Bumble has lost a third of its Texas workforce in the months since the state passed the controversial abortion SB 8 (Senate Bill 8), also known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, over a year ago. This new data point was shared by Bumble’s Interim General Counsel, Elizabeth Monteleone, speaking on a panel this afternoon at […]

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Meta’s newest app Threads, a would-be Twitter/X rival, may not want politics on its platform, but it’s coming to the app anyway — or so Threads’ search trends indicate. The app began testing its Twitter-like trends feature last month with a small group of U.S. users, but it’s now more broadly available to Threads’ user […]

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Apple says it plans to make it easier for customers to switch to Android as a result of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which went into force today. Alongside support for alternative app stores, new business terms for EU app developers, and mobile browser choice screens, among other things, the iPhone maker said it […]

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Anonymous social apps are in for a reckoning. Yes, again. This week, University of North Carolina (UNC) System President Peter Hans announced a plan to block the use of popular anonymous social apps on campus, including Yik Yak, Fizz, Whisper, and Sidechat. The ban would impact the 16 universities, like UNC Chapel Hill, NCSU, UNC […]

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The Digital Markets Act (DMA), an ex ante European Union reform of digital competition rules, will be in force today, by midnight Brussels’ time, on six tech giants — applying a new set of legal requirements on more than 20 of their “core platform services” (CPS). Online empires that scaled in an era of minimal […]

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The European Union has confirmed it’s looking into Apple’s decision to close Epic Games’ developer account — citing three separate regulations which may apply. Yesterday the Fortnite maker revealed Apple had terminated the account, apparently reversing a decision to approve the developer account last month. Epic had planned to launch its own app store, the […]

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Google today is sharing more details about the fees that will accompany its plan to comply with Europe’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA), the new regulation aimed at increasing competition across the app store ecosystem. While Google yesterday pointed to ways it already complied with the DMA — by allowing sideloading of apps, for example […]

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The Apple-Epic saga has just taken a new turn today as the Fortnite game developer, Epic Games, shared that Apple has terminated its developer account. This is a reversal from Apple’s earlier approval of the account last month, which Epic said would allow it to bring back Fortnite to iOS devices in the EU by […]

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Meta today is offering more details about how it plans to make its messaging apps, WhatsApp and Messenger, interoperable with third-party messaging services, as required by the new EU law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The company had earlier shared that engaging with third-party chats would be an opt-in experience for users, given that the […]

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No, Apple’s new and controversial “Core Technology Fee” isn’t going away for EU app developers who opt into the iPhone maker’s new business terms designed to comply with the region’s Digital Markets Act. However, Apple is today announcing a handful of smaller concessions driven by feedback from its app developer community, it says. Notably, the […]

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Reports are coming in that a number of Meta’s top social apps, including Facebook and Instagram, as well as its new app Threads, are all experiencing an outage on Tuesday morning. When loading the apps or websites, users receive an error message that “something went wrong” and to try again later, or, in the case […]

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Streaming music service Deezer is joining Spotify in cheering the European Union’s €1.84 billion fine imposed on Apple for breaking antitrust rules in the streaming music market. However, the company urges the EU Commission to assess Apple’s response to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which it says is “deceptive” and “an attempt to bypass European […]

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