If it’s Thursday it’s time for the Top Tech News of the Week, Week, eeek! I’m on with Mark Starling, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week’s top tech stories: face filters are banned in Texas, DogeCoin co-founder says most crypto projects are scams, and Russia seizes Google R bank accounts. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern by tuning into WWNC on the iHeartRadio app. Listen now.
:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/92e525dfa5fa30ca5b37b9d58650156c/Meta%20REUTERS%20TT.jpg)
TEXAS’ META LAWSUIT KEEPS DOG EARS OFF TEXANS’ FACES
Facial filters, dog ears, whiskers, and more have been disabled for Texas Instagram and Facebook users two months after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed lawsuit against Meta. The lawsuit alleged the social media companies were violating Texans’ privacy because the applications used facial recognition technology to apply these features to users’ faces. For its part, Meta countered it has halted its facial recognition program and doesn’t use facial recognition to tag images. So, it’s disabled the feature in Illinois and Texas to prevent meritless and distracting litigation. Ken Paxton says the suit could result in hundreds of billions of dollars in penalties for Meta. The company has already paid a record $5 billion in consumer privacy violations to the FTC in 2019.
DOGECOIN CO-FOUNDER SAYS CRYPTO IS A SCAM
Tuesday, Billy Markus, co-creator of the satirical crypto currency, Dogecoin, tweeted 95% of cryptocurrency projects are scams. He blames scammers and bad players for sowing distrust in the entire crypto industrial complex by top financial players and users. When pegged about his project, Dogecoin, he said that it was a satirical project designed to ridicule the proliferation of pointless crypto projects. All cryptocurrencies are down from their high flying values at the end of 2021 and beginning of this year. My personal holdings (in play money) are down 50%. The market began unraveling this week when a cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar, US Terra (UST), depegged itself from the US dollar. Again, I’m not a fan of vehicles that have to rely on people losing money in order for others to make it.
So, what happens when you get a bunch of computer nerds who don’t really know anything about finance begin manipulating a fake, unregulated monetary market?
Read on for more details.
RUSSIAN BANKING AUTHORITIES SEIZE GOOGLE RUSSIA ACCOUNTS
Google’s Russian subsidiary plans to file bankruptcy after Russian Banking Authorities seized its bank accounts. Google R reported making 134.3 billion roubles ($2.086 billion) and employed 100 people in 2021. Google’s Russian activities weren’t always steady. Russia fined Google R $98 million dollars for making content the country considers illegal available on its platforms. Google had stopped selling ads in March after Russia’s Ukrainian invasion. This news comes after McDonald’s wished Russia, “do svidaniya,” this week and leaving the country for good by selling all of its franchises.