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Good morning!
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And happy holidays to you and yours from all of us at Technext.
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Digital marketing has indeed come to stay.
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Like TweetOracle said in a recent interview with Technext, "there are lots of opportunities yet to be tapped." Case in point, the rise of the WhatsApp influencers.
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As Technext said about them recently, they have emerged "for a new crowd unwilling to work the riggings of Twitter clap-backs and Instagram filters, seeking a kind of bottom of the pot realness."
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Below are the tech stories and news you need to know to start your day, carefully curated by Technext.
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Summary of the news
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- In a prelimanary rulling, the EU said that Apple Pay is by nature "anticompetitive"
- A new report shows that WhatsApp influencers have begun to monetise the platform
- Google has come under fire for laying off a researcher who challenged a research that the tech giant published
- Biden has kicked off his $3 billion plan to boost battery production for electric vehicles
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Apple Pay is anticompetitive, says EU in preliminary ruling
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Apple has been hit with an antitrust accusation by the European Union over its exclusion of rivals from its Apple Pay mobile payment system. The Verge reports that the EU sent Apple a formal “Statement of Objections” with the preliminary view that Apple has abused its dominant position in mobile wallets on iOS.
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“The Commission takes issue with the decision by Apple to prevent mobile wallets app developers, from accessing the necessary hardware and software (‘NFC input’) on its devices, to the benefit of its own solution, Apple Pay,” reads the decision. “Today’s Statement of Objections takes issue only with the access to NFC input by third-party developers of mobile wallets for payments in stores.”
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According to the EU, Apple’s exclusionary behaviour “leads to less innovation and less choice for consumers for mobile wallets on iPhones.”
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This is only the initial formal stage of antitrust proceedings against Apple, and the company will have the chance to respond to the Commission’s list of objections. The EU notes that the sending of a Statement of Objections “does not prejudge the outcome of an investigation.”
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We are witnessing the rise of WhatsApp influencers in Africa
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Influencer marketing has many channels and WhatsApp is one of them, knowing that information, the good and the bad, spreads as fast as with other platforms in the digital space. There are people who drive the spread of this information and usually score a high note, giving them the tag: WhatsApp Influencers.
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With a contact list that looks like a litany of results from a Google search page, these influencers could be broadcast-message merchants, chain-view status posters, and more, such that a temporary downtime is not enough to bring down their status.
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Technext reports that a new crowd unwilling to work the riggings of Twitter clap-backs and Instagram filters, seeking a kind of bottom of the pot realness, WhatsApp influencers came to their aid, creating, as they say, “content” consistently tailored to their needs.
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Google fires researcher who questioned a celebrated paper on AI
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Less than two years after Google dismissed two researchers who criticized the biases built into artificial intelligence systems, the New York Times reports that the company has fired a researcher who questioned a paper it published on the abilities of a specialized type of artificial intelligence used in making computer chips.
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The researcher, Satrajit Chatterjee, led a team of scientists in challenging the celebrated research paper, which appeared last year in the scientific journal Nature and said computers were able to design certain parts of a computer chip faster and better than human beings.
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Dr. Chatterjee, 43, was fired in March, shortly after Google told his team that it would not publish a paper that rebutted some of the claims made in Nature, said four people familiar with the situation who were not permitted to speak openly on the matter. Google confirmed in a written statement that Dr. Chatterjee had been “terminated with cause.”
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Biden starts $3 billion plan to boost battery production for electric vehicles
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The Biden administration has announced it will begin a $3.1 billion plan to boost domestic manufacturing of batteries, in a broader effort to shift the country away from gas-powered cars to electric vehicles, CNBC reports.
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The electrification of the transportation sector will be critical to mitigating human-caused climate change. The transportation sector is one of the largest contributors to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, representing roughly one-third of emissions each year.
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The funding will support grants aimed at building, retooling or expanding the manufacturing of batteries and battery components, as well as establishing battery recycling facilities, according to the Department of Energy. The grants will be funded through President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law, which includes more than $7 billion to bolster the country’s battery supply chain.
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Latest in funding
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Other stories we are following
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