In what can only be characterized as a good thing, YouTube announced that it’s cracking down on medical misinformation by removing videos that go against its policies, including those recommending “harmful or ineffective” cancer treatments and “cures.” The video platform is making its medical misinformation policy more robust, having already added new rules to ensure abortion safety last month. According to zdnet.com, YouTube will follow a framework targeting videos that showcase prevention, treatment, and denial of different health ailments based on unproven, harmful, and ineffective methods. It’s also taking down videos that directly contradict health authorities on topics prone to misinformation, like cancer, Covid-19, and vaccines. As we note at the end of the next story, please don’t follow medical advice from Doctor YouTube or Doctor Google! 

Google has been unveiling changes and features for their generative AI over the past few months, in an effort to catch up with OpenAI’s tech. Now, the New York Times reports that one of the capabilities Google wants to give Bard  is the ability to give advice about issues users face in their lives. Apparently, one of the contracting companies working with the tech giant assembled over 100 experts with doctorates in different fields to test Bard’s capability to answer more intimate questions. This will be anywhere from interesting to catastrophic in my opinion. Getting relationship advice from an AI chatbot seems pretty foolish right off the bat…but after the system rolls in advice from itself and other chatbots, I can’t imagine the terrible advice you may be getting. Google is also working on getting Bard up to speed on tutoring…but even Google warns in the help pages against using the chatbot’s advice and relying on its responses “as medical, legal, financial, or other professional advice.” 

The iPhone 15 is now being produced in India, and that marks the first time that plants there have made the latest iPhone model as the same time of China. Appleinsider.com notes that older models of iPhone have been made by Foxconn for several years intuit country…both to reduce reliance on China as a single source, and to dodge Indian import fees. Now, 7% of iPhone production is coming from India. Last year, the plants there didn’t build current models until some 6 to 9 months after phones started flowing out of China. Now, they lag by just weeks. It is thought that Apple is seeking parity with China, and would like to increase latest-model iPhone production in India substantially from the 7% figure currently.  

In an unsurprising, childish action, X…the app formerly known as Twitter, apparently has delayed loading of Links to sites of competitors and others disliked by Elon Musk. Theverge.com reports that the New York Times was taking extra long to load starting on August 4th. Other sites that had a delay in loading sites from links included Meta, Bluesky, and Substack. The Washington Post tested some links, and found that while these were slow, Fox News, YouTube, Mastodon, and even the Post loaded fine. Yoel Roth, X’s former head of trust and safety, noted on Bluesky  that “This is one of those things that seems too crazy to be true, even for Twitter, until you see it inexplicably take 5 seconds for Chrome to receive 650 bytes of data.” When queried, X sent an auto reply message saying ‘We’ll get back to you soon.’

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.