Microsoft offers TikTok US lifeline with potential deal
Microsoft is in advanced discussions over a potential TikTok purchase in the US, as President Trump looks to address the platform’s privacy concerns. After TikTok’s meteoric rise during lockdown saw it become the most downloaded app of 2020, parent company ByteDance and host-nation China were dragged through the mud in...
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Twitter’s new audio feature will transform it, for better or worse
Heated political discussion is no longer confined to your phone’s keyboard, as Twitter begins to test out new audio tweet features for iOS. You only need to browse Twitter for five minutes to notice that it’s a very political space where anyone can argue via aggressive tweeting and reactionary gifs. This...
Huawei trumps Samsung as top smartphone vendor this quarter
Thanks to a Covid-19 slump from Samsung, China’s smartphone giant Huawei has shipped more handsets than any other vendor in the last quarter. Huawei’s long harboured ambition to trump Samsung to the title of biggest smartphone seller has finally come to fruition, according to a new report from analyst firm...
Instagram’s shopping feature is looking to be ‘the new mall’
As fashion and beauty turns to tech to stay afloat during the Coronavirus pandemic, online-platform shopping features are set to become 'the new mall.' Though the thought of returning to a mall in the middle of a global pandemic might seem unusual to most, many are finding themselves longing for...
Instagram rolls out ‘Personal Fundraisers’ to support small businesses
In response to the economic fallout caused by Covid-19, Instagram has released a crowdfunding feature to keep small businesses afloat. Instagram pumping out updates has become one of the constants of 2020, but the latest feature is far from just another quirky AR addition. Parent company Facebook has already played host...
Twitter suffers massive bitcoin security breach
Accounts of huge companies and celebrities including Barack Obama and Apple have been compromised in the biggest Twitter hack ever. Over 300,000 verified Twitter accounts have been temporarily blocked from posting any content due to a huge, widespread cyber-attack by a bitcoin scammer. These users include huge international companies such...
Is TikTok really an elaborate façade for Chinese spyware?
Cyber-experts are claiming that 2020’s number one app is a shady front for Chinese spyware and mass censorship. Suggestions that ByteDance’s ‘innocuous’ short-bite video app TikTok has all the makings of a totalitarian plot hatched by the Chinese government are looking more plausible by the day. Suffice to say, people are freaked. Months of bad publicity Two months ago, an anonymous software engineer with 15 years of experience claimed he had successfully reverse-engineered TikTok. Within its inner workings, he pointed to...
Chinese face-tracking tech bans foreigners from live streaming
A global inquest into TikTok has done little to deter China from pushing stricter censorship on its own soil. Official documents from TikTok’s parent company ByteDance have confirmed rumours that the viral video app is constantly running facial recognition technology to monitor and censor content on Douyin – China’s version of the platform. Douyin may appear innocuous on the surface, but Chinese streamers are subject to an intrusive regime of automated...
Reddit must persist with alt-right purge despite ‘free speech’ concerns
Media efforts to combat hate is pressuring user-based platforms like Reddit and MeWe to follow suit, and rightly so. Since the 18th century we have used boycotting as a political weapon for good. In 1791 some 300,000 people abstained from buying any goods produced by slaves in the West Indies, demonstrating for the first time the undeniable influence of consumer action in bringing about tangible change. Today, with social media being...
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 to hide posts with George Floyd and BLM hashtags, has accepted responsibility for failing Black content creators by censoring their...
