Technology

Facebook designed changes to its news feed algorithm in 2017 to reduce the visibility of left-leaning news sites like Mother Jones on its platform, the Wall Street Journal reported, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had personally approved the plans. But Mother Jones editorial director for growth and strategy Ben Dreyfuss wrote that in multiple meetings with Facebook executives in 2017 and 2018, they reassured him that while traffic might go down, “not in a way that favored or disfavored any single publication or class of publisher.” According to the WSJ, some policy executives at Facebook voiced concerns in 2017 about pending changes to the news feed algorithm that they thought might have a larger impact on right-leaning news sites like the Daily Wire. So engineers made changes to the algorithm tha...

I stepped away from my computer for dinner, halfway through writing a story for The Verge. When I got back, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Windows 10 had restarted my computer without permission yet again — to install yet another forced OS update onto my solid state drive. The craziest part: When my machine finished rebooting, it now contained the exact thing I’d been writing about before I was rudely interrupted. Microsoft had installed unsolicited, unwanted web app versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook onto my computer. Seriously, the story you’re reading right now started off as a news post about this happening to other people. Screenshot: Sean Hollister/The Verge OK, it’s not as bad as when my entire computer screen got taken over by an unwanted copy of Microsoft Edge. That was ...

It’s been tough to talk about OnePlus as a scrappy smartphone startup ever since its close ties with Oppo, Vivo, and electronics giant BBK came to light, but it’s still hard to overstate the impact of Carl Pei, the longtime public face of the company, who confirmed his departure today. As a marketer and brand builder, he used a combination of bold promises, real talk, and unconventional marketing campaigns to turn smartphone enthusiasts simply looking for a good deal into a community of OnePlus fans. In a blog post on the OnePlus forums, Pei says he’s “looking forward to taking some time to decompress and catch up with my family,” without addressing why he’s doing so now. Rumors suggest that he had a falling-out with fellow co-founder and CEO Pete Lau, and / or that Pei left to start his o...

I will never look at a cantaloupe the same way again, thanks to Vann Newkirk II’s latest story in The Atlantic, “Earth’s New Gilded Era.” The fruit brings back some of my favorite summer memories with my mom, who makes a juice with it that Filipinos lovingly call “melon” — pronounced with a long, rolling L (“mell-lown”) so that the name is as satisfying to say as the juice is to drink on a hot day. Newkirk’s story is a tale of two cantaloupes: he follows the fruit’s journey from the fields where it’s harvested by people working in scorching heat, to a hotel breakfast buffet where the melon is a refreshing snack for summer vacationers. The contrast is just one illustration of the many ways heat will draw the lines between the world’s haves and have-nots as climate change wreaks havoc on the...

Tesla has reportedly canceled an audacious return policy in which new buyers of its electric vehicles could return them for a full refund within seven days. The news, reported on Friday by Electrek, marks an end to one of CEO Elon Musk’s flashier marketing strategies. Musk has used the seven-day return policy as a way to boast about Tesla’s high customer satisfaction rates, with the company so confident new buyers would be happy with their purchase that they wouldn’t take Tesla up on its bold offer, which is practically unheard of in the standard automobile industry. The policy also bolstered the idea that Tesla cars are like consumer electronics products — you could order and customize them online and have them delivered to your door, like an Amazon package, and then return it if you were...

Sony has clarified more details surrounding a controversial new PlayStation voice chat recording feature, first mentioned in its recent 8.0 update earlier this week, after some users were led to believe the company would be actively recording and moderating conversations among private groups. In a new blog post published Friday, Catherine Jensen, Sony’s vice president of global consumer experience, admits the company “should have more clearly explained why this function was being rolled out.” Jensen now confirms Sony will not be actively listening in on voice chats whatsoever when the feature launches with the PS5 next month. “Its sole purpose is to help in reporting of inappropriate behavior, including actions that violate our Community Code of Conduct,” she writes. “Please note that this...

If you bought a new Oculus Quest 2 with the hopes of experiencing games from the now-discontinued Oculus Go, I have bad news: the company has decided not to include support for Go titles on the Quest 2, Oculus’ consulting CTO John Carmack confirms on Twitter. When the Oculus Quest 2 launched three days ago, some people noticed there was no feature on the UI that allowed users to access Go apps and games, something the original Quest headset featured. Carmack did not go into much detail on why support was not added other than “[he] totally lost the internal debate over backwards compatibility.” The Oculus Go was discontinued in June, but last year, Carmack tweeted out that Oculus planned to bring Go emulation to the Quest, allowing users to play games originally released on the Go onto its ...

A new crowdsourced report finds that the algorithm for shopping delivery platform Shipt has led to reduced pay for 40 percent of its workers. First reported by Gizmodo, the report from Coworker.org, a pro-labor nonprofit organization that helps workers organize, gathered screenshots from more than 200 Shipt workers — who the company calls shoppers — in 140 different US metro areas. The screenshots showed more than 40 percent of the workers saw a reduction in pay following the rollout of Shipt’s “V2” pay model. The so-called “effort-based” pay model replaced Shipt’s previous flat-fee model. The Coworker.org team worked with PhD student Dan Calacci at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to analyze the information it had collected and found that the workers who reported lower wages were...

Riot is taking Wild Rift, the mobile version of League of Legends, into open beta on October 27th. The developer announced the news today, noting that it will first be available in Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand on both iOS and Android. Wild Rift is expected to hit locations such as Europe, the Middle East, and Russia by December; a Stateside release is coming in spring 2021. In addition to a new champion, Riot will also be testing six others, alongside in-game rewards and location-specific content. Riot announced Wild Rift last year; the game is specifically built to better suit mobile devices and consoles. The developer has previously said it will be “a new game built from scratch to ensure it is a polished, legitimate LoL experience tha...

Brian Awadis, better known as Faze Rug, loves to be scared. He watches horror movies, visits haunted attractions at Halloween, and frequently films himself getting spooked on his YouTube channel. “I get scared super easy, but I think that’s what makes it more fun to watch,” he says. “I want to get scared. I just love the thrill of it.” So, around a year ago, when he was given the chance to star in a horror movie — his first ever acting role — he jumped at the chance. “That’s a no-brainer,” says Rug. For the uninitiated, Faze Clan is a new kind of entertainment company that’s part esports organization, part influencer supergroup, and part merchandise brand. It counts some of the biggest YouTube and Twitch stars in the world among its members, including Rug, along with more traditional celeb...

Elon Musk’s Boring Company’s system of tunnels to shuttle people under the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) may not be able to move as many people as originally promised, according to documents obtained by TechCrunch. That’s not just disappointing — it may also mean financial penalties for The Boring Company. The choke point isn’t technology — it’s fire regulations. In one of the three loading zones for the tunnel network, called the Convention Center Loop, only 800 passengers an hour are allowed. If that’s true of all three loading zones, the Loop will only move about a quarter of what it promised: just 1,200 people an hour, according to TechCrunch. It’s unclear what might be enforcing that limit of 800 passengers, as the plans don’t include any turnstiles or barriers that could help co...

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