Clicked is a roundup of links to consumer tech articles we read covering everything from GDPR, social media, gadgets/devices to streaming services.
GDPR
- GDPR came into effect just yesterday and it didn’t take long before to get crazy as social media and search engine giants Facebook and Google respectively have already been hit in $8.8 billion in lawsuits over their non-compliance. The complaint argues that they force users into an all or nothing choice,a violation of the GDPR provisions.
- Don’t ignore those GDPR – related privacy policy emails as they are not only to inform you of their updated privacy updates. They are also asking for your consent.
This thread shows what you should be looking for if you decide to read them :
Companies have been bombarding you with emails about their updated privacy policies in a bid to hit the GDPR deadline which is today. If you've been ignoring them, don't delete them yet. Here's what you should be looking for. A thread pic.twitter.com/Cp9LGTzbte
— Techweez (@techweez) May 25, 2018
- Legal experts are pointing out that most GDPR emails are unnecessary and some even illegal since lots of these firms already got the required consent and others don’t have the consent to send a request.
- Looks like Google isn’t done launching new messaging products as just this week, they brought Youtube’s messaging feature to the web. The previously mobile-only messaging feature will now let logged in users share and talk about videos in a chat window with friends.
- Still, no edit button: This week, Dallas Mavericks’ player, Harrison Barnes interviewed Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO and Co-founder for the athlete website The Player’s Tribune where they talked about how the social network is working to protect its users’ privacy among other things. Jack gave an interesting response when asked what one thing he would change about Twitter’s early days
- 2008 never looked so good: It’s Saturday but also a good time to go back in time on Twitter and see what dumb tweets the people you follow were posting. This Twitter search filter will enable you to read 10-year-old tweets from the people you follow today
- How worse can Android fragmentation be? So bad that Twitter is taking action by updating users to one global set of emoji so that the emojis in the tweets you read both on desktop and mobile look the same
Airbnb
If you thought the ephemeral 24-hour Stories added by social networks is going to end, It’s not. House rental service, Airbnb is launching their own stories for users to build video montages of their travels.
- Early this week, Mark was in Europe to testify in front of the European Parliament in Brussels and these are the questions he should have offered answers to.
- The interview format allowed Zuckerberg to cherrypick his responses rather than reply to each individual point. Rather than giving each Member of Parliament time to ask a question, get an answer, and follow up, everyone asked their questions in the beginning. Though EU political groups had asked much tougher questions than the U.S. Congress, Mark Zuckerberg still played them fools and got them pissed since he left lots of unanswered questions. Here are some of them.
- The hearing was superior to the one US lawmakers had, but as always still less productive as The Slate reported.
- And also check out this brutal depiction of Mark on the cover of a French magazine of him dressed up in Napoleon’s coat which says “Their empires have to be dismantled”, “threat to privacy, thought democracy”, and “how to resist”
- We all hate sharing numbers with big corporations especially Facebook. The social media giant will now not force you to use your number for two-factor authentication. This is a welcome move since users found that Facebook was using the numbers to spam them with text notifications. Now you can use code-generator apps or hardware tokens.
- Facebook has had a couple of scandals this past year and a half but despite their woes, nobody is leaving only a few high ranking executives have left and Recode’s Kurt explains why.
- Facebook wants you to send nudes but for good purpose. They want to combat revenge porn. The idea, technically, sounds good but it will hard to convince users since Facebook has misused so much of our trust especially now that they’re under scrutiny over data privacy.
- Snap invented stories and even popularized them but Facebook now has the lead thanks to smart acquisitions, speedy product development, and the power of incumbency with billions of users on their different platforms (FB, Instagram and WhatsApp)
- Facebook is not going to spin out Instagram and Whatsapp
- Instagram’s Mute Feature > Emoji slider
Social media has created this dreadful obligation for us to keep up with friends, family, brands, co-workers, exes, acquaintances and professional contacts with their annoying vacation, baby photos and inspirational posts. Instagram’s mute feature will come as a blessing and it will be used unrestrainedly. Instagram’s ‘You’re all caught up’ is a handy welcome too for its non-chronological feed so now you can scroll without FOMO
Here’s how to get started if you’re tired of seeing their posts but don’t want to unfollow them.
The mute option is coming to Instagram. This new feature will give the power to dictate which of your following will show up in your feed. This is a subtle way to quiet your loud and insufferable friends with thier inane vacation posts. We show you how. 1/ pic.twitter.com/qFQDFykBB6
— Techweez (@techweez) May 23, 2018
- Reddit joins Twitter to get a dark mode. In a blog post, the company said the desktop Night Mode theme is now available to everyone. Here’s how to enable it.
Andy Rubin’s Essential Problem
- The father of Android is finding it hard to crack into the brutally competitive and demanding smartphone market. After spending $100 million on product development, Andy Rubin’s Essential has scrapped plans for a second smartphone and is exploring a sale of the company. Essential didn’t confirm the sale talks but did say it has cancelled some planned products.
ZTE
- The U.S. and China have reached an agreement on the outline of a deal that would allow ZTE to resume operations in exchange for significant changes to its board and management. Remember the US government sanctions pushed smartphone maker ZTE out of business when the company admitted to having trade relations with Iran and North Korea to sell US-made technologies to these countries.
HMD
- HMD, the company that sells phones under the Nokia brand, raised $100 million in new funding.
Amazon Alexa
- If you were having second thoughts of getting a smart speaker, hold on to them. Amazon’s Alexa recorded a user’s private conversation and sent it to one of their contacts all without their knowledge.
Vevo
- Nine-year-old Vevo is shutting down both its website and apps to refocus on Youtube. The music video service owned by Universal and Sony could have been “an existential threat” to YouTube, but YouTube won, in the end, The entire hope for Vevo from YouTube’s perspective…was that it would be successful enough to keep the labels from taking down their music and launching a competitor, but not so successful that it ultimately was a better destination than YouTube.
Spotify
- Spotify is bringing back songs by rapper XXXTentacion which had been removed together with R Kelly’s tracks from Spotify’s playlists as punishment for hateful conduct. This comes after other artists threatened to pull their music out of the streaming service.
Youtube Music
YouTube just introduced a new ad-free subscription service in the hope of mollifying the labels. Youtube Music is largely Google Play Music with a fresh coat of paint and music videos and will become a legitimate challenge for both Spotify and Apple Music.
Netflix
- Barack and Michelle Obama signed a multi-year production deal with Netflix. The former First Couple will work on scripted and unscripted series as well as docuseries, documentary films and features
Streaming
Life is pretty good for the music industry these days on the streaming front.The industry, for the first time in more than two decades, is seeing significant growth, largely off the back of streaming technology such as Spotify, Apple Music, and Pandora.
It wasn’t always this way. Dive into this history of the (mostly failed) legal streaming services that came between Napster and Spotify.
You’re now all caught up.
