Crypto exchange OKX is ceasing services for users in India, it said in an email to customers Thursday, advising them to withdraw their funds by April-end.
The move follows Apple and Google pulling the eponymous app of OKX in the country after an Indian government agency said many crypto exchanges were operating illegally in the South Asian market.
Financial Intelligence Unit, the government agency, named Binance, Kraken, Huobi and Gate.io among apps operating “illegally” in India but hadn’t named OKX in its public statement.
OKX has advised customers in India to close all their active margin positions and withdraw all funds by April 30.
While India-based crypto exchanges continued to require rigorous know-your-customer verifications before onboarding new users, the same hasn’t been true of many global platforms.
Remember when you would “poke” your friends on Facebook to get their attention, annoy them or just start a poke war?
Well, Facebook is trying to bring back that experience with some small updates to the poking feature.
Plus, Facebook added the ability to poke a friend when you search for them on the social network.
Facebook says these small changes have led to a 13x spike in poking in the past month.
Facebook never defined what the idea behind poking was, and left it up to users’ interpretation, with some choosing to use it a way to flirt.
Europe eyes LinkedIn’s use of data for ads in another DSA askMicrosoft-owned professional social network, LinkedIn, is the latest to get a formal request for information (RFI) from the EU.
Of specific concern is whether LinkedIn is breaching the DSA’s prohibition on larger platforms’ use of sensitive data for ad targeting.
Profiling based on such data to target ads is banned under the law.
The DSA also empowers the EU to impose fines for incorrect, incomplete, or misleading information in response to an RFI.
LinkedIn isn’t the only platform to be in the EU’s spotlight when it comes to use of data for ads.
The eight platforms are designated as very large online platforms (VLOPs) under the regulation — meaning they’re required to assess and mitigate systemic risks, in addition to complying with the bulk of the rules.
These will test platforms’ readiness to deal with generative AI risks such as the possibility of a flood of political deepfakes ahead of the June European Parliament elections.
It’s recently been consulting on election security rules for VLOPs, as it works on producing formal guidance.
Which is why it’s dialling up attention on major platforms with the scale to disseminate political deepfakes widely.
The Commission’s RFIs today also aim to address a broader spectrum of generative AI risks than voter manipulation — such as harms related to deepfake porn or other types of malicious synthetic content generation, whether the content produced is imagery/video or audio.
The European Union has opened its third formal investigation of a very large platform under the Digital Services Act (DSA), with China’s AliExpress earning itself the dubious honor of being the first online marketplace to face formal probe by the Commission.
Social media platforms X and TikTok are the two other very large online platforms (VLOPs) already under formal DSA investigation (since December and February, respectively).
They said it will also look into transparency and safety concerns related to influencers’ use of AliExpress.
It said it will also investigate how the influencer affiliate program is implemented to verify whether it complies with DSA transparency rules.
There’s no fixed timeline for the EU to conclude a DSA investigation.
Code suggests that TikTok could be building an app for photosAfter rivaling music streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple music with TikTok Music, ByteDance might be looking at creating an Instagram competitor named TikTok Photos, code found in the TikTok app suggests.
As spotted by The SpAndroid blog, TikTok’s APK file — an installable file format for Android — contains references and icons to a new app named TikTok Photos.
“Whether you’re a world traveler, food blogger, or simply enjoy sharing what’s going on in your life, TikTok Photos is our all-new photo-sharing platform dedicated to helping creators like you reach other like-minded people,” the description reads.
“TikTok Photos is our all-new photo-sharing platform where we’ve made it easier to enjoy and discover photo posts.”The APK also has a representative icon of the potential TikTok Photos service in old TikTok colors.
Through this update, users could already add photo posts to the network, but the company could be working on a separate platform to make photos stand out.
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This week, Roku played hardball with its customers, requiring them to consent to new dispute resolution terms.
And Elon Musk, the CEO of X, sued OpenAI over allegedly “betraying” its nonprofit mission.
NewsEpic takedown: Apple has terminated Epic Games’ App Store developer account, reportedly calling it a “threat” to the iOS ecosystem.
Musk money: Four former Twitter executives, including ex-CEO Parag Agrawal, sued Musk on Monday, alleging that they’re owed over $128 million in severance payments.
Several social media websites are experiencing outages on Tuesday morning.
YouTube confirmed that some users are having trouble loading videos on the platform; meanwhile, platforms like Discord and Meta’s Threads, Facebook and Instagram are down as well.
YouTube also shared an update on its X account, which links to the support page.
thanks to everyone who sent notes about loading issues with YouTube: we're on it!
🔍 will follow up here once things are back to normal, you can also follow our Help Community post for details ➡️ https://t.co/4Ezmtku3Em — TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) March 5, 2024The root cause of these widespread outages remains unclear.
Some cryptocurrency exchanges in Nigeria faced accessibility issues for users, prompting speculation of imposed restrictions on crypto sites, the Financial Times reported.
On Wednesday, local media reported that Nigeria’s telecom regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), received instructions from the country’s apex bank to suspend access to crypto websites, including Binance, Coinbase and Kraken.
According to Bloomberg, a presidential spokesman confirmed Nigeria’s issuance of a directive instructing telecoms and internet service providers to block access to cryptocurrency trading platforms.
Only users attempting to access the website are impacted, although the app is currently available,” Binance stated.
While several Binance users in Nigeria reported difficulties accessing the site in the early hours of Thursday, it appears that the directive to restrict access has been temporarily halted, as these cryptocurrency trading platforms, including Kraken and Coinbase, are currently accessible.
The European Union is formally investigating TikTok’s compliance with the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), the Commission has announced.
Although the EU’s concerns over TikTok’s approach to content governance and safety predate the DSA coming into force on larger platforms.
Commenting in a statement, Margrethe Vestager, EVP for digital, said:The safety and well-being of online users in Europe is crucial.
The EU may also accept commitments offered by a platform under investigation if they are aimed at fixing the issues identified.
In TikTok’s case the platform informed the bloc last year that it had 135.9M monthly active users in the EU.
