UK orders Meta to sell Giphy; Twitter tightens privacy rules; Microsoft shareholders ask for a report on sexual harassment; Xiaomi Note 11 5G launches

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has been ordered to sell Giphy by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority, BBC reports. Meta, until recently known as Facebook, bought the GIF-sharing search engine last year in a deal reportedly valued at $315 million. Meta planned to integrate Giphy's database of GIFs with Instagram, according to the BBC report. But the CMA ruled the purchase unfair to competing for social-media platforms. In May 2020, when Meta announced its acquisition of Giphy, it said 50 percent of the GIF search engine's traffic already came from Facebook platforms—half of that from Instagram. Giphy also provides GIFs to competitors such as TikTok, Snapchat and Twitter. Facebook’s cryptocurrency head David Marcus is leaving the company, The Verge reports. The former PayPal executive joined Facebook in 2014 to run Messenger but eventually took over plans to launch a new cryptocurrency and wallet. These were known at the time as Libra and Calibra, respectively, but are now called Novi. “While there’s still so much to do right on the heels of hitting an important milestone with Novi launching—and I remain as passionate as ever about the need for change in our payments and financial systems—my entrepreneurial DNA has been nudging me for too many mornings in a row to continue ignoring it,” Marcus said on his Facebook page and Twitter. Novi’s VP of product Stephane Kasriel, previously an early PayPal employee and the CEO of Upwork, will take over the leadership. Twitter has banned users from sharing photos or videos of private individuals without their permission on its platform, the company said in a blogpost. Twitter is updating its existing private information policy and expanding its scope to include “private media.” Under its existing policy, publishing other people's private information, such as phone numbers, addresses, and IDs, is already not allowed on Twitter. This includes threatening to expose private information or incentivising others to do so. Microsoft has been asked by shareholders to publish a report on sexual harassment within the company, CNBC reports. Shareholders approved a proposal asking the company’s board to publish a report on the effectiveness of its workplace sexual harassment policies in a rare vote of support for an activist initiative. Microsoft’s board had recommended that shareholders vote against the proposal, but it received 77.97 percent of all votes, according to a regulatory filing. The decision comes a year and a half after Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates stepped down from his seat on the company’s board. Reports at the time had said that Gates had tried to start a relationship with an employee in 2000—prompting a board investigation. The proposal asks for the details of investigations on executives—including Gates—as well as the number of cases the company has looked into and what was done about them. Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 11T 5G Android smartphone has been launched in India. The phone was previously launched in China alongside two other new Redmi Note 11 series phones last month, Android Central reports. Xiaomi's latest budget 5G phone has a 6.6-inch LCD with a 90Hz refresh rate and a 240Hz touch sampling rate. It is equipped with MediaTek's 6nm Dimensity 810 chipset, paired with up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The phone is expected to go on sale in India from December 7 for a starting price of ₹16,999 (about $227), according to Android Central.