An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Economic Times: Meta, the owner of Facebook andInstagram, is planning a fresh round of layoffs and will cut thousands of employees as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter. The world's largest social networking company is eliminating more jobs, on top of a 13% reduction in November, in a bid to become a more efficient organization. In its earlier round of cuts, Meta slashed 11,000 workers in what was its first-ever major layoff.

The company has also been working to flatten its organization, giving buyout packages to managers and cutting whole teams it deems nonessential, Bloomberg News reported in February, a move that is still being finalized and could affect thousands of staffers. The imminent round of cuts is being driven by financial targets and is separate from the "flattening," said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. Meta, which has seen a slowdown in advertising revenue and has shifted focus to a virtual-reality platform called the metaverse, has been asking directors and vice presidents to make lists of employees that can be let go, the people said. This phase of layoffs could be finalized in the next week, according to the people.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The US can stop Twitter from releasing details about the government's demands for user information in national security investigations, a court ruled (PDF), in the same week House Republicans are to grill national security officials over surveillance. Twitter had protested the government's redactions to a 2014 "transparency report" that featured a numerical breakdown of national security-related data requests from the previous year. The US appeals court in San Francisco on Monday agreed with a lower-court judge that the Justice Department had shown a "compelling" interest in keeping that information secret. Based on classified and unclassified declarations provided by government officials, the court was "able to appreciate why Twitter's proposed disclosure would risk making our foreign adversaries aware of what is being surveilled and what is not being surveilled -- if anything at all," US Circuit Judge Daniel Bress wrote for the three-judge panel.

Although the case is almost a decade old, the ruling comes just as lawmakers and US national security agencies gear up for a bruising fight over making changes to a key surveillance program. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, described by intelligence officials as a key authority, expires on Dec. 31 unless Congress votes to renew it. US agencies use the authority to compel internet and technology companies to turn over information about suspected foreign terrorists and spies. Changes to Section 702 could include altering what companies like Twitter are required to do in response to government demands. "The case at issue in Monday's decision involved efforts by Twitter to share information about two types of federal law enforcement demands on the social media company: 'national security letters' for subscriber information, which would cover metadata but not the substance of any electronic communications, and orders under FISA, which could include content," adds Bloomberg.

Judge Daniel Bress wrote: "The government may not fend off every First Amendment challenge by invoking national security. But we must apply the First Amendment with due regard for the government's compelling interest in securing the safety of our country and its people."

A veteran JPMorgan Chase banker fumed over the financial giant's policy requiring certain staffers to give six months' notice before being allowed to leave for another job. From a report: The Wall Street worker, who claims to earn around $400,000 annually in total compensation after accumulating 15 years of experience, griped that the lengthy notice period likely means a lucrative job offer from another company will be rescinded.

Taking to the social media platform Blind -- which allows career professionals anonymity so that they can freely post without concern about retribution from their bosses -- the worker in the e-trade division lamented over the policy. "So I had made up my mind to resign from JPM (New York) and look for a new role," the Blind poster wrote in an item titled, "Notice period blues. When I looked into the resignation process, I see that my notice period is 6 bloody months!! I was in disbelief, I checked my offer letter and 'Whoops there it is,'" the post continued.

schwit1 writes: In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when little was known about the virus, the U.K. government briefly considered asking the public to exterminate every cat amid fears that the pets could spread the disease. Lord Bethell, a former deputy Health Minister from 2020 to 2021, revealed the news Wednesday during an interview with Britain's Channel 4 News.

"Can you imagine what would have happened if we had wanted to do that?" he added. The U.K. has some 10.9 million cats, according to the 2022 PDSA Animal Wellbeing report. The bombshell revelations have sparked astonishment from some on social media, with users sharing images of their own cats and vowing they would have put up a fight. 10 Downing Street's own feline friend Larry's unofficial Twitter parody account wrote: "hard not to take this personally."

TikTok has announced a batch of new features intended to reduce screen time and improve the well-being of its younger users. The Verge reports: In the coming weeks, a daily screen time limit of 60 minutes will be automatically applied to every TikTok user under 18 years old. Teens that hit this limit will be asked to enter a passcode to continue watching. They can disable the feature entirely, but if they do so and spend more than 100 minutes on TikTok a day, they'll be prompted to set a new limit.

TikTok claims these prompts increased the use of its screen time management tools by 234 percent during the feature's first month of testing. Teens will also be sent an inbox notification each week that recaps their screen time, allowing younger users to be aware of how much time they spend on the app and requiring that they make active decisions to extend the recommended screen time. These weekly updates are available now, alongside prompts to encourage teens to use screen time tools.

TikTok says it consulted current academic research and experts from the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children's Hospital when deciding how long the time restriction should be. "While there's no collectively-endorsed position on how much screen time is 'too much', or even the impact of screen time more broadly, we recognize that teens typically require extra support as they start to explore the online world independently," said Cormac Keenan, Head of Trust and Safety at TikTok, in a statement.

The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee voted on Wednesday along party lines to give President Joe Biden the power to ban Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, in the latest setback for the popular video sharing site. From a report: Lawmakers voted 24 to 16 to approve the measure to grant the administration new powers to ban the ByteDance-owned app -- which is used by over 100 million Americans -- as well as other apps considered security risks. Democrats on the committee opposed the bill, which was sponsored by Republican committee chair Michael McCaul. TikTok has come under increasing fire in recent weeks over fears that user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government, undermining Western security interests.

China says a ban on the use of TikTok by official European Union institutions will harm business confidence in Europe. From a report: In the latest salvo in the battle over the Chinese-owned video sharing app, the European Parliament, the European Commission and the EU Council have banned TikTok from being installed on official devices. [...] China has been pushing back, though its ruling Communist Party has long blocked many foreign social media platforms and messaging apps, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram -- and TikTok. A Chinese version of the app, Douyin, is permitted, but its content is not the same as that found on TikTok. "The EU claims to be the most open market in the world, but recently it has been taking restrictive measures and unreasonably suppressing other countries' companies on the grounds of national security," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a daily briefing Wednesday. "This will dampen the international community's confidence in the business environment in the EU. The EU should match its words with deeds, respect the market economy and fair competition, stop overstretching and abusing the concept of national security and provide an open, fair, transparent and non-discriminatory business environment for all companies," Mao said.

Bluesky, the Twitter alternative backed by Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, has hit the App Store and more testers are gaining access. Though the app is still only available as an invite-only beta, its App Store arrival signals that a public launch could be nearing. TechCrunch reports: We haven't heard much from Bluesky since October 2022, when the team behind the project shared an update on the Bluesky blog, detailing the status of the social protocol that powers its new Twitter-like app, also called Bluesky. AT (originally called ADX, or "Authenticated Transfer Protocol,") is Bluesky's main effort while the Bluesky mobile app serves to showcase the protocol in action. [...]

We received an invite to the service and found it to be a functional, if still rather bare-bones, Twitter-like experience. Users create a handle which is then represented as @username.bsky.social as well as the display name that appears more prominently in bold text, as on Twitter. As a brand-new app, Bluesky's suggested user list didn't immediately impress with big names of public figures during onboarding. The app itself presents a simplified user interface where you can click a plus button to create a post of 256 characters, which can include photos. Where Twitter asks "What's happening?," Bluesky asks "What's up?" You can search for and follow other individuals, much like on Twitter, then view their updates in a Home timeline. User profiles contain the same sort of features you'd expect: a profile pic, background, bio and metrics, like the number of followers and posts a user has, as well as how many people they're following. Profile feeds are also divided into two sections, like Twitter: posts and posts & replies.

Bluesky users can share, mute and block accounts, but advanced tools, like adding them to lists, are not yet available. The discover tab in the bottom center of the app's navigation is useful, offering more "who to follow" suggestions and a running feed of recently posted Bluesky updates. The latter gives you the opportunity to find more people who you might like to follow, based on their posts rather than just a bio. Posts themselves can be replied to, retweeted, liked and, from a three-dot menu, reported, shared via the iOS Share Sheet to other apps, or copied as text. Another tab lets you check on your Notifications, including likes, reposts, follows and replies, also much like Twitter. There are no DMs. You can download the app here, but you're still going to need an invite code.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Three different cybercriminal groups claimed access to internal networks at communications giant T-Mobile in more than 100 separate incidents throughout 2022, new data suggests. In each case, the goal of the attackers was the same: Phish T-Mobile employees for access to internal company tools, and then convert that access into a cybercrime service that could be hired to divert any T-Mobile user's text messages and phone calls to another device. The conclusions above are based on an extensive analysis of Telegram chat logs from three distinct cybercrime groups or actors that have been identified by security researchers as particularly active in and effective at "SIM-swapping," which involves temporarily seizing control over a target's mobile phone number.

Countless websites and online services use SMS text messages for both password resets and multi-factor authentication. This means that stealing someone's phone number often can let cybercriminals hijack the target's entire digital life in short order -- including access to any financial, email and social media accounts tied to that phone number. All three SIM-swapping entities that were tracked for this story remain active in 2023, and they all conduct business in open channels on the instant messaging platform Telegram. KrebsOnSecurity is not naming those channels or groups here because they will simply migrate to more private servers if exposed publicly, and for now those servers remain a useful source of intelligence about their activities.

Each advertises their claimed access to T-Mobile systems in a similar way. At a minimum, every SIM-swapping opportunity is announced with a brief "Tmobile up!" or "Tmo up!" message to channel participants. Other information in the announcements includes the price for a single SIM-swap request, and the handle of the person who takes the payment and information about the targeted subscriber. The information required from the customer of the SIM-swapping service includes the target's phone number, and the serial number tied to the new SIM card that will be used to receive text messages and phone calls from the hijacked phone number. Initially, the goal of this project was to count how many times each entity claimed access to T-Mobile throughout 2022, by cataloging the various "Tmo up!" posts from each day and working backwards from Dec. 31, 2022. But by the time we got to claims made in the middle of May 2022, completing the rest of the year's timeline seemed unnecessary. The tally shows that in the last seven-and-a-half months of 2022, these groups collectively made SIM-swapping claims against T-Mobile on 104 separate days -- often with multiple groups claiming access on the same days. In a written statement to KrebsOnSecurity, T-Mobile said this type of activity affects the entire wireless industry.

"And we are constantly working to fight against it," the statement reads. "We have continued to drive enhancements that further protect against unauthorized access, including enhancing multi-factor authentication controls, hardening environments, limiting access to data, apps or services, and more. We are also focused on gathering threat intelligence data, like what you have shared, to help further strengthen these ongoing efforts."

More countries shut down the internet in 2022 than ever before, according to a new report by digital rights researchers, as the threat of "digital authoritarianism" races up the agenda of many governments worldwide. From a report: Authorities in 35 countries instituted internet shutdowns at least 187 times, according to the New York-based digital rights watchdog Access Now. Nearly half of these shutdowns occurred in India, and if that nation is excluded, 2022 saw the most number of shutdowns globally since the group began monitoring disruptions in 2016. Access Now relied on technical assessments as well as news articles and personal accounts to compile its report, which spans complete blackouts, suspensions of specific phone networks or social media apps, and the slowing down of internet speeds.

Triggers for shutdowns have included large protests, conflict situations, elections and even examinations. Whatever the situation, they make it substantially more difficult for people to communicate and receive or send news, and they incur significant economic costs, which prompted the United Nations last year to call for governments to avoid using such a blunt tactic. "This can be a big warning sign of how the human rights situation is deteriorating, and shutdowns are often associated with increased levels of insecurity and other restrictions," said Liz Throssell, a spokeswoman at the U.N. Human Rights Office in Geneva. India is the most prolific at suspending the internet, topping Access Now's list for the fifth year in a row.

In a Facebook post today, Mark Zuckerberg said the company plans to develop "AI personas" for Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. He also announced that the company is "creating a new top-level product group at Meta focused on generative AI." Engadget reports: It's currently investigating helpers for multiple media formats. You could see advanced chat features in Messenger and WhatsApp, or unique Instagram filters and ads. Video and "multi-modal" content could also benefit, Zuckerberg says. In the near future, you'll see an emphasis on tools for creation and expression. The social media giant is also pooling its generative AI teams into a single group to help "turbocharge" efforts in the emerging field, the executive adds. He doesn't provide more details, and cautions that there's a "lot of foundational work to do" before the most advanced projects come to fruition.

LinkedIn has been hit by a rise in sophisticated recruitment scams, as fraudsters seek to take advantage of the trend towards remote working and widespread lay-offs across the tech sector. From a report: Jobseekers on the world's largest professional network are being defrauded out of money after taking part in fake recruitment processes set up by scammers who pose as employers, before obtaining personal and financial information. "There's certainly an increase in the sophistication of the attacks and the cleverness," Oscar Rodriguez, vice-president of product management at LinkedIn told the Financial Times "We see websites being set up, we see phone numbers with a seemingly professional operator picking up the phone and answering on the company's behalf. We see a move to more sophisticated deception," he added.

The warning comes as the Microsoft-owned social media company said it has sought to block tens of millions of fake accounts in recent months, while US regulators warn of an increase in jobs-related cons. Last month, cyber security company Zscaler revealed a scam that targeted jobseekers and a dozen US companies, where fraudsters approached people through LinkedIn's direct messaging feature InMail. Scammers identified businesses that were already hiring, including enterprise software company Zuora, software developer Intellectsoft and Zscaler itself. They then created "lookalike" websites with similar job ads and, via LinkedIn's InMail feature, invited jobseekers to enter personal information into the websites, before conducting remote interviews via Skype.

After an iPhone was stolen, $10,000 vanished from the owner's bank account — and they were locked out of their Apple account's photos, contacts and notes. The thieves "stole thousands of dollars through Apple Pay" and "opened an Apple Card to make fraudulent charges," writes 9 to 5 Mac, citing a report from the Wall Street Journal. These thieves often work in groups with one distracting a victim while another records over a shoulder as they enter their passcode. Others have been known to even befriend victims, asking them to open social media or other apps on their iPhones so they can watch and memorize the passcode before stealing it. A 12-person crime ring in Minnesota was recently taken down after targeting iPhones like this in bars. Almost $300,000 was stolen from 40 victims by this group before they were caught.
The Journal adds that "similar stories are piling up in police stations around the country," while one of their article's authors has tweeted Apple's official response. "We sympathize with users who have had this experience and we take all attacks on our users very seriously, no matter how rare.... We will continue to advance the protections to help keep user accounts secure."

The reporter suggests alphanumeric passwords are harder to steal, while MacRumors offers some other simple fixes. "Use Face ID or Touch ID as much as possible when in public to prevent thieves from spying... In situations where entering the passcode is necessary, users can hold their hands over their screen to hide passcode entry."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Since Thursday morning, Dish Network has been experiencing a major outage that's taken down the company's main websites, apps, and customer support systems, and employees tell The Verge it's not clear what's going on inside the company. The company's Dish.com website is completely blank save for a notice apologizing for "any disruptions you may be having" while promising that "teams are working hard to restore systems as soon as possible." The Boost Mobile and Boost Infinite sites display a similar message. When we called each brand's customer support lines, there were no humans on the other end -- each call automatically hung up after delivering a recorded message about the outage.

In an ironic twist, the outage started around the time that Dish was set to release its earnings for Q4 and fiscal year 2022. CEO Erik Carlson addressed it during the company's earnings call, saying the company was experiencing an "internal outage that's continuing to affect our internal servers and IT telephony." While Carlson claimed that Dish, Sling, and the company's wireless networks were operating normally, he admitted that "internal communications, customer care functions, Internet sites" were knocked out. Internally, frontline employees have been kept in the dark about what's going on. Two sources tell The Verge that they are being told to stand by for information from their leadership teams, which haven't yet been forthcoming. They say it hasn't even been made clear whether they'll be paid. Employees have also been told that they won't be able to connect to their VPN, keeping remote workers from logging in to work.

Despite Carlson's comments that Dish's services should be working normally, Downdetector shows an increase in reports of issues using Dish Network's services, which include satellite TV and Boost Mobile's wireless network. Customers are reporting on social media that they're unable to activate new equipment or SIM cards received from the company, and alleged technicians say they can't complete installs and upgrades for customers. Customers have also said that the outage is preventing them from paying their bills. Some of the company's sites, like dishwireless.com and launch.5gmobilegenesis.com, are currently completely down and don't even display an error message. The good news is that the outage doesn't appear to be the result of a cyberattack, according to The Desk, though Dish likely hasn't concluded its investigation yet.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC: Google is blocking some Canadian users from viewing news content in what the company says is a test run of a potential response to the Liberal government's online news bill. Also known as Bill C-18, the Online News Act would require digital giants such as Google and Meta, which owns Facebook, to negotiate deals that would compensate Canadian media companies for republishing their content on their platforms. The company said Wednesday that it is temporarily limiting access to news content for under four per cent of its Canadian users as it assesses possible responses to the bill. The change applies to its ubiquitous search engine as well as the Discover feature on Android devices, which carries news and sports stories. All types of news content are being affected by the test, which will run for about five weeks, the company said. That includes content created by Canadian broadcasters and newspapers.

In a news release, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) said Google's tactics just reinforce why Bill C-18 is so "vital," adding that Google and other global digital giants are showing they do not intend to play fair. "These are bully tactics, and Google is trying to push the Senate to back down on Bill C-18. We hope senators will see these actions for what they are," said CAB president Kevin Desjardins. "Bill C-18 was introduced to set up fair negotiations between news organizations and these global digital giants on the value of their news content. Google has shown they're willing to block Canadians' vital access to legitimate news content to maintain their dominance in the advertising field." Meta threatened to stop the sharing of news links in Canada last year if C-18 passed as currently written.

The social media company temporarily shut down news feeds in Australia after a similar law was introduced. It took effect in March 2021 and has largely worked, according to a government report.

CBC notes: "More than 450 news outlets in Canada have closed since 2008, including 64 in the last two years."

Staff working at the European Commission have been ordered to remove the TikTok app from their phones and corporate devices. The BBC reports: The commission said it was implementing the measure to "protect data and increase cybersecurity." EU spokeswoman Sonya Gospodinova said the corporate management board of the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, had made the decision for security reasons. "The measure aims to protect the Commission against cybersecurity threats and actions which may be exploited for cyberattacks against the corporate environment of the commission," she said. The ban also means that European Commission staff cannot use TikTok on personal devices that have official apps installed.

The commission says it has around 32,000 permanent and contract employees. They must remove the app as soon as possible and no later than March 15. For those who do not comply by the set deadline, the corporate apps -- such as the commission email and Skype for Business -- will no longer be available. [...] TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, has faced allegations that it harvests users' data and hands it to the Chinese government.

Artifact, the personalized news reader built by Instagram's co-founders, is now open to the public, no sign-up required. TechCrunch reports: With today's launch, Artifact is dropping its waitlist and phone number requirements, introducing the app's first social feature and adding feedback controls to better personalize the news reading experience, among other changes. [...] With today's launch, Artifact will now give users more visibility into their news reading habits with a newly added stats feature that shows you the categories you've read as well as the recent articles you read within those categories, plus the publishers you've been reading the most. But it will also group your reading more narrowly by specific topics. In other words, instead of just "tech" or "AI," you might find you've read a lot about the topic "ChatGPT," specifically.

In time, Artifact's goal is to provide tools that would allow readers to click a button to show more or less from a given topic to better control, personalize and diversify their feed. In the meantime, however, users can delve into settings to manage their interests by blocking or pausing publishers or selecting and unselecting general interest categories. Also new today is a feature that allows you to upload your contacts in order to see a signal that a particular article is popular in your network. This is slightly different from Twitter's Top Articles feature, which shows you articles popular with the people you follow, because Artifact's feature is more privacy-focused.

"It doesn't tell you who read it. It doesn't tell you how many of them read it, so it keeps privacy -- and we clearly don't do it with just one read. So you can't have one contact and like figure out what that one contact is reading ... it has to meet a certain minimum threshold," notes [Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom]. This way, he adds, the app isn't driven by what your friends are reading, but it can use that as a signal to highlight items that everyone was reading. In time, the broader goal is to expand the social experience to also include a way to discuss the news articles within Artifact itself. The beta version, limited to testers, offers a Discover feed where users can share articles and like and comment on those shared by others. There's a bit of a News Feed or even Instagram-like quality to engaging with news in this way, we found.

Regulators have told major Chinese tech companies not to offer ChatGPT services to the public amid growing alarm in Beijing over the AI-powered chatbot's uncensored replies to user queries. From a report: Tencent Holdings and Ant Group, the fintech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, have been instructed not to offer access to ChatGPT services on their platforms, either directly or via third parties, people with direct knowledge of the matter told Nikkei Asia. Tech companies will also need to report to regulators before they launch their own ChatGPT-like services, the sources added.

ChatGPT, developed by Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI, is not officially available in China but some internet users have been able to access it using a virtual private network (VPN). There have also been dozens of "mini programs" released by third-party developers on Tencent's WeChat social media app that claim to offer services from ChatGPT. Under regulatory pressure, Tencent has suspended several such third-party services regardless of whether they were connected to ChatGPT or were in fact copycats, people familiar with the matter told Nikkei. This is not the first time that China has blocked foreign websites or applications. Beijing has banned dozens of prominent U.S. websites and apps. Between 2009 and 2010, it moved to block Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Between 2018 and 2019, it instituted bans on Reddit and Wikipedia.

The U.S. Supreme Court, hearing a case that could reshape the internet, considered on Tuesday whether Google bears liability for user-generated content when its algorithms recommend videos to users. From a news writeup: In the case, Gonzalez vs, Google, the family of a terrorist attack victim contends that YouTube violated the federal Anti-Terrorism Act because its algorithm recommended ISIS videos to users, helping to spread their message. Nohemi Gonzalez was an American student killed in a 2015 ISIS attack in Paris, and his family's lawsuit challenges the broad legal immunity that tech platforms enjoy for third party content posted on their sites. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, protects platforms from legal action over user-generated content, and it also protects them if they choose to remove content. Section 230 has withstood court challenges for the past three decades even as the internet exploded.

The attorney for Gonzalez's family claimed that YouTube's recommendations fall outside the scope of Section 230, as it is the algorithms, not the third party, that actively pick and choose where and how to present content. In this case, the attorney said, it enhanced the ISIS message. "Third parties that post on YouTube don't direct their videos to specific users," said the Gonzalez's attorney Eric Schnapper. Instead, he said, those are choices made by the platform. Justice Neil Gorsuch said he was '"not sure any algorithm is neutral. Most these days are designed to maximize profit." [...] Internet firms swear that removing or limiting 230 protections would destroy the medium. Would it? Chief Justice John Roberts asked Google's attorney Lisa Blatt. "Would Google collapse and the internet be destroyed if Google was prevented from posting what it knows is defamatory?" She said, "Not Google," but other, smaller websites, yes. She said if the plaintiffs were victorious, the internet would become a zone of extremes -- either The Truman Show, where things are moderated into nothing, or like "a horror show," where nothing is.

Tumblr's parody of paid verification has already delivered the social network and blogging platform a 125% boost in iOS in-app purchase revenue since November, according to a new analysis of the app's in-app consumer spending. TechCrunch reports: The company, now operated by WordPress.com owner Automattic following its 2019 acquisition, launched its response to Twitter's paid verification hustle with the addition of its own purely cosmetic double blue checks -- a sort of tongue-in-cheek rebuttal to the idea that subscription-based verification had any real value. As it turns out, at least some Tumblr users were willing to pay -- though perhaps not for clout, but because in-jokes have proven to be a more successful monetization strategy for the blogging network than some of its more legitimate attempts to make money, such as its creator-focused subscription, Post+. After being met with community backlash, at one point Post+ was being outperformed from a monetization perspective by crabs -- a goofy paid feature that let users send animated dancing crabs to each other's dashboards.

According to new data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower provided to TechCrunch, consumer spending on Tumblr's iOS app increased since November 2022's double-blue check launch, now totaling $263,000 in net revenue. While that's not a significant figure in the grand scheme of things by any means, it still represents a 125% jump in spending compared with the prior three-month total of August through October 2022. When looking at more long-term trends, Tumblr's revenue remains up -- but not by as much. Sensor Tower says the in-app purchase revenue on iOS is up 19%, compared with the prior ten months ahead of the blue check's launch (January through October 2022).