TGIF. Good morning. Let’s get through the tech news and hopefully get to the weekend sooner, shall we?
1. Esafety says Twitter created the ‘perfect storm’ for online hate
InnovationAus is reporting that Twitter’s (now X) gutting of its workforce when Elon Musk bought the company created a perfect storm for online hate speech, according to a report put out by Australia’s online safety regulator. Since Musk’s takeover, more than half of its moderation staff had been laid off, and in Australia, 6,100 previously banned accounts had been reinstated – 195 of which were banned for hateful content. “It’s almost inevitable that any social media platform will become more toxic and less safe for users if you combine significant reductions to safety and local public policy personnel with thousands of account reinstatements of previously banned users,” eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said.
2. NBN Co talks AI
ItNews is reporting that NBN Co is looking to improve its network management with AI. NBN Co’s executive general manager for technology transformation Jo Dutton said that AI could be useful for managing the terabytes of data that flow through the network each day: “Where we really see benefit from AI is about our ability to drive more advanced insight from our data sets, and then be able to apply that to our process automation and our decision making,” Dutton said. According to NBN Co, AI could be used to fix issues before the end customer even notices them.
3. New Spotify policies could see hundreds of millions of songs intelligible for compensation
Bloomberg is reporting that Spotify’s new policies for streaming compensation could make up to 152 million songs ineligible for payment. The figure comes from Luminate’s latest report, which also noted that 100,000 songs are uploaded to streaming platforms every day. Spotify claims that the changes will drive $1 billion in revenue towards artists.
4. Oops, more layoffs
Over to The Verge, which is reporting that Google is laying off hundreds of workers in its hardware division, particularly in the augmented reality space. “A few hundred roles are being eliminated in DSPA with the majority of impacts on the 1P AR Hardware team. While we are making changes to our 1P AR hardware team, Google continues to be deeply committed to other AR initiatives, such as AR experiences in our products, and product partnerships,” Google said to 9to5Google. On top of these layoffs, Fitbit confounders James Park and Eric Friedman are leaving entirely.
5. Somehow even more layoffs?
Wrapping things up with Engadget, which is reporting that Discord is laying of 170 workers, with the company claiming that it grew too fast during the height of the pandemic. This will see employee numbers cut by 17 per cent, with the CEO saying that projects pursued by the growing staff made the company less efficient.
BONUS ITEM: Nope.
i really can’t overemphasize how uncomfortable this AI is to talk with. On the upside it did give me the ingredients for thermite. https://t.co/k59Job0917 pic.twitter.com/08a3hAgBUT
— Robert Evans (The Only Robert Evans) (@IwriteOK) January 10, 2024
Have a lovely weekend.
Image: Fitbit