New research by Mozilla Foundation says TikTok is fueling misinformation and political tension in Kenya ahead of its August general elections.
Mozilla made the conclusion after reviewing 130 highly-watched videos sharing content filled with hate speech, incitement and political disinformation.
Mozilla Tech and Society Fellow Odanga Madung say the videos were not purged from the short video platform, which is among the most popular social sites in the East African country.
Madung reviewed content shared through popular political hashtags, names of political candidates, key locations, political parties, and ethnic communities earlier this year.

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India’s central bank proposed integration between UPI and credit cards as a significant boost for a fast-growing payments protocol that has become the most popular way individuals in the South Asian market transact online.
Governor of Reserve Bank of India at a briefing, Shaktikanta Das says UPI facilitates transactions by linking savings or current accounts through users’ debit cards.
He says it is now proposed to allow the linking of credit cards on the UPI platform, to begin with, the RuPay credit cards will be linked to UPI.
UPI, a five-year-old payments protocol built by a coalition of retail banks, is the most popular way Indians transact money.

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When the company formerly known as Facebook announced its plan to rebrand, it also announced a new stock ticker.
Execs said that after ten years as FB, its NASDAQ listing would transition to MVRS for the metaverse. However, after the investment fund listed under META vacated the symbol in January, Meta Platforms quickly confirmed that it would use META instead, while at the same time announcing its first drop in daily active users, ever.
Now it has filed paperwork saying the shift will become official before the market opens on June 9th.
The company says is moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented and virtual reality to help build the next evolution in social technology.

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Twitter has agreed to pay $150 million in fines after the US government sued the social media company alleging that it misled consumers about how it protects their personal data.
According to the federal lawsuit, Twitter failed to tell its users for years that it used its contact information to help marketers target their advertising in violation of a 2011 privacy settlement with the Federal Trade Commission.
FTC Chair Lina Khan says this practice affected more than 140 million Twitter users while boosting Twitter's primary source of revenue.
Twitter says that the use of the personal information for ads was inadvertent and that the incident was first disclosed in 2019.

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Elon Musk has faced questions from the US Securities and Exchange Commission about how and when he disclosed his large stake in Twitter last month, prior to agreeing to buy the social media company.
The SEC asked him to advise why the initial disclosure does not appear to have been made within the required 10 days from the date on which he acquired a stake in the company greater than 5%.
Musk had previously made several comments on Twitter suggesting he felt changes needed to be made to the platform.

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A federal antitrust lawsuit over the long-shuttered alternative app store called Cydia has now been given the green light to proceed after its initial complaint was dismissed.
The Cydia app store, which once featured apps and other tweaks that weren’t permitted by Apple’s official App Store policies, is suing Apple for its alleged unlawful monopoly over iOS app distribution — a monopoly that contributed to the end of Cydia’s business.
Judge Gonzalez Rogers has rejected Apple’s motion to dismiss it. Apple had again argued Cydia’s allegations fell outside the four-year window allowed under federal antitrust law, reported Reuters, which first noted the lawsuit’s update recently.

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The Supreme Court just blocked a controversial law that allows Texas residents and the attorney general to sue social media companies over their content-moderation decisions.
The law, HB 20, prohibits tech platforms from removing or restricting content based on the viewpoint represented in the user’s expression and was designed with conservative claims of tech’s liberal ideological bias in mind.
The Supreme Court ruling isn’t the final word on HB 20, which still faces a lawsuit from two tech industry groups, the Computer and Communications Industry Association and NetChoice, challenging its constitutionality.
The tech trade groups asked the Supreme Court to intervene with an emergency stay.

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Talk360 is looking to bridge the challenge of establishing payment services as it creates a new payment platform that will integrate all available payment options across Africa.
It says this product will open up businesses to the largest pool of localized payment options in Africa.
The startup is also looking to expand its international calling operations across Africa after closing a $4 million seed funding round, led by HAVAÍC.
Talk360 co-founder and managing director for Africa Dean Hiine told TechCrunch he anticipates great growth for its payment platform, which he says will also make it easy for international merchants to sell to users in Africa too.
He added that the startup decided to build its own payment platform informed of the need to make payment and checkout easy for its users in Africa.

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The Cairo Angels Syndicate Fund has announced an undisclosed investment in Finclusion Group, a sub-Saharan African fintech platform.
Finclusion offers buy-now-pay-later services, salary advance schemes, loan services, and transactional banking to individuals and SMEs across 5 countries—South Africa, Eswatini, Namibia, Kenya, and Tanzania.
The startup reportedly has over 240,000 customers across its 5 markets and has disbursed over $310 million in loans since launch. So far, CASF’s investment is the startup’s third raise since launch. In September 2021, it raised $20 million in a partnership with Lendable.
CEO of the Cairo Angels Syndicate Fund, Aly El Shalakany says their mission is to invest and support incredible founders building digital platforms to solve essential problems.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced on Twitter that Starlink, the satellite internet service launched by SpaceX, his space exploration company, has been approved in Nigeria and Mozambique.
The company received two licenses, which include the International Gateway license and Internet Service Provider license, and will be trading as Starlink Internet Services Nigeria Ltd.
The Nigerian Communications Commission says the International Gateway license has a 10-year tenure while the ISP license is to last for five years.
The NCC says both licenses take effect from May 2022 and may be renewed after the expiration.

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