By Mike Scarcella A U.S. judge on Thursday approved Apple Inc's $50 million class-action settlement resolving consumer claims

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has accused the Indian government of putting pressure on the social media company to block accounts critical of the government amid the long-running farmers’ protest in 2021. Mr Dorsey, who was still the platform’s chief at the time before its takeover by Elon Musk, said India placed “many requests” during the months-long farmers protests. “India for example, India is one of the countries which had many requests around farmers protests, around particular journalists which were critical of the government,” the former Twitter chief, who stepped down from the company’s board last year, said in a new interview with the YouTube channel Breaking Points. “It manifested in ways such as ‘we will shut Twitter down in India’… ‘we would raid the homes of your employees’, which they did; ‘we will shut down your offices if you don’t follow suit’. And this is India, a democratic country,” Mr Dorsey said. The protests in 2021 forced the Indian government to repeal laws that would have seen the biggest reforms to Indian agriculture in decades. Farmers drove tractors from agrarian states surrounding Delhi to block traffic on major roads into the capital city. Amid the protests, the Indian government allegedly threatened to punish Twitter employees with fines and jail terms of up to seven years for failing to suspend accounts deemed critical of the Modi administration. It demanded that Twitter block over a thousand accounts, including those tweeting under the hashtag “ModiPlanningFarmerGenocide”, arguing that the phrase was inflammatory. Following this, the social media company made over 250 accounts inaccessible to its India-based users, including that of the investigative news magazine The Caravan. The move was later reversed after a major public outcry. Twitter told the Indian government at the time that it would not comply with the directive to ban some accounts and tweets as they either constituted “free speech” or were “newsworthy”. Mr Dorsey compared India’s behaviour to that of Turkey. “We had so many requests from Turkey. We fought Turkey in their in their courts and often won but they threatened to shut us down constantly,” he said. Indian IT minister Rajeev Chandrashekar rejected the former Twitter chief’s claims that the Modi government put pressure on the social media company, calling it “an outright lie,” and “an attempt to brush out that very dubious period of Twitter’s history.” “Twitter under Dorsey and his team were in repeated [and] continuous violations of India law. As a matter of fact they were in non-compliance with law repeatedly from 2020 to 2022 and it was only June 2022 when they finally complied,” Mr Chandrashekar said. The minister alleged that Twitter had a problem accepting the “sovereignty of India law,” and behaved “as if the laws of India did not apply to it”. “No one went to jail nor was Twitter ‘shut down’ ... India as a sovereign nation has the right to ensure that its laws are followed by all companies operating in India,” Mr Chandhrashekar said. “During the protests in January 2021, there was a lot of misinformation and even reports of genocide which were definitely fake,” the minister said, adding that the Indian government “was obligated to remove” them from the platform as it had the potential to “further inflame the situation based on fake news”. Mr Dorsey also commented on Twitter’s regime under Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk, calling some of his moves “fairly reckless”. After taking over Twitter in October, Mr Musk proceeded to cut costs at the company and slash over three quarters of the firm’s workforce. “I think it set up a dynamic where he had to be very hasty, he had to be impatient, and he had to move as quickly as possible with features even if they weren’t fully thought out... It all looked fairly reckless,” Mr Dorsey said. Read More Twitter’s new chief echoes Elon Musk’s goal in first memo to employees Put ‘public good’ at heart of AI and new tech, Starmer to say Elon Musk is hilariously shut down by his ‘favourite’ podcast Bluesky, championed by Jack Dorsey, was supposed to be Twitter 2.0. Can it succeed? Jack Dorsey endorses Robert F Kennedy Jr for president Jack Dorsey says Twitter ‘went south’ after company’s sale to Elon Musk

By Satoshi Sugiyama and Chris Gallagher YOKOHAMA, Japan Tokyo-based start-up Tsubame Industries has developed a 4.5-metre-tall (14.8-feet), four-wheeled

By Blake Brittain (Reuters) -Alphabet Inc's Google must pay $32.5 million in damages for infringing one of smart-speaker maker Sonos

TL;DR: The 2023 Complete Secure Software Development Bundle is on sale for £16.15, saving you

Meta Platforms said on Friday a policy that was put in place to curb the spread of misinformation

Leaks suggest a Loba Prestige skin is coming to Apex Legends in the near future, possibly as early as Season 19 in November 2023.

Not long after being embroiled in controversy himself over a video in which he helped 1,000 people “hear for the first time”, MrBeast - real name Jimmy Donaldson – has waded into the outcry over the latest divisive policy decision from the streaming platform Twitch. On Tuesday, the company updated its policy around branded and sponsored content, in which it set the incredibly specific limit of no more than three per cent of a screen size featuring a brand’s logo or overlay. A ban on ‘burned-in’ adverts embedded into streams is another rule which will come into effect on 1 July. Twitch was already facing a significant backlash over how it splits payments for channel subscriptions, which is currently 50/50, as well as its decision to charge a $25 maintenance fee to terminate an affiliate contract. Given just how limiting three per cent is as a percentage, and in terms of screen size, many Twitch streamers voiced their frustration with the planned change, mocking how the site would even enforce such a policy and how they would avoid going over the threshold: Eventually, Twitch issued a statement on Twitter, in which the organisation admitted the updated policy was “overly broad” and “created confusion and frustration”. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter It reads: “We do not intend to limit streamers’ ability to enter into direct relationships with sponsors, and we understand that this is an important part of how streamers earn revenue. “We wanted to clarify our existing ads policy that was intended to prohibit third party ad networks from selling burned in video and display ads on Twitch, which is consistent with other services. “We missed the mark with the policy language and will rewrite the guidelines to be clearer. Thank you for sharing your concerns, and we appreciate the feedback. We’ll notify the community once we have updated the language.” YouTuber and streamer Sean “Jacksepticeye” McLoughlin and rival streaming service Kick were among those who criticised the climbdown: And speaking of Kick – the platform on which Drake streamed himself getting a card declined – this is where MrBeast comes in, as a Twitter account promoting streams on Kick noticed the 158m subscriber strong YouTuber had followed them. Donaldson replied: “Might do a stream for fun just to protest Twitch lol.” Even Elon Musk, of all people, was on board with the idea, simply tweeting Donaldson to say “great!” In a separate tweet – since deleted – MrBeast wrote: “This is the funniest thing I’ve seen all year. I’m not even a Twitch streamer and now I want to stream on a competitor now [sic] just to spite them for you guys lol. “If YouTube pulled this s*** I’d lose my mind.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

It's the end of an era, at least for Mac gamers. On Feb. 15, 2024,

In today's connected world, you must leverage social media tools, such as Facebook and Twitter,

SEOUL, South Korea--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 21, 2023--

ALAMEDA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 19, 2023--