Tech giants have gotten worse at removing illegal hate speech from their platforms under a voluntary arrangement in the European Union, according to the Commission’s latest assessment. The sixth evaluation report of the EU’s Code of Conduct on removing illegal hate speech found what the bloc’s executive calls a “mixed picture”, with platforms reviewing 81% […]
Opal is helping companies ensure employees have access to the right apps
The platform enables enterprises to design intelligent user access policies and automate reviews of current company access points.
Instagram ditches the IGTV brand, combines everything but Reels into an ‘Instagram Video’ format
Instagram head Adam Mosseri recently said was “no longer a photo-sharing app,” noting the company was prioritizing a shift into video amid significant competition from TikTok and YouTube. Today, Instagram is taking another step towards its larger goal of making video a more central part of the Instagram experience with news that it will now […]
Mark Cuban-backed live entertainment app Fireside launches to creators
Amid a deluge of new creator platforms, a startup called Fireside is launching today with what it believes will be a compelling proposition for professional creators in need of a more robust set of tools for content creation, distribution, measurement, and monetization. The service, which offers a platform for live and interactive shows, had been […]
Robinhood finally brings on-demand phone support to all of its users
Robinhood announced Tuesday that it will be bringing “24/7” phone support to its 31 million users. It’s a long overdue move for the stock and crypto trading company founded in 2013, but one that signals its maturation following a challenging year that brought the company its biggest crisis, a surge in trading volume and its […]
Adaptive Shield lands $30M Series A to build out its SaaS security platform
Adaptive Shield, a Tel Aviv-based startup that automates the security of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, has secured $30 million in Series A funding led by Insight Partners. The funding round, which also saw participation from Okta Ventures and existing investor Vertex Ventures Israel, follows a $4 million seed round in 2019. The company tells TechCrunch it will […]
Rendered.ai raises $6M on the promise of ending data scarcity
The availability of data can paralyze a company and its effort to bring software-centric products and services to market. To solve this issue, two-year-old data startup Rendered.ai is generating synthetic data for the satellite, medical, robotics and automotive industries. At its most broad, synthetic data is manufactured rather than gathered from the real world. “When […]
8-Bit Capital, co-led by Jonathan Abrams, has closed its first fund with $40 million
Jonathan Abrams and Kent Lindstrom have partnered on a lot of things over the years. Lindstrom was an advisor and investor at the early social networking service Friendster, founded by Abrams. He was also the COO of social news aggregator Nuzzel, which was founded by Abrams and that sold to a subscription startup called Scroll […]
Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram are slowly returning. Why did they disappear to begin with?
Facebook’s day-long outage is by far its longest and most extreme in years. At around 9 a.m. PDT on the U.S. West Coast — where the social giant is headquartered — Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger seemed to vanish from the internet. The outage continued through market close, with the company’s stock dropping around […]
Neurodiversity and the software design dilemma
Neurodiverse professionals bring different perspectives and strengths to the table and often challenge the status quo. It is this diversity of thought that gives an organization strength in special ways.