Tech Roundup: Kazakhstan Crypto Woes, Twitter CEO Shake-up & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

• Twitter's Jack Dorsey steps down as CEO effective immediately, with CTO Parag Agrawal appointed as his replacement; says "I've decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders."
• China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology orders technology giant Tencent to halt the roll out of new apps in China as well as temporarily suspend updates to its existing apps to review compliance with new data protection rules that came into effect in the country earlier this month.
• Truecaller brings Video caller ID to its apps, in addition to rolling out call recording to all users on the platform.
• Kazakhstan announces plans to ration power over winter to 50 registered crypto miners as illegal miners and mass relocations from China cause blackouts across the country.
• Meta-owned WhatsApp hits almost 20 million users in India using its payment services, in addition to receiving regulatory approval to double the number to 40 million; updates its desktop web version with a built-in custom Sticker Maker, which lets users turn ordinary images into stickers that can be sent via the messaging service.
• Ride-hailing company Uber is ordered to stop offering its services in the Belgian capital of Brussels after the Appeal Court ruled that a 2015 ban on private individuals offering taxi services also applies to professional drivers.

• Open-source software company Nextcloud and a consortium of nearly 30 other E.U. companies dubbed the "Coalition for a Level Playing Field" file an antitrust complaint with the European Commission against Microsoft for bundling OneDrive and Teams with Windows.
• U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to reportedly planning to block Meta's (aka Facebook) proposed acquisition of online gif platform Giphy, marking the first time a major purchase by a big tech company is being reversed.
• Russia's communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, to continue slowing down Twitter on mobile, which has been in force since March 2021, until all content deemed illegal — including posts containing child pornography, drug abuse information or calls for minors to commit suicide — is deleted from the service.
• Australian government proposes new defamation legislation that would mandate social media companies to reveal the identities of anonymous trolls or face fines.
• Chinese internet giant Tencent begins allowing content from third-party social media rivals to be opened directly within its popular WeChat app, following government intervention mandating internet firms to stop blocking links to rival services and open so-called walled gardens in a broader campaign to curb the companies' growing monopoly on data and protect consumers.