Happy fall, y’all. Here are some of the most recent tech updates affecting all internet citizens.
TikTok Ban
Earlier this week, Mashable reported that Trump’s TikTok ban was “given a temporary stay of execution in the U.S., with a federal judge blocking the ban that was to go into effect from midnight Monday.”
“The U.S. government ordered app stores to stop distributing or updating TikTok earlier this month, responding to President Donald Trump’s August executive order,” Mashable added. “This order banned everyone in the U.S. from doing business with TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance, allegedly due to security concerns.”
We’re sure this isn’t the end of this fight, so stay tuned.
In Other TikTok News…
TikTok also has created an “in-app election guide.” The app created the guide to help “fight misinformation” and “provide easy access to authoritative information as we continue our work to protect against misinformation,” TikTok’s VP of Public Policy Michael Beckerman wrote in a statement, Engadget reported.
Users can find the guide on the app’s Discover page “and in ‘election-related’ search results,” as well as “at the bottom of videos relating to the elections and on videos from verified political accounts,” Beckerman added.
Think Before you RT
The Verge reports that Twitter also is getting in on stopping uninformed information spreading.
According to The Verge, Twitter is “working on bringing its ‘read the article before you retweet it’ prompt to all users ‘soon.’ The company began testing the prompt in June, which shows up when people go to retweet a story they haven’t clicked through to actually read.”
An initial test of the feature showed that people who were “shown the prompt opened articles 40 percent more often and that the overall proportion of people opening articles before retweeting increased by 33 percent.”
Google Meet just got Quieter
Engadget reported that Google Meet, an app people use to hold meetings, introduced its noise cancellation feature to mobile devices (including Android and iOS). Folks who use this app on their desktops already had access to this feature.
This update was rolled out to meet the needs of people working from home but prefer to use their mobile devices for meetings. This particular noise cancelation feature will reduce any noise that doesn’t sound like voices. “That means it’ll get rid of things like typing, construction noise or closing a door, but it can’t block voices from a TV or other people talking in the room,” Engadget reports. “The feature is turned off by default, so you’ll need to turn it on if you want to use it, but there are certain circumstances where you may not want it.”
This addition, along with previous additions that included “low-light mode, tiled layouts, backgrounds, and background blur,” was added to compete with Zoom.
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Abbie Stutzer is a queer, non-binary writer living in Kansas City, MO. You can find them doing witchy stuff at home with their numerous pets or at the local animal shelter saving lives. Contact Stutzer via abbie@ynotcam.com.
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