Social Networks

GPT-Fabricated Scientific Papers Found on Google Scholar by Misinformation Researchers (harvard.edu) 81

Harvard's school of public policy is publishing a Misinformation Review for peer-reviewed, scholarly articles promising "reliable, unbiased research on the prevalence, diffusion, and impact of misinformation worldwide."

This week it reported that "Academic journals, archives, and repositories are seeing an increasing number of questionable research papers clearly produced using generative AI." They are often created with widely available, general-purpose AI applications, most likely ChatGPT, and mimic scientific writing. Google Scholar easily locates and lists these questionable papers alongside reputable, quality-controlled research. Our analysis of a selection of questionable GPT-fabricated scientific papers found in Google Scholar shows that many are about applied, often controversial topics susceptible to disinformation: the environment, health, and computing.

The resulting enhanced potential for malicious manipulation of society's evidence base, particularly in politically divisive domains, is a growing concern... [T]he abundance of fabricated "studies" seeping into all areas of the research infrastructure threatens to overwhelm the scholarly communication system and jeopardize the integrity of the scientific record. A second risk lies in the increased possibility that convincingly scientific-looking content was in fact deceitfully created with AI tools and is also optimized to be retrieved by publicly available academic search engines, particularly Google Scholar. However small, this possibility and awareness of it risks undermining the basis for trust in scientific knowledge and poses serious societal risks.

"Our analysis shows that questionable and potentially manipulative GPT-fabricated papers permeate the research infrastructure and are likely to become a widespread phenomenon..." the article points out.

"Google Scholar's central position in the publicly accessible scholarly communication infrastructure, as well as its lack of standards, transparency, and accountability in terms of inclusion criteria, has potentially serious implications for public trust in science. This is likely to exacerbate the already-known potential to exploit Google Scholar for evidence hacking..."
Crime

New York Times Calls Telegram 'A Playground for Criminals, Extremists and Terrorists' (yahoo.com) 107

The New York Times analyzed over 3.2 million Telegram messages from 16,220 channels. Their conclusion? Telegram "offers features that enable criminals, terrorists and grifters to organize at scale and to sidestep scrutiny from the authorities" — and that Telegram "has looked the other way as illegal and extremist activities have flourished openly on the app."

Or, more succinctly: "Telegram has become a global sewer of criminal activity, disinformation, child sexual abuse material, terrorism and racist incitement, according to a four-month investigation." Look deeper, and a dark underbelly emerges. Uncut lumps of cocaine and shards of crystal meth are for sale on the app. Handguns and stolen checks are widely available. White nationalists use the platform to coordinate fight clubs and plan rallies. Hamas broadcast its Oct. 7 attack on Israel on the site... The Times investigation found 1,500 channels operated by white supremacists who coordinate activities among almost 1 million people around the world. At least two dozen channels sold weapons. In at least 22 channels with more than 70,000 followers, MDMA, cocaine, heroin and other drugs were advertised for delivery to more than 20 countries.

Hamas, the Islamic State and other militant groups have thrived on Telegram, often amassing large audiences across dozens of channels. The Times analyzed more than 40 channels associated with Hamas, which showed that average viewership surged up to 10 times after the Oct. 7 attacks, garnering more than 400 million views in October. Telegram is "the most popular place for ill-intentioned, violent actors to congregate," said Rebecca Weiner, the deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism at the New York Police Department. "If you're a bad guy, that's where you will land...." [Telegram] steadfastly ignores most requests for assistance from law enforcement agencies. An email inbox used for inquiries from government agencies is rarely checked, former employees said...

"It is easy to search and find channels selling guns, illicit narcotics, prescription drugs and fraudulent ATM cards, called clone cards..." according to the article. The Times "found at least 50 channels openly selling contraband, including guns, drugs and fraudulent debit cards." In December 2022, Hayden Espinosa began serving a 33-month sentence in federal prison in Louisiana for buying and selling illegal firearms and weapon parts he made with 3D printers. That did not stop his business. Using cellphones that had been smuggled into prison, Espinosa continued his illicit trade on a Telegram channel... Espinosa's gun market on Telegram might never have been uncovered except that one of its members was Payton Gendron, who massacred 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in 2022. Investigators scouring his life online for motives for the shooting discovered the channel, which also featured racist and extremist views he had shared.
"Operating like a stateless organization, Telegram has long behaved as if it were above the law," the article concludes — though it adds that "In many democratic countries, patience with the app is wearing thin.

"The European Union is exploring new oversight of Telegram under the Digital Services Act, a law that forces large online platforms to police their services more aggressively, two people familiar with the plans said."
Privacy

Signal is More Than Encrypted Messaging. It Wants to Prove Surveillance Capitalism Is Wrong (wired.com) 70

Slashdot reader echo123 shared a new article from Wired titled "Signal Is More Than Encrypted Messaging. Under Meredith Whittaker, It's Out to Prove Surveillance Capitalism Wrong." ("On its 10th anniversary, Signal's president wants to remind you that the world's most secure communications platform is a nonprofit. It's free. It doesn't track you or serve you ads. It pays its engineers very well. And it's a go-to app for hundreds of millions of people.") Ten years ago, WIRED published a news story about how two little-known, slightly ramshackle encryption apps called RedPhone and TextSecure were merging to form something called Signal. Since that July in 2014, Signal has transformed from a cypherpunk curiosity — created by an anarchist coder, run by a scrappy team working in a single room in San Francisco, spread word-of-mouth by hackers competing for paranoia points — into a full-blown, mainstream, encrypted communications phenomenon... Billions more use Signal's encryption protocols integrated into platforms like WhatsApp...

But Signal is, in many ways, the exact opposite of the Silicon Valley model. It's a nonprofit funded by donations. It has never taken investment, makes its product available for free, has no advertisements, and collects virtually no information on its users — while competing with tech giants and winning... Signal stands as a counterfactual: evidence that venture capitalism and surveillance capitalism — hell, capitalism, period — are not the only paths forward for the future of technology.

Over its past decade, no leader of Signal has embodied that iconoclasm as visibly as Meredith Whittaker. Signal's president since 2022 is one of the world's most prominent tech critics: When she worked at Google, she led walkouts to protest its discriminatory practices and spoke out against its military contracts. She cofounded the AI Now Institute to address ethical implications of artificial intelligence and has become a leading voice for the notion that AI and surveillance are inherently intertwined. Since she took on the presidency at the Signal Foundation, she has come to see her central task as working to find a long-term taproot of funding to keep Signal alive for decades to come — with zero compromises or corporate entanglements — so it can serve as a model for an entirely new kind of tech ecosystem...

Meredith Whittaker: "The Signal model is going to keep growing, and thriving and providing, if we're successful. We're already seeing Proton [a startup that offers end-to-end encrypted email, calendars, note-taking apps, and the like] becoming a nonprofit. It's the paradigm shift that's going to involve a lot of different forces pointing in a similar direction."

Key quotes from the interview:
  • "Given that governments in the U.S. and elsewhere have not always been uncritical of encryption, a future where we have jurisdictional flexibility is something we're looking at."
  • "It's not by accident that WhatsApp and Apple are spending billions of dollars defining themselves as private. Because privacy is incredibly valuable. And who's the gold standard for privacy? It's Signal."
  • "AI is a product of the mass surveillance business model in its current form. It is not a separate technological phenomenon."
  • "...alternative models have not received the capital they need, the support they need. And they've been swimming upstream against a business model that opposes their success. It's not for lack of ideas or possibilities. It's that we actually have to start taking seriously the shifts that are going to be required to do this thing — to build tech that rejects surveillance and centralized control — whose necessity is now obvious to everyone."

Communications

Starlink Now Constitutes Roughly Two Thirds of All Active Satellites (the-independent.com) 64

"SpaceX deployed its 7,000th Starlink satellite this week, making the vast majority of active satellites around earth part of a single megaconstellation," writes Slashdot reader DogFoodBuss. "The Starlink communications system is now orders of magnitude larger than its nearest competitor, offering unprecedented access to low-latency broadband from anywhere on the planet." According to the latest data from satellite tracker CelesTrak, SpaceX now controls over 62% of all operational satellites. The Independent reports: The latest data from non-profit satellite tracker CelesTrak shows that SpaceX has 6,370 active Starlink satellites in low-Earth orbit, with several hundred more inactive or deorbited. The figure, which has risen more than six-fold in just three years, represents just over 62 per cent of all operational satellites, and is roughly 10-times the number of Starlink's closest rival, UK-based startup OneWeb.

SpaceX plans to launch up to 42,000 satellites to complete the Starlink constellation, capable of delivering high-speed internet and phone connectivity to any corner of the globe. Starlink currently operates in 102 countries and has more than three million customers paying a monthly fee to access the network through a $300 ground-based dish. The company expects to launch its service in dozens more countries, with only Afghanistan, China, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Syria not on the current waitlist due to internet restrictions or trade embargos.
"Starlink now constitutes roughly 2/3 of all active Earth satellites," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on X following the latest SpaceX launch.
Technology

Malaysia Orders ISPs To Reroute DNS Traffic (theedgemalaysia.com) 66

The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, which regulates online and broadcast media in the Asian nation, has instructed internet service providers in the country to redirect DNS traffic that uses third-party servers back to their own DNS servers, according to local media reports. From a report: MCMC in a statement tonight said this is to ensure that users continue to benefit from the protection provided by the local ISP's DNS servers and that malicious sites are inaccessible to Malaysians. As a commitment to protecting the safety of Internet users, MCMC has blocked a total of 24,277 websites between between 2018 to Aug 1, classified into various categories, which are online gambling (39 per cent), pornography/obscene content (31 per cent), copyright infringement (14 per cent), other harmful sites (12 per cent), prostitution (two per cent) and unlawful investments/scams (two per cent). Further reading: MCMC orders DNS redirection for businesses, govts, enterprises by Sept 30, according to Maxis FAQ.
Chrome

ChromeOS 128 Adds Snap Layouts For Apps, OCR Text Extraction, and Improved Settings (neowin.net) 7

Google's new ChromeOS 128 update introduces a feature similar to Windows 11's Snap layouts. Called Snap Groups, the feature enables users to organize on-screen apps in various fullscreen layouts. "When you pair two windows for split-screen display, ChromeOS now forms a Snap group," explains the ChromeOS team. "As a Snap group, you can bring the windows back into focus together, resize them simultaneously, and move them both as a group."

Other notable features of ChromeOS 128 include Optical Character Recognition (OCR), ChromeVox support for the Magnifier tool, isolated web apps (IWA), and improved settings for the camera and microphone on Chromebook devices.

You can view the release notes on the support document here.
Social Networks

Telegram Disables 'Misused' Features As CEO Faces Criminal Charges (theverge.com) 33

Following the arrest of its CEO Pavel Durov last month, the encrypted messaging service said it has disabled some "outdated" and "misused" features used by anonymous users. The Verge reports: The first changes to the app following his arrest in France last month affect its built-in blog posts and a "People Nearby" location-based feature. [...] Durov's first post-arrest statement Thursday said, "Telegram's abrupt increase in user count to 950M caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform. That's why I made it my personal goal to ensure we significantly improve things in this regard." He also said that during the four-day interview after his arrest, "I was told I may be personally responsible for other people's illegal use of Telegram, because the French authorities didn't receive responses from Telegram."

Telegram has since reworked some of its language surrounding private chats and moderation and followed up with these new updates. It's also adding Star giveaways and enabling a reading mode for its in-app browser. "While 99.999% of Telegram users have nothing to do with crime, the 0.001% involved in illicit activities creates a bad image for the entire platform," Durov's message says. "That's why this year we are committed to turn moderation on Telegram from an area of criticism into one of praise."

Durov says the service has stopped new media uploads to its standalone blogging tool, Telegraph, because it was "misused by anonymous actors." Telegram has also removed its People Nearby feature, which lets you find and message other users in your area. Durov says the feature has "had issues with bots and scammers" and was only used by less than 0.1 percent of users. Telegram will replace this feature with "Businesses Nearby" instead, allowing "legitimate, verified businesses" to display products and accept payments.

Facebook

Meta Will Let Third-Party Apps Place Calls To WhatsApp, Messenger Users (techcrunch.com) 10

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Meta on Friday published an update on how it plans to comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the European law that aims to promote competition in digital marketplaces, where the law concerns the company's messaging apps, Messenger and WhatsApp. As Meta notes in a blog post, the DMA requires that it provide an option in WhatsApp and Messenger to connect with interoperable third-party messaging services and apps. Meta says it's building notifications into WhatsApp and Messenger to inform users about these third-party integrations and alert them when a newly compatible third-party messaging app comes online. The company also says it's introducing an onboarding flow in WhatsApp and Messenger where users can learn more about third-party chats and switch them on. From the flow, users will be able to set up a designated folder for third-party messages or, alternatively, opt for a combined inbox.

In 2025, Meta will roll out group functionality for third-party chats, and, in 2027, it'll launch voice and video calling in accordance with the DMA. And at some unspecified point in the future, Meta will bring "rich messaging" features for third-party chats to WhatsApp and Messenger, like reactions, direct replies, typing indicators and read receipts, the company says. "We will keep collaborating with third-party messaging services in order to provide the safest and best experience," Meta wrote in the post. "Users will start to see the third-party chat option when a third-party messaging service has built, tested and launched the necessary technology to make the feature a positive and secure user experience."

Technology

Smartphone Firm Born From Essential's Ashes is Shutting Down (androidauthority.com) 3

An anonymous reader shares a report: It's been a rough week for OSOM Products. The company has been embroiled in legal controversy stemming from a lawsuit filed by a former executive. Now, Android Authority has learned that the company is effectively shutting down later this week. OSOM Products was formed in 2020 following the disbanding of Essential, a smartphone startup led by Andy Rubin, the founder of Android.

Essential collapsed following the poor sales of its first smartphone, the Essential Phone, as well as a loss of confidence in Rubin due to allegations of sexual misconduct at his previous stint at Google. Although Essential as a company was on its way out after Rubin's departure, many of its most talented hardware designers and software engineers remained at the company, looking for another opportunity to build something new. In 2020, the former head of R&D at Essential, Jason Keats, along with several other former executives and employees came together to form OSOM, which stands for "Out of Sight, Out of Mind." The name reflected their desire to create privacy-focused products such as the OSOM Privacy Cable, a USB-C cable with a switch to disable data signaling, and the OSOM OV1, an Android smartphone with lots of privacy and security-focused features.

Businesses

PwC 'Tipping the Balance' of Hybrid Working and Will Start Tracking Its Workers' Locations (yahoo.com) 97

PwC has demanded staff spend less time working from home -- and it's going to start tracking their location to ensure they comply. From a report: The accountancy firm informed its 26,000 U.K. employees in a memo that from January they'll be expected to be at their desks -- or with clients -- at least three days a week, or for 60% of their time. Previously staff were expected to spend two to three days working in-person. What's more, to ensure staffers are not secretly working from home (or at a beach) when they shouldn't be, the company will monitor how often they're working from the office, in the same way it monitors how many chargeable hours they work. Every month, workers will be sent information about their "individual working location data" which will even be shared with their in-house career coaches, according to the Financial Times.
Power

America's EV Charging Infrastructure Has Doubled In Less Than Four Years (carscoops.com) 104

The electric revolution has given way to a gradual transformation, but the groundwork is already being laid for the future. From a report: The Department of Energy recently highlighted this by noting the number of publicly available EV chargers has doubled since President Biden was inaugurated on January 20, 2021. According to the government, there are now more than 192,000 publicly available charging ports in the United States and around 1,000 are being added every week. The Department of Energy credited the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as aiding the buildout, which is helping to bring charging infrastructure to rural, suburban, and urban communities.

The law provided funding for a $2.5 billion Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program. A big chunk of that money is now heading out as the Biden administration recently announced $521 million in grants to support projects in 29 states as well as the District of Columbia and a few tribal areas. This will result in more than 9,200 charging ports being added, which means each one will cost roughly $56,630 -- although California's West Coast Truck Charging and Fueling Corridor Project also includes a hydrogen component.

IT

Gen Z-ers Are Computer Whizzes. Just Don't Ask Them to Type. (msn.com) 149

Typing skills among Generation Z have declined sharply, despite their digital nativity, according to recent data. The U.S. Department of Education reports that only 2.5% of high school graduates in 2019 took a keyboarding course, down from 44% in 2000.

Many educators assume Gen Z already possesses typing skills due to their familiarity with technology. However, access to devices doesn't automatically translate into proficiency, WSJ reports. Some schools are addressing this gap by introducing typing competitions and formal instruction when students receive Chromebooks.

The shift towards mobile devices is contributing to the decline in traditional typing skills. Canvas, an online learning platform, reports that 39% of student assignments between March and May were uploaded from mobile devices, contrasting sharply with teachers who completed over 90% of their work on computers.
Facebook

Threads is Trading Trust For Growth (werd.io) 37

Ben Werdmuller, an entrepreneur who leads tech for ProPublica, writes on the trust crisis brewing in Meta's Threads app. He posted a quick comment about the Internet Archive's legal troubles, only to find it blew up in unexpected ways. Turns out, Threads' algorithm tossed his post to folks way outside his usual crowd, and they weren't happy about the lack of context. He writes: The comments that really surprised me were the ones that accused me of engagement farming. I've never received these before, and it made me wonder about the underlying assumptions. Why would this be engagement farming? Why would someone do this? Why would they assume that about me? Turns out, Meta's been secretly paying select "creators" up to $5,000 per viral post, turning the platform into a digital gold rush. Now, every post is suspect.
Robotics

Engineers Gave a Mushroom a Robot Body and Let It Run Wild (sciencealert.com) 64

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: Nobody knows what sleeping mushrooms dream of when their vast mycelial networks flicker and pulse with electrochemical responses akin to those of our own brain cells. But given a chance, what might this web of impulses do if granted a moment of freedom? An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Cornell University in the US and the University of Florence in Italy took steps to find out, putting a culture of the edible mushroom species Pleurotus eryngii (also known as the king oyster mushroom) in control of a pair of vehicles, which can twitch and roll across a flat surface. Through a series of experiments, the researchers showed it was possible to use the mushroom's electrophysiological activity as a means of translating environmental cues into directives, which could, in turn, be used to drive a mechanical device's movements. "By growing mycelium into the electronics of a robot, we were able to allow the biohybrid machine to sense and respond to the environment," says senior researcher Rob Shepherd, a materials scientist at Cornell.

By applying algorithms based on the extracellular electrophysiology of P. eryngii mycelia and feeding the output into a microcontroller unit, the researchers used spikes of activity triggered by a stimulus -- in this case, UV light -- to toggle mechanical responses in two different kinds of mobile device. In controlled experiments, the team used the signals from a fungal culture to govern the movements of a five-limbed soft robot and a four-wheeled untethered vehicle. They were able to influence and override the 'natural' impulses produced by the fungi, demonstrating an ability to harness the system's sensory abilities to meet an end goal. "This kind of project is not just about controlling a robot," says Cornell bioroboticist Anand Mishra. "It is also about creating a true connection with the living system. Because once you hear the signal, you also understand what's going on. Maybe that signal is coming from some kind of stresses. So you're seeing the physical response, because those signals we can't visualize, but the robot is making a visualization."
The research has been published in the journal Science Robotics.
Android

Android Earthquake Alerts Now Available Across All 50 States, 6 US Territories (droid-life.com) 29

Google's Android Earthquake Alerts System, initially launched in 2020, is now available in all 50 U.S. states and 6 territories. Droid Life reports: For users in California, Oregon and Washington, users will continue to have their alerts powered by the ShakeAlert system, utilizing traditional seismometers to detect earthquakes. For all out states and supported territories, "this expansion uses the built-in accelerometers in Android phones to bring another layer of preparedness and potentially life-saving information to people across every state," the company explained in a blog post.

Using the accelerometer to sense vibrations and an apparent earthquake, the system quickly analyzes the crowdsourced data to determine if an earthquake is occurring. Google says it has been working with many experts to continue the system's improvement. Depending on the severity of the earthquake, you'll get two types of notifications. A little pop up on your screen if it's pretty weak with light shaking or a complete screen takeover for moderate to extreme shaking. These are called Take Action alerts, complete with the classic drop, cover, and hold instructions.

Technology

Uniswap Labs Beset By Regulators For Building a Decentralized Exchange (axios.com) 20

Uniswap Labs, the firm behind the world's most popular decentralized exchange, is under fire from a variety of regulators. From a report: If regulators want to throw a giant monkey wrench into the crypto economy, making people afraid to use Uniswap would be a great way to do it. Uniswap Labs today agreed to a $175,000 settlement with the CFTC, while some of its chief investors received subpoenas from the New York Department of Financial Services. The CFTC settlement concerned trading for various tokens that represent leveraged trades on leading crypto assets, such as bitcoin (BTC) and ETH. This all comes after the SEC previously served Uniswap Labs with a Wells Notice, which indicates that it's likely to take legal action.
Verizon

Verizon To Buy Frontier For $9.6 Billion, Says It Will Expand Fiber Network 45

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Verizon today announced a deal to acquire Frontier Communications, an Internet service provider with about 3 million customers in 25 states. Verizon said the all-cash transaction is valued at $20 billion. Verizon agreed to pay $9.6 billion and is taking on over $10 billion in debt (PDF) held by Frontier. Verizon said the deal is subject to regulatory approval and a vote by Frontier shareholders and is expected to be completed in 18 months.

"Under the terms of the agreement, Verizon will acquire Frontier for $38.50 per share in cash, representing a premium of 43.7 percent to Frontier's 90-Day volume-weighted average share price (VWAP) on September 3, 2024, the last trading day prior to media reports regarding a potential acquisition of Frontier," Verizon said. Assuming regulatory and shareholder approval, Verizon will be buying back a former portion of its network that it sold to Frontier eight years ago. In 2016, Frontier bought Verizon's FiOS and DSL operations in Florida, California, and Texas. The 2016 changeover was marred by technical problems that caused weeks of outages for tens of thousands of customers.
"Frontier's 2.2 million fiber subscribers across 25 states will join Verizon's approximately 7.4 million FiOS connections in 9 states and Washington, D.C.," Verizon said. "In addition to Frontier's 7.2 million fiber locations, the company is committed to its plan to build out an additional 2.8 million fiber locations by the end of 2026."
AI

OpenAI Considering Monthly Subscription Prices as High as $2000 for New AI Models (theinformation.com) 61

OpenAI executives are considering premium subscriptions for advanced language models, including the reasoning-focused Strawberry and flagship Orion, with potential monthly prices ranging up to $2,000, The Information reported Thursday, citing a source.

The move reflects growing concerns about covering operational costs for ChatGPT, which currently generates approximately $2 billion annually from $20 monthly subscriptions, the report added. More sophisticated models like Strawberry and Orion may require additional computing power, potentially increasing expenses, the report added.
Technology

Visa Debuts New Product Designed To Make It Safer To Pay Directly From Bank Account (cnbc.com) 86

Visa said it plans to launch a dedicated service for bank transfers, skipping credit cards and the traditional direct debit process. From a report: Visa, which alongside Mastercard is one of the world's largest card networks, said Thursday it plans to launch a dedicated service for account-to-account (A2A) payments in Europe next year. Users will be able set up direct debits -- transactions that take funds directly from your bank account -- on merchants' e-commerce stores with just a few clicks. Visa said consumers will be able to monitor these payments more easily and raise any issues by clicking a button in their banking app, giving them a similar level of protection to when they use their cards.

The service should help people deal with problems like unauthorized auto-renewals of subscriptions, by making it easier for people to reverse direct debit transactions and get their money back, Visa said. It won't initially apply its A2A service to things like TV streaming services, gym memberships and food boxes, Visa added, but this is planned for the future. The product will initially launch in the U.K. in early 2025, with subsequent releases in the Nordic region and elsewhere in Europe later in 2025. [...] Static direct debits, for example, require advance notice of any changes to the amount taken, meaning you have to either cancel the direct debit and set up a new one or carry out a one-off transfer. With Visa A2A, consumers will be able to set up variable recurring payments (VRP), a new type of payment that allows people to make and manage recurring payments of varying amounts.

Transportation

Madrid Bans Hired E-scooters Over Safety Concerns (lemonde.fr) 55

Madrid City Hall said on Thursday it would ban all rental e-scooters from October because of the risk they pose to pedestrians, the latest city to make the move. From a report: "We are withdrawing authorization for companies hiring out scooters on the city's streets," the Spanish capital's conservative mayor Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida wrote on X. "Our priority is the... safety of the people of Madrid," he said, adding that the measure would "take full effect in October." The three companies currently with licenses to rent out e-scooters on the streets of Madrid -- Lime, Dott and Tier Mobility -- will now have to remove their devices. These firms "did not comply with the conditions we imposed to guarantee the safety of pedestrians, particularly the elderly," the mayor said. Madrid City Hall criticized the firms for not using technology to prevent e-scooters from driving or parking in prohibited areas and lacking the appropriate accident insurance.

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