Kalakshar US

If anyone was holding out hope that the Oversight Board would provide some kind of check on Meta’s rewritten hate speech policy, Meta has just made it clear exactly where it stands. The company published its formal response to the board’s criticism, and has declined to commit to any substantive steps to change its rules.

The Oversight Board previously criticized Meta’s January policy changes as “hastily announced” and wrote that it was “concerned” about the company’s decision to use the term “transgenderism” in its rewritten community standards. The company’s policy, announced by Mark Zuckerberg in January shortly before President Donald Trump took office, now permits people to claim that LGBTQ people are mentally ill.

“We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words such as ‘weird,'” the policy now states. In a decision related to two videos depicting public harassment of transgender women, the Oversight Board had sided with Meta on its decision to leave the videos up. But the board recommended that Meta remove the word “transgenderism” from its policy. “For its rules to have legitimacy, Meta must seek to frame its content policies neutrally,” the board said.

The word has a long association with discrimination and dehumanization, human rights groups have said. Human Rights Campaign noted that the term is “socially and scientifically invalid” and “often wielded by anti-trans activists to delegitimize transgender people.” GLAAD has likewise noted that “framing a person’s transgender identity as a ‘concept’ or ‘ideology’ reduces a core identity to an opinion that can be debated, and therefore justifies dehumanization, discrimination, and real-world violence against transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people.”

In its formal response, Meta officials said they were still “assessing feasibility” of removing the word from its policies. The company said it would “consider ways to update the terminology” but added that “achieving clarity and transparency in our public explanations may sometimes require including language considered offensive to some.”

Meta also declined to commit to the board’s three other recommendations in the case. The board had recommended that Meta “identify how the policy and enforcement updates may adversely impact the rights of LGBTQIA+ people, including minors, especially where these populations are at heightened risk,” take steps to mitigate those risks and issue regular reports to the board and the public about its work.

It had also recommended that Meta allow users to designate other individuals who are able to report bullying and harassment on their behalf, and that the company make improvements to reduce errors when people report bullying and harassment. Meta said it was “assessing feasibility” of these suggestions.

Meta’s response raises uncomfortable questions about just how much influence the ostensibly independent Oversight Board can have. Zuckerberg said that Meta created the Oversight Board so that it wouldn’t have to make consequential policy decisions on its own. Previously, the social network has asked the board for help in major decisions, like Donald Trump’s suspension and its rules for celebrities and politicians. But Zuckerberg’s decision to roll back hate speech protections and ditch third-party fact checking took the board by surprise.

Meta has always been free to ignore the Oversight Board’s recommendations, but it has allowed it to influence some of its more controversial policies. That seems like it could be changing, however. Zuckerberg’s decision to roll back hate speech protections and ditch third-party fact checking took the board by surprise. And the company now seems to have little interest in engaging with the board’s criticism of those changes.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-tells-the-oversight-board-it-isnt-removing-the-word-transgenderism-from-its-hate-speech-rules-180438796.html?src=rss 

Snap has acquired Saturn, a calendar app for high school and college students. The company didn’t disclose the terms of the deal but said that close to 30 of Saturn’s full-time employees will be joining Snap as part of the acquisition.

It’s not clear what exactly Snap has planned for Saturn, but the company confirmed to Engadget that the calendar app will continue to operate as a standalone service. It also suggested that the acquisition could help Snap bring calendar-focused features into Snapchat.

A calendar app may seem like an odd choice for Snap, but there’s clearly a lot of overlap between the two services’ users. According to Snap, about 80 percent of US high schoolers attend schools that support Saturn (its App Store page says it’s available at more than 17,000 high schools). Snap is used by more than half of US teens, per Pew Research.

Saturn is also much more social than the typical calendar app. It has a Snapchat-like design that allows teens to easily share and compare their schedules with friends. It also supports features specific to many high school students’ routines, like block schedules, rotation calendars and extracurricular activities. Saturn also has features for college students, though it doesn’t seem to be as widely used among that slightly older demographic.

The startup, founded by Dylan Diamond (Saturn’s CEO) and Max Baron (COO) has previously raised money from a number of high-profile investors, including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions. Forbes reported in 2021 the startup had raised $44 million.

Jim Lanzone, the CEO of Engadget’s parent company Yahoo, joined the board of directors at Snap on September 12, 2024. No one outside of Engadget’s editorial team has any say in our coverage of the company.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/snap-is-acquiring-saturn-a-calendar-app-used-at-thousands-of-high-schools-160046915.html?src=rss 

Nothing has probably made its biggest impression in the tech world with its distinctive mid-range Android phones (like the 3a Pro pictured above). But the UK-based brand’s first product was actually wireless earbuds, and now it’s preparing to unveil its first over-ear headphones on July 1. As is often the way, though, we don’t have to wait until then to get our first look at the upcoming cans, as pictures have leaked online ahead of the London launch event.

As you’d expect from a Nothing product, the Headphone 1 – if these leaked images are indeed legitimate – looks like nothing else on the market. A number of photos uploaded to Instagram by Nothing Fan Blog show off a typical transparent design, which looks a bit like someone has glued a cassette tape to a slab of smooth metal. It looks like the headphones will be available in black/gray and silver/white colorways.

It’s hard to determine what materials Nothing has opted for from the leaked photos, but it looks like there are at least three buttons: two on the side of the left earcup and one on the top. In one photo you can also see a wire attached to the bottom of the headphones, so presumably they’ll have a 3.5mm connector.

Again, we don’t know for certain if this is the final design of the Headphone 1, but aesthetically speaking they could definitely stand out in what is an enormously crowded market.

Nothing CEO Carl Pei confirmed that the Headphone 1 will arrive on July 1 alongside the brand’s new flagship phone, the Phone 3, during a live appearance at SXSW in London earlier this month. Engadget’s Igor Bonifac was impressed by Nothing’s Phone 3a and 3a Pro when he reviewed both phones earlier this year, with the caveat that they carry a limited US warranty.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/nothings-first-over-ear-headphones-leak-ahead-of-july-unveiling-150631940.html?src=rss 

Amazon Prime Days begins again on July 8, but early deals are already starting to trickle out. For instance, the 8BitDo Micro gamepad is on sale for just $17. This is a record-low price and represents a discount of 33 percent. However, the deal only applies to the green colorway.

The Micro is a Bluetooth controller designed for the Nintendo Switch and Android devices, but it should also integrate with gadgets like the Steam Deck and iPhones. The company has released a firmware update for Switch 2 compatibility, so that should work too. We’ve tested other 8BitDo controllers with Nintendo’s new console and came away impressed.

This is an extremely tiny gamepad that still manages to pack in 16 buttons. It’s a near-perfect way to play retro-tinged 2D platformers. Did we mention it’s small? This thing will easily fit in a pocket or just about anywhere else. The company wasn’t kidding around when they named it Micro.

There’s one caveat. The diminutive size of the 8BitDo Micro doesn’t allow for actual joysticks and there’s no haptic engine for rumble or anything like that. This isn’t the best controller for brand-new AAA games. If you absolutely must have a pair of joysticks, for FPS titles and the like, the 8BitDo Lite SE is also on sale for $22.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/early-prime-day-deals-include-the-8bitdo-micro-gamepad-for-only-17-151924406.html?src=rss