by Elon Musk’s Boring Company that snake underneath Sin City, hasn’t been the traffic or even technological game changer the company promised it would become. It was supposed to be a futuristic, autonomous people mover that looked like public transit from the Tron universe. Instead, Las Vegas just got a bunch of underground tunnels where people are transported by ordinary Tesla vehicles that didn’t really solve any of the city’s traffic problems.

Apparently, it’s not just Tesla vehicles in the tunnels either. Fortune filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority on incidents involving the Tesla tunnels going back to 2022. The records revealed that the tunnels have seen at least 67 trespassing reports going back to 2022 and 22 instances of vehicles following Teslas into the tunnels and stations.

Boring’s monthly reports to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority also showed several instances of “property damage, theft, technical issues, or injuries, near-misses and trespassing or intrusions,” according to Fortune.

The cars that wandered into the stations appear to mostly be just accidents in which drivers followed the Teslas into the unauthorized areas. The trespassing incidents are a bit more egregious and Fortune described them as “a headache for the Boring Company.”

Some of the more notable instances include a skateboarder who snuck into the tunnels through a passenger pickup station, two people who were spotted sleeping in one of the tunnel stations and a man who tried to remove a license plate reader at a station. In each case, Boring security escorted the trespassing out of the tunnels and stations but there are no records showing they were reported to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police.

Even the construction of the tunnels had more than a few sketchy moments but not nearly as amusing. Former Boring Company construction crew members spoke with Fortune back in February including one who said, “We have consistently flirted with death.” During a six month period last year, Boring reported 36 injuries to Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) officials including heat exhaustion, contusions and crushed hands and elbows. One tip sent to OSHA’s Nevada field office reported that 15 to 20 employees were burned with accelerant chemicals while working in the tunnels.

Somehow, none of these incidents have stopped the city and Clark County’s desperate hope for the transit system that the Boring Company promised but never delivered. County commissioners approved a plan last May to expand the underground Tesla vehicle tunnels to 65 miles and add 69 passenger stations.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/the-boring-companys-vegas-loop-is-a-comedy-of-trespassing-errors-191025432.html?src=rss

EU residents will have a new way to dispute content moderation decisions by Facebook, YouTube and TikTok

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European Union residents will have a new place to turn to settle disputes with Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. A new Appeals Centre, certified by Irish regulators, will soon begin accepting complaints about content moderation decisions.

The concept is similar to Meta’s Oversight Board, which weighs in on content moderation decisions across Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Meta has long suggested that other social media companies should use its Oversight Board, though there’s been little incentive for them to do so. Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA) changed that calculation somewhat, as it enabled the creation of Out-of-Court Dispute Settlement (ODS) bodies that have the ability to help resolve user complaints.

And while the Appeals Centre is a separate entity, there are some notable links between the two organizations. The new Appeals Centre will be led by Thomas Hughes, who was previously the CEO of the Oversight Board Administration. The Oversight Board Trust, which oversees the board's budget, also helped fund the new Appeals Centre with a “one-time grant,” according to a statement from its chair of trustees, Stephen Neal. And, the first non-executive trustees of the Appeals Centre are also trustees on the Oversight Board.

The Appeals Centre says it expects to be up and running “in late 2024,” at which time individuals and organizations will be able to request appeals through its website. Users wishing to appeal a moderation decision from Facebook, YouTube or TikTok will be required to pay a “nominal fee” that will be refunded if the group rules in their favor, according to information posted on its website.

However, it’s not clear exactly how this process will work or how many cases the group will be able to take on. Meta’s Oversight Board, which has been up and running for years, received nearly 400,000 appeals and issued just 53 decisions in 2023. The Appeals Centre may also end up being less influential than the Oversight Board. A press release from Ireland's media regulator notes that “the decisions of ODS bodies are not binding.” Still, it could increase the visibility of the kinds of content moderation issues that often frustrate users and give some hope that their situation may be reconsidered.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/eu-residents-will-have-a-new-way-to-dispute-content-moderation-decisions-by-facebook-youtube-and-tiktok-190221606.html?src=rss