It has been a tumultuous month for Facebook and Google, as the world watched with interest while Australia threatened to make them pay for any local news content they displayed, Google threatened to pull out of Australia completely (to Microsoft's delight, as Bing was touted as a replacement) and Facebook simply banned the posting of [...]
In the middle of an on-going privacy battle between Facebook and Apple, Facebook is launching a strategy designed to circumvent a planned Apple update that will severely impact Facebooks ability to track users, and consequently, to serve accurately targeted and relevant ad content to them. The Apple update will force app developers to request permission [...]
Twitter, one of the most active social media platforms, has been working on a new, decentralised social network, (called Bluesky) for a couple of years now, and earlier this month, Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO, told investors why he thought that this feature would be of crucial importance for the future of social media. He said that [...]
In the wake of the collapse of the EU-US Privacy Shield Agreement, France's privacy watchdog CNIL (Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés) announced last month that it was imposing a fine of 100 million Euros on Google's parent company Alphabet, and 35 million Euros on Amazon for breaching rules regarding cookies used for online [...]
In the last month of last year, lawsuits were filed by the US Justice Department against Facebook, and Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. Accused of using their market power to suppress, or acquire, rival companies, a judgement against them could see Facebook forced to sell off WhatsApp and Instagram, the platforms they acquired in order [...]
A poorly explained and understood announcement by Facebook recently has led to unprecedented growth in the user bases of both Signal and Telegram, rivals to the Facebook-owned WhatsApp. In the week after the Facebook announcement, which notified users of WhatsApp that they would lose access to the platform after February 8th unless they accepted the [...]
Recently announced changes to the latest Apple iOS operating system, (iOS 14), have made it necessary for users to actively opt in to the kind of tracking that Facebook has leveraged into the accurate targeting that underpins its profitable paid marketing service. Originally announced earlier last year, Facebook pushed back enough that Apple delayed the [...]
Based on early figures, Business Insider has reported an even lower than expected volume of sales this year for Black Friday in the wake of the ongoing pandemic, and amidst the economic impact of 248 days of lock-down in South Africa. Online Sales Increase Overall, it looks like online sales did experience an increase, with [...]
In a surprising announcement, South African financial bodies the Reserve Bank, and the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, issued a warning this week that consumers should beware of "Instant EFT" payment options on Ecommerce sites, calling them fundamentally unsafe and potentially leaving users open to fraud, and without recourse. Offered by many major payment gateway providers, [...]
Twitter made two recent announcements about changes to the platform, one of which was the launch of their new "Fleets" messaging, which allows users to send a series of short messages (text, images or video clips) that disappear after 24 hours. Fleets? Fleets give Twitter users a way of posting an Instagram Stories-like series of [...]
