Month: March 2023

Daily Crunch: Citing data privacy concerns, Italy temporarily bans ChatGPT

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To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Fri-yay Crunch! We are pretty excited about Disrupt 2023 getting a whole stage dedicated to fintech. And while we’re talking about events…There’s just a few hours left to save $200 on TC Early Stage tickets in Boston in a couple of weeks, so get yer tickets while you can! On that note, enjoy your weekend! — Christine and Haje The TechCrunch Top 3 Italy gives ChatGPT the boot: Italy’s government has been on a blocking kick lately. A few days ago, we wrote about a possible ban on cultivated meat, and today Italy wants to block ChatGPT, citing data protection concerns. Natasha L writes that the country’s data protection authority is opening an investigation into whether OpenAI is breaching the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. Groupon gets its Czech book: Ingrid reports that Groupon has lost 99.4% of its value since its IPO and now has a new CEO who will …

NASA’s DAGGER could give advance warning of the next big solar storm

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There’s enough trouble on this planet already that we don’t need new problems coming here from the sun. Unfortunately we can’t yet destroy this pitiless star, so we are at its mercy. But NASA at least may soon be able to let us know when one of its murderous flares is going to send our terrestrial systems into disarray. Understanding and predicting space weather is a big part of NASA’s job. There’s no air up there, so no one can hear you scream “wow, how about this radiation!” Consequently, we rely on a set of satellites to detect and relay this important data to us. One such measurement is of solar wind, “an unrelenting stream of material from the sun.” Even NASA can’t find anything nice to say about it! Normally this stream is absorbed or dissipated by our magnetosphere, but if there’s a solar storm, it may be intense enough that it overwhelms the local defenses. When this happens, it can set electronics on the fritz, since these charged particles can flip bits or …

A judge dismissed Phhhoto’s antitrust suit against Meta

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A U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of New York threw out a lawsuit against Meta this week that had been simmering for a year and a half. The suit, filed in late 2021 by now-shuttered social app Phhhoto, alleged that Meta violated federal antitrust law by copying its core features with the Instagram-adjacent video looping app Boomerang. Like Boomerang, which Meta launched in October of 2015 and later integrated into Instagram itself, Phhhoto invited users to share very short GIF-like loops. U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto ultimately granted Meta’s motion to dismiss the complaint dismissed due to time-limits imposed by the relevant statutes of limitations. “Phhhoto has failed in its 69-page Amended Complaint of 222 paragraphs to allege sufficientfacts that cure the untimeliness of all of its federal claims,” Matsumoto wrote in the opinion, calling the possibility of any amendment to resolve the issue of the lawsuit’s timing “futile.” In the lawsuit, Phhhoto alleged that Boomerang was the culmination of Facebook’s anticompetitive full-court press, effectively killing the smaller company with a copycat …

Celebrities don’t want to pay Elon for a blue check

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April 1 is the dumbest day on the internet, and this year, it’s not just because brands will try to prank you by selling “hot iced coffee.” Starting on Saturday, Twitter will begin removing blue checks from “legacy verified” users if they don’t sign up for a Twitter Blue subscription. This is part of new owner Elon Musk’s grand plan to make Twitter profitable, but this particular scheme has a glaring issue: if anyone with $8 per month can get a blue check, the symbol won’t be cool anymore (and also disinformation will proliferate, but Musk doesn’t seem super worried about that). Twitter initially launched its verification system in 2009 to protect celebrities from impersonation. Someone made an account pretending to be former St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, but instead of just asking for the account to be taken down, La Russa sued Twitter. And so, the three-year-old company introduced its iconic blue check badge. Now, we’ve come full circle. Celebrities are a day away from losing their verification badges, and you might …

Twitter reveals some of its source code, including its recommendation algorithm

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As repeatedly promised by Twitter CEO Elon Musk, Twitter has opened a portion of its source code, including the algorithm it uses to recommend tweets in users’ timelines, for inspection. On GitHub, Twitter published two repositories containing the source code for many parts of the social network, including the mechanism it uses to control the Tweets users see on the For You timeline. In a blog post, Twitter characterized the move as a “first step to be more transparent” while at the same time preventing risk to Twitter itself and people on the platform. On that second point, the open source releases don’t include the code that powers Twitter’s ad recommendations or the data used to train Twitter’s recommendation algorithm “[We] excluding any code that would compromise user safety and privacy or the ability to protect our platform from bad actors, including undermining our efforts at combating child sexual exploitation and manipulation,” Twitter wrote. “We [took] steps to ensure that user safety and privacy would be protected.” Twitter says that it’s working on tools to …

Stability AI CEO has the ambition to IPO in next few years

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Emad Mostaque, the CEO and founder of open source platform Stability AI, hinted at plans to go public in the next few years, during the Cerebral Valley AI Conference in San Francisco on Thursday. He also shut down the idea that Stability AI, an Open AI rival and leader in the generative artificial intelligence space, will ever get acquired. “I think you can’t just IPO, ” Mostaque said during an interview with journalist Eric Newcomer. “You need to have amazing revenue, amazing margins, distribution, and so we’ve been executing…we’re 17 months old.” He also said that the business model of Stability AI’s open source platform will be seen more properly in the next year,” but added that he doesn’t “want to give away my arbitrage opportunities. The generative intelligence company landed a spotlight after building Stable Diffusion, an image-generating system, along with Dance Diffusion and the development of open source music. Thus, it’s unsurprising that Mostaque feels strongly about creating open source standards in the world of generated art. Mostaque was one of the notable …

Netflix restructures its film units, aiming to make fewer (but better) original movies

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Netflix is restructuring its film units and vowing to make fewer but better movies, according to a new report from Bloomberg, which Netflix partially confirmed. The report said the streaming giant is combining film units that produce small and midsize films, resulting in a handful of layoffs, including two longtime executives. Netflix told TechCrunch that these changes were made to simplify its structure and set it up for the next phase of its growth, but declined to comment on how many people were being let go. Scott Stuber, Chairman of Netflix Film, has been looking to scale back the company’s output of films to ensure that more of them are high quality, according to the report. It appears that this change has already been implemented, as the report comes as Netflix recently revealed its 2023 original films lineup, which consists of 49 titles. In comparison, the company had 85 original films in its lineup last year. For context, a Netflix original refers to both the content that has been produced in-house and the content it …

What’s going on with the TikTok ban?

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With a U.S. ban of TikTok looming, it might look like game-over for the hit video sharing app, which has taken the world by storm in recent years, reshaping every aspect of culture in the process. Uncertainty abounds right now, but TikTok’s fate is far from sealed. We’ve answered some common questions about a situation that’s complex, confusing and changing as we speak. What happened in Congress? TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testified before Congress last week, enduring five hours of intense questioning from lawmakers over concerns that China might leverage the app to compromise U.S. national security. TikTok is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, setting it apart from other major social media companies based in the U.S. “Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” Chew said in his opening statements, a refrain TikTok’s CEO repeated throughout the hearing as he sought to reassure lawmakers. National security concerns were just one of the worries that representatives expressed about TikTok. Members of the House Energy and …

Hulu’s new interface with a revamped sidebar is rolling out on Fire TV, Apple TV, and Roku

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Hulu is slowly rolling out a new interface on streaming devices like Fire TV, Apple TV and Roku, among other compatible devices. The new redesign moves the navigation to the left side with options for TV, Movies, and My Stuff. The company confirmed to TechCrunch that the updated interface began rolling out the updated interface yesterday. It will be available across all supported connected TV devices in the coming months, including Android TV devices as well as Chromecast, LG smart TVs, Samsung smart TVs, Vizio SmartCast TVs and more. Cord Cutter News was the first to report the new interface. Users that have seen the update were welcomed with a message from Hulu that writes, “Over the next few weeks, Hulu’s navigation menu will move to the left side of the screen on living room devices. Press ‘back’ to open the menu for easy access to TV, Movies, My Stuff, and more.” The update makes it easier for TV users to navigate to these destinations. Previously, viewers had to scroll all the way up to …

TechCrunch+ roundup: 3 key hiring metrics, building SDR teams, insurtech investor survey

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The expense involved in recruiting, training and onboarding a new employee who turns out to be a poor fit could be equivalent to 50% of that person’s first-year salary. According to Anastasiia Kuzmenko, head of talent acquisition at Flyer One Ventures, “the biggest difference between hiring in a healthy economy and hiring now is that there’s no room for mistakes.” Hiring the wrong person can create a cascade of failures inside an early-stage startup, which is why she recommends that founders focus on three essential metrics to “adopt a more data-driven approach:” Full TechCrunch+ articles are only available to membersUse discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription Cost per hire Time to hire Employee turnover rate In her article, Kuzmenko shares formulas for calculating each metric, along with tactical advice for setting benchmarks and helping managers stay attuned to employee morale. Thanks for reading, Walter ThompsonEditorial Manager, TechCrunch+@yourprotagonist How to build a sales development representative strategy that will fill your B2B pipeline Image Credits: kampee patisena (opens in a new …