Apple has taken down an app that uses crowdsourcing to flag sightings of U.S. immigration agents after coming under pressure from the Trump administration.
ICEBlock, a free iPhone-only app that lets users anonymously report and monitor activity by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, was no longer available on Apple’s App Store as of Friday. The developer had confirmed its removal on Thursday evening.
“We just received a message from Apple’s App Review that #ICEBlock has been removed from the App Store due to “objectionable content’,” ICEBlock said in a social media post. “The only thing we can imagine is this is due to pressure from the Trump Admin. We have responded and we’ll fight this!”
The developer said last month that it had more than 1 million users. Even though it has been removed from the app marketplace, those who have already downloaded the app should still be able to use it.
OpenAI now worth $500 billion
OpenAI could now be the world’s most valuable startup, ahead of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, after a secondary stock sale designed to retain employees at the ChatGPT maker.
Current and former OpenAI employees sold $6.6 billion in shares to a group of investors, pushing the privately held artificial intelligence company’s valuation to $500 billion, according to a source with knowledge of the deal who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.
The valuation reflects high expectations for the future of AI technology and continues OpenAI’s remarkable trajectory from its start as a nonprofit research lab in 2015.