Tech Giants: Arbiters Of Truth

The US president accused the tech giant of "stifling the truth."

According to Twitter spokesperson Katie Rosborough, the tweets were labelled because they contain “potentially misleading information about voting processes.” 

Even Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey explained that labeling two of President Donald Trump's tweets with fact checks does not make the social media company an "arbiter of truth." Dorsey assumed accountability for Twitter’s actions and said, "There is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and that's me.” 

Mark Zuckerberg said that "I just believe strongly that Facebook shouldn't be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online."

On this issue, I would take the side of Twitter providing it's users guidance to know the facts and make informed choices or opinions. Fact-checking should be in the DNA of tech giants whose platforms have a global reach and influence. 

Zoom addresses data privacy issues

With the continuing challenges of the pandemic, companies have allowed, encouraged or forced employees to work from home. Safety has become the mantra of many companies. But not all homes are equipped with the tools to enable productivity and efficiency of remote work.

 

Employees who work from home need a range of tools and technology. It starts with one’s internet connection which can get crowded with all other devices from family members connected. Often, I would tell my kids to shut down Netflix so I can have more bandwidth. Still, I would need to upgrade my Sky Broadband internet connection as soon my kids would also be studying from home. 

 

At least my MacBook Pro is still up to the challenge and is proof that technology works. I have deleted many files and documents, and even Rafa’s Minecraft app to allow more space. Still, I would need a new external drive.

 

Remote work has made Zoom part of the new normal around work collaboration tools. But even Zoom faced some recent challenges. Have you heard of “zoombombing?”

According to www.howtogeek.com, “Zoombombing” is when an uninvited person joins a Zoom meeting. Aren’t they like trolls? Zoombombers often share pornographic photos, throw in racial slurs and find ways to disrupt technology.

 

Photo from https://screenrant.com/zoom-bombing-report

Zoom zoomed in to address the issue. Even, Eric Yuan, Zoom’s chief executive, apologized. He said the recent problems are been addressed. Data privacy issues have been raised against Zoom. 

In a Zoom blog published last 8 April 2020, Yuan said, “We are committed to ensuring that the safety, privacy, and security of our platform is worthy of the trust of all of our users — both new and existing.”

 

If data is secured and protected, then, technology works.

Most Popular Social Networks from 2003 to 2019

It is amazing how social networks have evolved for the past several years. This video is from Data Is Beautiful You Tube Channel.

One can see some Chinese companies crawling up in search like Qzone which is China's Facebook and challenging tech giants like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Qzone begun in April 2005 as part of the Tencent Holdings s a Chinese multinational holding company founded in 1998. This company has subsidiaries in various segments such as artificial intelligence, internet services to entertainment in China and many countries.

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Growth of TikTok and Data Privacy

My daughter, Angel, is a fan of TikTok. She has been accessing TikTok through my old Samsung phone. And often shows me the short videos that she has created.

While it has experienced growth as teens and kids having more free time on their hands through summer vacation, internet and data privacy advocates are quick to call the attention of tech giants when data protection is placed at risk.

Even the US Department of Defense has to encourage its employees to avoid installing the app on their smartphones. CNN Business reports that "US lawmakers on both sides of the aisle warn that the app could pose a national security risk, and are calling on regulators and intelligence agencies to investigate TikTok's ties to China. 

In response, Sean Kim, Head of Product, TikTok US, in it's corporate website, says, "TikTok is committed to building an experience that protects the safety and privacy of our community."

Roland Cloutier, TikTok's Chief Information Security Officer, says, "Building technology security defenses is a constant effort to anticipate, plan, and react. What has been clear since I started this job almost three months ago is that the team at TikTok is fully committed to protecting the privacy of our users and providing transparency on our overall security efforts."

Technology works only when the user's data privacy is upheld and protected.

Tech Giants of 2018

Here are the top 20 internet leaders of 2018 as published in www.visual capitalist.com last 6 July 2018.

Maybe as I would have expected, Apple leads with a value of US$915 billion, followed by Amazon and Alphabet. Not many know that Alphabet is the parent company of Google, after Google restructured in 2015. The top guns at Google assumed leadership roles with Larry Page as CEO and Sergey Brin as president.

 You can see a few Chinese companies like Alibaba, Bai and Xiomi in this list. But am happy to see that Netflix is on that list.

Easily express ourselves

Before the norm was 140 characters. 

We were forced to be more concise and brief within 140 characters for a tweet. Every character counts. Brevity was key. It was a challenge to consolidate one's thought in 140 characters that sometimes, users like me would abandon scribbling a tweet.

Last November 7, Twitter announced the change in character count, which wouldn't affect Chinese, Korean and Japanese users as their characters can convey more meaning in a single character.

With 330 million users, Twitter still lags behind Facebook with more than 2 billion (yes, 2 billion users) and even Instagram which is pushing towards 800 million users.

Maybe, the expanded character count would bring in new users and spread more positivity online. Yes, we can criticise and critique and express our opinion via tweets. But do we need to be racists? Bigots? With positivity, technology can work. 

Origins of Twitter

Ten years ago, the first ever tweet came from Jack Dorsey last 22 March 2006. He is the co-founder and CEO of Twitter.  He was inspired by inspired in part by LiveJournal and by AOL Instant Messenger to develop a Web-based realtime status/short message communication service.

 

Together with Biz  Stone, they co-founded Twitter. Stone was previously the creative director of Xanga. Remember Xanga? I do. I think I even had a profile. It was one of the early social networking sites in the early 2000, before it became a Facebook world.

 

Today, Twitter is a microblogging and social networking platform which allows users post and interact with messages known as "tweets.” Noah Glass and Evan Williams joined Dorsey and Stone in March 2006 to start Twitter.

 

Dorsey would later explain the origins of Twitter. “

 

Some stories credit the name of Noah Glass. According to a Business Insider story, Dorsey had an idea for “a completely different product that revolved around "status" — what people were doing at a given time.” In an interview with Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic, last 14 April 2011, Glass says it was he who came up with the name "Twttr."  "I spent a bunch of time thinking about it." Eventually, the name would become Twitter. 

The story further describes Glass passion. “No one at Odeo was more passionate about Twitter in the early days than Odeo's co-founder, Noah Glass.”

 

All these men have contributed to how technology works