The certificate had been in use since December 6, 2020, when Kazakh officials forced local internet service providers to block Nur-Sultan residents from accessing foreign sites unless they had a specific digital certificate issued by the government installed on their devices.

While users were able to access most foreign-hosted sites, access was blocked to sites like Google, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Netflix, unless they had the certificate installed.

Saddled by massive debt from its $200 billion Time Warner and DirecTV mergers in recent years, the company keeps deciding to recoup that debt from its subscribers in the form of relentless price hikes. That, in turn, has resulted in millions of subscribers heading for the exits.

Normally, a company hoping to make inroads in a sector like TV (traditional or streaming) would try and focus more on not pissing its subscribers off. But as a government pampered telecom monopoly unfamiliar with things like competition, this is all alien territory for many AT&T executives. So, relatively unsurprisingly, the company is imposing all manner of new rate hikes across its AT&T broadband, TV, and DirecTV service options.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s internet infrastructure service that is the backbone of many websites and apps, experienced a multi-hour outage on Wednesday that affected a large portion of the internet. The service has been nearly fully restored as of 4:18AM ET on Thursday morning, according to Amazon.

In an email to The Verge on Wednesday, Amazon noted that the issues are only affecting one of its 23 geographic AWS regions. But the problem was significant enough to take out a large number of internet services.

Snapchat on Monday launched Spotlight, a video tab within its app that, like TikTok, distributes videos based more on how popular they are than on who created them. Facebook in August launched its TikTok competitor, called Reels.

The company currently shares ad revenue with video-makers who are enrolled in its partnership scheme, when it shows ads before or during their content.

Changes to its terms of service mean YouTube will not share the revenue from those ads with the video-makers.

"It's another policy change that seems likely to rankle with ordinary creators, who have often felt aggrieved that YouTube capitalises on their content without properly compensating them - or recognising their contribution to the success of the platform."

The unpopular policy was already enforced in most of Comcast's 39-state US territory over the past few years, and the upcoming expansion will for the first time bring the cap to every market in Comcast's territory.

Comcast provides no way for customers to independently verify the meter readings, and there's no government regulation of broadband-data meters to ensure their accuracy.

Customers can avoid overage charges by spending an extra $30 a month on unlimited data or $25 for the "xFi Complete" plan that includes unlimited data and the rental cost for Comcast's xFi gateway modem and router.

Built by The Markup, Simple Search strips out the information panels, shopping boxes, and search ads to show only the raw web search results. It’s a view of an older, simpler Google, one with surprising antitrust implications.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai defended the changes by saying they are meant to provide a better user experience within Google search. “When I run the company, I’m really focused on giving users what they want,” Pichai told Cicilline. “We conduct ourselves to the highest standard.”

The plan already came with significant caveats—unlimited storage was for the tier Google deems "High quality," which includes compressed media only, capped at 16 megapixels for photos and 1080p for videos. Uncompressed or higher-resolution photos and videos saved in original quality count against the 15GiB cap for the user's Google Drive account.

The Motion Picture Association says that circumvention services such as VPNs, DNS masks and Tor networks can pose a direct threat to legitimate streaming services.

For example, if Netflix is not available in country X, people could use a VPN to make it appear they come from country Y, where the service is legally available. This is a problem, MPA notes, particularly in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Cleroth, a game developer who asked not to use his real name, woke up to see a message that all his Google accounts were disabled due to "serious violation of Google policies."

Google had determined he had broken their terms of service, though they didn't explain exactly what had happened, and his account wouldn't be reinstated.

Others professed to have been barred from using Microsoft services, while losing access to Facebook accounts can be equally damaging.