Natasha Lomas
While mainstream social networks like Facebook and Instagram have had their services blocked by state authorities in Russia in recent days, as the Kremlin seeks total control of the narrative around the war in Ukraine, Reface, a Ukraine-based face-swapping app, has voluntarily pulled its app out of Russia.
After...
Vira Health, a UK startup that offers personalized digital therapeutics for women going through the menopause, has closed a second round of funding — taking $12 million from lead investor Octopus Ventures, along with participation from US-based VC firm Optum Ventures, as it gears up to hop over...
Twitter has claimed it’s complying with an EU-wide ban on Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik which came into force yesterday as part of the package of sanctions imposed by the bloc on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, albeit reluctantly.
In a statement the social network has been circulating...
It’s many years since the Blackberry was the corporate phone du jour. Touchscreen phones and the ‘Bring your Own Device’ trend put paid to all that. But the concept of dedicated mobile hardware for corporates and governments with above average security concerns hasn’t entirely passed into tech history.
Brazilian...
Google has just announced that YouTube will geoblock the Kremlin-affiliated media outlets Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik in Europe, following pressure from regional lawmakers to choke off Russian war propaganda.
In a tweet announcing the geoblocks, the company’s Europe policy team writes: “Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine,...
Late yesterday the European Union announced an “unprecedented” step against Russian disinformation, saying it would ban Kremlin-based media outlets, Russia Today (aka RT) and Sputnik — extending measures targeting the country following president Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The state-owned Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as their subsidiaries will...
Reface, an a16z-backed synthetic media app that’s developed out of Ukraine, has added push notifications informing its ~200 million-strong global user-base about Russia’s invasion of the country — urging people to #StandWithUkraine, including by watermarking face-swapped videos created with the app.
All videos created in the app are now...
RIP Mark Zuckerberg’s “time well spent“? In a move that appears to coincide with Facebook/Meta reporting slowing growth, photo-sharing app Instagram appears to have quietly removed the ability for mobile users to set a lower daily time limit reminder than 30 minutes.
Indeed, the app’s UX design nudges people...
Google is being sued in Europe on competition grounds by price comparison service PriceRunner which is seeking at least €2.1 billion (~2.4BN) in damages.
The lawsuit accuses Google of continuing to breach a 2017 European Commission antitrust enforcement order against Google Shopping.
As well as fining Google what was —...
Rising pressure on big business to address the threat of climate change by decarbonizing their ops has, in recent years, led to huge demand for carbon offset schemes — enabling companies to buy carbon credits to ‘offset’ emissions so they can claim to be ‘greening’ their activities, without...
