Author: uzair

The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a non-profit journalism school and research organization, analyzed Twitter’s 1,000-user pilot test of its Birdwatch fact-checking platform. Their conclusion’ It makes mistakes.On February 5, Twitter flagged a post from controversial YouTuber Tim Pool that said the 2020 U.S. presidential election was rigged. The platform noted that the claim was disputed and turned off engagement “due to a risk of violence.” But, on Birdwatch, the social media platform’s experiment in crowdsourced fact-checking, users overwhelmingly said the tweet was not misleading, according to a Feb. 14 analysis of Twitter data. And most Birdwatch users indicated in…

Will Douglas Heaven / MIT Technology Review:Tel Aviv-based startup Hour One is paying people to use their likenesses to create AI-voiced characters for marketing and educational videos for its clientsAI-powered characters based on real people can star in thousands of videos and say anything, in any language. Click here to read full news..

Tom Warren / The Verge:Hands-on with Microsoft Store on Windows 11: UI overhaul and speed improvements are nice; addition of much-needed apps like Zoom and WinZip is a promising startThe Windows store is finally getting apps people care aboutMicrosoft’s dysfunctional app store for Windows Click here to read full news..

Tony Zerucha / Crowdfund Insider:Cloud-based bill payment tech provider Paymentus to buy Payveris, which provides software for money transfers and bill payments, for $152.2M in cash and stockCloud-based bill payment technology firm Paymentus has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Payveris, itself a cloud-based bill payment software provider. Click here to read full news..

Nilay Patel / The Verge:Q&A: Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud on how the company is helping large and small companies use video, its growing OTT business of making TV apps for creators, and moreToday on Decoder I’m talking to Anjali Sud, the CEO of Vimeo. Now, you probably think of Vimeo as a smaller competitor to YouTube Click here to read full news..

Dave Lee / Financial Times:Yandex has lost 75%+ of its value in the past 6 months, despite not being directly sanctioned, as deals with Uber, Grubhub, and DuckDuckGo appear likely to endWestern investors and tech partners are abandoning the group following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine Click here to read full news..

Katie Wickens / PC Gamer:Amid a global chip shortage, Hong Kong customs says it stopped multiple attempts of CPU smuggling over the past few weeksThe smaller the chips become, the more cavities they’ll fit into.In a recent trend, border smugglers have turned from their usual tricks of smuggling mobile phones, and trained their eyes on PC parts. Click here to read full news..

Bloomberg:How ByteDance is competing with Alibaba in social commerce, including roping in influencers like Xiaomi’s Lei Jun to livestream on TikTok’s Chinese twin Douyin- TikTok owner aims to challenge Alibaba in e-commerce arenaZhang eyes global opportunity after major breakthrough Click here to read full news..

Drew Harwell / Washington Post:Public docs show that ICE used private database run by Thomson Reuters with 400M+ names, addresses, and utility service records to pursue immigration violationsGovernment agencies increasingly are accessing private information they are not authorized to compile on their own Click here to read full news..

Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch:HoneyBook, which offers financial and business management tools to SMBs and freelancers, raises $155M Series D at $1B+ valuation, has doubled users in 12 monthsHoneyBook, which has built out a client experience and financial management platform for service-based small businesses and freelancers Click here to read full news..