A ransomware group called BlackCat stole over 80GB of Reddit data in February and is now threatening the platform
Posted Date – 12:45 AM, Wed – 21 June 23
Content rating and discussion platform Reddit appears to be experiencing growing problems. Now a group of hackers has targeted the platform following an orchestrated outage by developers.
Reddit’s woes began earlier this month when they announced an update to their application programming interface (API) policy. The platform said it will start charging third-party companies, such as Apollo, who want to access its content.
Many people like to browse Reddit’s third-party apps, and the latest changes have irritated the developers who maintain the platform in a variety of ways. In retaliation, thousands of developers protested by privatizing popular subreddits and calling them Reddit Blackout.
Joining the online protests, a ransomware group called BlackCat stole more than 80GB of Reddit data in February and is now threatening the platform. They demanded that Reddit pay a $4.5 million ransom and withdraw its new API policy.
On the other hand, Reddit CEO Steve Hoffman said the platform was never designed to support third-party apps. He said the company would not make any changes to the latest policy.
It remains to be seen who wins the online war — an international alliance of hackers and app developers or the world’s largest discussion forum.
Twitter video app for smart TV
Social media platform Twitter may soon launch an app for smart TVs. In response to a tweet suggesting the need for a Twitter video app, the company’s owner, Elon Musk, replied “it’s coming.”
In a tweet on Saturday, he said the move was in line with the company’s new plan to focus on growing video content on the platform.
Recently, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson launched a new show called “Tucker on Twitter.” A source familiar with the matter told Reuters that Twitter envisions it selling ads and sponsorships as well as videos from Carlson and other content creators.
Meta launches Voicebox
In addition to the trend of AI tools, Meta has introduced generative AI models for speech-related tasks.
A super tool called Voicebox that helps with audio editing, sampling, and styling, it helps content creators, it helps the visually impaired hear written messages, and it lets people speak any foreign language.
The tool creates various styles of output from scratch. While most other AIs are good at generating pictures based on text prompts, Voicebox can generate high-quality audio clips. As of now, it can process speech in six different languages and perform tasks such as denoising, content editing, diverse sample generation, and style transfer.
Is Realme stealing your data?
A Twitter user has claimed that Realme is collecting private information such as call logs, text messages, location information and other data; Minister of State for Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar has assured that an investigation will be conducted.
Smartphones are known to often have access to user data to provide enhanced services. But what Realme is reportedly doing is tracking data without user consent because their enhanced smart service feature that collects information is activated by default.
