Technology

Netflix user reviews are no more. Sure, chances are pretty decent you didn&t realize Netflix still had reviews at this point, but the video streaming giant has delivered on its promise to do away with the one-time mainstay of the service.

Last month, it informed recent users that reviews would be sunset soon.Netflix dropped the feature this week with little fanfare, simply updating the &How do I post reviews on Netflix& section of its help page to read, &You can no longer post reviews on Netflix.& Fair enough, I guess.

The service has slowly evolved its recommendation engine over the year, putting plenty of effort into one of its primary drivers of user engagement. Review were slowly moved into the background to make way for new features, including the current thumbs up/thumbs down offering.

As Variety notes, while some continued to use reviews up until the end, the loss of reviews hasn&t exactly been met with a widespread backlash from users. Not a thumbs up, nor a thumbs down, so much as a collective indifference to the end of once key feature.

The Kindle Voyage is no more. The e-reader is currently unavailable through Amazon, as noted by a few sites. You can still pick up a refurbed version through the retailer, but listings for the new model note that, &[t]his item is only available from third-party sellers.&

TechCrunch confirmed that the product is no longer available with Amazon, which noted, &that customer response to Kindle Voyage has been incredibly positive and we&ve sold out.& While Amazonrefusing to disclose any further information, if there was a refresh on the way, the company likely would have noted as much on the site as is its custom.

All of this probably means thereeither new model on the way or, more than likely, the Voyage has been sunset. The device was first introduced in 2014 as a thinner, lighter and generally more premium version of the popular reader. The arrival of the higher end Oasis two years later, however, has made the product a bit redundant.

The culling of the line was probably a bit overdue, really. Amazonthe far and away leader in devoted e-readers, but even without the Voyage in the lineup, thereplenty of variety to be had in a still fairly narrow space.

Jack Dorsey is hedging his bets. In an interview with CNNBrian Stelter, the beard-rocking CEO said Twitter is reluctant to commit to a timetable for enacting policies aimed at curbing heated political rhetoric on the site.

The executivelukewarm comments reflect an embattled social network that has been the brunt of criticism from both sides of the political divide. The left has taken Twitter to task for relative inaction over incendiary comments from far right pundits like Alex Jones. The site was slow to act, compared to the likes of services including YouTube, Facebook and even YouPorn (yep).

When it ultimately did ban Jones& Infowars, it was a seven day &timeout.& That move, expectedly, has drawn scrutiny from the other side of the aisle. Yesterday, Trump tweeteda critique of social media in general, that is generally being regarded as a thinly-veiled allusion to his embattled supporter, Jones.

Social Media is totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices. Speaking loudly and clearly for the Trump Administration, we won&t let that happen. They are closing down the opinions of many people on the RIGHT, while at the same time doing nothing to others

Trump also recently called for an end to what the right has deemed the &shadow banning& of conservative voices on social media.

&How do we earn peoples& trust& the CEO asked rhetorically during the conversation. &How do we guide people back to healthy conversation&

Dorsey suggested that his company is &more left-leaning,& a notion that has made him extra cautious of blowback from the right. He also continued his position of refusing to hold the company to be accountable for fact-checking, a policy that runs counter to proclamations of other social media like Facebook.

&We have not figured this out,& Dorsey said, &but I do think it would be dangerous for a company like ours… to be arbiters of truth.&

For now, Dorsey and co. appear to be in a holding pattern, an indecisiveness that has drawn fire from all sides. The exec pines for a less polarized dialogue, citing NBA and K-Pop accounts as examples of Twitter subcultures that have been more measured in their approach.

Of course, anyone whospent time reading replies to LeBron or The Warriors can tell you that thata pretty low bar for discourse.

The fact of the matter is that this is the state of politics in 2018. Things are vicious and rhetoric can be incendiary. All of that is amplified by social media, as political pundits lean into troubling comments, conspiracy theory and outright lies to drive clicks.

Dorsey, says hepushing for policies &that encourage people to talk and to have healthy conversation.& Whatever Twitter&small staff& might have in the works, it certainly feels a long way off.