Good morning!
Last night someone managed to gain access to the entire Twitter platform. They used their new-found power to...steal some Bitcoin. But it could have been far more dangerous, and the breach has undermined confidence in the platform's stability.
In other news, most GDPR consent banners are illegally engineered to get visitors to share data, tensions continue to escalate between China and the West, and we take a look at how social media is evolving (for better and for worse).
The most catastrophic security breach in Twitter's history
Someone got access to all of Twitter and used it to...steal Bitcoin
Last night, multiple high-profile Twitter accounts -- including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos -- were compromised. Hundreds of people fell for it, and over $110,000 was sent to the address. There are reports that a Twitter staff member was paid to help with the attack. "Bitcoin scammers won’t be the last people to take over verified accounts — and we should be very, very worried about who else will," said Casey Newton.
Pando's biggest story this week...
Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked
Privacy regulations such as the GDPR say that you need to seek permission from your website visitors before tracking them -- but most GDPR consent banner implementations are deliberately engineered to be difficult to use. If banners are implemented properly, over 90% of visitors have have been found to decline GDPR consent.
There's a race to reclaim digital sovereignty
UK bans Huawei as the West's battle against China escalates
China's ambassador to the UK has called Britain's decision to ban telecoms giant Huawei from its 5G network "disappointing and wrong". China’s Commerce Ministry has since said that it will take "necessary measures" in response to the UK's "discriminatory" ban.
Slack-rival Element deal is a huge win for open chat protocols
Element, a European rival to workplace messaging app Slack, has won the world’s largest-ever single contract for a collaborative software service. With Element, conversations are hosted and owned entirely by the participating servers, rather than being stored centrally somewhere in Silicon Valley, which is particularly attractive to European governments and armies concerned about digital sovereignty.
Matthew Hodgson, the CEO of Element, told Sifted that it was a sign that Europe was beginning to embrace its own privacy-friendly messenger service that reduced its reliance on Silicon Valley.
This week's most interesting trends
From sci fi to commercialization: the rise of digital avatars
In the late 1990s, the Gorillaz — a virtual music band made up of four animated characters — introduced the concept of digital avatars to the general public. Now, this technology has begun to appear in a wider array of business and personal applications. It's beginning to blur the lines between the virtual and real worlds in a way that was envisioned by sci fi writers of previous decades. Jerry Lu discusses how we are weaving digital characters into our real digital lives
Tech companies are letting leases expire as employees continue to work from home
Start-ups across the country are letting leases expire and preparing for an extended period of remote work as they realize that real estate is not a worthwhile expense. Amazon has recently extended its work from home policy to January 2021. And for those who are going back to the office, life will be far from "normal".
How can we build better social networks?
Did MySpace kill the potential for customization on social media?
One thing that’s been lost during the development of internet culture is design—not the design of the platforms, themselves, but the freedom to take a piece of internet land and make it your own. MySpace gets mocked today, but it encouraged users to try new things. Modern social networks have moved away from that. Is there a way to bring it back?
tedium.coA text-only social network with 'no popularity counter'
According to the about page, this Twitter-style social network "was created by Lucian Marin from the desire of a having a simple to use, English only, public forum that has nothing in common with ancient and untrustworthy social networks". Emojis are used in place of avatars, and there is no popularity counter. There is only one rule: be nice or else.
subreply.comIt's time to decommercialize the web
Back when the web first started, it was a free-for-all. You were just one click away from literally anything. Now, the entire web is controlled by a very small number of commercial entities. But we're starting to see a shift -- in this article we talk to Charles Broskoski, creator of are.na, and Elliott Cost, creator of special.fish and gossips.cafe and get their opinion on how to create a web that works for all of us.
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