Weekly News Highlights | Google blocks news in Canada, MOVEit hack fallout continues, Twitter battles data scrapers

July 3rd

Google blocks news in Canada

Google has announced that it will remove links to Canadian news outlets from their search in response to the Online News Act recently passed by Canadian parliament.

The law requires companies like Google & Meta to pay Canadian news outlets fair compensation for the rights to use their content. An independent report found that under the law, news outlets could have received as much as £196m per year. Unfortunately, this bill intended to help news providers has only left them in hot water with Google's choice to pull their support.

Read more here.

MOVEit hack fallout continues

Weeks on from the MOVEit hack, the fallout continues to spread with more than 140 known victims of Russian hacker group Clop having come forward.

Even with only 10 organisations having reported numbers of affected individuals, the total already exceeds 15.5 million people who have been impacted. The latest victims have included several US public sector organisations which have led to the exposure of millions of American citizens' personal data.

Read more here.

Twitter battles data scrapers

In a bid to battle data scrapers and system manipulation, embattled CTO and owner of Twitter Elon Musk has announced a temporary limit on the number of tweets readable to users.

The numbers currently sit at 10,000 posts per day for Twitter Blue subscribers, 1,000 posts per day for unverified users, and 500 posts per day for new unverified users.

It's not known when these temporary emergency measures will be lifted, but some are not convinced it has anything to do with data scrapers and has instead been caused as a result of Twitter's ongoing battle with Google over unpaid bills!