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How Will Tech Lead The Economic Recovery? (infographic)

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Can tech help the economy recover? The real question is how can tech help the economy recover, because just about every sector of the economy is heavily dependent on technology. There are tech companies that have become household names, like Uber, Venmo, Warby Parker, AirBNB, Pinterest, and more got their start during the last major economic recession. Now those companies and others are fueling the economic recovery from the pandemic. Interestingly, much of this recovery hinges on remote work.

Remote Work Kept The Economy Going

Would it surprise you to learn that two in three American workers worked remotely during the pandemic? Just think of all the businesses that would have had to shut down otherwise. Technology like the internet, computers, smartphones, webcams, and more enabled people to stay connected and keep businesses going, and this is going to be a key component of economic recovery.

In order to cut costs so a recovery can be successful, businesses will be able to keep their workforce at home. This cuts back on major expenses like office space, cleaning, and equipment, but it also cuts back on smaller expenses like snacks and coffee for the break room, bathroom supplies, and more.

Workers can also save more of their salaries when they work from home, making this a win-win situation. There’s less need for professional attire and dry cleaning for starters. But the big savings come from no longer needing to commute, a perk that also frees up a large chunk of a worker’s day.

Big Tech Thrives In Downturns

Necessity is the mother of invention, and no one knows this more than a tech company. There are problems out there that need to be solved, and people are going to do whatever it takes to solve those problems. Those solutions will endure and drive economic growth long into the future, as we have seen from previous economic downturns.

The Great Depression gave us such inventions as the electric razor, chocolate chip cookies, radios in cars, the Monopoly board game, and more. Each of these inventions has endured.

This economic downturn has given us the ability to change the way we live and do business for the better. It is exposing weaknesses in our critical systems and infrastructure, which gives us the opportunity to build them better. The principle of antifragility comes into play here. It’s one thing to survive a downturn by adapting, but it’s another thing to use what you learn in a downturn to become stronger in the long run. If we can take what we learn from this downturn and build our systems to withstand the next downturn, all will not be lost.


The reason tech thrives in a downturn is people are searching for ways to adapt. Every aspect of our lives has been affected by this pandemic, which translates to major changes in the way we are living our lives. Tech is responsible for helping us get food through ordering apps for groceries and takeout, keeping us connected through messaging platforms, and keeping many of us working through remote collaboration tools.

Even the way we receive medical care has adapted to suit remote services through telehealth and telemedicine. When it is too dangerous for some patients to see a medical provider in person, that person can still have access to care through technology.

Going to school and even going on vacation is temporarily tech-centric, too. It’s fortunate that we have the ability to continue much of our lives with minor interruptions thanks to the advances we have seen in technology in the last decade or two.

Learn more about how tech will lead the economic recovery from the infographic below.

How Tech Will Figure In To Economic Recovery - Infographic

Read next: Transitioning To The Remote Work Economy (infographic)

Apple may achieve "the next big thing" in security that Microsoft is still struggling with - a password-less web

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Microsoft with its Windows Hello technology declared the end of passwords in recent months. This means the users will be able to sign into their accounts without having to remember a random transcript of characters.

This was followed up to the point that Windows Hello became a certified FIDO2 compliant. This certification means that any devices (with the necessary hardware components) running Windows 10 would be able to use Windows Hello PINs or biometrics to access their networks, apps, devices, and online services with Certified FIDO security. However, the only noteworthy use of Windows Hello is to reveal the user’s passwords stored in the Chrome browser.

The Fast Identity Online (FIDO) Alliance is an association of open industries that was launched in February of 2013. The mission of the organization is to promote and develop standards for authentication that help to reduce the world’s over-dependence on passwords. A large range of authentication technologies is supported by FIDO. This includes biometrics (iris and fingerprint scanners), facial and voice recognition, existing communications and solutions standards like USB security tokens, smart cards, Near Field Communication (NFC), remembering multiple usernames and passwords.

Apple joined the FIDO2 (2-factor authentication) alliance in February this year and recently announced support for FIDO2 via FaceID and TouchID in their Safari browser on Apple devices. Apple is a tech giant that has enough power and influence to move the web developers around the world to make necessary changes as it has frequently demonstrated in the past, which is very unlike Microsoft.

Apple’s acceptance could advance the biometrics movement overall. This is because Apple can make complicated technologies user-friendly and can take on educating the users about how they work. An example of this can be traced back to the introduction of the first iPhone where the development of the touch-screen was a breakthrough for consumer products. Apple also demonstrated how much easier and faster it was to operate the touch-screen as compared to the conventional way of communicating with the other mobile devices, that used physical navigating buttons and a number pad. This accelerated the growth of the market in accepting touch-screens and now it's pretty much a set standard for modern smartphones. So similar improvement can be expected in the development of the biometric movement as well.

Apple also has a large community of developers who get excited to develop, improve, and launch Apple’s new technologies to the public. With this, it can be expected that many websites will redesign their systems so they can accommodate iPhone browsers, and hopefully, the owners of those sites will not keep non-Safari users from enjoying the end of passwords.



Read next: New Feature in iOS 14 Could Solve an Age Old YouTube Problem

Twitter CTO Says That The Platform Checks Millions Of Accounts Every Week To See If They Are Real Or Fake Accounts

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Twitter has been taking several initiatives to combat the spread of misleading information across its platform. Usually, fake accounts are used to spread misinformation across social media platforms. The major social networking companies are making efforts to combat these fake accounts across their respective platforms. Twitter has also been making efforts to tackle fake accounts and misinformation on its platform.

On Thursday, Parag Agrawal, CTO at Twitter stated that the company challenges millions of Twitter accounts every week to check whether a real human is running an account or those accounts are entirely automated.

Twitter CTO was speaking at the Collision from Home tech conference and stated that there are several categories of fake accounts that bad actors can use. He said that some of the fake accounts are entirely automated while some accounts are bots with real humans in the loop.

There are other fake accounts that are operated by humans and attempt to manipulate chats as well as accounts that get compromised and then bad actors use them. Agarwal also revealed that the company suspends millions of Twitter accounts each month before a user even sees those accounts on their Twitter timelines or in the search results.

Twitter applies AI technology to monitor the behaviors of several accounts and detect patterns to determine any abnormal behavior. If the company detects anomalies that cannot be explained by normal human usage, Twitter knows whether to investigate particular accounts or not.


According to Agrawal, figuring out whether an account is fake or not, it is not always easy for the company as there are a lot of accounts with no profile image and a small number of posts that seem like bots. However, those accounts are actually used by real humans. The company also allows users of its platform to use pseudonyms.

Still, Agrawal states that those Twitter accounts that seem to be fake are not potentially the most problematic ones. According to him, the most dangerous fake Twitter account seems to be real on the surface. This makes it difficult for the company to determine whether an account is fake or not.



Read next: Twitter for Android Tests Out New Topics Page

YouTube Is Testing An Improved Voice Search Feature For Multilingual Users

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It has been seen that Google-owned YouTube is always testing out new features and options to be implemented in the app to enhance the user experience. The company always focuses on innovating features, particularly in the research part.

Recently, Google started to experiment with an all-in-one record-and-publish feature on YouTube, and now the company has started to test a feature that will help users to easily find the video that interests them. It has been seen that YouTube’s engineers are developing a new button that will enable users to switch voice search languages right on the input screen of the app.

The new feature will be very beneficial for multilingual users or those who like to use voice search in variety of cultures. The feature will allow users to search for content that is not available in the language they have set up in their YouTube settings. With this option, users will be able to customize voice search according to language.

The company hopes that the new test will help YouTube’s voice search systems to better account for multilingual speakers. The new feature will be ideal for those users who watch videos from different countries. However, content from other countries does not appear frequently in the search results as those videos are from countries other than what was entered in the default settings of the YouTube app.

The additional positive point in this update is the fact that Google better serves those users who are multilingual, as the option will allow those users to search for video themes related to the language they desire. As the company usually rolls out these types of experiments with a small number of users, the feature is also rolling out to only a few users.


If a user is included in the new test, a blue banner will appear on the voice input screen. The banner provides extra details for beta testers. According to the company, the language selector is available for all languages that are supported by ‘Cloud Speech-to-Text’. These languages are listed on the official website of Google Cloud.

Uzbek, Burmese, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, and Estonian languages are some of those languages supported by Cloud Speech-to-Text. However, it is not yet clear whether users will have to scroll through a large list of all of these languages while switching or the most used languages will be easily available to them.

Screenshot of current YouTube voice search layout:


Read next: Google Has Been Trying To Push YouTube Onto Larger Screens, Now Over 100 Million Americans Watch YouTube On TVs Every Month

Don't Touch My Stuff: Tech Couples Consider Off-Limits to Partners

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The novel coronavirus, colloquially known as COVID-19, has completely redefined what “normal” means for the majority of the world. Our social interactions have been transferred to video calls and our workdays now revolve around telecommuting. However, the new normal for many means spending extended amounts of time quarantined with those they live with.

Cohabitating presents new challenges even for the most emotionally intelligent. These challenges become only more pronounced when there’s a global pressure to not leave the house. Boundaries have to be set, especially in regards to all of our tech devices that hold so much personal and professional information users may not want to be viewed on a whim.

With this in mind, QS Supplies wanted to explore which devices over 1,000 Europeans and Americans consider off-limits to their partners. All of the respondents are currently in a relationship and living with their partners.

Phone Over Everything

It’s no secret that our smartphones contain a decent amount of private information, whether it’s personal messages or important logins. This could potentially explain why over 2 in 5 respondents list their smartphone as the No. 1 item off-limits to their partner. In fact, respondents were nearly 55% more likely to restrict their partner’s access to their phones than their debit or credit cards.




Although the study found the longer a relationship lasts the more likely someone is to allow a partner access to their personal items, smartphones remained among the top items respondents restricted at all points during the relationship. In fact, smartphones were the item most likely to be off-limits from the get-go. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many respondents reported limiting their partner’s access to their smartphones after they had damaged it or outright lost it.



While completely blocking a significant other from using your smartphone may seem harsh to some, one can only sympathize considering over 2 in 3 respondents reported having their partner damage their belongings. Of course, accidents happen, but smartphones are typically a big-ticket item people try to replace as infrequently as possible.

Tech We Shouldn’t Touch

Smartphones aren’t the only personal tech device those in relationships keep to themselves. Computers came in second only to smartphones, with nearly 42% of respondents considering them one of the top items off-limits to their partner. Similarly to phones, computers were among the top three items restricted from being used by a partner right from the beginning of a relationship.



Significant others who had broken or lost a partner’s computer were also prohibited from using it again. Now more than ever, though, people’s personal computers are crucial for getting them through the day. Reducing the risk for further damage is imperative considering those who work full-time and do so remotely generally rely entirely on their computer for their job.


Interestingly enough, AirPods were also among the top tech items off-limits to significant others. Over 1 in 10 consider their AirPods as off-limits to their partner. Much like smartphones, these sleek tech accessories are priced at a pretty penny. Replacing a broken or lost pair would likely be an unpleasant expense that could’ve been avoided.

Only slightly behind AirPods, gaming consoles made the list of items couples forbid their partners from using. Men were 40% more likely than women to restrict access to their video game consoles.

Tech Restrictions’ Effect on Relationships

Setting boundaries in a healthy way is important to any relationship. However, when we’re too restrictive on a partner, what are the effects? Respondents deeming items off-limits to their partner were 26% less likely to say they trust their partner very much. Unfortunately, it can be difficult trusting your partner with other aspects of the relationship when you can’t trust them to handle your personal belongings with care.

These same people are also more likely to report feeling dissatisfied with their relationship. It can be difficult feeling satisfied with a partnership if there’s little to no trust being shared. This dissatisfaction, if left unaddressed, has the potential to boil over and negatively affect our perception of the relationship’s success. Over 1 in 4 respondents went as far as saying they’ve come close to ending their relationship over off-limits items.

It’s certainly frustrating when a partner doesn’t respect our boundaries as they should or when they don’t treat our personal items with the utmost care. However, communicating your expectations clearly could help alleviate some tension. If you’re uncomfortable with your partner looking through your smartphone without your permission, be sure to politely convey this with clarity. If you would prefer your partner to limit their time on your personal computer, let them know the arrangement that works best for you.

Set clear, yet realistic expectations for how you would prefer your partner to treat your tech accessories to avoid continually replacing new products. As previously mentioned, accidents happen. Should your partner damage or lose one of your personal tech items, have a discussion as to how the two of you will go about replacing it and allay future occurrences.

Read next: These are the most (and least) internet friendly cities around the world (infographic)

Google Chrome Tests a Better User Interface for its PDF Viewer and Highlights What's New in the Browser

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Google has been busy developing new features to improve its Chrome browser, and according to TechDows the Google engineers are planning to add two new features in Chrome.

First off, it has updated the user interface for its PDF viewer, and they have been working tirelessly on improving it. The new UI has gathered all PDF options into a small space to make it easier and more intuitive for users to use and convince third-party users to convert to using Chrome PDF Viewer. Now, this sounds pretty promising.

The PDF name, number of pages, rotation options, and Print and download options are shown on the top toolbar while the sidebar shows the zoom options and Fit to page option.

In order to use the updated UI for PDF Viewer, the user need to go to “chrome://flags,” then search for “PDF Viewer Update” in the page’s search bar or simply pasting chrome://flags/#pdf-viewer-update in the address bar bring the required flag. The flag's description will show a message that would say that “the PDF Viewer will display an updated UI with new options and features.” Click “Enabled” and the user will have the new and updated Chrome PDF Viewer User Interface. In our testing we found that some options including full screen and rotate are not functioning properly as the feature is going through a trail phase.



In addition to this, Google has added a small new label that will inform users about new updates and new features as they discover them.

Chrome now displays badges next to updated features that say “New”. This test is working and is available behind a flag that users can check by pasting this in search bar “chrome://flags/#enable-new-badge-on-menu-items”. If users want to be able to see these badges more frequently so as to be updated on new features they can enable "New badge on menu items" flag on their PC.



The unveiling of these two new features is evidence of how committed the team at Google is to keep on improving and evolving their user interfaces and their efforts to making Chrome the most user-friendly, intuitive, and open internet browser. The developers are in constant competition with other browsers like Firefox, Safari, Opera; and now, albeit recently, Edge has been revamped and updated bringing it back in competition with the new browsers, Chrome has cemented its place as the default and go-to browser for hundreds of millions people all over the world, which is the fruits of the developers' labor.

Read next: Google Chrome will now give definition to Android users with a single tap

Bityard Review: The New Hub of Options Trading?

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“Options Trading” is gaining popularity with every passing day. For those of you unaware, it is a contract that allows the buyer to purchase or sell an underlying asset based on the contract type they have. The reason why many investors are opting for “Options” is that the risk factor associated with this contract is considerably low. Moreover, the pressure of financial commitment, in this case, is quite less in comparison to equities.

Although cryptocurrency options trading is a rising trend in the financial market, the concept can be quite difficult to understand for novice investors. This is where Bityard comes into play.

Bityard: Safe - Easy - Fast

While there’s no denying that various credible platforms offer exceptional crypto asset trading services, most of them cater to investors with a background in trading and may, therefore, turn away the aspiring investors who may classify these platforms as being “too complicated” to comprehend.

When it comes to Bityard, the story is completely different. Despite being touted as the “World’s Leading Cryptocurrency Contracts Exchange”, Bityard’s target audience is mainly the crypto traders who are interested in options trading but lack considerable experience in the said field and are on the lookout for a platform where they could access simplified trading operations.

Bityard is headquartered in Singapore and puts a strong emphasis on the concept of “Complex Contracts Simple Trade”. Moreover, it offers its fast, safe, and easy services across 150+ countries.

Depending on the ongoing complex contract products in the market, Bityard provides its users with insight into the market opportunities, and before you ask us, there are tons of newcomers in the crypto contract markets who could make good use of such data.

In order to keep things simple and prevent “trade leaks”, Bityard refrains from using order books and rather relies on the exchange matches user trading itself.


Bityard: Leading by Example

Within a year of its launch, Bityard has taken the world of options trading by storm. Not only does it offer its customers an easy-to-use trading platform but it also boasts several other perks that will prompt crypto traders to consider growing Bityard. Here are some of the main points, courtesy of which Bityard has gained prominence in a short amount of time.

Bityard is regulated and licensed under Singapore’s ACRA, USA’s MSB from Financial Crimes Enforcement Network which belongs to the United States Department of the Treasury, Estonia’s MTR, and Australia’s AUSTRAC.

Supporting “Leveraged Trading” is another strong suit of Bityard. This allows you to gain considerable exposure regarding a change (increase or decrease) in a specific crypto’s price without requiring you to acquire the underlying assets. Bityard enables you to get up to 100x leverage. Simply put, you are just increasing your bet by borrowing from the exchange.

Using Bityard’s interface is like a walk in the park. It is clean, simple, and allows users to easily understand what’s transpiring on their screens. Moreover, Bityard has made its website available in different languages including English, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese and Indonesian.

To further encourage novice investors or crypto traders to get used to options trading, Bityard also boasts a “demo trade” mode. When enabled, this mode allows traders to indulge in “demo” crypto options trading by utilizing authentic price charts and volumes without acquiring genuine assets. Users can also practice “leveraged trading” to get used to how the platform works.

In addition to supporting fiat deposit, the platform in question works with several deposit currencies i.e. USDT, BTC, ETH, XRP, TRX, HT, EOS and BYD.

Bityard’s transaction fee i.e. 0.05% is less than that of its main competitors such as BitMEX and Bybit i.e. 0.075%. This “contracts” platform also enables you to withdraw up to 100,000 USDT at a time.

Its customer support service is off the charts. Available via Email, Telegram, and Online, Bityard strives to achieve customer satisfaction by ensuring that anyone who inquires about the platform or its operations is catered to immediately and respectfully.

Unlike many other trading companies, Bityard is endorsed by world-renowned Muay Thai Champion, Buakaw Banchamek. Not only does this partnership open the door for a completely different audience to gain interest in crypto trading but having such a well-known Ambassador also boosts the credibility of the brand.

There are also plans in place for Bityard to use its own platform’s coin, BYD. It will be along the lines of BNB and is expected to be included in the mainstream exchanges in the future along with playing a major role in the Bityard ecosystem.

What is Bityard up against?

Bybit and BitMEX are among the most credible competitors of Bityard and both platforms have a massive user base currently. While all of the aforementioned platforms allow users to master in contract trading, Bityard manages to stand out among similar platforms.

The reason behind it, as we mentioned above, is that its simple-to-use and easily-comprehensible interface attracts beginners. While there’s no denying the fact that BitMEX has a solid reputation in the trading industry, it’s more suitable for experienced traders due to its complex services and advanced interface.

Conclusion - Is Bityard a Safe Platform?

In the end, what you should know is that in less than a year, Bityard has done a solid job of stabilizing itself. From facilitating its users with a user-friendly interface and a demo trading option to introducing its own coin and finding a well-known personality to represent the brand, the company in question is leaving no stone unturned to live up to its reputations as the “World’s Leading Cryptocurrency Contracts Exchange”.

Even though Bityard offers its users a simplified trading experience along with market insight, it recommends its clients to trade with caution since crypto contracts trading involves considerable reward or risk, especially when leveraged trading is a part of the discussion. Therefore, Bityard advises traders to only trade what they can afford to lose, and do proper research on the underlying market as well as the associated risks beforehand.

Twitter Decided To Tone Down Its Criteria To Flag Tweets Related To Covid-19 And 5G, As It Was Taking Down The Genuine Tweets That Had Nothing To Do With Fake Information

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Recently the micro-blogging platform Twitter announced that it is tweaking the labeling criteria on tweets, which are related to 5G and Covid-19. This was a much-needed step that was mandatory for the company. Although the decision of highlighting tweets was taken to protect the users and keep a distinguished check between fake and genuine updates regarding pandemic and 5G. But instead, they landed from one trouble to another. Labeling all the posts caused a drawback for the company.

The US-based Twitter declared a few days back that it will be keeping a strict check on tweets that are about coronavirus (COVID-19) and 5G. This was done because some users were misusing the platform by spreading false information and misconception. This created a problematic situation. Hence, Twitter decided to label every tweet that carried a keyword “Corona” and “5G”.

Some users circulated conspiracies regarding 5G too. They stated that the lethal disease Coronavirus is spreading through 5G. Again, the situation became uncontrollable. People started to panic. Latter researches founded that this news was fake. WHO stated this news to be rubbish. They further explained that 5G has nothing to do with coronavirus.

After this, the situation couldn’t get better. This was because the automated system started flagging every tweet that had a keyword corona or 5G. Although every tweet was not made to spread misconceptions. But the extreme check of the automated system counted it as an attempt to pass on the false news.


The users went crazy when their tweets were either taken down or labeled. They assured that they are not involved in promoting any fake information that could harm anyone. They further added that their tweets were the general ones, not the informative ones. Their explanation and appeal was the genuine one.

Hence for this purpose, Twitter decided to moderate its criteria for taking down content. They apologized for the inconvenience caused in the last few weeks, through their official Support account. They further explained the situation and stated that they are now working on a moderate labeling system for their users.

Social networks have been working to give a protective and safe platform to their users. Twitter is a part of such platforms. Let’s see how this new moderate version of the automated system will work.



Read next: Twitter CTO Says That The Platform Checks Millions Of Accounts Every Week To See If They Are Real Or Fake Accounts

YouTube Tests New Analytics Overview, That Will Help Creators To Get Better Insights About Their Content And Audience

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Just recently, YouTube published a refresher to guide its users about How YouTube Works. Now, the Google-owned video hosting platform is developing a new analytic overview for YouTubers. This new addition is in the process and it is done to give a better summary to the creators about their videos, content, audience, and a lot more. This will help the channels to know their lacking areas and their strong areas.

Conor Kavanagh from YouTube Creator Insider explained that this new analytic view will give a more insightful description of how creative is your new upload. It will also guide you about how far is your video from being shown up in YouTube home page, suggestions, and watch next section.

YouTube is a source of income for many influencers. Creators are earning through their YouTube channel. This new addition will help creators to make their performance better and earn more, they will get to learn better about their audience and what kind of content they prefer. This new update will also interpret that from which part of the world is most effective in terms of traffic generation. The average duration of the video being watched in the specific part of the world will also be analyzed through the new update.



YouTube itself provided a tip to make the video more effective. It said that videos with most eye-catching thumbnails have higher chances to appear on the home page or suggestive videos.

Since the new update is in process, YouTube will also come up with an integrated channel performance chart. This chart will be visible in Creator Studio. This bar graph based chart will give a better explanation about views, watch time (hours), subscribers, and estimated revenue.

Insights will also give a guideline about prevailing subscribers, watch time, and audience’s performance. If the new analytic summary is not showing good graph bars, you can work on your strategy and improve your content.

YouTube is also enabling a tag called “Made for kids”. This will filter the age-restricted content. It will also influence the creator’s reputation positively and play a vital role in monetization.

YouTube has made it easy for users to operate the analytical chart. People are often afraid to make a YouTube channel. This is because they believe it might be difficult for them to learn about their audience. But YouTube has solved the issue. This user-friendly interface will motivate beginners to start their YouTube channel.



Read next: The List Of Top Ten US Colleges That Apple, Facebook, And Google Hire From

Facebook warns its users about hateful comments that are not in line with its policies

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Facebook, a social media platform almost all of us know about and have used at least once in our life. The platform has recently been getting scrutinized a lot by its users, advertisers, and has been a major topic of discussion for its privacy and expression practices. This was because Facebook was not taking effective measures against the hateful and controversial posts and comments that were being made on the platform. Observing this, the advertisers and brands started pulling out their marketing budget from Facebook, and had this continued, the site would have faced a big loss because most of its revenue comes from its advertisers.

But now, the famous social media consultant Matt Navarra and a Twitter user Adam Flowers spotted a change on Facebook. Navarra posted an image of a pop-up message which tells the user that their comment is against Facebook’s community guidelines as it might be containing bullying or harassment to another party. Then they have given options to either ‘Edit Comment” “Ignore” or “Delete Comment”. Matt captioned the image by saying that he has never seen Facebook alerting its users about a comment before. This feature is almost similar to Instagram's caption warning system that detects abusive content instantly.

There have been quite a few responses to Matt’s tweet. Some people have said that they have seen this message themselves when they were joking around with their friends, using sarcasm. They witnessed that their comments had gone grey and they do not seem very happy about it. We all use different tones to talk with our friends and if Facebook is striking down those comments that did not contain any hate speech in them, it may cause Facebook a lot of trouble because majority of users may not want to use the app anymore to express themselves or their opinions. As a recent survey from Gallup shows that two-thirds of consumers prefer social media to be a place of free expression (including views that are offensive).


Critics also claims that Facebook only took this step because they didn’t want to lose their advertisers and also do not like the fact that Facebook has given the users the option to “Ignore” the message and continue with what they are doing. However, there still are people who support the idea and have also mentioned that they wished YouTube, the Google-owned social network had done the same i.e. inform its users first before demonetizing the videos.

It feels like it is better for Facebook to alert and target those posts or comments which go against their community guidelines and not strike every post which they think might be containing it.


Screenshot: @adzflowers / @MattNavarra / Twitter.

Read next: Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook will soon start labeling problematic content that violates its policies

Edward Snowden: Tech workers also play a very vital role in helping the apps violate user privacy

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In this era of social networks and a variety of tech apps, there’s nothing else a user wants other than a platform providing privacy to its data.

Over the past years, so many platforms were highlighted due to their violations of user privacy and data breaches, and yes companies are the ones to be blamed but along with it, the tech workers should also be considered responsible for such violations.

In a recent interview, the renowned American Whistleblower named Edward Snowden highlighted that tech companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft aren’t the only ones to be blamed but the tech workers providing such products to the companies should also be held responsible for it.

This interview was hosted by Motherboard and when Snowden was asked the question about tech workers of such companies supporting people instead of companies, his response was that it solely depends on the tech workers on how they intend to see the work they do.

Just take a look at it, tech workers from the beginning know about companies monitoring people's activities, interfering with their lives and instead of standing out against it, they continue to work on the project.

In the interview, Snowden also said that most Technologists believe that the tech they make is value-neutral, while majority don't not consider its effects on people at all. He also gave examples of physicists trying to control the power of atoms in order to help clean energy and they surely never thought of the future full of weapons made out of it but it happened and so many generations were affected with it.

Giving some more insight on this issue, during the interview Snowden also gave examples of similar small tech companies like weather apps, family tree websites on how these types of apps are being sold to other companies and later on exploited and corrupted into providing more insight of user to the companies.

Such type of small level apps are also being manipulated into working in the favor of institutions by providing user information.

So, it is the responsibility of Tech provider to not just take a look at the result of such apps on the individual level instead look at its effect on the whole community.

This interview of Edward Snowden comes at the time when a variety of tech workers were seen protesting against the tech companies due to their violations of user privacy, a similar incident happened with the Facebook as its employees kept a virtual walkout against the platform for not removing a post made by US President Donald Trump.

Yes, majorly the tech companies are the ones at fault for violating user privacy but along with it the employees, insiders and tech workers also play a part with the companies if they don’t support the users. So it is the responsibility of every single individual to see themselves, maintain a balance on the work they do and how it affects the community.



Featured photo: Barton Gellman/Getty Images

Read next: You better get used to the name ‘tracking beacons’ instead of Cookies

This researcher claimed to reverse-engineered TikTok app, and unveiled alarming privacy aspect

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Most social media platforms have gone through privacy and security scandals at least once and according to an app researcher TikTok has also joined that privacy disaster league.

Around 2 months ago, Reddit user ‘Bangorlol’ commented on a discussion about TikTok claiming to have successfully reverse-engineered it. He advised users against using the app and telling their friends and family to stop using it as well due to its intrusive user tracking among other serious problems. Regarding this, the fact that TikTok was the most downloaded app in the start of 2020 on both Apple and Google app stores, is worrying.

He claimed that he has a strong understanding of how the app works and stated that it was a data collection service thinly disguised as a social media platform. The app tracks users' phone hardware that means it tracks CPU type, hardware IDs, memory usage, disk space, etc.

It also tracks the apps you have installed. In addition to all this, everything network-related like, IP addresses, MAC addresses, WiFi access points, etc. are also monitored. It tracks if your phone is jailbroken or rooted. Some variants of the app have GPS pinging enabled, meaning the app was sending the users live location to HQ, every 30 seconds. This option was auto-enabled if the user added their location to their posts. The app sets up a local proxy server on devices for "transcoding media" but this was clearly an excuse to steal user info. The app leaked users' email and secondary email used for password recovery and users' real names and birthdays.

The developer of TikTok app leverages viral-sensation technique to attract existing users to stay and to gain new users. It is extremely likely that users' first posts garner quite a few likes and comments to encourage them to continue using the app. Usually, this strategy succeeds, and users end up chasing the unicorn.

Not to mention how the app is an advantage to pedophiles as there have been numerous reports of old men doing duets with underage girls to NSFW songs.

TikTok does not want users to know how much information it collects and the security implications for all that data together are enormous. All of their analytics requests are encrypted, and the keys change with every update. They have also configured the system so that if a user blocks communication to their analytics host the app will not function.

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat do not collect anywhere near the amount of data TikTok does and they don't try to hide the data being sent as explicitly as TikTok.

All this being said, Bangorlol is not a conspiracy theorist nor are his claims speculation. He has invested a decent amount of time in IT and the last few years of his career have been devoted to reverse-engineering and analyzing how apps work. Bangorlol devotes his time analyzing how apps work and what functions those apps don't provide users, he then works to build third-party tools like apps, websites, extensions that give users the missing functionalities.

It reportedly took the Chinese development team 200 days to create the original version of TikTok but Bangorlol was able to crack it with ease. Although the system did put up a struggle. TikTok puts a lot of effort into preventing people like Bangorlol from figuring out how their app works. There's a ton of obscurity at all levels of the application. They hide functions, stop debuggers from attaching, and use a whole host of other sneaky tricks.

This level of secrecy is fathomable as TikTok's revenue has risen considerably. With the increase in popularity of the parent company, ByteDance, it has generated a profit of 3 billion U.S dollars.

Bangorlol thinks that today's society has grown used to giving away their private info. People nowadays do not understand the implications if their private information is leaked and it is vital to educate people on the importance of their private information and spread awareness of the consequences of stolen information.

That being said, people should double-check where they use their private information and be aware of the various ways their information can be stolen.


Photo: Thomas Trutschel | Photothek | Getty Images

Read next: New Feature in iOS 14 Reveals Sinister TikTok Snooping

Clinical Trials And The Future Of A COVID-19 Vaccine (infographic)

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As the pandemic rages on, many of us are wondering whether there is any relief in sight. Absent a cure or a vaccine, life isn’t going to get back to normal any time soon. We have vaccines for similar diseases like the flu, so why can’t we just whip up a vaccine to the novel coronavirus and be done with it? As it turns out, whipping up a vaccine takes time and clinical trials, and the fastest vaccine made from scratch to ever make it to the market was the mumps vaccine and it took upwards of four years. We may be in this for the long haul.

A Brief History Of Vaccines

The idea of innoculations likely came from ancient China, where smallpox scabs were ground up, burned, and the smoke puffed into the nostrils of the person being inoculated. Various methods of inoculation have been used since, and George Washington even inoculated his armies by taking scabs and pus from smallpox victims and rubbing it into open wounds, usually purposeful cuts, of his army. Vaccines as we know them today are actually fairly recent, starting with a smallpox vaccine in the 1700s, though widespread efforts to vaccinate people would come a little later still.

The Development Of Vaccines Ends With Years Of Clinical Trials, Typically

For all the years of research it takes to create a vaccine, the creation of a vaccine is not the end of the road. After a vaccine for a disease is created it has to go through clinical trials, which can take years.


In the United States, it takes an average of 12 years for a new drug to reach the marketplace. It has to be proven safe and effective before it can reach consumers. On average it takes 3.5 years to develop a new drug, 30 days for the application to test it, a year for phase one, two years for phase two, and three years for phase three of trials, followed by 2.5 years for the new drug application to go through to allow it to be used on the healthcare market. What’s more, only about 10% of drugs that make it to trial are ever approved for use.

These facts do not bode well for the rapid creation of a COVID-19 vaccine, but there are a few places scientists and policy makers are tightening up the process.

How To Get To A Vaccine Faster

The best way to find a working vaccine for COVID-19 is to test multiple vaccines simultaneously. Worldwide there are already eight potential vaccines in the clinical trial phase, and in the United States there are 144 potential treatments in active trials and another 457 in the planning stages. There are also 16 COVID-19 vaccines worldwide in pre-clinical trials waiting to make it to the clinical trial phase.

By moving forward with multiple clinical trials simultaneously, we may be able to arrive at a vaccine quicker. Currently there are six trials worldwide in phase one, three in phase two, and two in phase three. Each phase has more people in it - from 20-100 in phase one trials to 1000-5000 in phase three trials.

After a drug is proven to be both safe and effective it can be deployed into the general population, which will require large-scale manufacturing efforts.

The biggest holdup for the COVID-19 vaccine is going to be enrollment. People love to benefit from medical research but few actually want to participate in it. If you want a vaccine, consider taking part in a study or trial.

Adaptive trials, in which new data is used to tweak the trial, are also helping to bring a potential cure or vaccine to market sooner. We already have data from a previous SARS vaccine upon which we can build, so expecting a vaccine by the winter, while highly optimistic, is within reason.

Learn more about clinical trials below.

Clinical Trials In The Age of Coronavirus - infographic

Read next: How The Pandemic Has Short-Circuited Our Rationality (infographic)

Apple Will Not Support These 16 Web APIs That Allow Developers To Create Powerful Web Applications

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Apple is known for discouraging web applications to promote Apple App Store. Progressive Web Apps are becoming increasingly popular among developers, however, it is challenging to provide a high-quality PWA for iPhones because of the Operating System level restrictions.

During the WWDC 2020, the company announced that it will not support various Web APIs (Application Programming Interface) that allow app developers to create powerful web applications. Apple will not allow web applications to use NFC, the proximity sensor, and Bluetooth.

Apple provided a list of several web APIs that will not be supported by Safari. The following is the list of those web APIs.

Web Bluetooth

Web MIDI API

Magnetometer API

Web NFC API

Device memory API

Network Information API

Battery Status API

Web Bluetooth Scanning

Ambient Light Sensor

HDCP Policy Check extension for EME

Proximity Sensor

WebHID

Serial API

Web USB

Geolocation Sensor

User Idle Detection

Some of the above-mentioned web APIs allows sites to access information such as when a user is idle, geolocation data of users, data related to locally connected HID devices, information about the distance between the device and an object measured by a proximity sensor, battery status of the device, and the storage space of a device, etc. The Web Bluetooth API enables sites to connect to nearby Bluetooth LE smartphones, while the Web NFC API enables sites to communicate with NFC tags via the NFC reader of a device.


The company made this decision to protect the privacy of people. Apple claims that Safari will not support these web APIs because of the privacy concerns of users. The company states that these web APIs enable advertisers as well as data analytics companies to develop scripts that fingerprint people as well as their devices.

User fingerprints are small scripts that execute various standard operations and measure the response. Marketers load and run these small scripts inside the browsers of each user. As all the users have different web browsers and OS configurations, the responses measured by these scripts are distinct as per the device of a user. Marketers can use these unique responses to develop distinct identifiers for every user.

The company also announced new technologies to help developers to create the applications of tomorrow. The new tools will enable developers to design and create more powerful apps. Apple has also been working on limiting the fingerprint-ability vector of those web APIs that were already implemented in Safari.


Photo: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

Read next: Apple may achieve "the next big thing" in security that Microsoft is still struggling with - a password-less web

Google Set to See Lower Ad Revenues As Compare to Facebook and Amazon in 2020 Due to Coronavirus Pandemic

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It’s fair to say that the coronavirus pandemic has ended up impacting pretty much every single aspect of our lives, and a big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that it has made it so that people won’t be able to go out as much as they can and with businesses shut down these are the sorts of things that are without a shadow of a doubt impacting the economy in a way that would be quite difficult to recover from all in all.

Google is set to lose out quite a bit as well, with projections estimating that it will receive over 5% less ad revenue this year with the total dollar amount coming up to 39.58 billion in total by the end of 2020 if current projections remain accurate. According to eMarketers, Google is losing some of its grip on the digital ad market in the US as well, with its share dropping by 2.2% to 29.4% which is still very significant but at the end of the day it is a sign that things are not going as well for Google as the tech giant might like.

One might ascribe this to the current economic client but that would be with all of that having been said and out of the way it is important to note that other tech companies seem to be doing just fine. Both Facebook and Amazon are expected to see increases in ad revenue this year in spite of the fact that the coronavirus pandemic has apparently stopped Google from doing so. Facebook has made gains thanks to its recent successes with Instagram, and as its market share grows to an estimated 23.4% this year it is closing in on Google which indicates that the social media platform might even potentially surpass Google if things keep following this trajectory.




Read next: How Will Tech Lead The Economic Recovery? (infographic)

Instagram influencers decrease Ad tag use

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As predicted, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic is showing its impact on influencer marketing as well. The latest figures show that the number of brands working with influencers dropped to a 16-month low in April.

Influencer marketing has been seeing a slight downfall for a few months. Last year, the engagement rates with influencer accounts closed in on their all-time-lows. However, posts with #ad hashtag did see a surge, reaching more than 3 million by the end of 2019, while the total money spent on Instagram inferencer marketing reached to $5.24 billion in the last year alone.

Instagram creators decrease Ad tag use

Unfortunately, as the lockdowns began to take effect, influencer posts about public events and travel took a nosedive – and by the mid of May, the influencer mentions fell for most categories. According to SocialBaker, this includes minus 36% for parties, sunglasses (-27%), music festivals (-24%), performing arts (-24%), vacations (-23%), wine (-19%), live events (-19%), hotels (-18%), seafood (-18%) and nightclubs (-18%).



It is anticipated that some categories might jump back up with the beginning of the summer season, as lockdowns slowly ease down.

When it comes to social media topics, insurance saw the biggest surge in influencer mentions in Q1 of this year. Other categories that also went up include mobile phones (4.5%), recipes (4.5%), TVs (3.3%), and politics (1.5%).

The efficiency rate of influencer marketing on Instagram also fell 41% in April – when compared to the same quarter of 2019. However, some industries did do better than others. For example, influencer posts about healthcare were 4.2 times more efficient than brand posts. Other categories that went up, in terms of efficiency include finance, telecommunications, and accommodations.





On the other hand, industries such as airlines, sporting goods, and automotive saw a decrease in their engagement.

iDeal Of Sweden and Walmart were the two most frequently mentioned brands by the influencers, indicating how these retailer have revamped their marketing strategy for a few years to welcome influencer’s activity as well.

Other brands that were listed as the most-mentioned by Socialbaker include Netflix U.S., Daniel Wellington, Quest Nutrition, and women's clothing retailer Na-Kd.com.



Read next: Don't Touch My Stuff: Tech Couples Consider Off-Limits to Partners

For Security Purposes India Decided To Ban 5 Dozen Chinese Apps, Including TikTok

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TikTok is a Chinese based app that has mass user base around the world. It is a short video creation app, which allows lip-sync, the addition of background music, and another basic editing. Apart from TikTok, many Chinese invented apps are ruling the digital era. Other apps include; WeChat, Helo, Shareit, UC Browser, and a long list of apps.

On Monday evening, the Indian government decided to ban 59 Chinese based apps like TikTok and others which are commonly used in their country. Ministry Of Electronics And Information Technology further stated that this is a mandatory step as it is threatening the security of the country. The government received information through their secret sources that users information was being stolen from the app. The stolen information was an aid for China. The information that was being leaked was probably a threat to the country’s sovereignty.

According to stats provided by SensorTower, in May of this year 20% of downloads of TikTok came from India, which makes India top country in terms of active users.

Another reason that has been stated to defend the decision is that commonly used Chinese apps like TikTok are exposing kids to age-restricted content. Not only this, but people came up with TikTok videos that were supporting domestic violence, child abuse, racism, objectifying women, and animal cruelty. This was unacceptable for the audience. In the response, TikTok requested the Indian government to give their decision a second thought. The app claimed that it has not shared Indian users data with any foreign country.

The banning decision comes along with geopolitical tension, as military clash happened between two countries a month before in the Himalayas. This situation created tension among the two armed neighbors. Since then, Twitter has been trending with the banning topics. People posted videos regarding boycotting products from both sides (including mobile phones, televisions, and other products). Chinese based mobile phones rules at least 80% of the Indian market. This means the world’s second-largest market of Chinese products is in India.

To express their anger, Indians deleted the app. Latter an app “Remove China Apps” became popular among the Indians. However, Google decided to delete the App as it was against Google policies. The app “Remove China Apps’’ was considered to be a policy-violating app. Hence, Google has to remove the app.

A few months back, India came up with Foreign Direct Investment Policy. Under this policy, they notified all neighboring countries including China to pursue permission from New Delhi while coming up with any investment program.

59 Apps that India is planning to ban
List of 59 apps India is planning to ban.

Read next: This researcher claimed to reverse-engineered TikTok app, and unveiled alarming privacy aspect

Reddit Officially Banned Hate Speech And Removed Around 2K SubReddits Including The_Donald

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Reddit was initially launched as an online discussion forum back in the year 2005, and now the company has finally revised its content policy after 15 years to ban hate speech and those groups that promote hate speech. The revised policy, after Reddit moderators call, was announced on Monday and prohibits those groups and users that incite violence or promote hate speech.

The platform has initially banned around 2,000 subreddits including The_Donald, a pro-Trump forum that is notorious for users posting racist, anti-Islam, and misogynistic content. This subreddit even had approximately 800,000 active users at one time. The platform adopted a new content policy back in the year 2015 and banned various racist subreddits. However, Reddit still did not explicitly forbid hate forums.

Steve Huffman, CEO/co-founder Reddit also admits that the social network has fallen short, and stated that the company is working to tackle bad actors, toxic communities, and abusive behavior. The platform also provided some examples of hateful activities that are a violation of Reddit’s new content policy.

If a post describes a certain racial minority as inferior to the racial majority, or content that argues that rape of a woman is acceptable, or a meme stating that people of color should not have the right to vote, or a subreddit group that is dedicated to mocking individuals with physical disabilities, these all are some of the examples provided by the platform.

The_Donald was banned because the community has hosted more rule-breaking content than average, says Huffman. Reddit banned the smaller ChapoTrapHouse for similar reasons. The site has quarantined both subreddits since 2019. The company’s quarantining penalty puts a warning in front of certain subreddits and prevents them from generating money. Their posts also do not appear in search as well as recommendations.


Most of the subreddits removed were inactive, and out of 2,000 removed subreddits, only 10% have over 10 active daily users. The latest Reddit’s initiative comes after the site was criticized for years for not cracking down on hate speech. Alexis Ohanian, Reddit co-founder resigned earlier this month and urged the company to select a Black candidate to replace his position. Then, five days later, Michael Seibel, a Black venture-capitalist investor and advisor, was selected in the place of Ohanian.

The updated content policy also requires users to abide by the community rules of Reddit. The new rule prohibits activity intended to cheat or engage in content manipulation. On average, the site had over 430 million monthly visitors and 21 billion monthly page views by the end of the last year.



Read next: Majority of Americans Think That They Should Be Allowed To Express Their Views On Social Media Even If They Are Offensive

Besides TikTok, 53 Other Major iOS Apps Are Also Spying On Clipboard Data

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As TikTok may soon clear the clipboard readings on iOS that have already been criticized for keeping an eye on a lot of data, trouble is still not over in the iOS 14 as there also 53 other apps that might be prying on clipboard data.

The revelation has been made by the security researcher Tommy Mysk as while giving an interview to Ars Technica he told that additional 53 apps were identified back in March which were found to be capturing clipboard data once they are opened by the user. Furthermore, this glitch also made the apps have the potential to share sensitive data of one iPhone to the nearby iOS devices.

When telling about the names of the apps, surprisingly there were major media houses that any user would normally trust including the news apps like Fox News, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. More popular games also made it to the list e.g Bejeweled, Fruit Ninja, and PUBG Mobile. And using social media apps like Viber, Weibo and Zoosk are no longer safe as well.

Some utility and media apps too had their eyes on the clipboard readings including AccuWeather, DAZN, and Overstock.

Fortunately enough, some developers have agreed to made the changes along with TikTok. 10% Happier and Hotel Tonight are no longer going to observe clipboard readings.

However, at the same time, there are also apps that take advantage of the clipboard really smartly. One of such apps is Pixelmator that pulls data from clipboards only if there is an image. If there are some changes to iOS 14’s clipboard data monitoring soon then the credit would definitely go to Mysk and his colleague Hal Bakry.

There are chances that more apps might be exhibiting similar behavior and no clarifications are also available on whether these apps operate in the similar way in Android phones or not. TikTok did say that the anti-spam feature doesn’t exist in the Android world but they haven’t made any revelations about having access to the clipboard on Google’s OS for any reason.

It doesn’t matter what device you have, we would recommend you to not copy sensitive data unless it is very important and if you do then don’t forget to clear the clipboard to remove the valuable information.



Read next: Apple Will Not Support These 16 Web APIs That Allow Developers To Create Powerful Web Applications

Survey Revealed That 50 Percent of People Keep Their Social Media Accounts Public And Open

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According to a recent Viasat Savings survey, 50 percent of respondents keep their social media accounts in private mode while the remaining half said that they keep their social media accounts open and public. Additionally, a lot of individuals keep their social networking accounts and the accompanying applications as a form of enjoyment.

When the respondents were asked why they keep an application rather than uninstalling it, most of them replied that they needed those apps to stay in touch with their loved ones. However, the generation Z respondents said that they keep particular apps because they use those apps to sign in to their other online accounts.

The Generation Z audience considers social media as online tools while other generations consider social media as a tool to stay connected. The study also discovered that 71% of respondents to the survey checked their advanced privacy settings after joining a particular social platform.

It is a good sign that users take control of the privacy settings when they get an opportunity. 50% of respondents updated their privacy settings last year because of privacy and security concerns as last year is notorious for data breaches and cyber-attacks.



Still, experts say that we should be more diligent about our privacy. This week, the personal data of over 100,000 social influencers was compromised due to the breach of Preen.Me, a social media marketing company. Moreover, RiskBasedSecurity’s report suggests that over 250,000 social users may have had their data entirely exposed on a deep web hacking forum.

The leak was discovered on June 6 of this year and the personal data of over 100,000 affiliated influencers was held for ransom. KnowBe4’s security awareness advocate, Erick Korn stated that breaches of this magnitude cannot be ignored. He added that considering the volume of data lost in this breach, the organization should contact victims as early as possible and they should provide a statement related to the breach.

Experts at KnowBe4 warned that doxing or releasing personal data related to the addresses, mobile numbers, or even employers of the people has been looked upon as a grievous offense in the cyber-security community. Korn warned that this breach has released the records of 253,051 individuals that contain information like Facebook accounts names and friend lists, which is a gold mine for social engineers. The data could be used to create fake accounts, spread malware, or perpetrate various other scams.

Read next: How people use location services and social media check-ins
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