Parler Apparently Temporarily Blocked Its Own Co-Founder and Former CEO

“Parler, the social media site popular among conservatives, appeared to have banned its cofounder and former CEO on Friday,” reports BuzzFeed News, “before restoring his access later in the day.” An anonymous Slashdot reader shares their report:
John Matze, whom Parler’s management fired earlier this month, told BuzzFeed News that he believed he had been banned after making several posts and comments…

Amid Bickering Over Movie Rights, Reddit Removes Top ‘WallStreetBets’ Moderators

The New York Times reports:
Late on Wednesday, a moderator of the popular Reddit message board WallStreetBets posted several screenshots on the chat app Discord. They showed that other moderators had quietly started talking among themselves about landing a movie deal. “What’s our cut?” one of the moderators had asked in a Discord chat, according to the screenshots. By Thursday morning, that…

Signal Says Cellebrite Cannot Break Its Encryption

Signal, in a blog post: Yesterday, the BBC ran a story with the factually untrue headline, “Cellebrite claimed to have cracked chat app’s encryption.” This is false. Not only can Cellebrite not break Signal encryption, but Cellebrite never even claimed to be able to. Since we weren’t actually given the opportunity to comment in that story, we’re posting this to help…

Google Photos Tests Locking Color Pop Behind a Google One Paywall

According to XDA Developers, Google is testing locking the Color Pop feature in the Google Photos app behind a paywall, requiring users to sign up for a Google One subscription to access this feature, and presumably other photo-editing features in the future. From the report: Shortly after we published our teardown of Google Photos 5.18 confirming that a Google One paywall…

Grubhub Hit With Lawsuit for Listing Restaurants Without Permission

Two restaurants have initiated a potential class-action lawsuit against GrubHub for allegedly listing 150,000 restaurants to its site without the businesses’ permission. From a report: The Farmer’s Wife in Sebastopol, California and Antonia’s Restaurant in Hillsborough, NC filed the suit with Gibbs Law Group, accusing Grubhub of adding their restaurants to its site despite not entering into a partnership, which causes…

Snopes.com Exposes 4chan Campaign to ‘Kindle Mistrust in Snopes’

“This is the perfect moment to do this. This is an age of conspiracies for boomers… Let’s kindle their mistrust in Snopes and other fact checkers,” wrote one 4chan poster. Snopes.com later reported:
In October 2020, a series of threads was posted to the anonymous internet forum 4Chan as part of operation “Snopes-Piercer,” a smear campaign with the stated goal of “red-pilling…

Facebook’s Account Verification Leaves Some Quest 2 Buyers With ‘Paperweight’

Quest 2 is the first Oculus headset to require a Facebook account at launch. False positives from its account verification system may be leaving some buyers with no choice but to return it. UploadVR reports: We’re seeing reports from Quest 2 buyers who aren’t on Facebook finding difficulty creating an account. Facebook’s account verification system — reportedly administered by a machine…

OnePlus Co-Founder Carl Pei Has Left the Company, Report Says

OnePlus, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer that has turned into one of the most popular Android smartphone brands worldwide, is reportedly missing one of its cofounders. According to Android Police, citing Reddit user JonSigur, who published alleged screenshots of internal memos at OnePlus, co-founder Carl Pei has left his role at the company after nearly seven years. From the report: The messages…

Twitter Is Building ‘Birdwatch,’ a System To Fight Misinformation By Adding More Context To Tweets

Twitter is developing a new product called “Birdwatch,” which the company confirms is an attempt at addressing misinformation across its platform by providing more context for tweets, in the form of notes. TechCrunch reports: Tweets can be added to “Birdwatch” — meaning flagged for moderation — from the tweet’s drop-down menu, where other blocking and reporting tools are found today. A…

‘I Monitor My Staff With Software That Takes Screenshots’

AmiMoJo shares a report from the BBC: Shibu Philip admits he knows what it’s like to “maybe waste a bit of time at work.” Shibu is the founder of Transcend — a small London-based firm that buys beauty products wholesale and re-sells them online. For the last year and a half he has used Hubstaff software to track his workers’ hours,…