Five things worth sharing from the last week or so, brought to you by a different member of the Browser Media team every Friday.
This week’s My Five is by Ashleigh.
1. Facebook now allows users to stop it stalking them off-site
In the settings section of Facebook there will be a section where users can find their “Off-Facebook Activity”, that will list all the places off Facebook that send their information to the social platform for its advertising.
Announced at the Facebook F8 conference, Zuckerberg confirmed that users will also have the option to clear that history and stop any future activity being tracked. Facebook is rolling it out very slowly to start with, with only users in Ireland, South Korea and Spain being able to access the information, but it will, one day, become a global feature.
The future is private! Mark Zuckerberg at #F8 pic.twitter.com/1Mnigl129h
— Marc Alain Boucicault (@marcalainb) April 30, 2019
For more information visit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49410371
2. Google’s new sign language reader technology
Google has developed artificial intelligence that makes it possible for a phone to read aloud sign language.
It’s not a Google app that they have created but the technology that allows other app designers to use the feature within their own apps, a technology that was only available on desktop previously.
“We’re excited to see what people come up with. For our part, we will continue our research to make the technology more robust and to stabilise tracking, increasing the number of gestures we can reliably detect,” said Google.
3. Reddit to trial short video streaming feature
For just five days Reddit will allow eligible users to stream live videos between the hours of 9am and 5pm, that will be monitored by human moderators to ensure the content to broadcastable.
Reddit has said that the test is meant to be “fun” and if it works out will become a permanent feature on the social news site.
For more details on the rules, read the Reddit Content Policy for Live Video
4. Disney+
In the run up to the launch of its direct-to-consumer, subscription service named Disney+, Disney has been pulling out all the stops to try and compete with the likes of Netflix.
Not only has it been implementing some innovative social media campaigns…
Clever social media:@Disney got all their @disneyplus properties to reply on the same thread to announce the launch of the Disney+ Twitter handle. All one long convo, each handle on brand. pic.twitter.com/jt47WlZtjI
— Matthew Kobach (@mkobach) August 19, 2019
… It has also hired Sky CMO, Luke Bradley-Jones to run the service, which is set to launch in the States in November. The date for the UK release is yet to be announced.
5. YouTube clamp down
Mirroring the decision made by Facebook and Twitter, Google has closed 210 channels on YouTube that it thinks are associated with the protests in Hong Kong. Google says the people creating these channels have made efforts to “disguise the origin of these accounts and other activity commonly associated with coordinated influence operations” so it has cut them off.
Not only is it stopping this type of activity, it is also talking about stopping serving ads alongside videos aimed at children. This will negatively impact its ad revenue, but it should satisfy the US Federal Trade Commission, which forbids advertisers targeting kids under 13 year old.
