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Its elimination had led to increased concerns about the well-being of vulnerable users on Twitter. Eirliani Abdul Rahman, who had been on a recently dissolved Twitter content advisory group, said the disappearance of #ThereIsHelp was "extremely disconcerting and profoundly disturbing." AIDS United said a webpage that the Twitter feature linked to attracted about 70 views a day until Dec. 18. In one of its blog posts about the feature, Twitter had said it had responsibility to ensure users could "access and receive support on our service when they need it most." Musk has said he wants to combat child sexual abuse content on Twitter and has criticized the previous ownership's handling of the issue.

Huawei, known for its telecoms equipment and smartphones, signed or renewed over 20 patent licensing deals this year, said Steven Geiszler, the company's U.S. chief intellectual property counsel. "By getting a return on our R&D investment, it allows us to re-invest and re-invent," Geiszler said, referring to research and development. Huawei generated about $1.2 billion globally from licenses over the three years ended 2021, or roughly hundreds of millions of dollars annually, Geiszler said. Its full-year sales figures for 2022 will not be tallied until next year, and the licensing unit's profits or losses are not accounted for independently, he said. As publicly disclosed technology, the patents are not subject to the U.S. restrictions, Geiszler said.

Sinead McSweeney, global vice president for public policy, has left Twitter, according to two sources. The layoffs and departures of a high-ranking leader comes as regulators around the globe question Twitter's content moderation work and protection of user data after Musk cut the staff from more than 7,000 to under 2,000. The public policy team is responsible for interacting with lawmakers and civil society on issues including free speech, privacy and online safety. Nick Pickles, senior director for global public policy strategy, has taken over McSweeney's role, the two sources said. One source told Reuters that half of the 30 remaining members of Twitter's public policy team were cut on Wednesday, implying 15 people were laid off.

OAKLAND, Calif., Dec 19 (Reuters) - Mark Zuckerberg considered saying in a 2017 speech that Facebook was looking into "organizations like Cambridge Analytica," according to details from a deposition of him by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Zuckerberg in the deposition also acknowledges asking colleagues in January 2017 to assess Cambridge's claims about its influence in elections. Media reports in March 2018 suggested that Cambridge kept leveraging Facebook data, prompting government investigations related to data protection practices that Facebook settled in the United States for at least $5.1 billion. In the draft obtained by the SEC, Zuckerberg proposed saying: "We are already looking into foreign actors including Russian intelligence, actors in other former Soviet states and organizations like Cambridge Analytica." Zamaan Qureshi, policy advisor for consumer advocacy group The Real Facebook Oversight Board, said the deposition should increase users' doubts of Meta.

Some 19 of the 50 U.S. states have now at least partially blocked access on government computers to TikTok, which is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd. Jamf Holding Corp (JAMF.O), which sells software to organizations to enable filtering and security measures on iPhones and other Apple (AAPL.O) devices, said its government customers have increasingly blocked access to TikTok since the middle of this year. TikTok on Monday reiterated a statement, saying the company was "disappointed that so many states are jumping on the political bandwagon to enact policies based on unfounded falsehoods about TikTok that will do nothing to advance the national security of the United States." West Virginia State Auditor JB McCuskey said he did the same for his agency. U.S. officials and TikTok have been in talks for months about a national security pact that would address the concerns about China's access to data on TikTok's more than 100 million U.S. users.

Three sources briefed on OpenAI's recent pitch to investors said the organization expects $200 million in revenue next year and $1 billion by 2024. OpenAI was most recently valued at $20 billion in a secondary share sale, one of the sources said. The startup has already inspired rivals and companies building applications atop its generative AI software, which includes the image maker DALL-E 2. OpenAI has also attracted attention as an AI provider and potential Google search competitor, with ChatGPT answering queries for more than 1 million users so far. OpenAI warns users, ChatGPT "may occasionally produce harmful instructions or biased content."

Ahmad Abouammo had been found guilty by a jury in August following a trial in federal court in San Francisco. Abouammo's attorneys had asked U.S. District Judge Edward Chen for a probationary sentence at his home in Seattle with no prison time. The case focused on Abouammo's efforts to look up information on two Twitter users, a $42,000 watch he received from a Saudi official and a pair of $100,000 wire transfers. Twitter, recently acquired by Elon Musk, and the Saudi Embassy in Washington also did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The attorneys also said Abouammo's actions paled in comparison to those of Ali Alzabarah, another ex-Twitter employee, who was accused of accessing thousands of Twitter accounts on behalf of Saudi Arabia.

"The issue with Google Ad Manager has been resolved and ad serving has now been restored for the affected users,” Google said in a tweet on Thursday evening. “We apologize for the inconvenience.”News websites such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times were being affected by the issue, one of the sources said. The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Ad Manager has about 90% share of the U.S. market for ad-serving software, which publishers embed on their websites, according to an ongoing antitrust lawsuit Texas and other states have been pursuing against the tech giant. The lack of competition has left publishers with few back-up options to Google Ad Manager, the sources said, and lawmakers in the U.S. and elsewhere are pursuing legislation to curb Google's market power.

The iPhone maker said that though it was not aware of breaches to iCloud servers or iMessage exchanges, hacking attempts are increasing. U.S. users will be able to activate the free Advanced Data Protection for iCloud storage by the end of the year. When turned on, Apple cannot help users recover photos, notes, voice memos and about 20 other types of data if they forget their password. The option to require plugging a security fob into a new device to access an Apple account is expected to roll out next year. Users can manually verify their communication is secure by matching up security codes, too.

The new allegations underscore the issues that Meta's planned system would counter. "Addressing fairness in ads is an industry-wide challenge and we’ve been collaborating with civil rights groups, academics and regulators to advance fairness in our ads system," the company said. "There’s no reason that job ads should be sent to a fraction of those numbers on a routine basis," he said. But the charge cites three ads for which Meta let advertisers select age-restricted audiences, an option it promised to block for job ads in 2019. If Meta is struggling to identify job ads, it may likewise face difficulties applying the planned variance reductions, Romer-Friedman said.

Meta on Thursday said it was reviewing the complaint and did not provide immediate comment on it or the status of the planned changes. Real Women in Trucking's complaint lists about 80 ads from Meta's public archive that show skewed audiences. "There’s no reason that job ads should be sent to a fraction of those numbers on a routine basis," he said. But the charge cites three ads for which Meta let advertisers select age-restricted audiences, an option it promised to block for job ads in 2019. If Meta is struggling to identify job ads, it may likewise face difficulties applying the planned variance reductions, Romer-Friedman said.

Akin to lengthy nutrition labels, Amazon's so-called AI Service Cards will be public so its business customers can see the limitations of certain cloud services, such as facial recognition and audio transcription. The goal would be to prevent mistaken use of its technology, explain how its systems work and manage privacy, Amazon said. The cards would address AI ethics concerns publicly at a time when tech regulation was on the horizon, said Kearns. Amazon chose software touching on sensitive demographic issues as a start for its service cards, which Kearns expects to grow in detail over time. In 2019, Amazon contested a study saying the technology struggled to identify the gender of individuals with darker skin tones.

Workers at Google and other big tech companies in recent years have clashed and protested over politics and racial and gender equity. "We've always been proud to host external speakers at Google, as they provide great opportunities for learning and connection for our employees," Google spokesman Ryan Lamont told Reuters. Rivals such as Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) also have policies for inviting speakers. At Google, speakers have included then-U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama, celebrity chef Ayesha Curry and former basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. At least one of the critics suggested inviting for balance Rajiv Malhotra, according to an internal message.

Investors have questioned the wisdom of that decision as Meta's core advertising business has struggled this year, more than halving its stock price. In his remarks to employees, Zuckerberg played down how much the company was spending in Reality Labs, the unit responsible for its metaverse investments. About 20% of Meta's budget was going to Reality Labs. About 40% of Reality Labs' budget went toward virtual reality, while about 10% was spent on futuristic social platforms such as the virtual world it calls Horizon. Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth, who runs Reality Labs, said AR glasses need to be more useful than mobile phones to appeal to potential customers and meet a higher bar for attractiveness.

In a private chat on Signal with about 50 Twitter staffers, nearly 40 said they had decided to leave, according to the former employee. A separate poll on Blind asked staffers to estimate what percentage of people would leave Twitter based on their perception. Blue hearts and salute emojis flooded Twitter and its internal chatrooms on Thursday, the second time in two weeks as Twitter employees said their goodbyes. By 6 p.m. Eastern, over two dozen Twitter employees across the United States and Europe had announced their departures in public Twitter posts reviewed by Reuters, though each resignation could not be independently verified. Early on Wednesday, Musk had emailed Twitter employees, saying: "Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore".

ID.me said it was reviewing the panels' findings and did not have immediate comment. Congress began investigating ID.me after former ID.me employees, government watchdog groups and lawmakers complained the company had been unprepared to handle an onslaught of unemployment insurance applications early in the pandemic. While Reuters and other media last year reported on the waits, investigators said their analysis definitively showed that issues had been widespread. The Democrat-led committees are continuing to investigate other concerns about ID.me, including the accuracy of its facial recognition system and the adequacy of its support for non-English speakers. Reporting by Paresh Dave; Editing by Bradley Perrett and Lisa ShumakerOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Google, Activision and Riot did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the new filing. Epic last year mostly lost a similar case against Apple Inc (AAPL.O), the other leading app store provider. The deal with Activision was announced in January 2020, soon after it told Google it was considering launching its own app store. Google around the same time was forecasting billions of dollars in lost app store sales if developers fled to alternative systems. Epic's lawsuit alleged that Google knew signing with Activision "effectively ensured that (Activision) would abandon its plans to launch a competing app store, and Google intended this result."

ID.me responded that calling its fraud estimate baseless or too high was premature because government auditing was ongoing. Congress began investigating ID.me after former ID.me employees, government watchdog groups and lawmakers complained the company had been unprepared to handle an onslaught of unemployment insurance applications early in the pandemic. While Reuters and other media last year reported on the waits, investigators said their analysis definitively showed that issues had been widespread. ID.me said it regretted the long waits but described them as "short-lived and temporary and caused by historic fraud." The Democrat-led committees are continuing to investigate other concerns about ID.me, including the accuracy of its facial recognition system and the adequacy of its support for non-English speakers.

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 16 (Reuters) - James Murdoch, a Tesla director, said on Wednesday CEO Elon Musk has in the last few months identified someone as a potential successor to head the electric carmaker. Murdoch, who did not name the potential successor, was testifying in a trial over Musk's 2018 Tesla pay package. When a plaintiff's lawyer asked him to confirm that Musk has never identified someone as a potential successor CEO, Murdoch said, "He actually has," adding that happened in the "last few months." MONITORING TESLA SITUATIONMurdoch also said Tesla's audit committee is monitoring the Twitter situation, saying that the committee had discussions about having some Tesla engineers do work at Twitter. He also said Musk asked a few team heads to see if they were people interested in helping Twitter.

Nov 14 (Reuters) - Epic Games on Monday will try to overturn portions of a court ruling in an antitrust trial last year that largely favored Apple Inc (AAPL.O). The "Fortnite" creator sued Apple in 2020 alleging that the iPhone maker's App Store rules, under which software developers must pay commissions of up to 30% on in-app purchases, violated U.S. antitrust law. Apple appealed the order, and Epic appealed the finding that Apple did not violate antitrust laws. According to its court filings, Epic plans to argue that the trial judge did not properly interpret U.S. antitrust laws. Epic argues that such standard agreements are still subject to antitrust laws.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said it was watching Twitter with "deep concern" after these three privacy and compliance officers quit. Twitter did not respond to requests for comment on a potential bankruptcy, the FTC warning, or the departures. Wheeler was the face of Twitter for advertising after Musk took over. Musk has saddled Twitter with $13 billion in debt, on which it faces interest payments totaling close to $1.2 billion in the next 12 months. It joined other brands including General Motors (GM.N) that have paused advertising on Twitter since Musk took over, concerned that he will loosen content moderation rules.

Chief Privacy Officer Damien Kieran and Chief Compliance Officer Marianne Fogarty have also resigned, according to an internal message seen by Reuters. He announced plans to cut half its workforce last week, promised to stop fake accounts and is charging $8 a month for the Twitter Blue service that will include a blue check verification. "We are tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern," Douglas Farrar, the FTC's director of public affairs, told Reuters. "Elon puts rockets into space, he's not afraid of the FTC," the attorney quoted Spiro as saying. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment on the FTC warning, the note from the attorney or the departures.

The groups said on Friday they are escalating their pressure and demanding brands pull their Twitter ads globally. Staff who worked in engineering, communications, product, content curation and machine learning ethics were among those impacted by the layoffs, according to tweets from Twitter staff. Shannon Raj Singh, an attorney who was Twitter's acting head of human rights, tweeted on Friday that the entire human rights team at the company had been cut. Musk tweeted that his team had made no changes to content moderation and done "everything we could" to appease the groups. Employees of Twitter Blue, the premium subscription service that Musk is bolstering, were also let go.

The social media company said in an email to staff that it will alert employees by 9 a.m. Pacific time on Friday (12 p.m. EDT/1600 GMT) about staff cuts. The social media platform said Twitter employees who are not affected by the layoffs will be notified via their work email addresses. The layoffs, which were long expected, have chilled Twitter's famously open corporate culture that has been revered by its employees. Shortly after the email landed in Twitter employee inboxes, hundreds of people flooded the company's Slack channels to say goodbye, two employees told Reuters. "If you are in an office or on your way to an office, please return home," Twitter said in the email on Thursday.

Twitter is currently losing about $3 million a day "with all spending and revenue considered," according to an internal document reviewed by Reuters. The social media platform is exploring whether to cut extra server space that is kept to ensure Twitter can handle high traffic, one source said. The second source described the proposed cuts as "delusional," adding that when user traffic kicks up, the service can fail "in spectacular ways." Teams across Twitter are racing to present a plan to achieve the cost savings by a Nov. 7 deadline, according to one of the sources and the Slack message. Some employees have been ordered to work in the office every day of the week to meet the deadline, the source said.

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