Technology | The Guardian

A few hours with the biggest Nintendo Switch game of the year reveals a world that’s rich with creative potential – and funHowever carefully open-world video games are designed, whatever delights they lay out for you like a buffet of fun-morsels, they can never account for the unpredictably dumb actions of their players. I have been invited to Nintendo’s European headquarters to spend a couple of hours with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, probably this year’s most-anticipated video game, and so with the whole of Hyrule stretched out before me and a tantalising fort full of grimacing Bokoblin monsters to fight just down the hill, I choose to instead spend 20 minutes constructing a flame-throwing fortress on wheels.Using storied adventurer Link’s telekinetic powers to pick stuff up and smoosh it together, I painstakingly line up wheels on wooden bars that I’m using for axels, throw together wooden boards to create a boxy chassis, and take it for a couple of troubleshooting test drives before I attach flamethrowing gargoyle heads to the front. Unfortunately, the flamethrowers unbalance it, and as I careen down the road my self-made vehicle flips over and sets itself on fire. Link falls off and I watch as my hard work turns to literal ashes, its few non-flammable components tumbling unspectacularly to the ground. It turns out you should not try to make a flame-throwing go-kart out of wood. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: Unrecord puts players in the role of a police officer, and looks every bit like real shootings – so how realistic is too realistic?

Canadian singer says she likes the ideas of ‘killing copyright’, as music industry scrambles to catch up with implications of AI-generated tracksGrimes has welcomed musicians to create new songs with her voice using Artificial Intelligence, saying she would split 50% of royalties on any successful AI-generated track that included her voice.The Canadian singer, whose real name is Claire Boucher, tweeted that it was the “same deal as I would with any artist I collab[orate] with. Feel free to use my voice without penalty,” she tweeted. Continue reading...

Redmond-based company exceeded analysts’ estimates, driven by its cloud computing and Office software businessesMicrosoft Corp beat Wall Street’s quarterly revenue and profit estimates on Tuesday, driven by growth in its cloud computing and Office productivity software businesses, and the company said artificial intelligence products were stimulating sales.The company forecast that revenue in its main segments for the current quarter would match or top Wall Street targets. Continue reading...

Google’s parent company reported a revenue of $69.8bn even as it races to implement cost-saving measuresAlphabet stocks rose in after-hours trading on Tuesday after the tech firm beat analyst expectations for first-quarter earnings, marking an unexpectedly bright spot in the otherwise struggling tech sector.The company reported first-quarter revenue of $69.8bn, up 3% year-over-year and above analyst predictions of $68.9bn. Its cloud business reported a profit for the first time since its launch, taking in $191m. Continue reading...

The government must do its bit to make new electric vehicles more affordable if mass adoption is to be achieved on the road to net zeroWhen the government controversially scrapped its discount on the purchase of electric cars last summer, the move was justified on the grounds that its work was done. After 11 years of subsidies, said ministers, the electric vehicle revolution had been “kickstarted”. As Britain strives to meet a 2030 target to end the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles, that judgment is beginning to look a little complacent.Amid ongoing economic headwinds, data has emerged that suggests a drop-off in current demand for electric cars, despite notable public enthusiasm for their adoption in principle. Auto Trader, which hosts the country’s largest car sales website, reported this month that inquiries in relation to new electric vehicles had fallen significantly compared with last year. Continue reading...

Designation as ‘very large online platform’ along with 16 other major names means big penalties for breachesTwitter is among the tech firms that will face the toughest level of scrutiny under a new European Union regulatory regime for monitoring digital platforms, after warnings from Brussels that the Elon Musk-owned platform is unprepared for the new rules.The company, which Musk bought in October 2022, has been designated a “very large online platform” under the bloc’s Digital Services Act, which means complying with measures such as publishing an independent audit of its compliance with the legislation. Continue reading...

Just as SpaceX’s Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly this month, Musk is a mess, too, thanks to Twitter’s blue ticksElon Musk is a man of many talents including, it would seem, resurrecting people from the dead. Over the weekend, a number of notable but no-longer-alive figures, including Anthony Bourdain, Hugo Chávez and Jamal Khashoggi had “blue checkmarks” suddenly appear on their dormant Twitter accounts. When you clicked on the checkmark you were informed that they’d provided their phone numbers to the platform and agreed to pay $8 a month to subscribe to Twitter Blue. The afterlife must be dire if people are signing up for Twitter’s paid features from beyond the grave.It wasn’t just dead celebs being mysteriously verified. The rollout of Twitter Blue was a spectacular mess. Once upon a time, having a blue tick by your name was a status symbol: a sign someone at Twitter HQ thought you were “notable” enough to verify. (Reader, I was not.) Then Musk came along, stripped people of their blue ticks, and said they’d only get the badge back if they paid up. Obviously only a complete loser would do that and the blue tick quickly became a scarlet letter. So when the checks mysteriously reappeared on the accounts of a number of high-profile – and very much alive – figures, including the author Stephen King and basketball star LeBron James, said figures swiftly announced that they hadn’t paid for the badge and wouldn’t be caught dead doing so. All of which would be incredibly embarrassing for Musk if he had any sense of shame. (Reader, he does not.) Continue reading...

From Pac-Man to pinball, French photographer Franck Bohbot transforms the neon chaos of amusement arcades into stunning works of art Continue reading...

Global companies like Google, Apple and Amazon could have to pay penalties of up to 10% of their global turnover as government gives competition watchdog more powerMajor tech firms face the threat of multibillion-pound fines for breaching consumer protection rules under new legislation that will tackle issues including fake online reviews and subscriptions that are difficult to cancel.The digital markets, competition and consumers bill will empower the UK’s competition watchdog to tackle the “excessive dominance” that a small number of tech firms hold over consumers and businesses. Continue reading...

Internet Watch Foundation says amount of material showing most extreme form of sexual abuse has doubled since 2020The most extreme form of child sexual abuse material accounted for a fifth of such content found online last year, according to a report.Category A abuse represented 20% of illegal images discovered online last year by the Internet Watch Foundation, a UK-based body that monitors distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). It found more than 51,000 instances of such content, which can include the most severe imagery including rape, sadism and bestiality.The NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. Continue reading...

Shot at dawn | Emergency alerts at evensong | A message to Airstrip One | Ofsted’s ‘inadequate’ | Jack Nicholson in RedsAlexandra Pearce-Broomhead’s piece (Country diary, 24 April) is probably the most emotionally charged article I’ve seen in over 40 years of reading the Guardian. I have sons the same age as these young men who were shot for supposed crimes such as “desertion” and “cowardice” in the first world war. May my children never have to go through what these young men did.

Verification mark granted to account that was suspended in 2017 but reinstated following takeover by Elon Musk last yearTwitter has given a gold tick to Britain First, the far right political organisation, after a shake-up of its verification system under new owner Elon Musk.The party’s leader, Paul Golding, has also received a blue tick for his account, which means that his posts will be boosted in conversations and will be ranked higher in user searches. Golding was jailed in 2018 for religiously aggravated harassment. Continue reading...

He’s been at PlayStation since the beginning, and seen the games industry transform beyond recognition. He talks unlikely successes, AI, and gaming’s futureIn early 1993, Shuhei Yoshida joined Sony’s nascent PlayStation division as a business development guy – the first member of the team who didn’t have an engineering background. When he was working with Ken Kutaragi and the other architects of the original PlayStation, and later producing games from Crash Bandicoot and Gran Turismo alongside game development legends Mark Cerny and Kazunori Yamauchi, he freely admits that he could scarcely believe his luck. When I speak to him, on the eve of receiving Bafta’s prestigious fellowship award for his contribution to video games, he still seems endearingly surprised by his own success.“The people who have received [this award] before are all creators! Amazing, talented, genius people! I don’t know how I fit in,” he says. (Previous recipients of the award include Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima.) “But everybody says I deserve it, so I guess I deserve it.” Continue reading...

On Sunday, millions of phones blared signal simultaneously under government test, but for some it did not go as plannedOn Sunday, millions of phones blared an emergency signal simultaneously under a UK-wide government test. However, a number of handsets received the alert late – or not at all.Here we answer your questions on what happened. Continue reading...

The site will remain online as an archive, alongside the Gawker reboot, the Toast, and a host of other defunct outletsThe closure of BuzzFeed News this week followed a familiar script for those who have followed the rise and fall of digital media. There were Twitter eulogies from current and former staff and op-eds on who was to blame for the site’s mismanagement.Bosses promised to keep the BuzzFeed News site online as an archive, which means, like so many other failed online projects, whatever happened to be on the homepage that day will now be frozen in time forever. In this case: a feature on the history of Midge, Barbie’s pregnant sidekick, an explainer on what to do after “overdosing” on weed and a review of Le Creuset’s new “shallot” cookware shade, which called the color “the trend child of millennial pink and Alison Roman’s shallot pasta”. Continue reading...

This debut feature dissects the ethical dilemmas that arise when an AI is used to entrap paedophiles, but it fails to translate its ideas into a cogent argumentProbing the ethical implications surrounding the use of AI, Franklin Ritch’s debut feature hinges on a high-concept premise: an entirely digital avatar of a young girl named Cherry (Tatum Matthews) is used as bait to trap paedophiles in online chatrooms. Without the signature spectacle of the sci-fi genre, The Artifice Girl is a markedly low-key and small-scale endeavour, steeped in philosophical musings that ultimately seem stagey rather than cinematic.Divided into three chapters spanning decades, the film moves through a series of single locations. It starts in a police interrogation room where Ritch’s Gareth, Cherry’s creator, is questioned by Deena (Sinda Nichols) and Amos (David Girard), members of a taskforce combatting child sexual abuse. Once Gareth reveals Cherry is a virtual being, concerns arise as to whether she can meaningfully consent to interacting with men on a daily basis. As Cherry grows increasingly sentient, the same talking points are reiterated in the second section of the film, as Gareth advocates to transfer Cherry’s intelligence into a physical form. Continue reading...

Regulator calls for better promotion of offers available to low-income households receiving benefitsMore than 4m UK households may be missing out on deeply discounted savings on their broadband bills, the telecoms regulator has said as it called for better promotion of the offers for those receiving benefits.Only 220,000 households have signed up to cheaper social tariffs offered by almost all of the UK’s main broadband providers, according to data published on Monday by Ofcom. Continue reading...

Decision to reinstate ‘verified’ status without distinguishing paid-for from free users prompts criticism for ‘false advertising’Twitter has again U-turned over its verification policy, restoring the “blue tick” free of charge to celebrity users of the social network.But the site’s decision to reinstate the “verified” status without distinguishing between paid-for and free users has led to criticism for false advertising, since the boilerplate disclaimer for those users inaccurately describes their status as being granted “because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue”. Continue reading...

Network’s users report en masse that SMS, accompanied by piercing 10-second tone, never arrived

Many customers on Three network report not receiving the loud alarm meant as a test for future emergencies. This blog is now closed

Google boss says issue keeps him up at night, while thousands have urged six-month pause on creation of ‘giant’ AIsWhen the boss of Google admits to losing sleep over the negative potential of artificial intelligence, perhaps it is time to get worried.Sundar Pichai told the CBS programme 60 Minutes this month that AI could be “very harmful” if deployed wrongly, and was developing fast. “So does that keep me up at night? Absolutely,” he said. Continue reading...

Fake perfumes and restricted items are being touted on social media platform despite bansTikTok is profiting from the sale of illegal and potentially dangerous beauty products, including counterfeit cosmetics and prescription-only skin creams, despite claiming to take a “zero tolerance” approach to rogue sellers.Counterfeit versions of Dior perfumes, Vaseline lip balms and Maybelline mascaras are among products being touted by third-party vendors via TikTok’s in-app marketplace. Continue reading...

On Sunday 23 April at 3pm Britons will receive an alert on their mobile phoneGuardian readers share their views and concerns about the planned first UK nationwide test of the government’s public warning system that will send alerts to UK mobile phones in the event of a disaster. The test will take place at 3pm on Sunday. Continue reading...

AI is already employed in various administrations in the US and its use is only set to grow – but what dangers does it bring?The recent blizzard of warnings about artificial intelligence and how it is transforming learning, upending legal, financial and organizational functions, and reshaping social and cultural interaction, have mostly left out the role it is already playing in governance.Governments in the US at every level are attempting the transition from a programmatic model of service delivery to a citizen-focused model. Continue reading...

Technology company violated US export control laws with shipments to Chinese firm, commerce department saysSeagate Technology Holdings has agreed to pay a $300m penalty in a settlement with US authorities for shipping over $1.1bn worth of hard-disk drives to China’s Huawei in violation of US export control laws, the Department of Commerce said on Wednesday.Seagate sold the drives to Huawei between August 2020 and September 2021 despite an August 2020 rule that restricted sales of certain foreign items made with US technology to the company. Huawei was placed on the Entity List, a US trade blacklist, in 2019 to reduce the sale of US goods to the company amid national security and foreign policy concerns. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: Journalist Frank Swain investigates those who want to reverse ageing to live forever in Buying Time. Plus: five of the best relaxing podcasts

‘MyAI’ service that users can converse and collaborate creatively with had initially only been available to subscribersSnapchat is releasing its GPT-powered AI chatbot to every user for free, the company announced at its annual developer conference, as it tries to chart a distinctive path between the titans of Instagram and TikTok.That means expanding access to its AI chatbot, doubling down on the distinction between public and private posts, and paying successful creators a share of the revenue their viral content generates. Continue reading...

UK regulator asks for views on how move will work in practice, amid concern over tech firm’s cut of in-app purchasesGoogle is to let Android developers bypass in-app payments on its Play app store for the first time, in an effort to head off an investigation from the British competition regulator.But the specifics of the deal to placate the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will give little cause for cheer to independent developers who have been campaigning against “app store taxes”, since Google will continue to collect a “service fee” for all eligible purchases on its platform. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: Party quiz games, an interactive thriller, a dungeon crawler and more – your split-screen multiplayer recommendations are an inspiration. Here’s are some of the best

Deep Silver; PC, PS4/5, Xbox Series X/S

Players have long found a refuge from grief in video games – and a recent wave of games is tackling this difficult theme head-onWhen James’s father died, he did what any of us would do in the throes of grief: he sought comfort. He went looking for it in the expected places – friends, family – but he found it somewhere unexpected: in the video game The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.“Dad had always loved games. He gave me his NES when he got the SNES, and my formative memories were playing Mario Kart 64 with him, my uncle, and my little sister. Shortly after my father passed, the Wii added some N64 games to its catalogue that I had loved to play growing up, and that started the journey I needed to take to forgive him,” says James. “I had felt abandoned by him – when I was right at the shifting point of puberty, about to learn how to drive, he just wasn’t there. Continue reading...

Cabinet Office secretary, Oliver Dowden, to issue national alert and urge companies to boost cybersecurityRussian hackers organised along the lines of the paramilitary Wagner group are seeking “to disrupt or destroy” parts of the UK’s critical national infrastructure, a cabinet minister will warn at a cyber conference in Belfast on Wednesday.Oliver Dowden, the Cabinet Office minister, will issue a national alert to key businesses amid growing international concern that as Russia struggles in Ukraine, an under-pressure Kremlin is searching for new ways to threaten the west. Continue reading...

Streaming giant announces DVD-by-mail service to be wound down at the end of SeptemberIt’s time to say goodbye to those red envelopes. Netflix announced on Tuesday that it would end 25 years of mailing DVDs of shows and movies to its subscribers.Netflix’s co-chief executive Ted Sarandos said mailing DVDs had “paved the way for the shift to streaming”, but that “after an incredible 25-year run, we’ve made the difficult decision to wind down at the end of September”. Continue reading...

The German artist caused uproar this week when he revealed the shot that won a prestigious award wasn’t what it seemed. But, he insists, AI isn’t about sidelining humans – it’s about liberating artistsSince 52-year-old German artist Boris Eldagsen went public with the fact that he won a Sony world photography award with an AI-generated image, relations between him and the award body have soured. The World Photography Organisation has issued a statement, saying: “We no longer feel we are able to engage in a meaningful and constructive dialogue with him.” His website reads: “Sony: Stop saying nonsense!”“I don’t know why they behaved like this,” he says, speaking to me from Berlin on the morning after the controversy broke. But I have a fair idea: plainly, they feel like they were conned, and had their aesthetic discernment called into question. If you can’t tell the difference between a photograph and an AI-generated image, then you may as well go home. (Boris Eldagsen has said that, prior to being informed of his win, he had not provided any information to the World Photography Organisation that the image was AI-generated; the organisation says that the judges were always aware this was an image created using elements of AI.) Continue reading...

A new album – full of Oasis-esque anthems – imagines what might have been if the band’s classic lineup had continued making music. So, we ask its human co-creators, what’s the story?Before you do anything else with your day, you need to listen to this. A new “lost” Oasis album has been released, from the period between their third album, 1997’s Be Here Now, and their fourth, 2000’s Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. Except, of course, it’s fake. It was created by AI – or at least, it’s an AI Liam Gallagher doing its best “hellooooos” and “sun-shiiiines” over a real band. But the eight songs, including Out of My Mind, Coming of Age and Forever, are practically indistinguishable from the real thing, with some seriously catchy melodies that give every post-What’s the Story album – not to mention the whole of Liam and Noel’s solo catalogues – a run for their money. So who made it? How do you get a computer to sing like Liam? And why would you want to?“We just got bored waiting for Oasis to re-form,” says Bobby Geraghty, a 32-year-old singer, songwriter and producer. “All we have now is Liam and his brother trying to outdo each other. But that isn’t Oasis. So we got an AI-modelled Liam to step in on some tunes that were originally written for a short-lived but much-loved band called Breezer.” Continue reading...

The Tesla founder has broken ground on a plot in Texas, while Google and Meta are building workers’ homes in California. Should we be celebrating or worrying?Welcome to Snailbrook, Texas. Established: 2021. Population: about 12, but with many more to come. In fact, in a decade or two, Snailbrook could be a gleaming, utopian city, shaped by the futuristic vision of the unavoidable tech titan of our day, Elon Musk.Musk is moving into Texas big time. According to reports, he has quietly bought as many as 2,430 hectares (6,000 acres) in the Austin area – where his core business, Tesla, has been headquartered since 2021 – upon which factories and facilities are under construction for the rocket company SpaceX and the tunnelling company Boring (whose mascot is a snail, hence the town’s name). Now, Musk is adding housing for workers (which reportedly will be more affordable to rent than that in Austin) and Boring executives are talking of building an entire city. Should we be celebrating or worrying? Continue reading...

The decentralized social network has seen user numbers drop in recent months, but tech-savvy users remain passionateWhen Elon Musk bought Twitter nearly six months ago, bringing back white supremacists and booting journalists who had criticized him, many users felt it was the right time to leave the platform.Thousands of tweeters – myself included – fled to Mastodon: a scrappy social media project designed from its start in 2016 to be resistant against takeovers by billionaires. Mastodon is decentralized: instead of a single website, it’s a network of thousands of independently run servers – each with their own moderators and users – who can interact with each other’s posts, called “toots”, using an open protocol called ActivityPub. Other social media services can connect to ActivityPub as well, so no one app can monopolize the broader network that Mastodon is part of, called the “fediverse”. Continue reading...

Social media has a long history of gross-out content. But on FoodTok, the recipes are more bafflingly repulsive than everI have just ironed my husband a toasted sandwich like some kind of tradwife and to be honest, I’m disappointed with his reaction. Admittedly, there were a few issues. The steam didn’t help, plus I wrapped it in too much tinfoil, so the heat couldn’t penetrate. The main problem, though, was that holding an iron meant I automatically started ironing the package, pressing hard and going to and fro industriously. The result is flat, very flat. “We have a sandwich toaster,” my husband points out, holding the crepe-thin delicacy between finger and thumb. He should be thrilled: this is the closest I’ve come to cooking for him in months. He tries it, reluctantly. “It’s very soft. Did you put mustard in it?”“I thought it would help,” I say. Continue reading...

German artist Boris Eldagsen says entry to Sony World Photography Award was designed to provoke debateA photographer is refusing a prestigious award after admitting to being a “cheeky monkey” and generating the prize-winning image using artificial intelligence.The German artist Boris Eldagsen revealed on his website that he was not accepting the prize for the creative open category, which he won at last week’s Sony World Photography Award. Continue reading...

Mario might be one of the most successful video games around – and the new movie is breaking box-office records – but there are still plenty of people out there who’ve never played one of his games. Here’s everything a beginner needs to knowIt’s official: the new Super Mario Bros film has broken a long-established trend of lacklustre video game tie-in movies by becoming a vast success. Zooming past the $500m mark in nine days, it has smashed box office records for animated films and it’s also the highest grossing film of 2023 so far.But if you don’t play games, you might be wondering what on earth is going on. How did a portly man in dungarees become a global superstar? Here is a quick recap … Continue reading...

Broadcaster leaves platform a day after NPR’s exit over concerns labels undermine credibility as independent news outletsThe US’s Public Broadcasting Service, better known as PBS, has quit its use of Twitter after the platform labeled the organization as “government-funded media”.PBS’s announced its Twitter exit on Thursday, one day after National Public Radio also left the platform amid comments by the Twitter owner, Elon Musk, that NPR was “state-affiliated media” which should be defunded. Twitter has since relabeled NPR as “government-funded media”, but that did not stop the radio broadcaster saying that the labels for it and the television broadcaster PBS were aimed at undermining their credibility as independent news outlets. Continue reading...

Readers respond to Larry Elliott’s article about the impact of artificial intelligence on the workplaceLike runaway climate change, the rapid development of self-learning artificial intelligence is an unprecedented existential threat to humanity, where past experience will be no guide to our future prospects (AI will end the west’s weak productivity and low growth. But who exactly will benefit?, 7 April). This is especially true when AI links to either super- or quantum-computing power.Complex systems like these give rise to emergent properties, and circumstances where the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. Previously “dumb” neural networks like ChatGPT, by drawing on large language models, have already led to increasingly sophisticated and adaptable generative AI. As these systems become more complex and powerful, and their learning sources and human interactions multiply exponentially, it is reasonable to assume that AI may evolve its own consciousness and mind. Continue reading...

They may be cheaper and less trouble, but they’ll never have the gravitas, the engagement or the raised eyebrow of reporters like me“The news is … there is no news.” With those words, outside St Mary’s Hospital in London awaiting the birth of Prince George in July 2013, my reporting for the BBC went viral on the internet. My somewhat testy response to standing in the street with nothing to say had struck a chord with many. Not for what I was saying but the way I was saying it. The resigned look. The world-weary tone. The slight annoyance that four decades of reporting from around the globe had led to this moment. I couldn’t hide it. Viewers knew what I was thinking and feeling. Some were annoyed by it. Quite a few people appreciated it – because they could relate to it. Because they are human. And so am I.“Fedha” is not human. Yes, the blond woman with light-coloured eyes, wearing a black jacket and a white T-shirt, looks human. She even sounds human. But this week she was introduced as the first presenter in Kuwait who works by artificial intelligence. “What kind of news do you prefer? Let’s hear your opinions,” she says in Arabic. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: The master storyteller investigates Carol Howe’s extraordinary life in The Debutante. Plus: five of the best real-life mystery podcasts

Powerful speaker with quality sound shows how to do immersive music right, if you can find a good trackThe Era 300 is the second in Sonos’s next-generation line of wifi hi-fis, packing six speakers into one curvaceous box capable of immersing listeners in quality sound.The speaker costs £449 ($449/A$749) and sits above the new £249 Era 100, competing directly with Apple’s HomePod and other high-end speakers – premium audio at a premium price.Dimensions: 16 x 26 x 18.5cmWeigh: 4.5kgSpeakers: four tweeters, two woofersConnectivity: wifi 6, Bluetooth 5, USB-C, AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect Continue reading...

US CPI dropped more expected last month, but core inflation rose

In this week’s newsletter: After decades of offensively terrible video game adaptations, I’m more than happy to settle for one that is simply OK

Owner talks of ‘extremely high’ pain level from running the site but adds it is now ‘roughly breaking even’Elon Musk, Twitter’s billionaire owner, has said the social media platform will change the BBC’s label of “government-funded media” after the broadcaster objected.The Tesla chief executive made the announcement during a wide-ranging interview with the corporation in which he said that his pain level from running the site had been “extremely high” but that the business was now “roughly breaking even”. Continue reading...

With government concerns over national security growing, Beijing’s influence over platforms such as WeChat and Shein could come under scrutinyAs TikTok, the world’s most popular app, comes under increasing scrutiny in response to data privacy and security concerns, lawmakers in the west may soon set their sights on other Chinese platforms that have gone global.TikTok was built by ByteDance as a foreign version of its popular domestic video-sharing platform, Douyin. But it is far from being ByteDance’s only overseas moneymaker. The Chinese company owns dozens of apps that are available overseas, many of them English-language versions of Chinese offerings. Continue reading...