Twitter is taking steps to remove bots after growing criticism. This week the company quietly deleted thousands of automated accounts. Shares of Twitter were down about 3 percent on Thursday. The Daily Beast's Technology Reporter Taylor Lorenz explains whether this move is a little too late for Twitter.
"It's great that they are addressing the bot problem. Of course, it would have been much better if they had addressed it earlier," says Lorenz. "I'm skeptical it will make a huge difference."
Lorenz interviewed several former Twitter engineers who said the company's bot protection technology was so bad that they only addressed it after the media backlash.
Skype users are scrambling to find an alternative after Microsoft shut down the pioneering internet phone service which let people make cheap long distance calls and chat with other users. Google Voice lets users make calls from a smartphone or a desktop web browser but it's only available to people in the U.S. Viber users can call phone numbers but can't get a number to receive calls. Zoom offers phone options too. You could get a number from a low cost virtual carrier or try other internet phone services. Microsoft says some Skype features will migrate to Teams, but its Teams Phone feature is only for businesses.
