Hillary Clinton Wants to Run Facebook,GDPR Mayhem,Spiegel’s Shade and Other Tech Stories from This Week

By
George Kamau
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2
Facebook's Mark Zukerberg
Facebook's Mark Zukerberg

In this week’s Clicked, we delve in how companies are panicking in reaction to GDPR,Papua New Guinea banning Facebook but not with good intentions,Facebook removing its Trending Topics section and other tech stories you might have missed reading in this tech roundup.

Facebook’s Mark Zukerberg

GDPR Comes Into Effect

  • EU’s sweeping data privacy law,the GDPR went live triggering news publishers such as The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times to shut access to their websites in a bid to avoid the stiff penalties.
  • Other news sites like The Washington Post launched EU-specific paywall.
  • GDPR rollout is affecting the ad business too with the programmatic (automated) ad-buying market crashing in Europe with ad demand volumes falling between 25 and 40% in some cases according to Digiday
  • Someone is winning though despite all,and that is Google. GDPR is boosting the ad prices of the search giant it seems.Sometimes well-intentioned regulation has the perverse effect of consolidating power to the largest players because they have the most resources to navigate novel legal or policy terrain.
  • Move over GDPR,the next privacy battle in Europe is over this new law – ePrivacy Regulation. This law is under consideration  and that is designed to protect the privacy of online communication. The law will require Skype, WhatsApp, iMessage, video games with player messaging and other electronic services that allow private interactions to obtain people’s explicit permission before placing tracking codes on users’ devices or collecting data about their communications.

  • Also who would have thought internet regulation couldn’t be funny?

https://twitter.com/hannahkuchler/status/1001877895873159168/

 

 

Facebook This Week

  • Papua New Guinea, a country in Oceania is unplugging and shutting down access to Facebook for a month to give the government the ability to study the impact of the platform and carry out research and analysis of its use.Sam Basil, the country’s Communications Minister says it  will gather local developers who can look at the possibility of creating a new social network site for Papua New Guinea citizens specifically to use with genuine profiles. But Wired’s Louise argues it shouldn’t be shutdown and that the government has other hidden intentions since  is concerned because a lot of the corrupt dealings and activities are being exposed in detail on Facebook.

He even added that Snap’s values are hard to copy..LOL

Telegram

Telegram CEO,Pavel Durov says that Apple is blocking Telegram updates worldwide.Telegram doesn’t want to hand over its encryption keys to Russia and the country wants Apple to remove the app from the app store and that’s why updates have been rejected worldwide.

Favstar

If you’re a power user of the internet like me(LOL),than you’ll be saddened by the fact that Twitter’s only good thing going on it,Favstar, is shutting down since Twitter doesn’t want to support the API anymore. Favstar was a site that you could browse the best and funniest tweets. RIP

Snap

Snap has a monetization flaw,Stratechery’s Ben Thompson argues and this is a challenge since for hardcore Snap users the app is still mostly about chat, not Stories; that, though, is another way of saying that Snap’s core use case is fundamentally unsuited to advertising.

Microsoft

Microsoft is talking about buying Github,a startup at the center of the software world last valued at $2 billion. The two have had on-and-off conversations over the years, but talks have grown more serious in the past few weeks. Github has struggled to land a CEO to replace Chris Wanstrath, who announced his resignation in August. This seems like a good move but should a large corporation known for its closed source code own a service which hosts the majority of the internet’s open source code?

HTC U12+

Android Police’s David argues that if there’s a reason for HTC to be making phones anymore, the U12+ sure isn’t making itself a case in point. He just doesn’t see a way forward for this company. Read why the HTC U12+ shows a smartphone company in free fall.

Xiaomi Mi 8 Transparency fuss

There’s something fishy about the transparent Xiaomi Mi 8 Explorer Edition. This design looks cool, but it might be a lie. Some have claimed it’s just a facade under the glass. And indeed, when you check out other phone mainboards, they don’t look anything like this.

Here’s an update

Xiaomi didn’t just copy the notch,it copied everything else from the iPhone X.

Google Pixel 3

It will be reportedly be built by Foxconn,probably launch in October 3rd and come with an edge-to-edge screen,two front facing cameras and a massive notch similar to the one iPhone X has.[Pixel 3 XL]

Remember when both original Google Pixel phones had the same design? Miss them days.

WeChat

Apparently people in China can now file for divorce on the WeChat instant messaging app

The Tech Bro Alignment

This is a fun parodish chart from The Outline is so fun because it’s true

WWDC 2018


Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off on Monday. Here are the odds on what Cupertino might unveil.

Expect a mix of the two—hardware and software—at the 2018 shindig as PCMag has compiled


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