Facebook faces lawsuit in Kenya over poor working conditions for moderators

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, is facing another lawsuit filed by one of is former content moderators. According to The Washington Post, this one is filed by Daniel Motaung, who’s accusing the company and San Francisco subcontractor Sama of human trafficking Africans to work in exploitative and unsafe working conditions in Kenya. The lawsuit alleges that Sama targets poor people across the region, including those from Kenya, South Africa, Ethiopia, Somalia and Uganda, with misleading job ads. They were reportedly never told that they’d be working as Facebook moderators and would have to view disturbing content as part of the job. 

Motaung said the first video he watched was of someone being beheaded and that he was fired after six months on the job for trying to spearhead workers’ unionization efforts. A Time report looking into the working conditions of the office where Motaung worked revealed that several employees suffered from mental trauma due to to their jobs. Sama, which positions itself as an “ethical AI” company providing “dignified digital work” to people in places like Nairobi, has on-site counselors. Workers generally distrusted the counselors, though, and Sama reportedly rejected counselors’ advice to let workers take wellness breaks throughout the day anyway. 

As for Motaung, he said in the lawsuit that his job was traumatizing and that he now has a fear of death. “I had potential. When I went to Kenya, I went to Kenya because I wanted to change my life. I wanted to change the life of my family. I came out a different person, a person who has been destroyed,” he noted. The lawsuit also mentioned how Motaung was made to sign a non-disclosure agreement and how he was paid less than promised — 40,000 Kenyan shillings or around $350. The report by Time said employees left in droves due to the poor pay and working conditions. 

Harrowing stories of Facebook moderators having to watch traumatizing videos and working in poor conditions aren’t new and come from all over the world, including the US. In fact, the company agreed to pay its US content moderators part of a class action lawsuit $52 million back in 2020. Those who were diagnosed with psychological conditions related to their work got a payout of up to $50,000.

Meta’s Nairobi office told The Post that it requires its “partners to provide industry-leading pay, benefits and support.” It added: “We also encourage content reviewers to raise issues when they become aware of them and regularly conduct independent audits to ensure our partners are meeting the high standards we expect of them.”

Grindr is going public with a $2.1 billion valuation

The LGBTQ+ dating app is going public through a blank check firm or Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) called Tiga, Bloomberg reports. They’re merging to form a combined entity with a $2.1 billion valuation, which will give Grindr access to $384 million in funds to be used for debt payments, as well as to support growth areas and to launch new endeavors.

Grindr Chief Financial Officer Gary Hsueh told the media organization in an interview that the company had been approached by several SPACs in the past. It ultimately chose the SPAC route instead of a traditional IPO, he said, because it makes more sense. “[I]t had certainty and that’s even more important today than it was a year ago when the market was different,” Hsueh explained.

As Bloombergnotes, SPACs became hot over the past couple of years after the pandemic made traditional IPOs much riskier than usual. They offer better returns and protections and could provide an easier route to become a public company. However, the market has become oversaturated of late, and at least one analyst told CNBC that the SPAC bubble is bursting. 

At the moment, Grindr’s revenue mostly comes from subscription, though it does earn some money from ads. It remains to be seen if a recent report that it sold user data would affect its future earnings: According to The Wall Street Journal, Grindr location data was for sale for at least three years, putting users’ privacy at risk. 

Nintendo predicts Switch sales will continue to slow this year

Nintendo sold (PDF) 23.06 million Switch units overall for the fiscal year ending in March 2022, over 5 million units fewer than its previous year. The gaming giant originally thought it was going to sell 25.5 million units this fiscal year, but it lowered its forecast to 24 million (and then 23 million) because the continued global chip shortage has made it difficult to procure components. In fact, the company most likely expects to continue grappling with supply chain issues, because it has lowered its forecast to 21 million Switch units sold for its next fiscal year ending in March 2023.

Nintendo’s sales were buoyed by the pandemic in previous years, with people purchasing new gaming consoles to get them through the COVID lockdowns. The Switch even became the company’s best-selling home console ever after total sales eclipsed 103.54 million units in the third quarter. Nintendo noted in today’s financial release that it has now sold a total of 107.65 million consoles.

Even though global lockdowns aren’t as regular, parts continue to be harder and harder to get, so the company’s forecast must also reflect that reality. Analysts and industry execs previously expected the chip shortage to persist throughout 2023, but Intel chief Pat Gelsinger recently said that the issue could drag on until 2024.

Nintendo also expects lower net sales and net profit overall in its next fiscal year. In FY2022, it reported net sales of 1,695 billion yen (US$13 billion) and an operating profit of 592 billion yen (US$4.6 billion). Next year, it expects its net sales to fall to around 1,600 billion yen (US$12.3 billion) and its annual operating profit to fall to $500 billion yen (US$3.8 billion). 

Despite the lower hardware sales, Nintendo has claimed the highest annual software sales for a single hardware family. It sold 39 million Switch games in its 2022 fiscal year, led by Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl with 14.65 million units sold. Pokémon Legends Arceus, which sold 6.5 million copies in seven days, has sold 12.64 million units so far. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe sold 9.94 million units, while Kirby and the Forgotten Land sold 2.1 million units in just over two weeks.

Activision Blizzard reportedly sent out anti-union message ahead of voting deadline

The management at Raven Software, the Activision Blizzard subsidiary that develops Call of Duty games, has reportedly been trying to convince its employees to vote against unionization. According to The Washington Post, the Raven management has been sending out messages and holding town hall meetings ahead of the election deadline on May 20th. 

During a meeting held on April 26th, company leadership suggested that unionization might not only impede game development, but also affect promotions and benefits. After that meeting, The Post says management sent employees an email with a message that’s more direct to the point: “Please vote no.” The Raven employees the publication talked to said the company’s efforts were ineffective, though, and that they still voted yes for unionization. 

This saga began late last year when Raven suddenly laid off around a third of the group’s QA testers after months of promising better compensation. Activision Blizzard workers staged a weeks-long strike in support of the QA employees, and unionization efforts started at the same time. Since then, Activision has been trying to dissuade workers from forming a union. 

Activision VP of QA Chris Arends reportedly told team members in a Slack meeting that a “union doesn’t do anything to help us produce world-class games, and the bargaining process is not typically quick, often reduces flexibility, and can be adversarial and lead to negative publicity.” The National Labor Relations Board granted the quality assurance testers’ permission to hold a union vote in April, though, and workers have been sending in their ballots by mail over the past month. We’ll soon find out if Activision’s alleged union-busting efforts are effective soon enough: The NLRB will be counting the ballots via video conference on May 23rd.

Microsoft open sources the code for 3D Movie Maker

Microsoft has open sourced the code for the 27-year-old program 3D Movie Maker — and it’s all thanks to someone who asked on Twitter. Foone, whose Twitter profile says they’re a “hardware and software necromancer,” asked the tech giant for the source code to the program so they could expand and extend it. Microsoft doesn’t own the BRender engine it runs on, which potentially posed a problem, but the one who does own it told Foone that he would be happy to open source it if he can find a copy. Thankfully, someone kept a copy of the engine, and Microsoft was able to release the program’s code in its entirety.

3D Movie Maker, which was released in 1995, gives users an easy way to create films by placing cartoony characters and props into pre-rendered environments. According to PCGamer, Foone plans to update the program so it can run on modern PCs, as well as add features to make it easier to share the resulting videos. “I’m expecting I’ll get the basic modernized version in the next month to a few months, depending on how many issues I run into,” they told PCGamer.

The original source code for the project is now on GitHub made available under the MIT license as open source. As RockPaperShotgun notes, the program’s BRender engine was also used for games such as Carmageddon 1 & 2, so the code’s release could potentially lead to fan-updated versions that can run more smoothly on modern computers.

Apple TV 4K with 32 GB storage falls to an all-time low of $150

If you’ve been looking to grab a new Apple TV, you now have another chance to do so at a discount. The 32GB version of the Apple TV 4K device released in 2021 is now available for $150 at Amazon, or $29 less than its retail price of $179. That’s the lowest price we’ve seen for the streaming box on the website — it was only briefly available for that much last holiday season.

Buy 2021 Apple TV 4K (32GB) at Amazon – $150

We gave the 2021 Apple TV 4K a score of 90 in our review and praised it for coming with an excellent Siri remote, which we think is a great selling point for the device. It’s larger than its predecessor, making it harder to lose, and we found its revamped directional pad easier to use for making fine-tuned selections. You can even use the pad as dial to scrub backwards and forwards in a video. We also found that the remote does an excellent job at interpreting our voice commands.

We praised the Apple TV for its quicker performance and capability to load apps faster than before, as well. Its A12 Bionic processor gives it the capability to support Dolby Vision content, HDR videos at 60FPS and Dolby Atmos for an immersive, room-filling audio. And, if you have an iPhone or an iPad, the streaming box is probably the option that makes the most sense for you. It will allow you to beam content to your TV via AirPlay and screen mirroring, and you’ll be able to use your iOS device to type in text on your TV. The Apple TV also comes in a version with 64GB of storage, though that one’s not on sale at the moment. 

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

Federal judge dismisses Trump’s lawsuit against Twitter

San Francisco federal district court Judge James Donato has tossed the lawsuit Donald Trump filed against Twitter last year in a bid to get his account back. The social network permanently suspended the former president’s account after his supporters stormed the Capitol in January 2021. In the company’s announcement, Twitter cited two of his tweets in particular that it believes were “highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the US Capitol” on January 6th last year.

Trump filed a lawsuit in October, seeking a preliminary injunction on the ban and arguing that it violates his First Amendment rights. Donato disagreed and noted in his ruling that Twitter is a private company. “The First Amendment applies only to governmental abridgements of speech,” he explained, “and not to alleged abridgements by private companies.” The judge also rejected the notion that the social network had acted as a government entity after being pressured by Trump’s opponents and had thereby violated the First Amendment when it banned the former President. 

In his lawsuit, Trump asked the judge to rule the federal Communications Decency Act, which states that online service providers such as Twitter can’t be held liable for content posted by users, as unconstitutional. The judge shot down that claim, as well, and ruled that the former President didn’t have legal standing to challenge Section 230 of CDA. Trump is a known critic of Section 230 and proposed to limit the protections social media platforms enjoy under it during his term.

The former President was an avid Twitter user before his suspension and formed his own social network called Truth Social after he was banned. Just recently, he told CNBC that he won’t be going back to Twitter even if Elon Musk reverses his suspension and will stay on Truth Social instead. According to a recent report by the Daily Beast, Truth Social has 513,000 daily active users compared to Twitter’s 217 million.

SpaceX Dragon capsule safely returns Crew-3 astronauts back to Earth

The astronauts that flew to the ISS as part of the SpaceX Crew-3 mission are back on Earth after almost six months on the orbiting lab. They splashed down safely in the Gulf of Mexico aboard the Crew Dragon Endurance, which made its debut flight with the same astronauts back in November 2021, on May 6th at 12:43am ET — and NASA has captured a pretty spectacular night video of the event.

As you can see, the Endurance capsule looks particularly glowy in infrared, most likely because it reached a temperature of around 3500 degrees Fahrenheit upon entering the atmosphere. The recovery team pulled out NASA astronauts Kayla Barron, Raja Chari and Tom Marshburn, as well as ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer from the capsule shortly after splashdown. Marshburn is the only veteran astronaut out of the four, and he completed his fifth spacewalk during the mission. It was the first ISS mission for the other three, with Maurer being only the second ESA astronaut to fly aboard a Dragon capsule.

The Crew-3 astronauts spent 177 days in orbit and started their stay with a bang. Shortly after they arrived on the station, all the astronauts onboard had to seek safety on their transport craft when the ISS passed dangerously close to a field of orbital debris. The US State Department later said that the debris came from a Russian missile test that destroyed one of the country’s own satellites.

SpaceX’s next manned mission to the ISS is scheduled to launch in September with two NASA astronauts, one JAXA astronaut and one Russian cosmonaut. It will be the fifth crewed NASA Commercial Crew flight so far after Crew-4 launched to the station back in April.

Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 falls to a new all-time low of $174

Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 4 is now cheaper than ever at Amazon, where the 40mm Bluetooth-only version is currently on sale for $174. That’s a new all-time for the wearable and is $76 less than its retail price of $250. The watch has been on sale a few times for $200 over the past months, but the lowest it got before this was $180 ahead of Black Friday last year. 

Buy Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 (40mm) at Amazon – $174

We gave the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 a score of 84 in our review and praised it for its comprehensive health tracking capabilities. It has a 3-in-1 biometric sensor that enables body mass scans and new sleep-tracking features, such as continuous blood oxygen detection that can help assess your sleep quality more accurately. We also praised the watch for having a sharper and brighter screen than its predecessors. 

Since Galaxy Watch 4 is loaded with Wear OS, it has much better third-party app support than previous versions. You can download apps directly from the Play Store — there’s even a section that shows which of the apps on your phone has a Wear OS counterpart. In addition, Samsung has added gesture controls to the device via the One UI that will let you answer or dismiss calls by flicking your wrist or lifting your arm. 

Although only the 40mm version is on sale for $174 right now, you can also get its bigger counterpart at a discount. If you prefer a larger smartwatch, the 44mm version of the Galaxy Watch 4 is currently available for $230, which is only around 90 cents off its all-time low and $50 less than its regular price. 

Buy Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 (44mm) at Amazon – $230

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.