It's no secret that, regardless of skill level, women's sports are broadcast and funded a whole lot less than men's sports. While serious structural shifts are needed to rectify this, small changes are always welcome. In that vein, Roku is launching the Women's Sports Zone, a hub for accessing live matches, alongside content like documentaries and movies that focus on women's sports, all in one place. The streaming platform credits a general spike in interest toward watching women's sports as responsible for the move. 

Roku users can access the Women's Sports Zone in one of two ways, the first being by searching directly for "women's sports" or the name of a team or a league. Otherwise, users on the TV or mobile app can scroll to the sports section to find it. On the TV, the zone will pop up under the "Browse by Sport" category — yes, implying women's sports are one entity versus being just as multifaceted as men's sports, again, small changes. Once inside the zone, there's a breakdown of current games streaming live and upcoming matches with their dates listed. 

The hub's launch is neatly timed to the WNBA season's imminent start, with live broadcasts currently including professional and collegiate basketball, soccer and golf. Supporting channels are responsible for providing each offering, and, according to Roku, additional content will be available in "the coming months." 

LinkedIn is the latest notable tech company to announce a round of mass layoffs. It's letting 716 staff go and shutting down its job search app in China. LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky said in a memo to employees that the cuts were part of a shift in strategy that was driven by changes in customer behavior and slower revenue growth. That's despite the platform seeing record levels of engagement and "making meaningful progress creating economic opportunities for our members and customers."

In 2021, LinkedIn shut down the seven-year-old Chinese version of its service, citing the difficulties of operating in the country. It rolled out a job board app for Chinese users called InCareer that did not have any social networking features. Now, Roslansky says the company will phase out that app by August 9th. While InCareer found some success, Roslansky wrote, "it also encountered fierce competition and a challenging macroeconomic climate."

LinkedIn is shifting its strategy in China toward helping companies based there recruit and train workers from other countries. It will cut its product and engineering teams in China and reduce the headcount of its local corporate, sales and marketing divisions. As The New York Times notes, LinkedIn did not say how many of the layoffs will be in China.

Around 20,000 people work at LinkedIn, so the layoffs account for around 3.5 percent of the overall headcount. However, Roslansky said LinkedIn will open more than 250 positions in other areas starting next week, namely in the operations, new business and account management divisions. 

This is just the latest instance of widespread layoffs in the tech industry over the last several months. LinkedIn parent Microsoft said in January it would cut 10,000 workers. Meta, Alphabet and Amazon have all laid off tens of thousands of workers too.

LinkedIn is experimenting with a new generative AI feature for job hunters. The company is testing a new feature that will generate brief, cover letter-like messages candidates can send to hiring managers on the platform. The feature is starting to roll out now for the site's premium subscribers.

With the update, users will see the option to “Let AI draft a message to the hiring team” alongside open roles on the platform’s jobs page. The feature draws on “information from your profile, the hiring manager’s profile, the job description, and the company of interest” to create a “highly personalized” message, according to the company.

LinkedIn

In the example provided by LinkedIn, the message reads like the opening few sentences of a cover letter. However, the AI-written message users see will likely vary based on how much information is in your LinkedIn profile. The company notes that “customization is still important,” and that users should double check and edit the text before sending it.

LinkedIn, which is owned by OpenAI partner Microsoft, has experimented with other generative AI features. The platform added AI writing suggestions to profiles, and “collaborative articles” which also make use of AI-written text.

After a week-long tussle with Twitter and owner Elon Musk over labels that the company applied to its accounts, NPR said it will no longer use the platform at all. The organization criticized Twitter over a "state-affiliated media" label that was placed on its main account last week. Twitter later updated the text to read “government-funded media.”

However, NPR said the latest incarnation of the label is "inaccurate and misleading," as it's "a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence." The organization pointed out that federal funding accounts for less than one percent of its $300 million annual budget.

NPR CEO John Lansing said that, as a result of the label, the broadcaster is abandoning Twitter in order to protect its credibility. Until recently, Twitter typically reserved the "state-affiliated media" tag for government-run outlets like Russia's RT and Sputnik and China's Xinhua News Agency. 

"At this point I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter," Lansing said. "I would need some time to understand whether Twitter can be trusted again." The NPR chief also said that "degradation in the culture of Twitter" also played a role in the organization's decision to pause its use of the platform.

Going forward, NPR will no longer "post fresh content" on any of its 52 official feeds. NPR is giving workers who handle its Twitter accounts a two-week grace period to rework their social media strategies. For one thing, they've directed NPR's Twitter followers toward the broadcaster's newsletters and accounts on other social media platforms. The company is leaving it up to staff to decide whether to keep using their personal Twitter accounts.

Twitter has also applied the "government-funded media" label to the BBC's Twitter account, a move that organization has also objected to. In a BBC interview on Wednesday, Musk said the company will tweak the BBC label so that it reads "publicly funded." That would be a more accurate description of how the BBC is funded. Still, Lansing claimed even if Twitter were to backtrack and remove the label from NPR's account, the organization won't start tweeting again right away.

Meanwhile, Musk has revealed how he decides which organizations should have the contentious labels. He's consulting Wikipedia's publicly-funded broadcasters category page. As it happens, several organizations listed on that page — including Canada's CBC, Japan's NHK and the UK's Channel 4 — do not have such labels on their Twitter accounts.

T-Mobile and Major League Baseball (MLB) are renewing their partnership. In addition to sponsoring various pro-baseball events, the carrier announced today that its subscribers would continue receiving free MLB.TV subscriptions through 2028.

MLB and T-Mobile have offered the deal for the past eight years as part of its T-Mobile Tuesdays promotion, which gives subscribers access to weekly discounts and freebies. MLB.TV lets you stream home and away broadcast feeds around the league — live or on-demand. (However, it’s subject to dreaded regional blackouts, so you shouldn’t count on it to watch teams nearby.) In addition, for the first time this season, the service lets you stream minor-league games for your favorite major-league team’s affiliates in the MLB app.

Speaking of the minor leagues, the two corporations are partnering on an automated ball-strike (ABS) system, which lets Minor League Baseball (MiLB) players and officials “review, challenge and analyze calls.” This season, T-Mobile will power the system with a “5G Private Mobile Network” during some minor-league games. You may recall that MLB has been experimenting with robot umps in the independent Atlantic League since 2019. Last year, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said the league aims to introduce the system to the big leagues by 2024. From a labor perspective, it’s hard not to see this as a first step toward automating umpires’ jobs, but at least fans can direct their vitriol over (perceived) bad calls to a machine instead of a human. 

T-Mobile says its baseball partnership will also include a little-league sponsorship, part of which consists of the carrier donating millions of dollars toward equipment and grants for aspiring young sluggers. It’s also continuing to sponsor the All-Star Week Home Run Derby and batting practice broadcast. Finally, T-Mobile plans to expand its 5G coverage in baseball stadiums across North America, envisioning eventual “immersive 5G-connected experiences for fans” and better in-stadium speeds and reception for its subscribers.

LinkedIn is the latest platform to hop on the generative AI bandwagon. The company is adding AI-powered “writing suggestions” and job descriptions to its service as it looks for new ways to infuse AI into its platform.

The writing suggestions are meant to make it easier to fill out key profile fields that LinkedIn says can otherwise feel “daunting” to complete: the “about” and “headline” sections near the top of each profile. Now, with the new “enhance” tool, LinkedIn Premium subscribers can generate descriptions based on their experience.

The company says the tool, which uses the same OpenAI models that power ChatGPT, is meant to preserve “your unique voice and style” and will draw from your job experience and skills, as well as LinkedIn’s own “insights” into what makes a good profile. In an example of a completed “about” section provided by LinkedIn, the tool generated a first-person summary of an individual’s job experience that reads almost like the beginning of a cover letter.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn also says it’s starting to test AI-written job descriptions. In those cases, hiring managers will simply need to fill out the job title, company name and a few other basic details, and LinkedIn will create a detailed draft of a relevant job description.

Of note, the company is positioning its AI writing features as more of a starting point than a final product. In both cases, LinkedIn says that users should review and edit the AI-generated text to check for accuracy. But the company says that both could be a major time saver for members who want to offload some of the more tedious writing tasks associated with LinkedIn.

These writing tools aren’t LinkedIn’s first foray into generative AI. The company also recently introduced “collaborative articles,” which rely on a combination of AI-written text as well as contributions from individual LinkedIn “experts.” Elsewhere, the company is also adding new online courses dedicated to generative AI-related topics.

It's International Women's Day 2023 and women worldwide still earn an average of 77 cents for every dollar men make. The United Nations predicts it will take 257 years at the current rate of progress to close the gender pay gap. This is a deeply rooted societal issue with many organizations that claim to lift women up also guilty of paying them less. 

These companies have long gotten away with posting a photo of a smiling woman or an inspirational quote about girl power on IWD to appear gender equitable. This was until last year when Francesca Lawson decided it was well past time they were exposed. Lawson, a freelance copywriter and social media manager, co-created the Gender Pay Gap Bot with her partner, Ali Fensome, a software consultant.

The Twitter bot uses data publicly available through the UK government's gender pay gap service. It analyzes the pay gap of organizations with at least 250 employees working in the UK. They represent a variety of sectors including education, government, healthcare and sports. Since 2017, organizations of this size have been required to submit their gender pay gap annually.

Lawson and Fensome created the bot after seeing companies post about empowerment or use IWD as an excuse for a sale without following through internally. "What the gender pay gap data shows is that behind employers' supportive words, all-women photoshoots, and inspirational quotes, there's still a lot of work to do,"Lawson, also the creative strategist behind the bot, tells Engadget. The pair also realized many people weren't aware this information was available for public knowledge.

The Gender Pay Gap Bot aptly aligns with this year's IWD theme 'DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality' in it's quest for pay equity. As the UN states, "the digital age represents an unprecedented opportunity to eliminate all forms of disparity and inequality."

The bot works in three steps. It searches Twitter for to match companies' accounts with their government profile then scans for keywords related to International Women's Day. Once it matches a company with a relevant post, it's time to publish their gender pay gap.

The Gender Pay Gap Bot automatically quote tweets the organization's initial post to its account. It typically uses modifications of the same two sentences: "In this organisation, women's median hourly pay is X% lower/higher than men's. The pay gap is X percentage points smaller/wider than the previous year. The bot has nearly 250K followers and usually tweets multiple times per minute." 

The results are disheartening but not surprising. Most companies' pay gaps reflects the global trend of women making less than men. 

A nominal number of tweets show cases in which women are paid more than men. Rare tweets also highlight companies who are doing it right: Equal pay for everyone.

However, for most organizations, it's a reminder they need to make serious changes. But, today, instead of taking accountability, some of them are choosing to run and hide. After the bot's call out, a few companies have deleted their initial tweet. Turns out you can be embarrassed into doing something, maybe even also fairly paying your workers.  

Twitter

Beyond shamefully deleting a tweet, Lawson hopes the Gender Pay Gap Bot gets organizations thinking about and taking action towards gender equity. "By putting the data back in the spotlight, I'd hoped to inspire companies to approach their International Women's Day activities differently this year — the overwhelmingly positive response we've had shows that women are tired of being 'celebrated' and labelled 'inspirational' for one day a year while experiencing discrimination and inequality on the other 364," Lawson says. "They want honesty, and accountability — not hollow marketing gestures."

If you love technology as much as we do and have writing chops to boot, we want to hear from you. Engadget is looking for freelance news writers in the US! Interested applicants should send a cover letter, resume and links to three writing samples to jobs at engadget dot com. Here’s the deal:

Contributing writer

Engadget is looking for ambitious and enthusiastic freelance writers capable of telling compelling stories about technology, science and the future of everything. The ideal candidate will put important news in proper context with minimal fluff, find an interesting and original angle from which to tackle a story, explain complicated subjects simply and clearly, and do this all reasonably quickly.

As a writer at Engadget you'll be an essential part of our dedicated and passionate news team. Our ideal candidates will have some solid professional media experience under their belt, but we're also open to early-career writers who are ready to hustle. You'll gain valuable experience and exposure in a fast-paced, online newsroom. Plus, you'll have access to some of the finest writers and reporters in the business who can offer invaluable lessons on how to thrive in the modern media landscape.

Freelance contributing writers will take on between three and five assignments per day (we're looking for coverage on East Coast hours, with shifts such as 8AM-1PM ET and 1PM-5PM ET available). We are currently looking for writers located in the US, or anyone willing to work during US business hours. Shifts will be a minimum of four hours, paid hourly at $28.

We're looking for:

• Preferably someone who already has some professional tech/science/auto bylines under their belt.

• A familiarity with and sincere interest in consumer technology.

• A writer with a strong, lively voice who can turn in clean copy quickly.

• Works well with others, and is receptive to feedback.

• Experience with Photoshop or other photo editing software is a plus.

Netflix has released a trailer for Money Shot, a documentary about Pornhub (arguably one of its biggest competitors for people's attention). The film features interviews with performers, activists and former employees. It promises to delve into many of the scandals and successes the porn colossus has experienced over the almost 16 years it has been around.

The trailer suggests the film will explore issues such as alleged sexual exploitation and accusations that Pornhub has hosted non-consensual pornography. Pornhub owner MindGeek has faced a lawsuit over its alleged monetization of child porn. In 2020, the site removed all uploads from unverified users.

The documentary seems to go beyond Pornhub to examine other facets of the sex industry. The trailer, for instance, touches on the fact many sex workers and porn performers have lost their accounts on social media platforms. Meanwhile, one interviewee suggests that critics aren't just attacking porn, but the very idea of self-expression. 

The clip suggests that Money Shot takes a far-reaching look at Pornhub and the broader industry. You'll be able to find out for yourself just how tactful and measured the documentary's approach is when it hits Netflix on March 15th.

After teasing it last year, YouTube has rolled out a new feature called Go Live Together that lets creators co-host livestreams. Anyone with over 50 subscribers can invite a guest to host a livestream with them from iOS and Android mobile devices. Only one guest is allowed at any time, but the host can swap in new guests during the same livestream. 

You can schedule co-streams through YouTube's desktop app, but both the host and guest must use mobile devices during the livestream. To do so, open the YouTube app, tap "Create" then "Go Live Together." After entering stream details, select "Invite a co-streamer" and send an invite link to the co-streamer. They'll then be sent to the waiting room until you click "Go Live."

There's no minimum number of followers for guests, but the host will be held responsible for guests violating any community guidelines. Hosts can earn revenue for ads, which can appear in pre-, mid- and post-roll form. 

YouTube offered a similar feature that lets creators co-host shopping livestreams, which allows both co-hosting and redirects to a brand's channel. Twitch recently introduced a feature in beta called Guest Star which allows creators to bring up to five guests onto streams. That system is a bit simpler, as any viewer can raise a virtual hand and the host can invite them on, much like Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces. Unlike YouTube's mobile limitation, Twitch's version is only available on desktop.