The potential sale follows controversy over app's ties to Chinese government |
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Welcome to Decrypted, Digital Trends' new daily newsletter guiding you through the latest news in the world of tech, with insights from our senior writers. |
Trump wants Tiktok to sell American operations, and Microsoft is looking to buy |
By Will Nicol, Senior Writer
TikTok may be under new management soon, in the U.S. at least. Reports on Friday indicate Microsoft is in talks to buy the social media giant's U.S. operations. The news follows weeks of debate over whether the Chinese-owned social media company is a threat to national security, a debate that reached a new pitch on Friday when reports emerged that President Trump would demand that TikTok sell its American business.
The concerns over TikTok have to do with China's national security laws. As TikTok's owner, ByteDance, is based in China, it is required by law to comply with China's intelligence requests. Politicians across America's political spectrum have expressed concern over TikTok's connection to the Chinese government, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo considering a ban and Joe Biden's campaign recently asking staff to delete the app from their phones.
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The Facebook ad boycott came in with a bang. Now it's fizzling out |
By Paul Squire, News Editor
When hundreds of companies joined a widespread advertiser revolt against Facebook in July over its hate content policies, activists believed they could force Facebook to seriously address their concerns.
But there were immediate signs the boycott may not be effective. A meeting between the boycott organizers and Facebook did not go well, with activists ripping CEO Mark Zuckerberg for not taking the issue seriously.
Now with the month wrapping up, some advertisers told reporter Maya Shwayder that they are returning to the social media giant. Facebook reported no significant drop in revenue from the boycott, despite the participation of major companies like Microsoft and Coke.
Activists say they'll keep up the fight, but some felt dejected as Facebook proved it was too big to boycott.
"It feels like we haven't really learned anything," one advocate from the Electronic Frontier Foundation told Digital Trends. "There wasn't much of a reaction."
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The office is a pre-internet relic. We don't need it anymore |
By Jaron Schneider, A/V Section Editor
The office can go the way of the dodo — at least in its current format.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, working from home was often cast as a threat to productivity, and only justifiable in the presence of extenuating circumstances. But now that workers have been forced out of shared workspaces and productivity hasn't plummeted, there is no longer a reason to keep up the charade.
The key is to make it a choice. For those who desire to work from home, video calls and chat applications excellently link remote workers to each other. There are new advantages to remote work for the business as a whole as well, like expanding a hiring pool beyond a small geographical footprint. For those that desire a more in-person environment, a push toward a decentralized series of smaller offices and away from the giant complexes of the Googles, Facebooks, and Apples of the world is not only better for the environment, but data shows it will also relieve the major problem tech faces: Burnout.
We should be focusing on the happiness and well-being of our workforce. Removing the office won't fix all the problems (companies still need to learn how to respect the time of their people), but it's a step in the right direction.
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Congress got its chance to grill Big Tech. What happens next? |
By Will Nicol, Senior Writer
Wednesday was an important day in the history of tech, as the CEOs of four of the world's biggest tech companies — Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Tim Cook (Apple), and Sundar Pichai (Google) — faced the House Judiciary Committee to answer questions about whether they are violating the country's antitrust laws. Throughout the long hearing, Representatives like Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and David Cicilline (D-RI) pressed the executives on issues such as Amazon's domination of its third-party sellers and Google's control of both the buying and selling sides of the ad exchange market. Unfortunately, the hearing often veered away from these issues, with digressions into online conspiracy theories and complaints about campaign emails going to spam folders. Ultimately, Cicilline concluded that all four companies have monopoly power, saying that some should be broken up and all should be regulated. The committee will propose solutions to the antitrust problems it has identified, but what those solutions are, and whether they will be enforced, remains to be seen.
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- Ever think of becoming a professional sandcastle builder? The Smithsonian interviewed world-renowned sand sculptor Ted Siebert about his insights on the craft.
- The Atlantic's Hannah Giorgis laments how dull Netflix's most-popular list has become.
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What we're watching: The Deuce on HBO |
By Rob Oster, Copy Chief
In the time after it first aired on HBO from 2002-08, David Simon's The Wire came to be regarded as one of the greatest television shows of all time. It wouldn't be surprising if one his more recent series, The Deuce, achieved the same kind of status belatedly.
The Deuce, which garnered excellent reviews during its three-season run that wrapped up in 2019, is an unflinching look at the seedy cesspool that was New York City's Times Square during the 1970s and '80s, when prostitution, drugs, and organized crime ran rampant.
Like The Wire, The Deuce deftly uses its setting and huge cast to explore the political, societal, and cultural environments and events of the day, from the birth of the pornography industry to the AIDS crisis and much more.
A brilliant Maggie Gyllenhaal leads the ensemble as a prostitute who sees porn as an avenue to tap into her creativity and rise above the dangerous streets. James Franco co-stars as twin brothers who we follow as they interact with pimps and prostitutes, police and mobsters, politicians and business owners.
Simon, along with his tremendously talented cast, expertly captures an era long before Times Square became a Disney-fied tourist attraction — when it was a scary and dangerous place that swallowed whole lives and very few escaped unscathed.
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