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TikTok Bans Political Ads in U.S. and EU

Charlotte Henry ·

Short video sharing app TikTok said Friday it will not allow political ads in the U.S. and EU, The Next Web reported. It already had a similar policy in India.

This is quite a different approach as compared to US-based tech platforms such as Gooogle, Facebook, and Twitter. All of them allow paid political ads but with transparency programs that allow people to see who paid for the ad. While we won’t see some hilarious attempts from politicians to connect with youth trough ironically funny videos, we might still see a lot of political content around. In this year’s assembly elections in India, the platform made a significant impact in making the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi more popular.

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Things Apple Can Learn From the Microsoft Surface

Charlotte Henry ·

Microsoft unveiled new products this, including an updated, dual-screen, Microsoft Surface. Over at iMore, Rene Ritchie made some suggestions about what Apple could learn from the product.

Apple’s reportedly been kicking around foldable projects since back in the days of iPhone 4 but hasn’t found anything they’d be happy turning into a shipping product yet. For them, the technology just isn’t mature enough yet. And that’s ok. That’s Apple. There were years of Windows Mobile and a decade of Tablet PC before we got the iPhone and iPad, and Microsoft Spot before we got the Apple Watch. Apple wants to learn from this before they do that. But for us nerds, this is still super interesting. Now, what Microsoft showed off weren’t technically foldables. They were more like… hingeables?

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One Year Later: Bloomberg Hasn't Retracted its iCloud Spy Chip Story

Andrew Orr ·

This story doesn’t need me piling on, but I think it’s astounding that a media organization with integrity, gravitas, etc. etc. still hasn’t retracted its debunked theory one year later. And the journalists who wrote the story are now in charge of Bloomberg‘s cybersecurity division. If by some miracle we learn that there really are spy chips I will most certainly apologize. But with zero evidence, I think that probability is low.

There’s been a lot of smoke, but no firings. Quite the opposite. It’s been a year since Bloomberg Businessweek published an extensively debunked story claiming that companies including Apple and Amazon had been hacked. Yet since then, all of Bloomberg‘s few responses and actions have only doubled down on how this publication lacks credibility on the topic.

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IMF Calls on Policymakers to Address Digital Currencies

Andrew Orr ·

Economists at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are calling on policymakers around the world to address the “notable risks” of privately-issued digital currencies, otherwise known as stablecoins. Facebook’s Libra is one such example. Should central banks issue their own digital currencies?

The two economists suggest that stablecoins could undermine financial stability, and that stablecoin users risk losing their money: “Whether stablecoins are indeed stable is questionable.” It depends on the safety and availability of the underlying assets, and whether they are “protected from other creditors if the stablecoin provider goes bankrupt.”

One of the worries is that technology companies don’t have the same consumer protection rules as banks do. I look forward to seeing how this will play out. I certainly trust banks more than I do Facebook.