Technologies

Twitter Spaces filled with hate speech, extremism, report says

The live audio chat feature has reportedly been tough for the social media site to police.

Taliban supporters, white nationalists and anti-vaccine activists have reportedly flocked to Twitter’s live audio chat feature, Spaces, with the social media site struggling to police the harmful content.

The Washington Post, citing researchers and users, as well as screenshots seen by the news outlet, reported Friday that hundreds of people have listened to these offensive live audio chats. Twitter users have made derogatory comments about Shiite Muslims, belittled transgender and Black Americans and spread misinformation on Spaces, according to the Post.

Twitter allows users to report live audio chats that violate its rules, and the company saves a copy of a flagged audio chat for at least 30 days to review for rule violations. Twitter also uses software to detect offensive keywords in the titles of Spaces. The social media site, though, doesn’t have human moderators or technology that scans audio in real time. Current and former employees told the Post that Twitter has also felt investor pressure to release products before they’re tested for safety.

Jack Dorsey, a Twitter co-founder, resigned as CEO in November, and Parag Agrawal, who was the company’s chief technology officer, stepped in to fill that role.

Twitter started testing Spaces in November 2020 as the social audio app Clubhouse rose in popularity. Clubhouse has also struggled to moderate misinformation, including about the COVID-19 vaccines.

Twitter’s software also mistakenly promoted some of the harmful live audio chats, which the company attributed to a bug, the Post reported.

A spokeswoman for Twitter told CNET that in the past week the company did discover bugs in its software and that this increased the amount of time it took to remove audio chats that violated its rules. «This left harmful conversations prominently visible and was a mistake. We’ve addressed these bugs and will continue exploring ways to further expand our proactive detection, as well as evaluating and developing new moderation options,» she said.

CNET asked Twitter how many audio chats it’s pulled down for violating its rules, but the company didn’t provide that information.

Technologies

Ultrahuman Ring Pro Brings Better Battery Life, More Action and Analysis

The company’s new flagship smart ring stores more data, too. But that doesn’t really help Americans.

Sick of your smart ring’s battery not holding up? Ultrahuman’s new $479 Ring Pro smart ring, unveiled on Friday, offers up to 15 days of battery life on a single charge. The Ring Pro joins the company’s $349 Ring Air, which boosts health tracking, thanks to longer battery life, increased data storage, improved speed and accuracy and a new heart-rate sensing architecture. The ring works in conjunction with the latest Pro charging case.

Ultrahuman also launched its Jade AI, which can act as an agent based on analysis of current and historical health data. Jade can synthesize data from across the company’s products and is compatible with its Rings.

«With industry-leading hardware paired with Jade biointelligence AI, users can now take real-time actionable interventions towards their health than ever before,» said Mohit Kumar, CEO of Ultrahuman.

No US sales

That hardware isn’t available in the US, though, thanks to the ongoing ban on Ultrahuman’s Rings sales here, stemming from a patent dispute with its competitor, Oura Ring. It’s available for preorder now everywhere else and is slated to ship in March. Jade’s available globally.

Ultrahuman says the Ring Pro boosts battery life to about 15 days in Chill mode — up to 12 days in Turbo — compared to a maximum of six days for the Air. The Pro charger’s battery stores enough for another 45 days, which you top off with Qi-compatible wireless charging. In addition, the case incorporates locator technology via the app and a speaker, as well as usability features such as haptic notifications and a power LED.

The ring can also retain up to 250 days of data versus less than a week for the cheaper model. Ultrahuman redesigned the heart-rate sensor for better signal quality. An upgraded processor improves the accuracy of the local machine learning and overall speed.

It’s offered in gold, silver, black and titanium finishes, with available sizes ranging from 5 to 14.

Jade’s Deep Research Mode is the cross-ecosystem analysis feature, which aggregates data from Ring and Blood Vision and the company’s subscription services, Home and M1 CGM, to provide historical trends, offer current recommendations and flag potential issues, as well as trigger activities such as A-fib detection. Ultrahuman plans to expand its capabilities to include health-adjacent activities, such as ordering food.

Some new apps are also available for the company’s PowerPlug add-on platform, including capabilities such as tracking GLP-1 effects, snoring and respiratory analysis and migraine management tools.

Technologies

The FCC Just Approved Charter’s $34.5B Cox Purchase. Here’s What It Means for 37M Customers

Technologies

Spotify Expands Into Audiobook Rankings With Weekly Charts

The feature is available to both free users and Premium subscribers. Wuthering Heights is reaching the heights on both the US and UK charts.

If you’re a Spotify user, you may be familiar with features like the year-end summary Wrapped, as well as your daily usage stats. Now, the service has a new popularity chart tracking audiobooks.

Spotify’s audiobook charts are now available to free and Premium users within the service’s Audiobooks hub. While only Premium users receive 15 hours of audiobook listening per month, the company offers a larger selection of titles you can buy.

US charts and UK charts are both available now.

Read more: Best Music Streaming Services for 2026

Spotify says that the audiobook charts will help customers discover new and popular titles in real time.

«As we’ve proven with Music and Podcasts Charts, when content is easier to access, discover, and enjoy, the demand grows,» said Duncan Bruce, Spotify’s director of audiobook partnerships and licensing, in a statement on Friday.

Spotify launched audiobooks in 2022, and has since added features such as the AI catchup tool Recaps and PageMatch, which lets you swap more easily between a printed book and the audio version.

Spotify Premium currently costs $13 a month and includes more than 100 million songs, as well as audiobooks. Spotify Premium is currently CNET’s Editors’ Choice for best music streaming service.

The current US audiobooks chart lists Emily Brontë’s romantic classic Wuthering Heights as the top listen, followed by James Clear’s self-help book Atomic Habits and Freida McFadden’s psychological thriller The Housemaid. Audiobook popularity is also broken down by genre, with charts for romance, mystery and thriller books, self-help, science fiction and fantasy, biography and memoir, business and careers, teen and young adult, religion and spirituality, history, and parenting and relationships.

Powered by its blockbuster movie adaptation starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, Wuthering Heights also leads the overall chart for the UK.