Tag Archives: users

New Update Gives Google Maps Users Greater Control Over Their Information

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Google Maps today announced that it is introducing several new ways to give users more control over their personal information. The Navigation app now allows you to delete activity related to a specific location, and location controls are now easily accessible from the blue dot within the app.

The company says users will soon be able to see recent activity related to a specific location and easily delete searches, directions, visits and shares with just a few taps. Let’s say you’re going to the bakery and you use an app to navigate there. You’ll soon be able to view and delete all recent activity related to your bakery.

As for the blue dot that marks your location on Google Maps, you’ll soon be able to use it to access location controls. Click this to see whether your Location History and Timeline settings (Features of Maps that help you remember places you’ve been) are turned on, and whether you’ve given Maps access to your device’s location. It shows.

Google says the ability to remove location-related activity from Maps and new blue dot controls will begin rolling out to Android and iOS in the coming weeks.

Google Maps also announced that when you turn on Location History, your time will immediately be saved directly to your device.

Timeline on Device

Image credits: Google

“As before, you can always remove all or part of your information or disable your settings completely,” Mario McGrid, product director for Google Maps, said in a blog post. “If you are buying a new phone or are worried about losing your existing phone, you can always choose to back up your data to the cloud to avoid data loss. Backup data will be automatically It’s encrypted so no one, including Google, can read your data.”

Additionally, when you turn on Location History for the first time, automatic deletion controls are set to 3 months by default. This option was previously set to 18 months.

Google says these changes will be rolled out gradually over the next year on Android and iOS. Users will receive a notification when this update is applied to their account.

Source: techcrunch.com

YouTube introduces new feature allowing users to pause comments on videos

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YouTube announced Today, we’re adding a new comment moderation setting, “Pause,” allowing creators and moderators to keep existing comments on videos while preventing viewers from adding new comments.

Instead of turning off comments completely or holding comments and reviewing them manually, you can temporarily pause comments until you have enough time to filter out trolls and negative opinions. can.[一時停止]The options can be found in the video-level comment settings on the app’s play page or in the top right corner of the comments panel in YouTube Studio. When pausing is turned on, viewers will see below the video that all comments and comments that have already been published have been paused.

Introducing new moderation settings for channels: Pause comments ⏸️

In addition to turning comments “on” and “off,” you can now “pause” comments. Existing comments will remain visible, but new comments will be disabled, giving you more control and flexibility 🌟 Learn more → https://t.co/wNAspRiR4s

Video sharing platform Under experiment A pause function has been added since October. According to YouTube, the experimental group reported feeling “more flexible” and no longer overwhelmed by managing too many comments.

As part of today’s announcement, YouTube also changed the names of some of its comment moderation settings. A new, more descriptive name may make it easier for people to determine what the tool does. For example, “On”, “None”, “Keep All”, “Off”. Other settings are self-explanatory, such as Basic, which holds potentially inappropriate comments for review, and Strict, which holds a broader range of potentially harmful comments.

In related news, YouTube is also testing a new feature that summarizes topics within comments.

December 7, 2023

YouTube Creators (@YouTubeCreators)

Source: techcrunch.com

23andMe reports that hackers gained access to ‘significant’ data concerning users’ genealogy

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Genetic testing company 23andMe announced Friday that hackers gained access to approximately 14,000 customer accounts in its recent data breach.

In a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission The company announced Friday that based on an investigation into the incident, it determined that the hackers had accessed 0.1% of its customer base. According to the company’s latest annual earnings report.23andMe has “more than 14 million customers worldwide,” so 0.1% is about 14,000 people.

However, the company also said that by accessing these accounts, the hackers were able to access “substantial data, including profile information about other users’ ancestry, that other users choose to share when opting in to 23andMe’s DNA kinship feature.” He said he also had access to several files.

The company did not say what those “significant” files were or how many “other users” were affected.

23andMe did not immediately respond to a request for comment that included questions about these numbers.

In early October, 23andMe disclosed an incident in which hackers used a common technique known as “credential stuffing” to steal the data of some users. In this method, a cybercriminal hacks into a victim’s account using a known password, possibly compromised by another password data breach. service.

However, the damage was not limited to the customers whose accounts were accessed. 23andMe allows users to opt in to the following features: dna relatives. If you opt in to that feature, 23andMe will share some of your information with other users. This means that by accessing her single victim’s account, the hacker was also able to see the personal data of people related to that first victim.

23andMe said in its filing that for its first 14,000 users, the stolen data “generally includes ancestry information, and for a subset of those accounts health information based on users’ genetics.” It contained relevant information.” For some other users, 23andMe said only that the hackers stole “profile information” and posted “certain information” online that was unspecified.

TechCrunch analyzed the set of stolen data released by comparing it to known public genealogy records, including websites published by hobbyists and genealogists. Although the data set was in a different format, it contained some of the same unique user and genetic information that matched genealogy records published online many years ago.

The owner of a genealogy website whose relatives’ information was partially exposed in the 23andMe data breach told TechCrunch that there are about 5,000 relatives discovered through 23andMe, and our “correlation shows that That may be something to consider.”

data breach news surfaced online In October, hackers promoted suspected data on 1 million Ashkenazi Jewish users and 100,000 Chinese users on a popular hacking forum. About two weeks later, the same hacker who first advertised his stolen user data, he also advertised what was claimed to be a record of 4 million people. The hacker was trying to sell each victim’s data for anything from $1 to $10.

TechCrunch discovered that another hacker was promoting more allegedly stolen user data on a separate hacking forum two months before the ad first reported by news outlets in October. In the first ad, the hacker claimed he had stolen 300 terabytes of data from 23andMe users, and if he wanted to sell the entire database he would get $50 million, or for a subset of the data he would get $1,000. He asked for $10,000.

Following the data breach, 23andMe on October 10 forced users to reset and change their passwords and encouraged them to enable multi-factor authentication. And on Nov. 6, the company required all users to use two-step verification, according to a new filing.

After the 23andMe breach, other DNA testing companies Ancestry and MyHeritage began requiring two-factor authentication.

Source: techcrunch.com

Bluesky, X’s competitor, reaches 2 million users; federation to launch in early next year

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Bluesky is a company building a decentralized alternative to Twitter/X. announced It now has 2 million users, an increase of another 1 million since September, despite still being an invite-only app. It also revealed deadlines for other important goals, saying it plans to have a public web interface up and running by the end of this month and start federation by early next year.

The latter is one of the most important differentiators between Bluesky and X, as it allows Bluesky to function as a more open social network. This means it works more like Mastodon, where users can choose which servers to join and move their accounts around freely. This is what Bluesky today claims is “billionaire-proof” and criticizes Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter, now known as X.

“Rather than being bound to the whims and black-box algorithms of private companies, you have the freedom to choose (and exit) at any time.” Explained in company blog post. “And wherever you go, your friends and relationships will be there too,” it states.

Similar to Mastodon, a decentralized service, federation allows anyone to run their own service and connect to other services running the same protocol. For Bluesky, this is done like this: AT protocol The company is also developing consumer services and mobile apps in parallel. But his other major decentralized social network, Mastodon, uses an established protocol, his ActivityPub, which has grown significantly in the months since Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. It is attracting attention.

Since then, other companies have adopted ActivityPub and Mastodon, including Mozilla, Flipboard, Medium, and Automattic (WordPress.com’s parent company). Unless Bluesky makes the AT protocol and ActivityPub interoperable in some way, there could be challenges regarding Bluesky’s ultimate reach. Bridging Maybe the two of you Technically It’s possible, but it’s more likely to be in the future, not in the near future.

Meanwhile, Bluesky is working to make its services more accessible, including launching a public web interface later this month. This will allow anyone to view his Bluesky posts, even if they don’t have an account. This could make the network more promising in terms of being a true competitor to X in breaking news and conversation, but it could expose Bluesky users’ posts to the outside world in ways they are not ready for. There is also. (This app currently does not have an option to set your profile to “private” like Twitter/X does. some users is not Happy about this. )

Despite its growth, Bluesky’s reluctance to drop its invite-only status and open its network to more users has allowed other competitors of X to gain a foothold. Last month, for example, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Instagram Threads, an alternative to X, had just under 100 million monthly active users. He believes he can reach 1 billion users in the next few years. Threads also plans to interoperate with ActivityPub in the future.

Bluesky’s announcement follows Threads’ rapid release of features to make the app more competitive with X, including a chronological feed, support for displaying likes, search, and (free) Includes an edit button, web version, voting, GIF support, and more. , topic tags, and soon a developer API. Mastodon also took advantage of the opportunity presented by the Twitter acquisition and launched an easier-to-use version of its service in September of this year. However, Mastodon currently has 1.6 million monthly active usersHowever, it is much smaller than a thread.

In addition to today’s news, Mr. Bluesky also provides mobile push notifications, shareable user lists, email verification, advanced feed and thread settings for sorting and filtering posts, a media tab in user profiles, and a user profile for your own users. We also mentioned other recently released features, such as a Likes tab for profiles. , the suggestions below, and various accessibility improvements.

Bluesky started life as a Twitter project under Jack Dorsey, but the company was spun off from Twitter. $13 million How to start research and development. Mr. Dorsey sits on its board of directors. This year, the company raised an $8 million seed round led by Neo to further its development and transformed from a public benefit LLC to a public benefit C Corp.

Source: techcrunch.com

Civitai, a generative AI content marketplace with millions of users, receives backing from Andreessen Horowitz

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A community that has a large following is stable diffusion, particularly among those experimenting with new AI technologies and creating their own models. Now, there is a platform called Chibitai, a startup that allows members to share their AI image models and content with other enthusiasts. The name “Chibitai” is a word play on “Civitas,” meaning community. Chibitai CEO Justin Maier recognized the need for such a platform after working on web development projects at Microsoft. He saw the potential for creating AI-generated images and posted them on platforms like Reddit and Discord, but felt the need for a centralized community to share and discover AI image models.

Chibitai became the go-to place for sharing AI models and images in 2023 and has since grown to over 3 million registered users and receives about 12-13 million unique visitors every month. The company has even raised $5.1 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) in June 2023.

The platform allows users to upload images to create their own AI image models, and with each image generated, metadata is provided that includes details such as prompts and resources used. However, concerns have been raised about artists’ work being used without consent to train AI models, which Chibitai is working to address by allowing artists to flag resources they believe are using their work. Additionally, there are also concerns about non-consensual pornographic AI images being shared on the platform, which the company is working to address.

In the future, Chibitai aims to expand to other modalities beyond AI image models and to create a consumer-facing mobile app that will act as a repository for AI images. The company also plans to enable users to monetize their creations, but for now, everything on the site is free to use.

Source: techcrunch.com

Instagram is experimenting with a dedicated feed focused solely on content from meta-verified users

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Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said the company is testing a feed that only shows posts from meta-verified users. The new toggle appears under the “Following” and “Favorites” options that appear when you click on his Instagram logo in the app.

“We’re testing a way for people to explore their Instagram feed and Reels by switching to only meta-verified accounts,” Mosseri said on Instagram’s broadcast channel. “We’re exploring this as a new control for people and a way for businesses and creators to be discovered.”

The official announcement comes two months after Instagram told TechCrunch that it had not tested such a feature after reverse engineering it. Alessandro Paluzzi We’ve noticed a new feed filter showing meta-authenticated subscribers in the code for both the iOS and Android Instagram apps.

Instagram seems to see the new feed as a way to drive meta-verified subscriptions and get people interested in subscribing. Because this new feed offers an opportunity to increase awareness. Meta Verified costs $11.99 per month on web and $14.99 per month on mobile, and gives users access to blue checkmarks, enhanced customer support, increased visibility and reach in searches and comments, exclusive stickers, and more.

Meta is clearly borrowing from Elon Musk’s playbook with the new Verified-only feed and Meta Verified in general. After Tesla’s CEO acquired Twitter (now X) last fall, the social network launched paid authentication through its revamped X Premium subscription service at $8 per month.With a subscription, users can various functions, the user’s notifications will include a “Verified” tab. The service also includes other features such as an edit button and support for long posts.

Source: techcrunch.com

Science and Technology News: Elon Musk’s X (previously known as Twitter) conducts trial to enforce posting fees for new users

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Elon Musk’s X has started testing potential sign-up fees for new users.

The company formerly known as twitter introduced a fee of $1 (82 pence). new zealand And that Philippinesmost of the main features are behind a paywall.

New accounts that do not pay will not be able to post anything or interact directly with other users.

Instead, you are limited to viewing and listening to content and following other accounts.

X said the move was aimed at “reducing spam, platform manipulation, and bot activity.”

musk We have long complained about the presence of fake accounts on the platform; and tried to use his concerns to get out of the contract to buy it last year..

The trials in New Zealand and the Philippines came after the billionaire businessman discussed plans to introduce “small monthly payments” to all users.

Speaking at an event with the Israeli Prime Minister Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Musk said last month that the fee would help fight “a horde of bots.”

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Mr. Musk starts charging fees for using X

Fees will make X “difficult to operate”

Since Musk took ownership of the company, much of his focus has been on monetizing Company X’s user base, with advertiser spending declining due to concerns over his moderation policies. ing.

X already offers a premium subscription for £9.60 per month. This gives users a verification check, allows them to write longer posts or edit existing ones, and gives their account priority visibility in search results.

Musk acknowledged that the new $1 fee “will not completely stop bots,” but argued that it will “make it 1,000 times harder to manipulate the platform.”

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This means that Company X israel-hamas war To spread.

EU officials warned Musk to take actionsaid it violated the block’s new online content rules.

Misleading content includes video game footage purporting to depict scenes of conflict and reusing unrelated war clips.

Later, X announced changes to the Community Notes feature. This allows volunteer posters to attach fact-checks to their posts, making them more visible if other users find them useful.

However, there are concerns that the tool is being manipulated, and all notes must include a source.

Source: news.sky.com