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Canoo reveals it paid for CEO's jet, AT&T leaks records and X announces NSFW plans | TechCrunch

April 16, 2024 10:49 PM0


Heya, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the noteworthy happenings in tech over the past several days (and change).

Famed startup accelerator Y Combinator had its Demo Days, and the venture desk took it all in with an appropriately skeptical eye. You can read their day one and day two coverage, along with an AI roundup from yours truly and analysis pieces from the rest of the dogged edit team.

But the world didn’t stop turning for YC. Also this week, Microsoft and Quantinuum, a quantum computing startup, made a scientific breakthrough — or so they claim. The companies say that they were able to run thousands of experiments on a quantum computer without a single error, a feat that’s long eluded the industry.

Elsewhere, Apple could be getting into home robots. Reportedly, the company — fresh off its decision to cancel its long-in-the-works autonomous EV — has put Apple Home and AI execs on some form of robotics project for households, although many of the details have yet to be finalized.

Lots else happened. We recap it all in this edition of WiR — but first, a reminder to sign up to receive the WiR newsletter in your inbox every Saturday.

News

Canoo paid for its CEO’s jet: Kirsten reports that EV startup Canoo paid the rent for the CEO’s private jet — $1.7 million— in 2023. That’s double the amount of revenue the company generated that year.

AT&T leak: Phone giant AT&T has reset millions of account passcodes after a huge cache of data containing customer records was dumped online earlier this month, Zack reports.

No ChatGPT account required: OpenAI is making its flagship conversational AI, ChatGPT, accessible to everyone — even people who haven’t bothered making an account. But it won’t be quite the same experience. Devin has the story.

Microsoft unbundles: Microsoft has introduced new versions of its Microsoft 365 and Office 365 subscription services that exclude Teams, its business collaboration chat offering, following scrutiny from European Union regulators and complaints from rival Slack.

Funding

Ghost ghosts: Ghost Autonomy, a startup working on autonomous driving software for automaker partners, has shut down after raising nearly $220 million.

Analysis

Alphabet and HubSpot: Reuters reported on Thursday that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is exploring the possibility of buying Boston-based HubSpot, a CRM and marketing automation company with a market cap of over $33 billion. Ron explains why that’d make for strange bedfellows.

Podcasts

This week on Equity, Alex chatted about BlaBlaCar’s new credit facility (and how it managed to land it), and he discusses how PipeDreams could be onto a clever model of startup construction, GoStudent’s rebound and profitability, Hailo’s chip business and the two new brands that GGV calls home as it divvies up its operations on opposite sides of the Pacific.

And over on Found, Nick Green, the co-founder and CEO of Thrive Market, was the featured guest. Thrive is a membership-based online grocery store that focuses on natural and organic food and household products. Green spoke about how Thrive isn’t just focused on offering healthy options, but also wants to ensure that everyone has access to them — including those with SNAP and EBT benefits. 

Bonus round

NSFW on X: The social media company has confirmed that authorized users on the platform can create NSFW communities, ahead of a change that’ll see all NSFW content on X filtered by default.


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Robotic Automations

X confirms plans for NSFW Communities | TechCrunch

April 13, 2024 3:36 AM0


A day after researchers surfaced X’s plans to test NSFW adult communities on the platform formerly known as Twitter, the company confirmed that Community admins can now set an “Adult Content” label in their settings to avoid having their communities’ content auto-filtered. Otherwise, all NSFW content will be soon filtered across X’s Communities by default. Communities are X’s smaller groups with their own feeds outside of the main timeline.

The changes appear to confirm the earlier tests of NSFW communities spotted by various researchers and reverse engineers, and point to a social network that will now more directly embrace the adult content that has always been present on the platform.

NSFW (not safe for work) content plays a major role on X, which has been a primary advertising venue for sex workers as well as home to a large amount of adult content-focused bots and spam. According to internal documents obtained by Reuters in 2022, roughly 13% of all Twitter posts included NSFW content, like nude and explicit photos, videos and other pornography. What’s more, the documents indicated that adult content was one of the fastest-growing genres on the platform, even as news and sports were declining.

New York Intelligencer also recently detailed the rise of spam bots on the service now known as X, which promoted NSFW content with links in their profiles, or bios, leading them to regularly reply to posts with messages like “nudes in bio,” “pics in bio” and other more explicit terms.

Now included in a long list of updates to X’s Communities is the confirmation that NSFW-focused communities will be allowed to designate themselves as such to keep from having their content filtered automatically, as in other Communities.

The changes, posted on X by an engineer, were reshared by Musk, who commented, “Many upgrades to X Communities!”

Communities are something that owner Elon Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino promoted during an all-hands last fall as being key to X’s growth plans.

According to a transcript acquired by The Verge, Musk explained that the Communities product was growing fast but “there’s a lot of work to do to make Communities compelling.” He also shared that X was seeing “rapid percentage growth” in Communities, and had been adding new features, like the ability to include any X account’s feed in the Community feed. For example, a video game-focused community may want to include the X accounts of notable video game reviewers or commentators, he said. The X executives had not shared any plans for NSFW Communities at that time.

If X were able to make Communities a successful product, it could potentially serve as a competitor to larger forum sites like Reddit and host training data for Musk’s xAI-run chatbot Grok, which has exclusive access to X content.

Alongside the news that Community admins could now label themselves as including adult content, X will also introduce a Ban button alongside Keep and Hide buttons on the Reported posts page along with more detailed messages explaining why you’re not eligible to join a given Community, plus temporary and permanent bans for spammers; tools to sort posts by Trending, Most recent and Most liked; a Media tab for Communities on Android; and more, including a range of bug fixes and minor improvements.

The list of what’s ahead for Communities was fairly extensive, too, noting that users will soon be able to explore top posts and top communities across all Communities and tools to discover top communities and posts by topic. Communities will also be promoted and recommended to potentially interested users on the For You tab, allowing them to grow more of a following. Mods will have access to Community Analytics and will be able to pin multiple members’ posts. There will also be support for spam filter levels set by admins, simplified reporting and moderation pages, and audio Spaces in Communities, among other things.

The post suggests a new user interface for posts, and replies may be on the way, too.

X did not return requests for comment about an ETA for any of the items listed as coming “soon.”




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Robotic Automations

X is testing NSFW adult communities, according to screenshots | TechCrunch

April 13, 2024 1:30 AM0


X is living up to its name. The platform, formerly Twitter, is working on an addition to its Communities feature that would let X users create groups for X-rated material, according to app researchers.

Researcher Daniel Buchuk of Watchful, which analyzes app development and performance, spotted the feature in development. He shared screenshots with TechCrunch exclusively that show what X’s NSFW Communities could look like.

An independent researcher, Nima Owji, also spotted the feature in development last month.

Twitter introduced its Communities feature in 2021. It allows users to post within smaller, interest-based subgroups, like a subreddit. When Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he enacted sweeping changes to the app’s brand identity, verification systems and creator monetization efforts — but some features, like Communities, remained stagnant.

X also hasn’t taken much initiative in working with its sizable population of online sex workers, who turn to the platform — one of few that allows adult content — to promote their paid offerings from sites like OnlyFans.

“Twitter really is the primary advertising venue at this point for sex workers,” Dr. Olivia Snow, a dominatrix and researcher at UCLA’s Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, told TechCrunch last year. So, the platform’s more lenient policy on adult content is critical for online sex workers to grow their businesses.

X did not reply to a request for comment.

Adult creators are allowed to post explicit content on X, though they can’t monetize it on the platform. But if they can create their own fan communities, this feature could give creators a more direct way to reach their audience.

Even though X seems to be working on this NSFW Communities feature, that doesn’t mean it’ll come to fruition. Shortly after Musk took control of the platform, reverse engineers uncovered possible features that would allow creators to monetize paywalled videos or charge money for DMs. These mock-ups looked similar to features on OnlyFans, which could be a strategy for Musk to recoup his $44 billion investment: monetizing “X videos.”

But as it stands, X doesn’t seem poised to reverse its stance on adult content monetization. Even before Musk’s takeover, Twitter had been working on an OnlyFans competitor, but it was shelved because Twitter could not adequately detect non-consensual content and child sexual exploitation (CSE). But X says it’s mitigating that dire problem. According to X CEO Linda Yaccarino, in 2023 the platform suspended 12.4 million accounts for violating child sexual exploitation policies, up from 2.3 million accounts removed in 2022.

Should Twitter embrace porn and compete with OnlyFans?

Sex workers explain why blue check stigma and #BlockTheBlue aren’t so straightforward




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