Amazon bans merchants for fake reviews, Apple threatens to boot Facebook from its App Store, and MacBook displays are randomly cracking.
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It’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending! It’s Monday, September 20, and I’m your host, Tom Li.
Amazon is cracking down on merchants who purchase fake reviews. According to Techspot, the online retail platform has booted off 3,000 merchants linked to 600 Chinese electronic brands. This marks Amazon’s biggest push towards maintaining its review system’s credibility. In an interview on Chinese Central TV, Amazon said that the crackdown wasn’t intentionally directed at Chinese sellers. The removal of these brands temporarily reduces consumer access to cheap novel toys, but time will tell if they will return in popularity without paid reviews in the future.
Apple is threatening to kick Facebook off of its app store after a 2019 BBC report on human trafficking. According to the report, human traffickers were using Facebook to sell victims. The investigation, led by Facebook itself, was tracking down a human trafficking market in the Middle East guised as an employment agency to lure its victims. One issue that hampered moderation was the language barrier. The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook’s AI moderator cannot detect all the languages used on its platform, and neither could its human moderators.
Finally, Apple is facing another two class-action lawsuits, this time for cracking glass on its MacBook laptops. According to the suits, Apple’s M1 MacBook and MacBook Airs would suffer unexplained cracking displays, even without mishandling. One lawsuit flat out alleges that the M1 MacBooks are defective due to their fragile screens, and that thousands of users around the world have reported the issue. Tech website Tom’s Guide reported that Apple reportedly offered free repairs for some but not for others.
That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire Newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Friday at 3 pm. If you have a suggestion or tip, please drop us a line in the comments or via email. Thanks for listening, I’m Tom Li.