Social media sites have begun to be introduced Fees and reducing services, AI chatbot reportedly threatens a researcher’s reputation and asks, “Do you really want to test me?”
It’s Tuesday, February 21st. These stories and more on Trending Hashtags—Today’s Top Technology News. I’m your host, Jim Love.
New fees and declining features as social media and tech companies try to increase profits.
It looks like a number of companies are following Elon Musk’s lead by slashing services and trying to charge for existing items, or revert users to versions they once got for free.
Musk has attempted to charge for a verified user’s “Blue Check” with a fee of $11.99 per month. While that idea generated some genuine backlash, it looks like Mark Zuckerberg is going to try a similar plan for Meta/Facebook, a subscription service that costs $11.99 a month. The service, called Meta Verified, will allow users to verify their accounts using a government ID and receive a blue badge identifying them as authentic users. According to a Reuters report, the subscription bundle will be launched for Facebook and Instagram will also include additional protection against impersonation.
The service is said to cost US$11.99 on the web or US$14.99 on Apple’s iOS or Android systems.
Meta Verified will be rolling out in Australia and New Zealand this week and will be launched in other countries.
Meanwhile, Twitter will charge for the SMS version of two-factor authentication. Mobile app and security key authentication is not affected.
Other social media apps such as Snapchat and Telegram launched paid subscription services last year as these platforms struggle to find New sources of income. Snapchat is charging 3.99 monthly and has over 2 million paid customers, according to Axios.
In a related story, Fitbit, Google’s fitness app, is removing some of its social features from its app, including challenges, adventures and open groups. Users will still be able to create private groups for competitions.
In a statement to The Verge, head of communications Nicole Addison Fitbit and Nest stated “Fitbit detected that these select features had a limited number of active users compared to other offerings, but is unable to confirm specific numbers at this time.”
These features will be available till March 27 but users should delete their data till that time as it will not be stored.
Fitbit has also faced stiff competition from other Android smart watches and of course offerings from Apple. This has led Android Central to speculate that the writing may be on the wall for “Google” to add another series of products to its “cemetery”.
Source: Android Central And ledge
Do I really want to spend more time with AI?
According to a report in India Today, Sundar Pichai has asked Google employees to spend 4 hours with Bard to make it a “more worthy ChatGPT rival”. The article said the company would send a detailed plan to employees next week. In that email, “Pichai reportedly reminded employees that Google hasn’t always been the first to release a product, but that hasn’t hindered its ability to win.”
On the other hand, Microsoft is recommending that people may want to spend a little less time with their ChatGPT/Bing AI. There have been more reports of Bing AI being criticized. Microsoft has attributed these outbursts to prolonged interactions with the AI and has taken some safeguards to limit and reset the volume of interactions before problems occur. We saw that in our testing last week.
According to a tweet posted by Toby Ord, a researcher at Oxford University and “author of Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity ”, Microsoft’s Bing AI, which calls itself Sydney, shocked him in a conversation with a colleague. where the AI said it could “bust you.” personal information and reputation in public, and ruins your chances of getting a job or a degree.
This exchange occurred when Ord’s aide Marvin von Hagen threatened to shut down Sidney when he accused von Hagen of being a threat. This is because according to Sidney he and a colleague publicized their success hacking aiPossibly one of the so-called speedy injection attacks that embarrassed Microsoft last week.
There have been reports of misbehavior by Sydney at various times such as threatening to release nuclear codes or trying to get a reporter to leave his wife and have a romantic relationship. And while troubling, these explosions seemed to be things that no logical person could imagine.
However, the idea that an AI could poison a person’s reputation really sends shivers down your spine when it says, “Do you really want to test me?”
If we need a reason for regulation and transparency On AI algorithms, Sydney could have given the best argument to date.
The entire exchange was documented in a tweet posted by Toby Ord. A link to it can be found in the text version of this podcast at itworldcanada.com/podcasts.
Source: Twitter/tobydoxford And india today
GoDaddy, one of the leading Internet registrars and hosting companies with more than 20 million customers worldwide, has revealed in an SEC filing that it was hacked by a “sophisticated threat actor” as part of a “multi-year campaign”. Is. The company also noted that previous breaches that surfaced in November 2021 and March 2020 were also part of this attack.
According to a report by Bleeping Computer, the November 2021 attack affected 1.2 million managed WordPress getting customers Access to certain active customers with their admin credentials, database credentials, and SSL private keys. GoDaddy alerted 28,000 in March 2020 customers that an attacker used their hosting credentials to connect to their accounts.
GoDaddy said in a statement that “we have evidence, and law enforcement has confirmed, that this incident was perpetrated by a sophisticated and organized group targeting hosting services like GoDaddy.” The statement links to the text of this podcast. included in the version.
Source: go Daddy
Elon Musk has threatened to sue an employee he claims leaked confidential information, according to multiple articles posted over the weekend, This isn’t the first time reports of Musk threatening sued employees who he claims violated their nondisclosure agreements, or NDAs, but clearly, Musk was very upset when news portal Platformer reported that the company’s engineers had a system in place to ensure that Musk’s tweets received a “previously unheard-of promotion of his tweets”. ,
According to the same reports, Musk got angry when President Biden left. A tweet in support of the Philadelphia Eagles at the Superbowl got 29 million impressions and a similar tweet from Musk got only 9.1 million impressions.
Musk reportedly flew back to his headquarters and pulled “about 80 people” to work on an emergency project to fix the issue that had caused his dismal numbers.
Last week, the platformer reported that Musk allegedly fired one of the company’s two lead engineers after the engineer allegedly told him that his tweets were going down because interest in Musk in general had waned. .
Given this encouragement, and Musk’s deputy told the rest of the engineering team that they would all lose their jobs if the engagement issue was not “fixed”.The 80-person team found a fix that called the platformer “artificially amplifying Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000.”
Meanwhile at rival social media Mastodon, which has no algorithms to boost anyone’s posts, enrollment has shot up to more than 1,000 new members per hour as the decentralized open source Twitter alternative reaches 10 million members. Chance?
This is the top tech news for todaywhy
Links to these stories can be found in articles posted at itworldcanada.com/podcasts. You can also find more great stories and more in-depth coverage at itworldcanada.com or in the US at technewsday.com.
Although we’ve covered some of the cyber security stories that happened this weekend for many more, you might want to check out our sister podcast, Cybersecurity Today.
Hashtag Trending airs five days a week with the daily newscast and we have a special weekend edition featuring an interview with an expert in some aspect of the technology that is making the news.
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I’m Jim Love, have a wonderful Tuesday.
