Tech Roundup: Brave De-AMP, Netflix Subscriber Loss & More

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

• The European Parliament's consumer protection committee votes 43 to 2 for a standardised USB-C consumer electronics charging standard across all devices (except smart watches and health trackers, given the size constraints), ahead of a full parliament vote in May; says "the goal is to avoid a new fragmentation in the market, to continue to reduce environmental waste, ensure consumer convenience and avoid so-called 'lock-in' effects created by proprietary charging solutions."
• A U.S. court rules that scraping publicly accessible user data is legal in a win for academics, archivists, journalists, researchers, and companies that use data that's been made publicly available on the web.
• Meta's WhatsApp tests new option that allows users to limit specific individuals from seeing their "Last Seen" status and reportedly planning options to introduce a new subscription plan for extended multi-device support for business accounts; pilots removing the "Recent" tab on Instagram hashtag pages for some users as part of a small test to "connect with more interesting and relevant content on hashtags" and adds the ability for users to create and donate to fundraisers directly from Reels.
• Twitter, which is currently working on an edit option for tweets, reportedly making it possible to keep track of tweet history.
• On-demand video streaming service Netflix loses 200,000 subscribers globally (and 600,000 customers across the U.S. and Canada) for the first time in a decade during the first quarter of 2022 amid heightened competition from Disney+ (also includes Hotstar, ESPN+ and Hulu), Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, HBO and Peacock, as the platform announces plans to offer cheaper, ad-supported plans; estimates that more than 100 million global households use a shared password, with more than 30 million of those in the U.S. and Canada, in violation of its rules, implying that the company is looking to monetise sharing.
• Robinhood revives its plans to expand in the U.K. and acquires cryptocurrency trading app Ziglu.
• DuckDuckGo clarifies that reports of the search engine removing piracy websites are "made up" and says that its "site:" operator function is having issues.
• Privacy-oriented Brave browser makes it possible to surface discussions from Reddit in search results and introduces De-AMP, a feature which bypasses Google-hosted AMP pages and takes users straight to the original website; says AMP Is harmful and "helps Google further monopolize and control the direction of the web."
• Instagram plans to tweak its ranking algorithm to highlight original content more, recommending lesser from accounts that aggregate and reshare other users and platforms, including TikTok.
• Zoom updates its desktop app with gesture recognition support for giving a thumbs-up or a raising a hand, after adding them to its iPad app in August 2021.
• Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase launches "Coinbase NFT," a marketplace for showcasing NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.
• Global smartphone shipments record sharpest decline since the Covid-19 outbreak, falling 11% in the first quarter of 2022 and eroding the market share of major Chinese companies like Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo, as Samsung and Apple continue to lead the global shipment rankings.
• Google adds two new extension badges — the Featured badge and the Established Publisher badge — to the Chrome Web Store in a bid to push users towards trustworthy browser add-ons.
• Apple to expand its Communication Safety feature, which warns "children and provide helpful resources if they receive or attempt to send photos that may contain nudity," in Messages to the U.K. and Canada after rolling it out in the U.S.
• Amazon unveils Buy with Prime, which lets third-party merchants use the retail giant's shipping and logistics network to fulfill orders on their own sites.