The party is over

Hong Kong protests force social media giants to take a stand against propaganda

There have long been concerns about China's capacity to spread disinformation through social media. But, up until now, we haven't seen the Chinese put anything into action. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are all blocked in mainland China. Still, all three platforms have found that Chinese accounts distributed false information around the protests in Hong Kong.

Facebook and Twitter reportedly closed down thousands of accounts late last week. YouTube was the last to act, closing down 210 channels on Thursday. The platforms are now receiving widespread praise for taking an active role in combating state-sponsored propaganda and misinformation.

After facing similar problems with Russian content, Twitter banned all advertising from state-controlled news outlets following China's state-backed media outlet Xinhua sponsoring ads on the platform. Facebook, where China's government (through its state media agencies) has been a big buyer of ads, are not planning to follow this move.

Google orders employees to stop debating and do what they were hired to do

On Friday, Google published new workplace guidelines ordering its staff to avoid making misleading comments about the company, insult one another and from "disrupting the workday to have a raging debate over politics or the latest news story."

Google, famous for its unrestrained culture that encourages employees to speak their minds and engage in philosophical debates, currently employs over 100,000 people. The new guidelines read "Our primary responsibility is to do the work we've each been hired to do, not to spend working time on debates about non-work topics."

The new rules are a marked departure from the open culture, shared with its Silicon Valley neighbours, that once served as a model for corporate America.

Facebook launches a tool for users to get more control over their data

In response to criticism over users' privacy, Facebook introduced a new tool this week. The tool, Off-Facebook Activity, lets people better view and control the information that Facebook has collected about their browsing habits outside the platform.

Users can view the sites and apps that share data and customer information with Facebook, and they can disconnect the data from their account if they want. In a blog post, Facebook stated: "This is another way to give people more transparency and control on Facebook."

Mark Zuckerberg previously said the company would develop a tool that would allow people to clear their browsing history. But Off-Facebook Activity is nothing like that. Facebook will continue to retain all user browsing data across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger, and will only give people the option to wipe their browsing history outside the Facebook ecosystem.

Tool of the week: Airtable

Airtable is part spreadsheet part database – a bit like Google docs on drugs.

It's super simple to link different spreadsheets together or have multiple views of the same data – like a calendar view, a list view, and a "Trello" view. The best thing is: it's all up to you!

Airtable comes with a variety of templates that you can start from, or you can create your own from scratch. And people use it for everything from creating organisation charts to content management platforms.

It is, of course, easy to collaborate with your colleagues in Airtable, as well as create input forms for your customers or colleagues to fill in. And, after you’ve designed and configured your Airtable base from the user-friendly graphical interface, Airtable provides an API that can create, read, update, and destroy records.

Airtable is almost too complex to describe in a couple of paragraphs. The best way is to take a look at their different demos and try the tool out yourself.