Bytes: What’s new in tech
Meta’s wartime-speech policy
Russia asked a court to label Meta an “extremist organization” after the company changed its hate-speech policy to exempt calls for violence against the Russian military, said Mark Trevelyan in Reuters. In an email sent to moderators of Facebook and Instagram last week, Meta said it would “temporarily make allowances” for forms of violent speech “in the context of the Ukraine invasion.” Spokesman Nick Clegg said the change was made “to let users voice opposition to Russia’s attack.” Meta initially permitted posts “that call for the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko” but narrowed its guidance after Russia opened a criminal case. In any case, the posts are not accessible within Russia, which has blocked Facebook and Instagram.
Rivian cuts truck projections
Electric-truck maker Rivian slashed its production forecast just a few months after making one of the biggest stock market debuts in history, said Mike Colias in The Wall Street Journal. The company blamed “supply chain challenges” for curtailing its factory output this year, saying it expects to produce just 25,000 vehicles in 2022, while “Wall Street analysts were projecting about 40,000.” Rivian’s stock has tumbled after a flashy initial public offering that raised $13.7 billion and “pushed its valuation higher than that of General Motors and Ford.” The company has since produced 2,425 vehicles and reported a net loss of $2.46 billion in the fourth quarter. Earlier this month, Rivian apologized and backtracked after infuriating customers with “a retroactive price hike” that amounted to a jump of $10,000 to $20,000 on preordered vehicles.
Identifying Russian soldiers
“Armchair” vigilantes are using facial recognition to identify Russian soldiers from half a world away, said Tom Simonite in Wired. “Even amateur investigators can access multiple face-recognition services” and link images of combatants to their names and social media profiles. It took five minutes for us, using a Russian service called FindClone, “to trace a photo of a man that a Ukrainian government adviser claimed was a captured Russian soldier” and find “the teenager’s birth date and photos of his family.” Some military experts say the watchful eye of “open-source intelligence,” or OSINT, can offer tactical advantages, revealing “information such as the locations or losses of military units.”