Yearly Archives: 2020

Recent upset with online content on social media has caused regulations to be once again questioned, and potentially expanded.

We recently published news regarding Donald Trump’s tweet regarding the George Floyd protests, which was hidden by Twitter and left available by Facebook. The EU is now in the midst of discussing a new law that will take effect in France, if passed. This regulation incentivises companies to remove distressing, but not necessarily illegal, content. 14 categories of content-related offences are covered by this proposed regulation, ranging from content which could be perceived as distressing to extremely disturbing content.

The regulation targets large companies and is specified for businesses in France over a certain number of users (the threshold is yet to be determined). Companies that receive an alert to remove content will have either one or 24 hours to remove it. This depends on whether the company is a “host”, “platform” or “website publisher”. Social media companies will be subject to both rules. Fines of up to €1.25m can be served, in addition to GDPR-like administrative fines of up to €20m, or 4% of total annual global revenues, for those who fail to comply with the law’s new internal compliance rules. Directors and employees can also be fined, or even imprisoned.

Opposition parties to this regulation have flagged up the issue of freedom of speech. Stricter surveillance of online content may result in users not being able to voice their opinions or state controversial facts. This has been highlighted already when the French authority ordered Google+ to remove a post last year, which Google refused to do. The post in question depicts the French president and his prime minister as dictators. If the new regulation comes into force, companies will have less time to evaluate content and could face high penalties, therefore their responses could be different to the situation above resulting in more posts being removed.

This new regulation in France is a reflection of countries not trusting the companies who own these platforms to police themselves effectively. Social media companies have improved their responses, shown by Twitter’s reaction to Trump’s controversial tweet, although recent discussion indicates further regulations are warranted.

The 2020 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) begins online on Monday, June 22 until Friday, June 26.

Apple will announce their plan to switch to 12-core ARM-based processors for Mac in 2021. This switch, named “Kalamata”, is being announced to allow developers time to adjust before new Macs are released.

The new processors will be based on the same technology used in iPhone and iPad chips, however, future Macs will still run the macOS operating system rather than the iOS software used on mobile. This change means that more attention will be spent on newer products, bringing significant updates, and may leave older models with less support. Apple will also have tighter control over their PCs. However, this doesn’t signify that people should wait until next year to buy the newer models, as it may take time to iron out all bugs/problems.

Developers will have to rewrite their software for ARM processors, which will take time, and therefore is why Apple is announcing this one year in advance. Hardware manufacturers will also need to develop support and drivers for ARM-based computers. This may cause future problems as older hardware may be deemed too old to support.

Previously software applications have been changed from 32-bit to 64-bit, inline with newer modern processors. Now just about every Windows PC and laptop is based on a 64-bit CPU, and even some 2020 MacBooks. This change for Mac will be significant. Software that is designed to work on ARM processors runs well and efficiently. However, software designed for 64-bit processors is not directly supported, therefore has to be run on emulation, which is far less efficient than it normally would be.

A similar situation happened previously, when Microsoft unveiled the Surface Pro X, running on ARM processor. Windows, with all its myriad applications from many companies and developers worldwide, on ARM has not been an immediate success. But it appears Apple is putting in more effort to get everyone on board and prepared for their new ARM-based Macs.

The BBC has released over 100 free images of their empty sets, which can be used as virtual backgrounds for video calls.

With video calls and online meetings being the new face-to-face, backgrounds (or perhaps lack of!) are becoming an important aspect. The BBC has provided a fun solution for those wanting to hide their background, making working from anywhere possible without clients/colleagues seeing your messy kitchen or Taylor Swift posters.

The featured sets are in six different categories: Sitcoms, Entertainment, Science Fiction, Children’s TV, Eastenders, and Sports. See here for all the backgrounds.

To use an image as your backdrop, click on the picture so it is full size, right click and choose “Save Image As” to download it. Then set that file as your background image in your video conferencing application(s).

Facebook has been heavily criticised for the lack of action against President Trump’s posts, which have been claimed as provoking violence.

On Monday, 1st June, Facebook employees requested the day off as a digital protest against their company’s lack of response. Employees have also spoken out about their disappointment on social media.

In his post, President Trump stated “any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. Twitter classified the post as “glorifying violence” and consequently hid the tweet on their platform with a warning. Trump responded to this by threatening to close social media platforms.

Mark Zuckerberg responded to Twitter’s decision: “we do not have a policy of putting a warning in front of posts that may incite violence because we believe that if a post incites violence, it should be removed regardless of whether it is newsworthy, even if it comes from a politician”. Which seems quite contradictory to the lack of action taken.

Talkspace was a partner of Facebook, providing online therapy to the team. The relationship has now been discontinued specifically due to Facebook’s response to Trump’s posts. Oren Frank, Co-Founder & CEO of Talkspace, posted on Twitter “We will not support a platform that incites violence, racism, and lies”.

Mark Zuckerberg claimed that leaving the post up was to “enable as much expression as possible”, but this has resulted in outraging employees, partners and users. Perhaps it is time for all social media platforms to assess what is being posted more stringently.

Google has released a new feature on Chrome, which gives the ability to group together related tabs.

Group tabs make working or viewing multiple web pages easier, providing better management of tabs and navigation across web pages, as well as saving space on smaller screens/devices. Google is working on this feature being collapsible, allowing the group tabs to expand or shrink when clicked on.

This feature is currently available in the Canary build of Chrome 85, and it is not enabled by default. The feature will be rolled out to all users in future, but to enable this feature now:

• Make sure you are running Chrome Canary 85.0.4148.0
• Launch the browser and type chrome://flags into the address bar
• Search for Tab Groups using the search box
• Click on the drop-down box next to Tab Groups and Tab Groups Collapse
• Set both to Enabled

You can check the feature is working by grouping some pages into a tab, and then clicking its label to expand and collapse it.

UPDATE – Zoom has extended the date for these security requirements to September 27th, 2020.

Zoom version 5.0 is now available. Please update your version of Zoom, if you have not already done so.

Zoom must be updated before May 30th. Those on an older version of Zoom will be forced to update before entering meetings after this date.

This update enables GCM encryption across the Zoom platform, providing increased protection for meeting data. There are new features which allow ‘waiting rooms’, the ability to lock meetings, remove participants and report users that misuse the platform. This is a welcome update, prompt from the security concerns users previously had with Zoom.

For more information on Zoom 5.0, please see here. To download Zoom 5.0 go here.

Microsoft has announced that its new home sites feature for SharePoint is now available.

SharePoint home sites are a landing site created for your organisation. Which neatly displays news, events, content, conversations and videos related to your teams’ activities and your organisation.

Home sites are built on communication type sites on the Modern version of SharePoint, and are designed to be interactive amongst team members featuring a “we space” and “me space” (the latter of which allows individual personalisation).

You can see a demonstration of home sites in Microsoft’s keynote presentation here. See here for how to create a home site, and you can install templates from the SharePoint ‘lookbook’ here.

Contact us on customising and leveraging your SharePoint experience.