Tech Roundup: Instagram Quiet Mode, Twitter Third-Party App Ban & More

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

• Movie streamer Netflix plans to roll out paid password sharing "more broadly" later in Q1 2023, as it reports Q4 2022 revenues of US$ 7.85 billion, up 1.9% YoY, and 231 million paid memberships, with 7.66 million subscribers added during the quarter.
• Twitter quietly updates its developer agreement with a clause banning all third-party clients, after claiming the company was "enforcing long-standing API rules"; prohits the "use or access the Licensed Materials to create or attempt to create a substitute or similar service or product to the Twitter Applications."
• Meta's Instagram launches options to filter out post recommendations based on a list of words, emojis or hashtags and showcases Quiet Mode, which silences notifications, updates profile activity status, and automatically send an auto-reply when direct messages are sent, as it belatedly continues to add a slew of safety features to reduce potential harms; WhatsApp releases feature that makes it possible to "send messages to yourself to keep track of notes and messages."
• Microsoft starts testing tabs in Notepad for Windows, along with "improvements to managing unsaved files, like automatically generating the file name/tab title based on content and a refreshed unsaved changes indicator."

• New complaint filed by privacy group noyb alleges that the recent €390 million fine issued by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) against Meta for its personalised advertising practices is several orders of magnitude smaller and that the regulator has "turned a blind eye on the revenue generated from violating the GDPR when calculating its fine," saving Meta almost €4 billion in fines.
• Tumblr begins rolling out polls across Android, iOS and the web.
• Online pharmacies that sell abortion pills are sharing sensitive data, including "web addresses the users visited, what they clicked on, the search terms they used to find a website, the previous site they visited, their general location and information about the devices they used, such as whether they were on a computer or phone," with Google and other third-parties, a new investigation from ProPublica has revealed.
• Google adds support for end-to-end encryption in its RCS-based Messages for Android for group chats up to 100 members, up from the current restiction of 21. (While it remains to be seen if Apple will embrace RCS, the company has attempted to differentiate itself from its rivals by using privacy as a selling point. The fact that its encrypted messaging app iMessages is not cross-platform means that users are defaulted to SMS, an antiquated technology that's severely lacking in encryption protections, exposing users to more risks.)