Tech Roundup: Pakistan Wikipedia Ban, Twitter Blue Expansion & More

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

• The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority blocks Wikipedia in the country, saying the site failed to remove "sacrilegious" content within a 48-hour deadline.
• Facebook owner Meta Platforms for years paid an Israeli contractor named Bright Data to scrape data from e-commerce websites to build brand profiles on the service while publicly condemning the practice and suing companies that pulled data from its own social-media platforms, a new report from Bloomberg reveals.
• India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) announces plans to ban and block 138 betting apps and 94 loan lending apps with Chinese links to prevent misuse of the citizens' data and crack down on shark loan apps that trick unuspecting users into taking big debts.
• Apple hits 935 million paid subscriptions across its services, as it faces mounting scrutiny from governments around the world in recent years over its closed ecosystem that imposes a number of restrictions on sideloading apps, alternative in-app payment systems, third-party browser engines, as well as when it comes to the use of pre-installed apps, default options, and anticompetitive self-preferencing.
• Twitter expands Blue to Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain; plans to launch a new Spaces tab with curated spaces and podcasts and start sharing revenue from reply-thread ads with users who pay for Twitter Blue.
• Microsoft launches Microsoft Store Ads in its app marketplace as a way for developers to pay to reach a "wider app audience."
• Google-owned YouTube rolls out "Go Live Together," which lets creators with 50 or more subscribers co-host livestreams with one guest at a time, on its iOS and Android apps; comes as YouTube Shorts surpasses 50 billion daily views, up from 30 billion in April 2022.
• Italy's privacy watchdog, the Garante, orders San Francisco-based AI chatbot maker Replika to stop processing local users' data over concerns its tech poses risks to minors.
• Global smartphone shipments decline by 12% YoY to 1.2 billion units in 2022, the lowest since 2013, according to Counterpoint Research; Apple captures 48% revenue and 85% profit share of the market.
• Telegram adds new options that allows users to turn any sticker or animated emoji into a profile picture as well as translate entire chats, groups and channels.
• ByteDance-owned TikTok opens an Transparency and Accountability Center in the U.S. to help regulators, academics and auditors understand how the app works, the workings of its algorithm and content moderation tools as it attempts to take control of the narrative over trust deficit concerns that it's a Trojan Horse for the Chinese government.