Twitch streamers plan 24-hour boycott in response to βhate raidsβ
Twitch streamers from marginalised communities have regularly spoken out against abuse and harassment they receive on the platform. With instances of βhate raidsβ continuing to slip past moderators, a day long boycott now aims to drive change. If youβre big into streaming, youβll likely have seen the hashtag β#TwitchDoBetterβ bouncing...
Current in News
The new Ugandan app tackling online abuse against women
A Ugandan tech company called Pollicy has created an interactive game to help women across Africa become digitally literate and clued up on digital safety. The digital game, Digital Safe-tea,Β provides women with digital safety training by allowing them to confront online violence scenarios as three different personas: Goitse, Aisha, and...
Vineβs creator working on bizarre new NFT console Supdrive
Dom Hofmann, a founder of both Vine and Byte, has announced a firmware console called Supdrive. Using NFTs as game cartridges, each title will be unique to each player. This whole NFT trend is getting pretty out of hand now. Dom Hofmann, the founder of TikTokβs 2012 ancestor Vine, has recently...
Twitter finally makes reporting misinformation simple for users
Following mounting pressure from the White House, Twitter has announced a new user feature intended to better tackle the online spread of misinformation. If ever there was a specific period to really underpin the dangers of misinformation, with Covid-19, the introduction of 5G, and the US presidential election, 2020 was...
Facebook plans to become βwater positiveβ by 2030
The social media giant has announced it will restore more water than it uses globally within the next decade, intensifying the competition between tech firms to become carbon neutral. Your nanβs favourite source of stale memes and clickbait headlines, Facebook, has just announced plans to become βwater positiveβ by...
Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp suspended during Zambiaβs election
Zambia officials threatened to suspend all broadband services on the day of its election to combat misinformation. In the end, its Ministry of Information froze traffic on WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. In the fight to stem the spread political misinformation during its presidential election, has Zambia compromised a sense...
Study suggests Gen Z prioritise digital life over real life
A new survey shows that young people now believe the way you present yourself online is more important than real life. Is our digital avatar now the priority? If youβve been active online at all during the last fifteen years, youβll no doubt have made at least one social media profile somewhere. Whether it be MSN or Myspace in the early noughties, or TikTok and Snapchat in the present day,...
NASA trials human expeditions to Mars through 3D printed experiment
The space agency is paying volunteers to spend a year living within a 3D printed Martian habitat in Texas. Here, they will conduct VR spacewalks and simulated problems to test the feasibility of attempting the real thing. Between the chaos caused by Covid-19 and the constant flow of demoralising climate change news, life on Earth over the last year has felt pretty exhausting. If your annual holiday to Tenerife hasnβt recharged...
US politicians call on gaming companies to axe coercive spending
Building on legislation outlined by the UK, US Congress members are calling for developers to better protect young people from βpredatoryβ game mechanics like loot boxes. In 2021, gaming is all about value for money. Subscription services like Games Pass, PlayStation Now, and EA Play are popping with hundreds of AAA titles to get stuck into, yet somehow people are still coerced into forking out for microtransactions. In a bid to...
Athletes on TikTok are switching up the Olympic perspective
Virtual tours of the Olympic Village, cardboard beds, crushes on competitors, and daily coronavirus testing are all new elements of this yearβs spectator experience. Qualifying for the Olympics is a level of achievement any professional athlete dreams of. So, when we think about the qualities of those competing, which words come to mind? βDisciplinedβ, βstrongβ, βlaser-focusedβ, perhaps even βseriousβ are probably amongst them. After all, these competitors are the best in their...
