Zone’s Ross Basham handpicks and shares the five best new stories on digital trends, experiences and technologies…
1. World Bank rejects El Salvador Bitcoin help
The World Bank has rejected a request from El Salvador to help it with implementing Bitcoin as legal tender. Earlier this month the Central American country announced plans to become the first nation to formally adopt the digital currency, which would be used as a parallel legal tender alongside the US dollar.
But the World Bank has cited concerns over transparency and the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining. It means El Salvador could miss its deadline of having Bitcoin accepted nationwide in the next three months. The IMF has also said it sees “macroeconomic, financial and legal issues” with the country’s adoption of Bitcoin.
2. YouTube puts limitations on masthead ads
YouTube is banning alcohol, gambling, politics and “prescription drug terms” from its most prominent ad slot — the masthead that appears at the top of the website. The reasons for banning booze, betting and drugs are obvious, while removing politics will avoid situations like Donald Trump buying the slot during the 2020 election.
Google has said that the limitations on what kinds of ads can appear in this slot will help “lead to a better experience for users”. It already provides a way for users to limit the number of alcohol and gambling-related ads they see on YouTube (which in theory would’ve applied to the masthead), but that involves actively opting out.
3. Facebook AI to spot trouble in the comments
If you’re a member of a local Facebook group you’ll know how quickly a post about parking can degenerate into a slanging match. So Facebook is launching a suite of new tools to help group admins keep control of their communities, including an AI-powered feature that can identify “contentious or unhealthy conversations”.
This tool is called Conflict Alerts, and it’s currently being tested. It lets admins create custom alerts for when commenters use certain words and phrases, but uses machine learning models to try to spot more subtle types of trouble. However, these models aren’t very reliable and are often fooled by things like slang and irony.
4. Twitter’s ‘unmentions’ to silence angry mobs
Twitter is working on a new feature that will enable users to ‘unmention’ themselvesin other people’s tweets. The tweets won’t disappear but the user who is receiving the unwanted attention can untag themselves from the conversation, making it much easier to avoid abuse, outraged mobs and bullies (without them even knowing).
A engineer at Twitter showed off several early-stage mock-ups of privacy features, which also included being able to stop authors from mentioning you again, restricting certain accounts from mentioning you for a specified amount of time and being able to control mass mentions by quickly addressing situations that have escalated.
5. Forget 5G — crazy-fast 6G is already here
You’ll all be aware of super-fast 5G technology — some of you may even be using it now (not available where I live, sadly). But time and tech wait for no man, because Samsung is already testing out super-super-fast 6G in its labs. While 5G wireless signals go up to 40GHz, 6G would go past 100GHz in the terahertz spectrum.
What does this mean? Well, it could mean transfer speeds of 125 gigabytes of data flowing in and out of a mobile device every second, which could be useful if our smartphones are projecting 8K holograms or streaming complex virtual reality worlds. Maybe. We’ll have to wait until 2030 at the earliest to find out, anyway.
