Tech Roundup: Nothing Phone (1), TikTok Content Levels & More

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

• Ride-hailing platform Uber gets sued by over 500 women in the U.S. over sexual assault by some drivers, alleging the company knew about sexual misconduct on rides, including rape, since 2014.
• Amazon's Ring subsidiary admits to providing law enforcement with camera footage captured using its smart home devices such as video doorbells 11 times this year alone without users' consent or a court order.
• Music streamer Spotify acquires Wordle-inspired music game Heardle to make music discoverability more interactive for users on the platform.
• Twitter sues Tesla CEO Elon Musk for attempting to back out of the US$ 44 billion purchase of the social network, stating "Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests."
• Google countersues Match, accusing it of bad faith dealings and breach of contract, after Match sued Google in May over alleged monopolistic billing policies.
• Nothing, the smartphone company led by OnePlus founder Carl Pei, announces its Phone (1), starting at £399 with two 50MP rear cameras, 4,500mAh battery, 6.55-inch 1080p OLED display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G Plus processor, and 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, in over 40 markets, including the UK, Japan, India, and countries in mainland Europe (but not the U.S.)
• Google says YouTube TV has over 5 million subscribers, including free trial users, making it the U.S.' biggest internet pay TV provider and fifth-largest TV distributor.
• Twitter says roughly 1.5 billion tweets about gaming were made on its site in H1 2022, up 36% YoY, with Genshin Impact and Wordle emerging the most tweeted-about games; pilots new option that reminds users to add descriptions to uploaded images as part of accessibility improvements and experiments with topic-oriented custom timelines for developers.
• TikTok unveils Content Levels, a system to classify and age-restrict content based on thematic maturity; also plans to let users automatically block videos with certain words or hashtags in their feeds.
• Called ID service Truecaller launches Open Doors, a Clubhouse-like app which allows users register with their phone numbers and audio chat with their contacts who use the app.
• Meta's WhatsApp tests new Status (its take on stories) feature that lets users add voice notes, alongside photos, videos, GIFs, and text messages.
• Netflix partners with Microsoft for its planned ad-supported streaming tier, with the tech giant functioning as the streamer's global advertising technology and sales partner.
• Reddit teams up with Meta's Giphy to bring support for GIF comments to new subreddits automatically, and existing subreddits if moderators opt in to enable the feature.