Here is today’s top trending news from the world of technology. News that every tech enthusiast should keep a tab on.
1)
X slows down access to several top websites
X, formerly known as Twitter, has slowed down access to links from its platform to number of top websites including The New York Times, Facebook, Bluesky and Threads. The delay in loading links from the affected websites was relatively minor, about 4.5 seconds. This process of slowing down is known as ‘Throttling.’ It is still not clear why X’s owner Elon Musk ordered the throttling of links to these websites. Some have speculated that Musk was attempting to penalize the websites for repeatedly giving negative coverage to him while others have claimed that he is trying to defend X from the competition.
2)
OpenAI may use GPT-4 for content moderation
In its latest blog post, OpenAI has said that it has been using GPT-4 for developing and moderating content. It has further claimed that GPT-4 has been effective in identifying harmful or inappropriate content, and it has been more accurate and consistent than human moderators. Going by these claims, it seems that OpenAI may consistently use GPT-4 for moderating content. However, some experts fear that GPT-4 could act biasedly while moderating the content. Moderating content at scale is one of the toughest challenges in the tech world.
3)
Xbox launches new strike system to punish bad behavior
Starting from 15th August, Microsoft’s Xbox will shift to eight-strike suspension policy to curtail bad behavior on its gaming platform. The new system will assign strikes to players who violate Xbox’s community standards. The severity of the violation determines both the number of strikes and the length of the punishment. For instance, after two strikes, players will be suspended for a day and after four strikes Xbox users will suspend the account for a week. And with eight strikes, Xbox will end up losing several social media features, this include features like multiplayer, messaging, parties and party chat.
4)
Google’s AI-Powered Search Can Now Summarize Web Pages
Google’s AI-powered search, called Search Generative Experience (SGE), can now summarize web pages for you. This means that you can quickly get the main points of a web page without having to read through the entire page. Additionally, it will also give coding improvement tips. Although Search Generative Experience appears to be a powerful tool, it is still in a beta testing stage. It is currently being tested in United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and India. You can enable Search Generative Experience or SGE by visiting the Google Search Labs page and turning on the tab Search Generative Experience.
5)
TweetDeck (now known as X Pro) has officially become paid service
X Pro, which was previously known as TweetDeck, will now only be available to paid Blue subscribers. Although this was announced in July itself, the official implementation started from 15th August. TweetDeck is one of the widely utilized services in the media industry for account scheduling and management. However, users will now have to subscribe to Blue subscription to enjoy these features. The cost of Twitter Blue is $8 per month or $84 per year. Putting TweetDeck behind the paywall is part of Elon Musk’s aggressive monetization strategy. However, this decision hasn’t gone too well with Twitter’s loyal users.