TikTok dedicated to promoting Black creators following accusations of racism
The hugely popular video-sharing platform has introduced a 'creator diversity council' after receiving criticism for suppressing non-white content with its complex algorithms. After a string of controversies about racial equality on the app, TikTok has formally apologised to its Black users. The company, which recently came under fire for appearing...
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Gen Z are mocking millennials online
If you’re over 25 and you’ve been using the phrase ‘OK boomer’ online, you’re about to have a reality check. The generational wars have truly begun, people. No longer are we simply aiming our tweets at dismissive and judgemental boomers, we’re now attacking each other in what can only be...
Mixer ends Ninja and Shroud contracts as Facebook partnership beckons
Microsoft is showing the door to its key Mixer streamers, but will its ballsy plot pay off in the long term? As we predicted back in January, 2020 is fast becoming the year for streaming services to really show their mettle. Whether it’s having a captive audience to target in...
BLM protesters weaponising memes against police
The weaponisation of memes is nothing new, but taking on anti-racism has to be its biggest and most significant engagement to date. Digital natives Gen Z are constantly shifting the parameters of political demonstration and discourse to include online spaces. Now a part of our everyday vernacular, memes are used...
Online dating during lockdown- can love thrive while we’re apart?
Lockdown has accelerated the transition of online dating apps to purely online hangout spaces. Should this trend continue beyond quarantine? If modern communication falls broadly into two categories – the online and the offline – then where do we place online dating? Pre-COVID, it occupied some strange liminal place between...
The apps empowering BLM protesters right now
Police brutality is the enemy, racial equality is the goal, and technology is becoming the vehicle for change. Many of you won’t be old enough to recall this with much clarity, but I remember the 2011 London Riots like they happened yesterday. A 29-year-old black man named Mark Duggan was...
Quibi fails to break into the mainstream during lockdown
Huge investment in both star power and content production has done little to establish Quibi among the streaming elite. But does the app have a future? Two months ago, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, veteran execs Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman boldly decided to launch a new mobile-centric streaming app called Quibi. But despite sinking a combined $1.8 billion in capital and star power, the platform may fail...
Facebook’s ‘Deep Fake Detection Challenge’ returns worrying data
As the 2020 US presidential election looms, social media sites are having to prepare for the inevitable onslaught of political discourse, and detecting defamatory content is high on the agenda. If you keep up to date with Thred, then this definitely won’t be the first time you’ve heard of deepfakes. This AI face manipulation technology began with innocuous memes of Nicholas Cage several years ago, but has slowly evolved...
Social media is getting Gen Z to the voting booth
New data suggests that apps such as Snapchat are making a sizeable difference to voting turnouts, which in turn could dramatically shift election results moving forward. One of the biggest challenges in modern politics is getting young people to vote. Millennials and Gen Zers now make up more than a third of eligible voters in the US, yet actual turn out is nearly always lower than experts predict. Bernie Sanders’...
Amazon-related beauty content is booming on TikTok
TikTok has become an unlikely source of beauty sales for Amazon during the Coronavirus pandemic. TikTok has emerged as a new source for brands struggling during COVID-19 to push sales on Amazon. Looking beyond the potential stigma of selling on a platform that has deterred retailers in the past with the amount of control it exerts over the process of getting products to customers, Amazon is rife with opportunities for...
