The race to build the next big large language model is on, and now a contender out of China has reportedly banked a major round of funding to catapult it to the front of the pack. Moonshot AI, an artificial intelligence startup founded less than a year ago building LLMs that can handle long inputs […]

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U.S. lawmakers have written a letter to TikTok questioning its independence from its Chinese parent company ByteDance, in the wake of a recent report from The Wall St. Journal that noted that several high-level executives had been transferred from ByteDance to TikTok, where they took on top roles across the organization. The report noted the […]

TikTok appears to be working on an integration with Lemon8, another social app owned by TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, according to new findings from product intelligence firm Watchful.ai. The apparent new partnership sees TikTok developing a feature that would allow users to sync their Lemon8 posts to TikTok, then add sounds and music to the posts using TikTok’s editor.

Watchful could not provide screenshots of the feature in question, but notes that its methodology uses a combination of computer vision, machine learning algorithms, and flow analysis of publicly available data to identify and emulate app changes. That allows Watchful to discover features before they launch publicly, as it has done many times before. Most recently,  it uncovered TikTok features in development like the AI chatbot Tako, a dedicated Shop feed, video stickers, and more.

TikTok did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the matter.

Lemon8, as you may recall, rapidly rose up the App Store charts earlier this year around the same time that U.S. lawmakers were discussing moving forward with a TikTok ban or forced sale. The app, a lifestyle social network, had originally launched in arch 2020 but was artificially inflated on TikTok this spring.

With suspicious timing, the app “went viral” on TikTok’s video platform after numerous influencers posted positive videos promoting Lemon8 using similar language describing it as a mix of Pinterest and Instagram. None of the videos we came across at the time indicated they were sponsored content or ads. This forced popularity, in turn, pushed Lemon8 into the Top 10 Overall apps in the U.S. App Store for several days in March 2023.

Ahead of this, Insider reported that ByteDance had been paying creators to post about Lemon8 on TikTok to seed its initial U.S. user base and content.

From the looks of things, it seemed that ByteDance’s hope was that Lemon8 could serve as something of a backup plan to gain U.S. users’ engagement and attention in the event of a full TikTok ban.

If the newly spotted cross-posting feature does, in fact, roll out more publicly, ByteDance would be able to leverage TikTok once again to further gain attention for Lemon8, driving new installs and adoption. However, it’s unclear at this time if or when the cross-pollination feature will launch, or whether it’s only something under consideration for now.

LinkedIn is cutting 716 jobs and will begin phasing out its local jobs app in China. In a letter today, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslanky said the decision to shutter the standalone China app, called InCareer, was because of “fierce competition and a challenging macroeconomic climate.”

While reducing some roles, LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, also plans to open about 250 new jobs in some segments of its operations, and new business and accounting management teams on May 15.

LinkedIn is the latest tech company, ranging in size from Google and Amazon to startups, to announce layoffs. Its parent company, Microsoft, said it was cutting 10,000 jobs, or nearly 5% of its global workforce, in January.

InCareer was launched in December 2021, a couple months after LinkedIn announced it was shutting down its main service in China. At that time, it attributed the decision to shutter LinkedIn China to “a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements.”

InCareer was meant to help professionals within China network, find and apply for jobs, but it was up against competitors like Maimai, the dominant professional networking site in the country with over 120 million users, according to its website. Maimai’s advantages include the ability to share posts anonymously, which makes it a popular destination for workers seeking to vent or find information about their companies.

LinkedIn plans to finish phasing out InCareer by August 9, while shifting its China strategy to help companies operating in China hire, market and train abroad. This means it will continue to have Talent, Marketing and Learning businesses in China.

Laid off employees who are covered by U.S. benefits will get severance pay, continuing health coverage and career transition services, while employees outside the U.S. will get benefits that align with local labor laws and practices.

The layoffs and InCareer’s phasing out are part of changes that LinkedIn is making to its Global Business Organization (GBO) and China strategy. As part of that, LinkedIn is sunsetting its Business Productivity team. It also plans to reduce management roles and use more vendors to “serve emerging and growth markets more effectively.”

Roslansky said he expects fiscal year 2024 to “remain challenging. “We’re adapting as we have done this year and will continue to operate with the ambition we need to deliver on our vision and the pragmatism required to run the business well,” he wrote.

As part of Microsoft’s latest quarterly earnings report, issued in April, LinkedIn reported a 8% increase in revenue year-over-year. In the report previous to that one, Microsoft warned it expected revenue growth to slow to the mid-single digits in the third quarter, due to a slowdown in hiring and advertising spending.

LinkedIn cuts 716 jobs as it phases out its China app by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Amid questioning about TikTok’s use of biometrics in today’s Congressional hearing, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew offered some insight into how the company vets potentially underage users on its platform. After denying the app collects body, face, or voice data to identify its users — beyond what’s needed for its in-app AR filters to function, that is — the exec was asked how TikTok determines the age of its users.

Chew’s initial answer was expected: the app uses age gating. This refers to the commonly used method that simply asks a user to provide their birthdate in order to determine their age. In TikTok, there are three different experiences for under-13 users, younger teens, and adults 18 and up, and which experience the user receives is based on this age input.

Relying on this method alone is a problem, of course, because kids often lie about their age when signing up for social media apps and websites.

As it turns out, TikTok is doing more than looking at the age that’s entered into a text box.

In the hearing, Chew added that TikTok scans users’ videos to determine their age.

“We have also developed some tools where we look at their public profile, to go through the videos that they post to see whether…,” Chew began, before being interrupted by Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA), who interjected, “that’s creepy. Tell me more about that.”

When Chew was able to continue, he explained “It’s public. So if you post a video, you choose that video to go public — that’s how you get people to see your video. We look at those to see if it matches up the age that you talked about it,” he said.

“Now, this is a real challenge for our industry because privacy versus age assurance is a really big problem,” Chew said.

An interesting follow-up question to the CEO’s response would have been to ask how TikTok was scanning these videos, what specific facial recognition or other technologies it uses, and whether those technologies were built in-house or if it was relying on facial recognition tech built by third parties. Then, of course, whether any of the data that associates the age with the user was being stored permanently, rather than being used to simply boot the user off a TikTok LIVE stream, for example.

Unfortunately for us, Carter didn’t pursue this line of questioning.

Instead, he blasted the CEO for dismissing age verification as an industry-wide issue.

“We’re talking about children dying!,” he exclaimed, referencing the dangerous challenges apps like TikTok and others have allowed to viral, like the blackout challenge. (That challenge resulted in TikTok removing some half a million accounts in Italy to block underage users from its platform, at the request of the local regulator, in fact.)

The reality is that age verification is an industry-wide concern and the lack of U.S. laws around children’s use of social media leaves companies like TikTok and others to develop their own processes.

For example, Instagram began verifying users’ ages just last year by offering users a choice of three options. Users could either upload an ID, record a video selfie or ask mutual friends to verify their age on their behalf. The latter is relatively easy to bypass if you have good friends willing to lie for you.

Earlier this month, Instagram rolled out its age verification tools in Canada and Mexico, in addition to the existing support in the U.S. Brazil, and Japan. The company had earlier said it had partnered with London-based digital identity startup Yoti for the video selfie part of the age verification process.

Instagram has also previously explained at a high level how it identifies which users it suspects to be underage.

Beyond investigating flagged accounts, the company claims it developed AI technology that it uses to infer someone’s age. Its model has an understanding of how people in the same age group tend to interact with content. And another one of the ways it may identify an underage user who’s lying about their age is by scanning the comments on “Happy Birthday” posts where a user’s age may be referenced. Plus, Instagram said it may try to match a user’s age on Facebook with their stated age on Instagram, along with the use of “many other signals” which it doesn’t disclose.

TikTok’s technique has been less clear. The company does document how to verify your age if it identified you incorrectly — for example, if you were kicked off LIVE for looking too young. (Last fall TikTok announced it was raising the age requirement for using its in-app livestreaming service, TikTok LIVE to 18, up from 16).

Last year, Bloomberg reported that TikTok met with two providers of facial age-estimation software in 2021. Both companies offered software that could tell the difference between children and adults, but a TikTok exec nixed the deals over fears that facial scanning like this would lead to fears that China was spying on child users, the report had said.

Today, the U.S. had the TikTok CEO in the hot seat, poised to explain the actual techniques TikTok uses for age determination, and all we got were screaming, blustering politicians putting on a show instead of getting real answers.

TikTok CEO says company scans public videos to determine users’ ages by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

In hopes of heading off concerns over the addictiveness of its app, TikTok earlier this month rolled out new screen time controls that limited minors under the age of 18 to 60-minute daily screen time limits. But in a Congressional hearing today before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, TikTik CEO Shou Zi Chew was questioned on the new tool’s inefficiency, forcing the exec to admit that the company didn’t have data on how many teens were continuing to watch beyond the default limits.

The line of questioning is notable because TikTok’s algorithm and vertical video-based feed are among the most addictive products to emerge from the broader tech industry in recent years. Each swipe on the app’s screen delivers a new and interesting video personalized to the user’s interests, leading users to waste an inordinate amount of time on TikTok compared with older social media services.

In fact, a recent study found that TikTok was now even crushing YouTube in terms of kids’ and teens’ app usage in markets around the world thanks, in part, to its addictive feed.

The format has become so popular, it’s also since been adopted by nearly all other major U.S. tech companies, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Snap. So an examination of any sort of addiction mitigation techniques is certainly warranted.

That said, the time limit TikTok designed for teens is really more for show — it doesn’t actually prevent younger users from watching TikTok.

A hard limit on TikTok viewing is still up to the teen’s parents, who would have to use the app’s included parental controls to set screen time and session limits. Otherwise, they could turn to other parental controls bundled with the mobile OS from Apple or Google or those from third parties.

In the hearing, Chew touted how TikTok was the first to launch a 60-minute watch limit for teen users, and had other teen protections, like disabled direct messaging for users under 16. He noted also that teen content couldn’t go viral on the app’s For You page, if the creator was under 18.

However, when pushed on the teen time limit’s real-world impact, the exec didn’t have any substantial data to share.

“My understanding is that teens can pretty easily bypass the notification to continue using the app if they want to,” suggested Representative John Sarbanes (D-Md.). “I mean, let’s face it, our teens are smarter than we are by half and they know how to use technology and they can get around these limits if they want to,” he said.

Sarbanes is correct. There’s really nothing to bypassing the feature — it only takes a tap of a button before you’re returned back to the feed when your time limit is up. A more effective mitigation technique would actually force a teen user to take a break from the app entirely. This could better disrupt the dopamine-fueled addiction cycle by requiring a short time-out where they’d be forced to find something else to do than continue to scroll more videos.

When asked if TikTok was measuring how many teens were still exceeding the 60-minute time limit after the new feature was added, Chew didn’t know and didn’t share any sort of guess, either. Instead, he avoided a direct answer.

“We understand those concerns,” the TikTok CEO responded. “Our intention is to have the teens and their parents have these conversations about what is the appropriate amount of time for social media,” he added, noting that the app offered a Family Pairing feature that does enforce a real screen time limit.

In other words, TikTok doesn’t think real teen protections are up for it to decide. To be fair, neither do any U.S.-based social media companies. They want parents to shoulder the responsibility.

This answer, however, showcases how a lack of U.S. regulation over these platforms is allowing the cycle of app addiction to continue. If lawmakers won’t create rules to protect kids from algorithms that tap into human psychology to keep them scrolling, then it really will be up to parents to figure step in. And many do not know or understand how parental controls work.

Sarbanes asked TikTok to follow up by providing the Congressional committee with research on how the time limits were implemented, how they’re being bypassed, and the measures TikTok is taking to address these sorts of issues.

In a further line of questioning, this time from Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), TikTok’s addictive nature of the app and the dangerous stunts and challenges it showcased were suggested to be “psychological warfare…to deliberately influence U.S. children.” While that may be a bit of a leap, it’s worth noting that when Carter asked if the Chinese version of TikTok (Douyin) had the same “challenges” as TikTok Chew also admitted he didn’t know.

“This is an industry challenge for all of us,” he said.

The TikTok CEO later reiterated how kids’ use of its app is ultimately up to parents. When responding to questions about the appropriate age for TikTok use, he noted there were three different experiences aimed at different age groups — one for under-13 year-olds, another for younger teens, and another for adults. As an interesting side note, where Chew is based in Singapore, there’s no under-13 experience available, meaning his own kids are not on TikTok. 

“Our approach is to give differentiated experiences for different age groups — and that the parents have these conversations with their children to decide what’s best for their family,” Chew said.

TikTok questioned on ineffective teen time limits in Congressional hearing by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

In his testimony before the U.S. Congress this morning, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said the company plans to delete all U.S. user data from company servers by year-end. The commitment was shared as part of Chew’s opening statements, which detailed the company’s initiative known as Project Texas. The plan involves the relocation of U.S. user data to Oracle servers based in the U.S. where the data would then be overseen by American personnel.

The plan is one part of TikTok’s larger agenda to stop the popular video entertainment app from being banned by the U.S. government over national security concerns. The company also aims to convince Congress that it has a number of protections included in its app designed to keep younger users safe, and is heavily relied on by both U.S.-based creators and small businesses to generate income, among other things.

With Project Texas, however, TikTok’s mission is focused on what Chew referred to as a “firewall” that would seal off protected U.S. user data from unauthorized foreign access — meaning, of course, the CCP.  In a bit of good branding, the name “Texas” refers to where Oracle is headquartered.

TikTok’s general plans for Project Texas were already known — the company last June wrote to Republican senators to assure them how it was working on an initiative to bolster data security for U.S.-based users. The letter was written in response to earlier Congressional outreach that had followed a report from BuzzFeed News that claimed some China-based employees had access to TikTok U.S. user data. In TikTok’s response, it explained how it intended to relocate and safeguard the data. However, the letter did not then commit to a timeframe for the data’s relocation.

In the testimony this morning, Chew gave TikTok a deadline for that move, noting the company expected to delete data from its own servers this year.

“Today, U.S. TikTok data is stored by default in Oracle’s service,” Chew said. “Only vetted personnel operating in a new company called TikTok U.S. Data Security can control access to this data. Now additionally, we have plans for this company to report to an independent American board with strong security credentials. Now there’s still some work to do,” he continued. “We have legacy U.S. data sitting in our servers in Virginia and in Singapore. We’re deleting those we expect that to be complete this year,” he said.

“When that is done, all protected U.S. data will be under the protection of U.S. law and under the control of the U.S.-led security team. This eliminates the concern that some of you have shared with me that TikTok user data can be subject to Chinese law,” Chew added.

The exec was later questioned on other aspects of its data security, including whether or not it would commit to not selling U.S. user data to anyone. Here, Chew couldn’t provide a straightforward answer. After initially responding that TikTok wouldn’t sell to data brokers, he said he would have “get back to you” on the details around whether or not it sold data to anyone, after being pushed to answer more directly.

In addition, the CEO couldn’t clarify if Project Texas would completely separate TikTok from its Chinese parent, as there could be technologies that were interconnected.

Plus, when questioned about whether or not any employees in China would have access to U.S. data, the exec responded, “After Project Texas, the answer is no” — an answer that begs the question as to how many Chinese employees could access the data now.

 

In Congressional hearing, TikTok commits to deleting U.S. user data from its servers ‘this year’ by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

TikTok today is announcing several changes to its service, including what it claims will be increased enforcement against bad actors as well as tests of new user-facing tools that will force a refresh of the app’s main algorithmic feed, known as the For You feed. The company said the changes are focused on keeping the platform both safe and entertaining for its users and creators alike.

While all major social media companies have content guidelines, their enforcement varies. As is often the case, people who violate the rules and are subject to takedowns of their content or bans, don’t always learn from their mistakes — they just become repeat violators. Today, TikTok’s enforcement system includes a variety of penalties, like temporary bans on posting or commenting, designed to reduce harmful content on the platform.

However, admits TikTok’s Global Head of Product Policy, Julie de Bailliencourt, in an announcement, creators complain that the current system can be confusing to navigate — especially if they don’t typically break TikTok’s rules or have unknowingly violated policy, and aren’t sure why they’ve been penalized. What’s more, this system is not efficient at deterring repeat violators, the exec explained

“Repeat violators tend to follow a pattern – our analysis has found that almost 90% violate using the same feature consistently, and over 75% violate the same policy category repeatedly,” de Bailliencourt wrote.

As a result, TikTok will move instead to a strike system, similar to YouTube. In all but the most severe cases, creators will accrue strikes as their content is removed. If they then reach a threshold of strikes within either a product feature (like comments or TikTok LIVE), or policy (like bullying or harassment), they will be permanently banned. The company said the threshold will vary depending on the violation and its potential to harm community members. It said, for instance, there may be a lower threshold for violating hateful content policies than there would be for posting low-harm spam.

TikTok will still issue permanent bans for severe violations, like videos that are “promoting or threatening violence, showing or facilitating child sexual abuse material (CSAM), or showing real-world violence or torture,” the post said.

The accumulated strikes will expire from an account’s record after 90 days, but accounts that “accrue a high number of cumulative strikes across policies and features” will be permanently banned. TikTok did not detail what a “high number” would be, nor did it share more information about what the thresholds are in the various areas. That could potentially cause more confusion among creators as they try to reverse engineer the system based on which accounts received strikes and why.

Creators will soon be able to track their own strikes and their account’s standing in the app, TikTok said, through an update to the Safety Center for creators. Here, they can view their own status and the status of the reports they’ve made on other videos or accounts. They’ll also be able to appeal strikes from this Safety Center if they feel they were given out in error. If the creator is close to a permanent ban, TikTok will notify them.

Related to this, the company said it will also begin to test a new feature in select markets that will inform creators which videos of theirs have been marked as ineligible for recommendation to users’ For You feeds, and why.

For end users, however, another new test may be more interesting.

Soon, TikTok will allow some users to tap a new “Refresh” button to receive an updated set of For You feed recommendations. Though TikTok’s feed is highly personalized and fairly addictive, many complain the content becomes stale as it doesn’t add enough variety after some time. With the new refresh button, which will be available in account settings, users will be able to force the app to bring “new, diversified content not based on previous activity or interactions” to their For You feed.

After hitting the button, users will then begin to see content that’s based on their new interactions, a TikTok spokesperson told TechCrunch. In addition to providing a refreshed feed, the company noted that the feature could serve as a way to support potentially vulnerable users who want to distance themselves from their current content experience.

The changes to TikTok’s policies and product come on the heels of increased concern over the app’s ties to China and the risks it poses. Across the U.S., TikTok has been banned on government devices after executive orders from governors prohibited the app. Several universities have banned the app on their Wi-Fi networks as well. And the Biden administration banned TikTok from government devices in a bill signed at the end of December. In response, TikTok has been taking meetings with officials, think tanks, and public interest groups in Washington, The New York Times reported, and this week invited media to tour its Transparency and Accountability Center in L.A.

Amid the increasing calls for a nationwide ban in the U.S., TikTok has been working to convince the public of its platform safety and rolling out new transparency tools that inform users why videos were recommended or allow them to filter out specific content. However, with every new announcement, there comes a bit of bad press, too. For instance, it was revealed last month the company had a secret heating button to make videos go viral, and just before that, Forbes reported TikTok had spied on its journalists. These reveals have tarnished the company’s image further at a time when it’s trying to increase trust.

TikTok says the refresh button will roll out in the “coming days” while the policy update is currently rolling out globally and users will be notified as it’s available to them.

TikTok introduces a strike system for violations, tests a feature to “refresh” the For You feed by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Temu, a shopping app from Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo, is having quite the run as the No. 1 app on the U.S. app stores. The mobile shopping app hit the top spot on the U.S. App Store in September and has continued to hold a highly-ranked position in the months that followed, including as the No. 1 free app on Google Play since December 29, 2022. More recently, Temu again snagged the No. 1 position again on the iOS App Store on January 3 and hasn’t dropped since — even outpacing competitor Shein’s daily installs in the U.S.

Offering cheap factory-to-consumer goods, Temu provides access to a wide range of products, including fast fashion, and pushes users to share the app with friends in exchange for free products, which may account for some of its growth. However, the large majority of its new installs come from Temu’s marketing spend, it seems.

When TechCrunch covered Temu’s rise in November, the app had then seen a little more than 5 million installs in the U.S., according to data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower, making the U.S. its largest market. Now, the firm says the app has seen 5 million U.S. installs this January alone, up 19% from 4.2 million in the prior 22 days from December 10 through December 31.

According to Sensor Tower estimates, Temu has managed to achieve a total of 19 million lifetime installs across the U.S. App Store and Google Play, more than 18 million of which came from the U.S.

The growth now sees Temu outpacing rival Shein in terms of daily installs. In October, Temu was averaging around 43,000 daily installs in the U.S., the firm said, while Shein averaged about 62,000. In November, Temu’s average daily installs grew to 185,000 while Shein’s climbed to 70,000 and last month, Temu averaged 187,000 installs while Shein saw about 62,000.

The shopping app’s fast rise recalls how the video entertainment platform TikTok grew to become the most downloaded app worldwide in 2021, after years of outsized growth. The video app topped 2 billion lifetime downloads by 2020, including sister app Douyin in China, Sensor Tower said. Combined, the TikTok apps have now reached 4.1 billion installs.

Like Temu, much of TikTok’s early growth was driven by marketing spend. The video app grew its footprint in the U.S. and abroad by heavily leveraging Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat’s own ad platforms to acquire its customers. TikTok was famously said to have spent $1 billion on ads in 2018, even becoming Snap’s biggest advertiser that year, for instance.

By investing in user acquisition upfront, TikTok was able to gain a following which then improved its ability to personalize its For You feed with recommendations. Over time, this algorithm became very good at recognizing what videos would attract the most interest thanks to this investment, turning TikTok into one of the most addictive apps in terms of time spent. As of 2020, kids and teens began spending more time watching TikTok than they did on YouTube. And earlier this month, Insider Intelligence data indicated all TikTok users in the U.S. were now spending an average of nearly 1 hour per day on the app (55.8 minutes), compared with just 47.5 minutes on YouTube, including YouTube TV.

While Temu is nowhere near TikTok’s sky-high figures, it appears to be leveraging a similar growth strategy. The company is heavily investing in advertising to acquire users, which it uses to personalize the shopping experience. One of Temu’s key features, in fact, is its own sort of For You page that encourages users to browse trending items “Selected for You.” In addition to gamification elements, Temu also puts heavy emphasis on recommending shops and products on its home page, which is informed by its user data.

But the app’s growth doesn’t seem to be driven by social media. While the Temu hashtag (#temu) on TikTok is nearing 250 million views, that’s not really a remarkable number for an app as big as TikTok where something like #dogs has 120.5 billion views. (Or, for a more direct comparison, #shein has 48.3 billion views.) That suggests Temu’s rise isn’t necessarily powered by viral videos among Gen Z users or influencer marketing, but rather more traditional digital advertising.

According to Meta’s ad library, for instance, Temu has run some 8,800 ads across Meta’s various platforms just this month. The ads promote Temu’s sales and its extremely discounted items, like $5 necklaces, $4 shirts, and $13 shoes, among other deals. These ads appear to be working to boost Temu’s installs, allowing the app to maintain its No. 1 slot on the App Store’s “Top Free” charts, which are heavily influenced by the number of downloads and download velocity, among other things.

Of course, having a high number of downloads doesn’t necessarily mean Temu’s app will maintain a high number of monthly active users. Nor does it mean those users won’t churn out of the app after their initial curiosity has been abated. Still, Temu’s download growth saw it ranking as the No. 1 “Breakout” shopping app by downloads in the U.S. for 2022, according to data.ai’s year-end “State of Mobile” report. (Data.ai calculates “Breakout” apps in terms of year-over-year growth across iOS and Google Play.)

Because Temu’s growth is more recent, the app did not earn a position on the Top 10 apps in 2022 in either the U.S. or globally in terms of downloads, consumer spend, or monthly active users, on this report. Instead, most of those spots still went to social media apps, streamers, and dating apps like Bumble and Tinder. The only retailer to find a spot on these lists was Amazon, which was the No. 7 app worldwide by active users and the No. 8 most downloaded in the U.S.

Temu’s marketing investment may not pay off as well as TikTok’s did, though, as other discount shopping apps saw similar growth only to later fail as consumers found that, actually, $2 shirts and jeans were deals that were too good to be true. Wish famously fumbled as consumers grew frustrated with long delivery times, fake listings, missing orders, poor customer service, and other things consumers expect from online retail in the age of Amazon.

Temu today holds a 4.7-star rating on the U.S. App Store, but those ratings have become less trustworthy over the years due to the ease with which companies can get away with fake reviews. Dig into the reviews further and you’ll find similar complaints to Wish, including scammy listings, damaged and delayed deliveries, incorrect orders and lack of customer service. Without addressing these issues, Temu seems more likely to go the way of Wish, not TikTok, no matter what it spends.

 

Shopping app Temu is using TikTok’s strategy to keep its No. 1 spot on App Store by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

As China looks to reignite growth, what role will its technology industry play? And is there enough capital flowing to support a new generation of tech startups that could keep China competitive?

It’s not a secret that the Chinese economy slowed in recent quarters, thanks to global macroeconomic turbulence, geopolitical matters and the country’s now-fading zero-COVID policies. The policies, which China’s government is presently dismantling, resulted in frequent lockdowns in the populous nation’s cities, while other precepts of the policy disrupted trade and transit.

The zero-COVID policies worked to limit the spread of the pandemic in the country for some time, but the cost of the policy — in human and economic terms — appears steep today as the nation begins to endure a wave of infections that were perhaps delayed instead of avoided.

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Other factors played into China’s slowing economic growth. The country’s highly leveraged real estate market has taken blows thanks to changing regulations and a history of debt-fueled expansion, the price of which eventually came due. And China’s government cracked down on its domestic tech industry starting in late 2020 with the scuppering of Ant’s then-planned epic fintech IPO.

After Ant was put into the penalty box, a host of other regulations rained down from the Chinese Communist Party’s pen, whacking gaming, e-commerce and edtech, among other technology subsectors. Unsurprisingly, venture capital activity in the country declined.

Can China’s venture capital market help it reignite growth? by Alex Wilhelm originally published on TechCrunch

Apple is clamping down on AirDrop privacy settings for all its users with the iOS 16.2 update, after backlash its recent restrictions impacting the feature’s use in China. In November, reports circulated that Apple had begun limiting the use of AirDrop in China as the country was facing widespread protests over the Chinese government’s “zero Covid” policy. Protesters had been using AirDrop, which leverages Bluetooth Low Energy and peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, to instantly share files with one other while avoiding Chinese censors.

By leaving “Everyone” enabled, protestors and others had been able to easily receive files from anyone else, including those who were not already in their iPhone Contacts.

Users first noticed new restrictions on AirDrop in China had arrived with the release of the iOS 16.1 update. After the update, iOS would revert AirDrop’s privacy settings back to “Contacts Only” after just 10 minutes even if “Everyone” was previously selected. (A user would have to manually select the “Everyone” setting — it was not the default.)

The change rolled out shortly after major media publications, including The New York Times, had reported how Chinese protestors were using AirDrop to send messages denouncing China’s President Xi Jinping as well as to share information about protests and instructions on how to download VPNs to bypass the country’s censors.

Apple, whose ties to China run deep — it’s both a key customer base and a manufacturing base — was called out by some as being complicit in aiding the Communist Party. Others, however, had argued that leaving the feature open to “Everyone” indefinitely had always been a security and privacy risk — and one that should have never been permitted in the first place.

Another news story illustrates the latter problem, in fact — a passenger on a Southwest Airlines flight recently AirDropped a naked photograph to others on the plane. The pilot threatened to ground the plane if it didn’t stop.

Reached for comment over the AirDrop changes in China, the company said only that it was planning to bring the functionality to users globally in the “coming year.” As it turns out, it’s already doing so.

Apple today said the release of iOS 16.2 will now update AirDrop to revert the setting to “Contacts Only” after 10 minutes in order to prevent unwanted requests to receive content. The update was released today into beta and will be rolling out to all supported devices in the near future.

Apple changes AirDrop security for all with iOS 16.2 after backlash over restrictions in China by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch

Hello and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

It is the first Monday of December, so this show is getting into the holiday spirit. And by that, we mean thinking far too much about the geopolitical-technological landscape, naturally.

Here’s what we got into on our Monday episode!

• Stocks in China are ripping higher on news that its drastic COVID-related policies could be starting to ease. It’s a long way from a reopening, but after years of hard-edged lockdowns, Chinese tech companies are breathing a sigh of relief — at least in valuation terms. Shares are down in Europe and the United States.
• How much are Chinese equities rallying? Bilibili is in the lead, up around 16% in pre-market trading. The day’s gains won’t cover all prior losses, but for the nation’s beleaguered tech industry, the valuation gains are beyond welcome news.
• And sticking to the good news vibe, the fact that the U.S. central bank may slow the pace at which it raises interest rates could provide some useful tailwinds to tech companies.
• The Circle SPAC deal is off.
• Giraffe360 raised new capital, which surprised us, given our perspective on the housing market.
• And we closed with notes on ChatGPT, the thing that everyone on Twitter cannot stop playing with.

Is this what good news feels like? by Alex Wilhelm originally published on TechCrunch