Hashtag Trending August 11- Apple’s pay inequality problem; Google increases privacy for kids; Google cutting remote employees pay

We pride ourselves on getting the facts right. A story in our August 10 episode didn’t measure up to our standards. So we’ve re-recorded the story so you don’t have to go back, here’s what we should have said…

Alberta’s privacy commissioner claimed that Babylon, a Telus Health app that helped to facilitate telemedicine, didn’t follow the province’s health information privacy laws. As reported by CBC News, two reports by the commissioner noted that the app failed to comply with two laws, namely the province’s Health Information Act and Personal Information protection act. The app was also allegedly collecting the patients’ photos, which the commissioner saw as unnecessary. Telus maintains that its app meets all privacy requirements in Alberta’s legislation, including the issues raised by the commissioner. But Clayton said she expects to speak with Alberta Health to discuss if the province should continue to fund Babylon’s doctors if the app fails to comply with the laws.

To be clear, Telus asked us to clarify. We do believe that this is a much clearer and more factual representation of the story. We want to be interesting, but always fair and objective.

Now, onto our regular programming.

Apple shuts down three employee pay equity surveys, Google enhances privacy for kids, and Google is cutting pay of employees who choose to work remotely.

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It’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending! It’s Wednesday, August 11, and I’m your host, Tom Li.

Apple says it does not have a problem with pay inequality, but recent actions from the company might suggest (or could lead you to think) otherwise. Apple has reportedly shut down three surveys sent out by employees about how much people make, particularly as it relates to women and underrepresented minorities. According to The Verge, multiple labour lawyers have said the tech giant may be violating worker protections. Since the survey can be considered as a form of labour organizing, according to U.S. law, employees have the right to talk about pay. The labour lawyers say that Apple has no right to ban pay equity conversations. It isn’t totally clear what this development could lead to as of yet.

Up next, Google has added a number of tools to help kids and teens manage their presence online. New changes include adding an enhanced private upload option in YouTube for kids 13 to 17, making SafeSearch a default option for users under 18, and preventing mature content from appearing in Google Assistant searches on smart devices. Google will also be disabling Location History for children with supervised accounts. Moreover, Google will block ad targeting based on age, gender, and interest of people under 18. These changes will roll out globally in the coming months.

And lastly, Google employees who choose to work from home permanently post-pandemic could suffer a pay cut. Google has already paid less to employees who work remotely from cheaper areas but this latest move could affect workers regardless of where they live. According to a Google employee who lives two hours away from Google’s Seattle office, he could experience a 10 per cent cut in pay if he continues working from home. According to Reuters, employees are using a pay calculator, provided by Google to see how much of a pay cut they would see depending on where they live. Another employee living one hour away from the New York office said the calculator showed a 15 per cent cut.

That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now. Hashtag Trending is a part of the ITWC Podcast network. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home daily briefing. Make sure to sign up for our Daily IT Wire Newsletter to get all the news that matters directly in your inbox every day. Also, catch the next episode of Hashtag Tendances, our weekly Hashtag Trending episode in French, which drops every Friday at 3 pm. If you have a suggestion or tip, please drop a line to any of our writers in the comments or via email. Thanks for listening, I’m Tom Li

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Tom Li
Tom Li
Telecommunication and consumer hardware are Tom's main beats at Channel Daily News. He loves to talk about Canada's network infrastructure, semiconductor products, and of course, anything hot and new in the consumer technology space. You'll also occasionally see his name appended to articles on cloud, security, and SaaS-related news. If you're ever up for a lengthy discussion about the nuances of each of the above sectors or have an upcoming product that people will love, feel free to drop him a line at [email protected].

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