The Lighthouse IT Podcast - June 30th, 2023
This week, Matt & Griff discuss the ongoing Reddit drama, the ongoing TikTok drama, Squarespace purchasing Google Domains, and the EU's latest push for consumer rights... Oh and also Canada is still on fire.
Listen here!
News
Canada is still on fire.
Let's talk about Red-dit, babeeey!
The short version is Reddit decided to start charging money for people to use its API, and the moderators of numerous Subreddits who rely on the API to help manage moderating found this highly unagreeable. Now both sides are in a struggle to get the other to break and it is going well for no one.
READ MORE & READ MORE & READ MORE & READ MORE
Google admits users aren't happy with search experience after Reddit blackouts.
Reddit has frequently been used as a source of information and it pages frequently rank highly in Google's search results, but that's much less helpful now that many of those links lead to private pages.
Squarespace is buying the Google Domains business and assets.
Google Domains currently hosts approximately 10 million domains for millions of customers, but Squarespace has said they will honor existing customers' renewal prices for at least 12 months following the transaction.
TikTok has said under oath that Americans' data has always been stored outside China, but apparently, they crossed their fingers.
TikTok claims the financial info of large American and European creators stored in China doesn't count since it was given to them by the creators and not collected by the app from users.
TikTok is also discontinuing its BeReel clone. Trends change fast, I guess.
BeReel was popular, TikTok made TikTok Now. BeReel is no longer popular, TikTok no longer supports TikTok Now.
The EU will make it so smartphones must have user-replaceable batteries by 2027, but it doesn't stop there.
In another big win for consumer rights, the EU has approved of a series of new rules about the requirements of rechargeable batteries, which comes with the added benefit of requiring smart devices to have user replaceable batteries.