Tumblr’s visit count crashes after banning explicit content; Verizon to roll out 5G to two U.S. cities; Google scraps a few apps.
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Cute kittens and puppies pictures couldn’t prevent Tumblr’s viewership from dropping by 15 per cent following its porn ban. The ban came into effect in December 2018 following the discovery of child abuse images on the blog. Instead of just targeting illegal content, however, Tumblr’s new content policy also barred all explicit content, legal or not. When it was instantiated, it sparked outcry from LGBT and art communities. Content creators who had their work removed were also unhappy. Just one month following the change, visits dropped from 521 million to 437 million.
Trending on Google, Verizon will be officially activating its 5G network in Chicago and Minneapolis on April 11th, and is aiming to expand it into 30 cities by the end of the year. Whereas 4G unlimited data start to throttle after exceeding a soft data cap, Verizon promises that its 5G plan will have no such limit; the service will remain at their peak regardless of usage. To get the increased network speed, existing Version unlimited plan users will need to pay an additional $10 per month. Furthermore, Verizon is only offering this plan to Moto Z3 smartphone owners with the 5G MotoMod attachment.
As a reminder: Google will be killing off a number of apps in March and April. The clean up has already begun; on March 12th, Google officially scrapped its Google Allo messenger. Google Inbox, a popular mailing app, will be discontinued by the end of March. The same goes for the Googl URL Shortener, which will end on March 30th. On April 2nd, Google will be officially ending Google+, its famously unpopular social networking platform, although many believe that it has died long ago. A few functions of these services will be integrated into more established apps. For example, Google has already ported much of
Inbox’s experimental features to Gmail.
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. I’m Tom Li, thanks for listening.