Amazon has prohibited police departments from using their controversial facial recognition technology, Rekognition, for a whole year until this software can be more properly regulated. The decision was announced on Wednesday, June 10th.

“We’ve advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology, and in recent days, Congress appears ready to take on this challenge,” Amazon said in a statement. “We hope this one-year moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules, and we stand ready to help if requested.” Rekognition has been used by both police and ICE to help catch criminals and target or identify immigrants, respectively. However, the software has been subject to plenty of criticism for more frequently misidentifying Black and Asian people than white people.

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Although Amazon hopes that a year will be enough time for Congress to develop and pass legislation that will regulate the use of this technology by law enforcement agencies, the American Civil Liberties Union is requesting that the ban be put in place indefinitely. 

“It took two years for Amazon to get to this point, but we’re glad the company is finally recognizing the dangers face recognition poses to Black and Brown communities and civil rights more broadly,” said Nicole Ozer, the ACLU’s technology and civil liberties director. However, she notes that “this surveillance technology’s threat to our civil rights and civil liberties will not disappear in a year.”

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Of course, police are not thrilled with this decision. “Amazon Rekognition has greatly increased the ability of our law enforcement officers to act quickly and decisively,” said Chris Adzima, an analyst at the Washington County Sheriff Office in Oregon. “We were able to index more than 300,000 photo records within 1-2 days, and the identification time of suspects went from 2-3 days down to minutes.”

If you're a sneakerhead who knows a lot about Michael Jordan, you have probably heard about the "Banned" sneakers from 1984. At this point, most people think of the Air Jordan 1 when you hear the word "Banned." In fact, Jordan Brand refers to the black and red Air Jordan 1 as the "Banned" colorway but as it turns out, this was simply a marketing tool to sell more sneakers back in the 80s. If you really know your Jordan history, you know that the banned sneaker was actually the Nike Air Ship which he wore at the start of his career.

During last night's episode of "The Last Dance," the GoodwinSports Twitter account posted some photos of their banned Nike Air Ship's which were worn and signed by MJ himself. As the account states in the post below, this sneaker was one of the first two pairs worn by MJ at the start of the 1984-85 season.

Yesterday, Tory Lanez found himself once again throwing caution to the wind and laughing in the face of Instagram's nudity guidelines, culminating in one of the wildest episodes of Quarantine Radio to date. Unfortunately for the Torontonian rapper, the social media giant decided to put the kibosh on Tory's dreams, pulling the plug on Quarantine Radio and hitting it with a temporary ban.

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Now, with artists like Royce Da 5'9" and YBN Cordae speaking out against the company's decision, head of Instagram Adam Mosseri hit up The Shade Room to explain why Quarantine Radio was shut down in the first place. "Quarantine Radio is great, so shout out to Tory Lanez for that," begins Mosseri. "The lives have been great, the lives with the fans have been great." In the comments, Tory can be seen pleading his case, writing "I JUST WANNA BE FREE ADAM." Mosseri doesn't appear to notice. 

"But you can't have nudity on Instagram," he continues. "That's part of our community guidelines, it's part of the rules and we can't make exceptions. And on a couple of those lives, on two accounts, there was nudity so we had to stop the live. There's a short period of time where you can't go live again. We have to stick to the rules otherwise why do we have them? But generally, big fan of Tory Lanez, big fan of Quarantine Radio. I hope it comes back soon, but no nudity! We can't have that."

To that, Tory had a few choice words: "THAT'S CAP. Cmooooooon MAAAAAYNE." What do you think? Can Quarantine Radio thrive in a PG-13 environment?

With all the craziness going on in the world right now given the coronavirus pandemic, we only have but a few things to keep us occupied at the moment during this quarantine period. One of those things just so happens to be the Instagram account of rapper Freddie Gibbs, and now it looks like even that minor joy has been taken away from us.

The golden rule is: Thou shalt kill the chill. Therefore, YouTube should be held accountable for disabling the "lofi hip hop radio – beats to relax/study to" channel, even if it was an accident. Regular listeners of the ChilledCow-curated stream were sent into a panic when they discovered over the weekend that they had lost their source of lo-fi beats. In a society where we all strive (or are required) to be productive workers, vibe-y and non-intrusive background music allows us to go about our daily tasks without losing our minds. 

On Saturday (Feb. 22), after receiving a message that they violated YouTube's terms of service, ChilledCow took to Twitter to request further explanation from the platform for their channel's removal. YouTube responded: "Thanks for flagging this to us! Our teams confirmed that this was a mistake on our side and your channel has now been reinstated. We’re sorry this happened! We've shared feedback with our review team to prevent similar errors from happening in the future." 

We all know that Boosie Badazz, formerly known as Lil Boosie, is stuck in his old school ways but when he ranted about Dwyane Wade’s decision to support his 12-year-old transgender daughter Zaya, he definitely crossed a line. The Baton Rouge rap icon recorded a video of himself speaking about Wade’s appearance on Ellen where he out explained his decision to support his daughter, who was born Zion Wade. Boosie Badazz ended up misgendering the little girl, earning major backlash on social media as a result. Young Thugfound himself in a similar position. Because of his comments, Boosie was subsequently banned from a Planet Fitness location, which caused him to spew further homophobic slurs.

“MANAGER WHO WAS GAY REFUSED TO LET ME N PLANET FITNESS BECAUSE OF MY PAST ACTIONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA ABOUT GENDER,” wrote Boosie on Instagram, saying in the video that the man was also upset that he referred to one of their employees as a “f****t” He went on to post the address of the location in question, calling for a boycott of their services and claiming that they have roaches. “THEY HAVE ROACHES , N THEY SHOWER WATER DONT GET HOT,” he said.

Boosie Badazz has gotten caught in hot water over his previous comments about gender and sexuality. His rant about Zaya Wade is simply the most recent instance of it.