Tech Tea, Top Headlines 12/14/2020: Pornhub Removes Unverified Videos

Pornhub removes all unverified videos from its platform

“Today, Pornhub said that the  third-party Internet Watch Foundation had reported 118 incidents of child sexual abuse material on the Pornhub platform, compared to 84 million instances self-reported by Facebook. Pornhub also pointed out that, as of today, every piece of content on the site is from verified uploaders, ‘a requirement that platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat and Twitter have yet to institute.'”

Reddit Acquires TikTok Rival Dubsmash

“Reddit has acquired Dubsmash, the short-form video app akin to TikTok, the company said in a statement provided to Axios. Deal terms were not disclosed.”

Facebook Publicly Launches Its Collaborative Music Video App, Collab

Collab, Facebook’s experimental app for making collaborative music videos, is today launching out of private beta testing with a public release on the App Store. The app is one of now many projects from Facebook’s internal R&D group, NPE Team, which tests new ideas that could ultimately influence Facebook’s  next steps in social media. Collab itself first emerged in late May, as the pandemic forced users to stay home and find new ways to entertain themselves online.”

Massive Google Outage Takes Gmail, YouTube, Google Docs, And Other Google Services Offline

“The problem seemed to start sometime after 3 a.m. Pacific. By 4:30 a.m., some services began to reappear, but they remained only intermittently available. The status page for Google services seemed to indicate virtually every service worldwide had been impacted.”

Russian Group Reportedly Hacks US Commerce And Treasury Departments

“Neither the Commerce Department nor the Treasury has formally confirmed the reports, which are said to have started roughly Dec. 12. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is reported to be investigating but has made no official comment. A spokesperson for the National Security Council did in part confirm the report, however, telling Reuters that they ‘are taking all necessary steps to identify and remedy any possible issues related to this situation.'”

USA Today Publishes Yet Another Bogus OpEd Against 230, Completely Misrepresents The Law

“Another day, another op-ed that totally misrepresents Section 230. This one comes from USA Today, and is written by faux-conservative Rachel Bovard, who is doing this on purpose. Sometimes we see op-eds where it’s clear the author is unfamiliar with how Section 230 works. Other times they are deliberately misrepresenting it. Bovard is in the latter category. She works for an organization, with dark money funding, that pretends to be for “transparency” about the tech industry — which is hilarious since that organization’s own funding is kept secret. The only known funding for that organization comes from Oracle, a company that has made it clear it wants to do away with Section 230 (despite the fact that it wants people to use its cloud services). Bovard has had many, many experts in Section 230 explain to her why she’s misrepresenting the law. And she has never once changed her arguments, nor admitted to being wrong. She just keeps repeating the bullshit.”

There Is A New Investment Scam Targeting First-Time Founders. Here’s How It Works.

“The scam goes like this: you, the founder, might be running a fundraise or doing an equity funding round. The scammers will target users on Fundable, for example, and explain that they are very interested in your product and are willing to fund your entire round in crypto.”

Photo by Parker Byrd on Unsplash

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