Technology

Amazon is taking legal action against the admins of over 10,000 Facebook groups that it says facilitate fake reviews for products on its platform by promising money or free products in exchange for positive reviews. The groups are allegedly responsible for fake reviews across Amazon’s sites in the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Japan, the company has announced. Just one such group, called “Amazon Product Review,” reportedly had over 43,000 members. The e-commerce giant has a well-documented problem with fake reviews, which has grown more pressing as third-party marketplace sellers make up a bigger and bigger proportion of sales on its platform. It officially banned incentivized reviews in October 2016, but four years later in 2020, a Financial Times investigation found that as ...

Vizio was once the de facto recommendation for TV shoppers looking to spend under $1,000 on a new set. But over the last several years, companies like TCL and Hisense have made their presence felt in the mid-range price segment that was long Vizio’s specialty — and sometimes with better performance. It didn’t help that Vizio hit some snags with its 2020 TV lineup (particularly in the area of next-gen 4K gaming), requiring multiple firmware updates to get those TVs where they needed to be for the most demanding gamers. So it makes sense that the company took its time with the 2023 models being announced today. What’s not being refreshed are Vizio’s highest-end sets. The 65- and 75-inch P-Series Quantum, 85-inch P-Series Quantum X, and OLED TVs will all continue to be sold for the remainder ...

In a trio of images posted to its official Twitter account, Samsung Mobile appears to have confirmed the date of its next Unpacked event as August 10th, 2022. The first image presents a grid of letters, numbers, and symbols, while the second shows the same grid replaced with colored circles. Match the characters to the colors, and you can decode the message on the third image as 081022 — aka August 10th, 2022. This date lines up with a recent leak from from Evan Blass, who published an image from Samsung that also suggested a launch even on August 10th. The encoded message (which can be seen at the top of this story) is accompanied by a rhetorical question: “When will something greater arrive?” Here’s a composite of the three images laying out the solution to the puzzle. The two initial im...

Apple is now facing a potential anti-competitive class-action lawsuit over its preferential treatment of its own contactless payment system, Apple Pay. Android users have long been able to use their smartphones as digital wallets carrying various contactless payment methods, but those on Apple’s ecosystem had always been restricted to the tech giant’s own payment method, even if you’re able to download and install the iOS version of Google Pay. Android also doesn’t charge card issuers for any digital payments made through the wallet app, while Apple charges a 0.15% fee on credit transactions, which globally has accumulated to $1 billion USD in earnings a year for the company, according to the lawsuit filing. By restricting iPhone users to just Apple Pay, the lawsuit also alleges that the c...

Unity CEO John Riccitiello has apologized for calling some game developers “some of the biggest fucking idiots” in an interview and has vowed that he will “do better.” This is a saga that has been playing out over several days, so let’s take a few steps back. On July 13th, Unity, which makes a popular game development engine, announced that it would be merging with ironSource, which offers software that helps developers monetize their apps. Riccitiello (who was formerly the CEO of EA) and Unity SVP Marc Whitten were interviewed by Pocket Gamer about the news, and the interviewer talked about how some developers push back on implementing monetization earlier in a game’s development. That’s where Riccitiello said the “fucking idiots” quote (with emphasis ours): [Pocket Gamer:] Implementing m...

Google Wallet, the app that will replace Google Pay in many countries (more on that in a moment), has started to show up on people’s phones. According to Google spokesperson Chaiti Sen, the company has “started rolling out the Wallet to Android users in 39 countries,” and it’ll be available “to all users over the next few days.” Google announced Wallet at its 2022 I/O event, pitching it as an app to manage all your digital cards — not just for payment, like debit and credit cards (though it does hold those), but for digital representations of your identification, vaccination status, tickets, keys, and more as well. In most countries, Wallet will be replacing the current Google Pay app. (9to5Google reports that it’s currently rolling out as an update to Google Pay.) However, Google said tha...

Russia imposed a nearly $365 million fine (21.1 billion rubles) on Google for failing to delete YouTube videos that go against the country’s laws, as reported earlier by Reuters. In a translated press release, Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor states that YouTube didn’t follow orders to remove “prohibited content,” which includes videos “promoting extremism and terrorism,” as well as supposedly false information about the war in Ukraine. In March, the Roskomnadzor threatened to charge Google over its failure to remove “illegal” YouTube videos, stating the fee would start at 8 million rubles (~$94,675 USD at the time), with the possibility to climb to 20 percent of Google’s annual revenue. The 21.1 billion rubles reflects a chunk of Google’s yearly turnover in the country, but i...

Duo Desus Nice and The Kid Mero, who established one of the top comedy brands of the decade with their podcast Bodega Boys and their eponymous show on Showtime, are well and truly done. Desus and Mero, otherwise known as Daniel Baker and Joel Martinez, respectively, are arguably the biggest podcast to Hollywood crossovers in the industry. After breaking into podcasting with Complex TV’s Desus vs. Mero podcast and Bodega Boys, the pair had a show on Viceland from 2016 to 2018 before getting the Showtime late-night series that would take them mainstream. “Desus Nice and The Kid Mero will be pursuing separate creative endeavors moving forward,” Showtime said in a statement Monday evening. “Showtime’s late-night talk show Desus & Mero will not be returning for a fifth season. Its final epi...

A proposed class action lawsuit is taking aim at Apple Pay, claiming that Apple has an illegal monopoly over contactless payments on the iPhone, letting it force card issuers into paying fees (via Bloomberg). The suit is being kicked off by Iowa-based Affinity Credit Union, which issues debit and credit cards that are compatible with Apple Pay, but the company’s lawyers hope to make it a class-action case so other card issuers can join the lawsuit. According to the complaint, which you can read in full below, Apple makes over $1 billion a year charging credit card companies up to 0.15 percent per transaction in Apple Pay fees, and yet those same card issuers don’t have to pay anything when their customers use “functionally identical Android wallets.” The suit alleges that Apple violates an...

Netflix is testing a new way to tackle password sharing in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic (as reported first by Bloomberg). The test will prompt users to pay an additional fee if they use an account outside their household for over two weeks, costing an extra 219 pesos ($1.17 in Argentina) and $2.99 everywhere else. According to Netflix, in the test areas, subscriber accounts have one primary “home” where they can access Netflix across their devices, and they have the ability to travel and use Netflix on the go. The test will allow users to purchase additional “homes,” giving the users in those locations the ability to use the service on devices at those locations as well. In these countries, Netflix is also working on a feature that will let you tr...