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WhatsApp Delays Privacy Update Following Concerns Over Facebook Data Sharing


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WhatsApp delays privacy update following concerns over Facebook data sharing


WhatsApp delays privacy update following concerns over Facebook data sharing

WhatsApp on Friday said it was postponing an update to its privacy policy following concerns and calls from users to switch to other encrypted apps like Signal and Telegram. The Facebook-owned app is now giving users until May 15 to review and accept its new policy, which relates to how businesses access user information

"No one will have their account suspended or deleted on February 8," WhatsApp said in a blog post. "We're also going to do a lot more to clear up the misinformation around how privacy and security works on WhatsApp."

Earlier this week, WhatsApp published an FAQ clarifying the terms of its updated privacy policy and responding to concerns that it shares personal information with parent company Facebook. The firm noted the update doesn't affect the privacy of messages with friends and family, and instead relates to messaging businesses through the platform. WhatsApp also said the update "provides further transparency about how we collect and use data."

Privacy advocates (as well as Elon Musk) have called for WhatsApp's users to ditch the Facebook-owned messaging app and instead opt for encrypted platforms like Signal. WhatsApp says personal messages are also protected by end-to-end encryption, but it has for years openly collected certain user data to share with Facebook. Telegram, another secure messaging app, on Tuesday said it had surpassed 500 million active users, and gained more than 25 million new global users in just 72 hours.

WhatsApp says neither it nor Facebook can see private messages. In addition, the company says it doesn't keep logs of who users message or call, can't see shared location and doesn't share contacts with Facebook.

Under WhatsApp's privacy policy, businesses have the option to use "secure hosting services from Facebook to manage WhatsApp chats with their customers, answer questions, and send helpful information like purchase receipts," WhatsApp says. If you communicate with a business, it can see what you're saying and then use that information for marketing, which could include advertising on Facebook. WhatsApp says it clearly labels conversations with businesses that use Facebook's hosting services. 

Also, interacting with Facebook's Shops commerce feature via WhatsApp allows a person's shopping activity to be used to show related ads on Facebook and Instagram. WhatsApp says this feature is optional and that when you use it, "we will tell you in the app how your data is being shared with Facebook." Additionally, clicking on a Facebook ad with the option to message a business through WhatsApp could allow Facebook to then show more related ads.


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https://nichols.my.id/how-to-create-apple-id.html

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WhatsApp For Android Now Offers Voice Calling To All Users


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WhatsApp for Android now offers voice calling to all users


WhatsApp for Android now offers voice calling to all users

whatsapp-logo.jpg
Voice calling is now available to all WhatApps users. WhatsApp

WhatsApp users on Android can now all tap into the app's new voice-calling feature.

Rolled out in February to a small number of people, the call feature then expanded to invitation-only by those who were able to get the feature. Now it's available to all Android phone users. There's just one catch. You may not be able to get it from the version currently up at the Google Play Store.

WhatsApp version 2.12.19 does include the calling feature, according to Android Police. But that version is available only as an APK file (Android application package), which is not as easy to install as an app you download directly from Google Play. Version 2.12.19 is the latest one available through the APK.

On Google Play, you'll also see WhatsApp version 2.12.5, and according to The Next Web, that older version also enables the feature. However, Android Police said that it's seen reports of the calling feature not working under older versions of WhatsApp.

A WhatsApp support rep told CNET that you should be on the latest version of the app. So if you really want to trade phone calls with a fellow WhatsApp user, your best bet seems to be to download the version 2.12.19 APK file.

Now owned by Facebook, which paid $19 billion to acquire it, WhatsApp started life as a basic text-messaging app but one that also offered the ability to leave voice messages. The company has been promising to add a phone-calling feature, which would give the app the leverage to compete against similar services such as Skype and Viber. At last year's Mobile World Congress, WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum said the voice calling would roll out to Android phones and the iPhone first, and then to Windows Phone and some BlackBerry phones.

So when will the voice-calling feature reach iPhone users? At Facebook's F8 developers conference last week, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton seemed to indicate that it could be out within a matter of not too many weeks, according to VentureBeat.

Here's how you get that APK file to try out the voice calling:

Normally, you should never download an APK file onto your Android device unless you're sure of its source. But in this case, the file comes from WhatsApp, so the source seems legitimate.

First, you'll need to download the actual file, either directly from WhatsApp or from an APK Mirror site. You can then follow the steps in this CNET tutorial on how to install an APK file.

After you open the app, you'll see a new tab for Calls, according to TNW. Simply tap that tab and then select the name of the person you wish to call.


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Facebook, YouTube To Restrict Some Russian State-Controlled Media Across Europe


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Facebook, YouTube to Restrict Some Russian State-Controlled Media Across Europe


Facebook, YouTube to Restrict Some Russian State-Controlled Media Across Europe

Facebook, YouTube and other social networks are restricting access to Russian state-controlled media outlets RT and Sputnik across Europe, amid calls to crack down on disinformation. The move will likely heighten tensions between some of the world's most popular social networks and the Russian government.

Facebook's parent company, Meta, said Monday that it will limit the accessibility of Sputnik and RT across the European Union.  

"We have received requests from a number of governments and the EU to take further steps in relation to Russian state-controlled media. Given the exceptional nature of the current situation, we will be restricting access to RT and Sputnik across the EU at this time," Nick Clegg, who oversees global affairs at Meta and is a former UK deputy prime minister, said in a tweet.

Clegg didn't respond to questions on Twitter about what the restrictions entail, how many requests Meta has received and from which governments or how many Facebook users will be impacted by these restrictions. Clegg also didn't say when these restrictions would start. RT's Facebook page has 7.4 million followers and Sputnik's Facebook page has 1.4 million followers. The media outlets are also on Facebook-owned Instagram, a photo and video service. RT has 839,000 followers on Instagram and Sputnik has 116,000 followers. 

On Tuesday, Google said in a post on Twitter that it would block YouTube channels connected to RT and Sputnik across Europe. 

"Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, we're blocking YouTube channels connected to RT and Sputnik across Europe, effective immediately," reads a tweet from the official Google Europe account. "It'll take time for our systems to fully ramp up. Our teams continue to monitor the situation around the clock to take swift action."

Google, the video giant's parent company, didn't immediately respond to questions on how many YouTube channels would be blocked. RT's main channel on YouTube has more than 4.6 million subscribers, while Sputnik has over 300,000 subscribers. 

Facebook's move came a day after Meta announced it had restricted access to several accounts, including from Russian state-controlled media, in Ukraine after a request from the government there. Meta has been facing more pressure to take action against these media outlets for spreading propaganda and false claims after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

On Sunday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a tweet that the EU's executive branch is developing tools to ban "toxic and harmful disinformation" published by RT and Sputnik and their subsidiaries. The EU is an economic and political union of 27 countries, including France, Germany and Spain.

Following Facebook's move on Tuesday, RT took issue with unspecified comments from European government officials and actions by social media platforms, with its deputy editor-in-chief saying in a statement that no one had pointed to specific evidence of falsehoods appearing on its site during the Ukraine crisis. In its own statement, Sputnik's press arm characterized the restrictions as an "information war against the Russian media."

RT and Sputnik are on other social media sites, including Twitter and TikTok. A spokeswoman for TikTok said users in the EU won't see content from RT's and Sputnik's accounts. Twitter started labeling state-affiliated media, but a spokeswoman said the company had "nothing to share at this time" when asked if the company was also planning to restrict RT and Sputnik. 

The rare move by Meta also raises questions about whether Russia will further restrict access to Facebook and Instagram. Ukrainians have put pressure on Facebook to remove access to the main social network and Instagram in Russia, but Clegg said Sunday those platforms are also being used by protesters and as a source of independent information. "The Russian Government is already throttling our platform to prevent these activities. We believe turning off our services would silence important expression at a crucial time," Clegg said in a tweet on Sunday.

Russia said last week that it's partly restricting access to Facebook after the social network refused to stop fact-checking and labeling content posted on Facebook by four Russian state-owned media organizations. Russia's telecommunications regulator, Roskomnadzor, alleges Facebook violated "fundamental human rights" by restricting the country's state-controlled media.

Facebook and YouTube have also been barring ads from Russia state media. Twitter also said last week that it's temporarily pausing ads in Ukraine and Russia. 

On Sunday, Meta also announced that it removed a network of about 40 fake accounts, Pages and Groups on Facebook and Instagram from Russia and Ukraine. Meta said some of these accounts pretended to be news editors and ran fake news websites and published stories that included "claims about the West betraying Ukraine and Ukraine being a failed state." Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, created a special operations center with experts who speak Ukrainian and Russian to help monitor its platform.

CNET's Carrie Mihalcik contributed to this report.


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https://rarasnjna.kian.my.id/

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Facebook-owned WhatsApp Extends Message Deletion Time


Facebook-owned WhatsApp extends message deletion time


Facebook-owned WhatsApp extends message deletion time

Facebook-owned WhatsApp is changing the amount of time you have to delete messages you've sent for all recipients. According to WABetaInfo, since the release of WhatsApp beta for Android 2.18.69, the messaging app allows users 2¹² seconds (4,096 seconds, which is 68 minutes, 16 seconds) to take back a message you didn't want to send. It replaces it with a "this was deleted" message. The feature has since been added to the iOS and Windows Phone apps via updates.

First released last October, the "delete for everyone" feature used to allow you only 7 minutes to delete a message. The app had a flaw though, allowing people with modified versions of the app from third-party sites to delete messages as far back as three years.

This has been fixed as well, and when a revoke request comes in, it will make sure the message was sent within 24 hours. This time limit was decided in case the recipient of the message that is being deleted didn't have their phone on. If they don't turn their phone on in 24 hours, the message will not be deleted.


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Back To Cell Phone Basics: Buying A Non-smartphone


Back to cell phone basics: Buying a non-smartphone


Back to cell phone basics: Buying a non-smartphone

For some people, smartphones and their always-on Internet connections and apps is a waste of money.

If you don't need apps or games and you can live without fast, robust access to the Net from your cell phone, then a smartphone might be expensive overkill. All four of the major U.S. wireless carriers still offer basic feature phones, which don't require expensive data plans. In this Ask Maggie, I offer some advice to a reader who is looking for one of these phones.

I also offer some advice regarding the new all-in-one desktop computers.

Going retro with a basic feature phone

Dear Maggie,

I have an AT&T iPhone 3GS. It's the worst telephone I've ever owned. And I'd say it wasn't even worth the $0 I paid AT&T for it at the time (a year ago). I have no intention of going to the iPhone 5 regardless of what's written about it. Although I get ok service here in the house I don't need a "smartphone" (I have 2 computers - one PC and one Mac laptop) and I have WiFi, so I don't need a handheld device to find places or play games or watch anything on the Internet or Google while I'm in restaurants or in the car. And I'm tired of paying AT&T for data I don't use each month just because I have an iPhone or a "smartphone" and "must" have data.

I might add that I was in the telecom industry for nearly 25 years (I worked for Sprint and MCI when there was an MCI) and the carriers are among the most rapacious greedy corporate enterprises I've ever gotten close to!

Stepping off my soapbox now. In your opinion, what's the best phone that's just a phone? I don't need to do anything but make and receive calls and do texting. I don't care about browsing or email or anything else. I just need a telephone that's simply a phone thank you very much!

Regards and thanks for your response,
Mark

Dear Mark,

While there are definitely more people switching from basic cell phones to smartphones these days, I know there are lots of people out there in your same shoes. Smartphones offer tons of functionality that many people now feel like they can't live without, but the reality is that all that functionality and that ubiquitous access to the Internet is pricey. In some ways, I think it's kind of surprising that there aren't more people asking me for this same advice.

The good news is that all the major carriers, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA, each continue to offer basic cell phones and what they call quick messaging devices that do not require data plans. The carriers recognize that there is a subset of customers who have no interest in a smartphone because it's either too complicated or too expensive. But the reality is that each of these carriers see their future in data. And they will do everything in their power to encourage as many customers as possible to sign up for smartphones that require data plans.

Overtime, I expect to see fewer of the more basic devices. But for now, carriers still offer a handful of basic phones that are either free or cost very little when you sign up for a two-year contract.

The great thing about these basic phones is that they are inexpensive. The carriers either give them away for free with a two-year contract, or you pay a minimal amount for the devices. But it's not just the upfront cost that's appealing, as you mentioned in your question, but it costs much less to own a basic phone than it does a smartphone, if you keep your services to a minimum.

For example, on AT&T, you could pay as little as $40 a month for your phone service. Compare this to the $80 a month you'd pay for the lowest amount of data you could get on AT&T's new Share Everything plan. Under that plan, the data service costs $40 a month for 1GB of data and it comes with unlimited text messaging and voice service.

Using a basic phone with no data or text messaging, could save you half. But as you start to add additional services, like text messaging and data, the cost difference is not as big. Adding unlimited texting to AT&T's basic feature phone plan is an additional $20 a month. And if you also wanted to add data, it would cost an additional $10 a month. (Data for feature phones is $15 a month if you subscribe to that without unlimited text messaging.) In total, if you wanted 450 minutes of voice service, unlimited text messaging and unlimited data for a feature phone, you'd pay $70 a month. That's only $10 less a month than you'd pay for smartphone, and you'd be getting much less in terms of the service and functionality of the device.

That said, it can offer some savings. And if you don't plan to subscribe to the data or you are not a heavy text messaging user, a basic phone that doesn't require a data contract is a good option.

My colleague Jessica Dolcourt recently updated her "best of" list in this category.

Here are her top choices:

  • Kyocera DurXT (Sprint)
  • Samsung Gusto 2 (Verizon Wireless)
  • Samsung +159 (T-Mobile)
  • LG Rumor Reflex (Sprint)
  • Samsung Entro (Virgin Mobile)

If you want more information on each of these phones, check out her story and the reviews of these devices.

As you can see from her list, none of these devices are available for AT&T. Since you are an AT&T customer, I have listed a few devices here that I think offer pretty good value and functionality.

Pantech Swift
Josh Miller/CNET

Pantech Swift

The Pantech Swift has a QWERTY keyboard that slides out and has an angled screen. It also has a touch screen that offers some icons for accessing some of the basic features and functionality. But CNET's reviewers Jessica Dolcourt and Lynn La were not impressed with the processor speed. And they said the touchscreen is unresponsive. Even though they don't recommend this device highly, they seem to think the Pantech Swift is the most appealing Pantech handset on AT&T with a keyboard. AT&T is currently selling it for $0.99 with a two year contract.

Pantech Renue
Pantech Renue Josh Miller/CNET

Pantech Renue

The Pantech Renue is another touch screen device with a slide out QWERTY keyboard. But CNET reviewer Jessica Dolcourt said she isn't a fan of the speakerphone or the mediocre camera. What's more, the Renue has a short battery life that many consumers have complained about in their own comments and reviews of the device. While the keyboard is nice for heavy texters, she said that the short battery life and underdeveloped camera are setbacks. AT&T sells this device for $49.99 with a two-year contract.

LG A340 LG

LG A340

The LG A340 is a standard flip-phone from AT&T. This is one of the most basic, barebones devices on AT&T's network. It's equipped with enhanced audio technology for users who are hard of hearing and it has Bluetooth so it can be used with a wireless headset and a 1.3-megapixel camera. Other features include "Text to Speech" functionality that lets you listen to your text messages as they're read aloud to you. It also comes with AT&T radio. With a two-year contract, this phone is only $19.99.

LG Xpression
LG Xpression AT&T

LG Xpression

The LG Xpression is another touch screen phone with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. It has a 2-megapixel camera with video, a personal organizer, Bluetooth 2.1, messaging and e-mail, 3G support, microSD card support (up to 32GB), voice dialing, a Web browser, and a basic music player. The device runs LG's standard operating system, but it also includes some social networking apps, as well as AT&T Navigator and LG Instant Note, which allows easy one touch updates to Facebook, Twitter or for sending a text messages. The Xpression is now $29.99 with a two year contract.

I hope this advice and the device suggestions were helpful. Good luck!

New computer advice

Dear Maggie,

I want to buy a 27" Windows 8 All-In-One for my parents, but don't really know which one is best for them. They're not tech whizzes (though they do like to experiment and learn new things), but they need it to work well and perform smoothly for the next five or more years. Which one(s) would you recommend on a $1500-$2000 budget?

Thanks a bunch,
Josh

Dear Josh,
The CNET Reviews team likes the Dell XPS One 27 the best. You may also want to consider Apple's 27 inch iMac. It's a bit more expensive, but with a budget of $2,000, it's doable.

CNET Reviews editor Rich Brown also has written about finding the best 27-inch all-in-one desktop, where he compares the Dell to the models that Apple offers. So you should check out his story, as well.

You might also want to consider the Lenovo IdeaCenter all-in-ones. Right now they only support Windows 7. But if you wait a few more weeks, you'll likely find more all-in-one computers available running Windows 8.

I hope this was helpful. And good luck!

Ask Maggie is an advice column that answers readers' wireless and broadband questions. The column now appears twice a week on CNET offering readers a double dosage of Ask Maggie's advice. If you have a question, I'd love to hear from you. Please send me an e-mail at maggie dot reardon at cbs dot com. And please put "Ask Maggie" in the subject header. You can also follow me on Facebook on my Ask Maggie page.


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Big Tech's Danger To Kids Finally Aligns Democrats, Republicans


Big Tech's danger to kids finally aligns Democrats, Republicans


Big Tech's danger to kids finally aligns Democrats, Republicans

More than once over the course of a five-hour hearing before Congress on Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's parenting style became a point of focus for angry lawmakers. One House Republican asked if he had issues with his young daughters watching YouTube. Another asked if he lets them use Facebook's own services. 

"My daughters are five and three, and they don't use our products," Zuckerberg said, before adding that he lets his older child use Facebook's chat app for kids. 

The exchange typified a common refrain as the leaders of Facebook, Google and Twitter weathered a grilling from Congress -- the fourth such event in the last year where a Big Tech CEO took the hot seat -- over the misinformation that flows through their platforms. While lawmakers tried to advance their disparate agendas, one bipartisan theme emerged among Democrats and Republicans who are usually bitterly divided: the danger of Silicon Valley's services on children. 

"Big tech is essentially handing our children a lit cigarette and hoping they stay addicted for life," said Rep. Bill Johnson, an Ohio Republican. Rep. Kathy Castor, a Democrat from Florida, peppered the CEOs with statistics that show a rising level of depression and suicidal thoughts among adolescents that coincides with the rise of social media. 

Historically, Big Tech products have been reserved for people 13 and older. But in the past few years, companies like Google and Facebook have tried to push the bounds of those limits, creating services for younger and younger kids. (Twitter, primarily used by older users, evaded scrutiny on the issue.)

YouTube Kids, launched in 2015, is billed as a child-safe version of the massive Google-owned site. Last month, Google said it's testing new parental controls for kids 9 and up to use the full scale version of YouTube. Facebook four years ago unveiled a version of its Messenger chat app for kids to talk to their parents and friends. Now, the social network is working on a version of Instagram for kids under 13.

screen-shot-2021-03-25-at-2-32-25-pm.png

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he doesn't let his young daughters use the company's products, except Messenger for Kids.

Screenshot by Sarah Tew/CNET

Technical issues like content moderation or the opaque advertising model of social networks are hard concepts to grasp, so lawmakers have glommed on to an issue that's more visceral and universal in nature: the safety of our children. It isn't a topic that the tech executives can easily swat away. 

Even tech luminaries have sounded the alarm. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates talked about raising their kids with limited tech. Apple CEO Tim Cook, who has recently feuded with Facebook, has said he doesn't want his nephew on a social network.

"These hearings reflect an emboldened Congress and a tech industry that's on the defensive because the companies know that serious regulation and legislation is coming," said Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, a child advocacy nonprofit. "No one is going to take Mark Zuckerberg seriously as a voice for parents, but the truth is our kids lives are being dramatically shaped by social media and internet platforms."

Silicon Valley companies have received blowback in the past when they've waded into kids products. YouTube Kids faced controversy in 2017 when the service's filters failed to recognize some videos that feature disturbing imagery but are aimed at children -- like Mickey Mouse lying in a pool of blood, or PAW Patrol characters bursting into flames after a car crash. Facebook's Messenger for Kids, meanwhile, suffered a bug in 2019 that let children join group chats with strangers. 

Critics accuse Google and Facebook of skirting the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, a federal law that regulates user data collection from sites with users who are under 13 years old. In 2019, the US Federal Trade Commission slapped the company with a record $170 million fine, as well as new requirements, for YouTube's violation of COPPA. In response, the video site made major changes to how it treats kids videos, including limiting the data it collects from those views. 

The pushback from Congress on Thursday comes as lawmakers have drafted other legislation that deals with Silicon Valley's treatment of kids. 

In September, Castor introduced the Kids Internet Design and Safety (KIDS) Act, in the House. This bill banned "auto-play" sessions on websites and apps geared for children and young teens. The legislation also banned push alerts targeting children and prohibited platforms from recommending or amplifying certain content involving sexual, violent, or other adult material, including gambling or "other dangerous, abusive, exploitative, or wholly commercial content." 

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, who asked Zuckerberg if his kids use Facebook products, has introduced the Big Tech Accountability Platform, which is a road map for how Republicans are approaching regulating the tech industry. While Republicans are still concerned about the censoring of conservative voices online, they also are concerned with how the big platforms use their algorithms "to drive addiction," as well as the role the companies play "in child grooming and trafficking."

"Remember, our kids -- the users -- are the product," McMorris said Thursday. "You -- Big Tech -- are not advocates for children. You exploit and profit off them."


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When Local Newspapers Fold, Polarization Rises. Here's What You Can Do


When Local Newspapers Fold, Polarization Rises. Here's What You Can Do


When Local Newspapers Fold, Polarization Rises. Here's What You Can Do

Russia's invasion of Ukraine, rising energy costs and our ongoing struggles with the coronavirus pandemic take up a lot of our attention these days. But there's more going on a lot closer to home -- you just might not know it, because your local newspaper is gone.

More than a quarter of hometown newspapers have disappeared in the last century, leaving about 70 million Americans with little or no way to stay informed about their city and county governments, schools or businesses. As the country heads toward the 2022 midterm elections, Americans are increasingly turning to friends and social media to stay informed -- which isn't always trustworthy, as we learned during the 2016 election when around 44% of Americans were exposed to disinformation and misinformation through untrustworthy websites. 

"The state of local news in America is dire," said Tim Franklin, senior associate dean of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism and head of the Medill Local News Initiative.

Local journalism isn't just a nice idea. Community newspapers report some of the most important stories in our country. That includes the Boston Globe's 2002 series exposing the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston's sex abuse of minors, Sara Ganim and The Patriot-News' coverage revealing Penn State sex abuse scandal involving Jerry Sandusky and the Charleston Gazette-Mail's 2017 expose on opioids flooding into West Virginia. 

Citizen Now

This is part of Citizen Now, a package that aims to empower readers with information about our changing world. 

CNET

But for every Pulitzer Prize-winning local journalism story, there are countless more that have  served as chroniclers of their communities and watchdogs of the people in power. And when they aren't there, research from the Brookings Institute found there's generally more government waste and fraud. 

"When you have less local news, there's various effects, some of which you'd find predictable: lower voting turnout, more corruption, more waste," said Steven Walden, president and co-founder of Report For America, a nonprofit that funds young reporters to work in understaffed newsrooms throughout the US. "There's also evidence that you have more polarization and misinformation."

The journalism industry has been struggling to adapt. Advertising, once a vital part of the newspaper world, has shifted to online. Meanwhile, profit-hungry newspaper owners have chosen to lay off staff and reduce the quality of their products.

Nonprofit organizations have stepped up to support newsrooms in several ways, but ultimately, they live or die by their communities. Many local papers and radio stations depend on individual donations to fund reporting that would never be done by larger publications, covering civic meetings and investigating local issues that lead to exposƩs which fix injustices. Even simply signing up for and reading local news draws people closer to issues that affect them -- and reinforces what publications do.

"Most of these stories weren't big but they mattered immensely to the residents in a community larger outlets didn't regularly cover," said Greg Yee, now a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, speaking about his year writing for the Farmington Daily Times in Farmington, New Mexico. (Full disclosure: Yee is a former colleague of this article's author.) Stories that stick out from that time include a mobile home park cut off from natural gas in winter and a new gas station opening in a Navajo Nation community, the only fuel access in 30 miles, that significantly improved locals' quality of life. 

"A good local news organization is a problem solver: it identifies problems and helps a community come together to solve it," said Penelope Abernathy, visiting professor at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, who heads a site dedicated to mapping news deserts, areas with one or zero local papers. "And a good news organization shows you how you are related to people you may not know you're related to in another part of the county, region or state."

Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams speaks in front of a circle of reporters, some standing with big cameras and others crouching while recording with smartphones..
The Washington Post / Getty Images

Long, withering decline

Journalism jobs have been shrinking for decades, driven by declining newspaper circulation and the rise in digital advertising. The news industry's advertising and subscription businesses have roughly halved over the past decade. Much of that money's shifted to Google, Facebook and Amazon, which together now hold 64% of the US online advertising market.

For newspapers, that shift in spending is catastrophic. In the decade after the great recession in 2009, the Pew Research Center found newspaper newsroom employment in the US had dropped by more than half, to about 35,000 workers. 

Ironically, the news industry has more readers than ever before – upwards of 10 times as many, according to Danielle Coffey, vice president and general council of the News Media Alliance. 

"We don't have a broken product. It's being consumed at exponential rates," she said. "The source of the problem is the revenue problem."

It wasn't always this way. 

The founding fathers believed so strongly in newspapers as a public good that they set up government subsidies for postal rates, reducing the cost of distributing the news – which at the time, was delivered on horseback.

In the 1960s and '70s, though, publicly traded paper owners began fixating on profits. To impress shareholders, news organizations conglomerated into big chains that gobbled up local papers into regional networks, said Amanda Lotz, professor of the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University.

"The financialization pressure really moves [newspapers] away from the balance between a commercial and public service enterprise of providing news to a community," Lotz said. 

Rounds of acquisitions resulted in the gutting of editorial budgets and staff. With fewer reporters, newspapers started relying on national stories published by wire services, a trend that created "ghost papers" that had little or no local content. Meanwhile, the internet became an easy substitution for things online that had until then been exclusive to the paper, like weather, sports scores, classifieds and even news.

Venture capitalists and other financial firms began buying up newspapers in the 1980s but rapidly accelerated in the last two decades, growing to own over 23% of US newsrooms today while wringing out profits with more layoffs.

"Those losses put more strain on already stretched newsrooms and the publications ended up churning through staff," said Yee, who worked for four years at a pair of newspapers owned by hedge fund Alden Global Capital. "All of that translates into worse, inconsistent coverage of the communities they're trying to serve."

As a result, from 2004 until the start of the pandemic in 2020, the US lost a quarter (around 2100) of its newspapers, according to a report from the University of North Carolina's Hussman School of Journalism and Media. By the end of last year, another hundred were gone, Poynter reported, expanding news deserts that are mostly located in financially-impacted rural areas in the country's interior.

Some papers have tried to rely more heavily on subscriptions, while transitioning to mainly digital publishing. Some success stories include the Chattanooga Times Free Press, which has been operating since 1869. Last September, it switched to a daily digital edition and a single print edition on Sunday from a daily print edition. The publication spent $6.1 million to give all its monthly subscribers iPads and train them one-on-one how to use them to access their daily paper, and it's retained subscribers through the transition. 

"There are some real success stories in this transition. If you can lower your paper costs and your distribution costs and if you can attract enough digital subscribers, you can support a local newsroom on that. But many local news organizations are still getting a significant chunk of their revenue from print advertising," Medill's Franklin said.

Senator Amy Klobuchar stands at a Senate podium to speak, with several men and women behind her.
Bloomberg / Getty News

Legislative fix, maybe

One way the news industry could regain revenue and profit is to seek compensation from big tech platforms. After all, advocates say, Facebook, Google, Twitter make money selling ads next to links, videos and photos published and shared freely to their networks. 

Legislators in Australia were the first to pass a law in February 2021 requiring Google and Facebook to negotiate with publishers for compensation to use their work, while France followed with its own legislation shortly thereafter. The latter locked horns with Google before finally securing legal assurance that the search giant would pay local media outlets when they appear in search results. Critics like the Electronic Frontier Foundation lament that the Australian and French laws ensured deals for big media publishers at the expense of smaller ones, but that hasn't stopped  Canada and the UK from gearing up to pass their own versions. 

A version of that idea in the US, called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, was proposed in March, 2021 by Senators Amy Klobuchar, Rand Paul, Cory Booker, and Lindsey Graham -- a rare bipartisan effort. The bill would allow news organizations to collectively bargain with tech companies for compensation, but hasn't moved out of committee yet.

Another idea to fund journalism Is the Local Journalism Sustainability Act introduced a year ago in the House by Representatives Ann Kirkpatrick and Dan Newhouse. That bill, if it were to become law, would give newsrooms around $50,000 annually in tax breaks to hire reporters. Small businesses, meanwhile, would receive $5,000 for the first year to advertise in local papers, and Americans would get a $250 stipend to pay for news subscriptions. It's unlikely to pass, though, in part because of partisan bickering over other spending plans on Capitol Hill.

"We need to make sure these publications can sustain themselves through this crisis and beyond, and I believe the credits in this bill make significant progress in providing a pathway to that sustainability," Rep. Kirkpatrick said when announcing the bill. 

Nonprofit newsrooms 

Some news organizations are finding funding beyond ads and subscriptions. Nonprofit foundations and philanthropic organizations are funneling grants and other aid money to newsrooms, including a new wave of nonprofit publications, like ProPublica, which run mostly on foundation and individual donations.

The American Journalism Project is a self-described venture philanthropy firm that to date has raised $90 million to back 32 local nonprofit newsrooms. Founded in 2019, it's also helped launch four more, taking the startup incubation model and applying it to digital newsrooms.

The organization focuses on both funding newsrooms and guiding them toward self-sustainability by diversifying their revenue streams, said Sarabeth Berman, CEO of the American Journalism Project. Newsrooms they've helped grow by around 67% in their first year and are projected to double their revenue in three years. 

"Will local news only be nonprofit? No. Is nonprofit news vital for the future of an informed citizenry? We think so," Berman said.

Report For America, founded in 2017, describes itself as a service organization, which helps pair young reporters fresh out of college with legacy newsrooms. The organization financially supports the reporter by paying half their salary (up to $25,000) the first year, then a third (up to $20,000) the following year. After that, it's up to the publication to decide whether to hire them permanently. 

"If you're not in New York or Boston or Washington, some of these news organizations have trouble getting people to go out to smaller towns," said Report For America's Waldman. "We have a very significant recruiting operation and are able to create a sort of self-selected group of people who are really passionate about local."

Report For America has grown its graduating class to 130 reporters this year, up from its first class of 13 in 2018 -- to date, over 560 reporters have gone through the program and partnered with local newsrooms. They include Laura Roche of the Charlotte News & Observer writing about the fraught debate over museums returning the unethically sourced remains of Black people, Sierra Clark of the Traverse City Record-Eagle writing about Melissa Isaac and many others in her Anishinaabek Neighbors series, and Brandon Drenon of the Indianapolis Star writing about the NAACP and others criticizing Indiana schools for failing Black students.

Report for America also connects newsrooms with donors in their area in an effort to get the community more involved in funding its local news again.

"Our goal is to actually help change the local business models in a way that they can sustain that," Waldman said.

The nonprofit Knight Foundation pledged to give $300 million to news organizations in 2019, some of which will go to both the American Journalism Project and Report For America, among other nonprofits that in turn support local newsrooms -- efforts that can be seen city by city on this interactive map. The flow of financial support is important for local newsrooms that operate on nonprofit and for-profit models, which are both valuable to their communities, said Jim Brady, vice president of the Knight Foundation's journalism program.

"Nonprofits tend to be more investigative or enterprise in nature, and the for-profits tend to provide more information on how consumers can live their daily lives. So we think both must be part of the answer to how local news can thrive," Brady said. 

A map showing all the counties of the US considered news deserts with one or zero local newspapers. While only a couple dozen don't have any, half the counties (1,540) only have one newspaper.

An infographic from the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media's project website, The Expanding News Desert, headed by Penelope Abernathy.

UNC Hussman

What to do if you don't have local journalism

News experts have advice for what to do if you live in a news desert, with little or no coverage. First on the list: Stop thinking that social media posts are an informative replacement for reporting. Social media can help people know what's going on, but it's rife with bias and misinformation. 

"There's a proliferation of misinformation and disinformation that goes unchecked because there's no local journalist checking on the facts. [Social media is] a place where unvetted gossip can get spread," Franklin said.

People need to learn to spot misinformation that's spread on social media by publications that look like they're trustworthy but aren't. Both the World Health Organization and the Poynter Institute have their own free online courses to learn how to fact-check posts yourself -- not just to spot fake news, but also to understand the agenda behind why they're spreading in the first place.

In the voids left by local papers, citizen journalists and bloggers have stepped up to provide their communities with informative coverage, but they lack the oversight and vetting a newsroom provides. For lack of better options, a citizen reporter could start a site on Substack and write about local events, Franklin suggested. 

The best thing to do is to reach out to regional papers the next town over and request coverage. You can find your nearest local or regional paper on Newspapers.com or  NewspaperMap.com. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has a station finder site too, and if you're a fan of National Public Radio, you can sign up to become a member of your local station in order to help support it. It isn't a perfect solution for an existing newsroom to stretch to cover another area, but is far better than starting a new local publication from scratch. 

But if your community decides to launch a new publication, organizing it as a nonprofit newsroom is a successful way to go. They rely on donations -- foundation support and individual giving account for a combined 83% of nonprofit revenue, according to the Institute of Nonprofit Newsrooms' 2021 Index. And that model is working: 83 of the over 400 nonprofit newsrooms affiliated with INN are less than five years old.

Then there's nonprofit newsroom Berkeleyside, which hosted the so-called first 'direct public offering' where it solicited a combined $1 million in funding from 355 of its readers (an average of $2,816 per person) in 2018 to get started. These are technically securities, but sold directly to its readers, and the publication continues to publish today. It's one of many ways newsrooms are innovating new ownership structures to stay solvent.

"We need to get more support from communities, from local community foundations, from national media foundations and from high net-worth individuals to help make local news sustainable in all areas of the country," Brady said.

Correction, June 28: The original version of this story incorrectly stated how many reporters were in Report For America's first graduating class. Its first graduating class of reporters was in 2018 and had 13 members.


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How Russia Has Spent A Decade Crumbling Online Freedoms


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How Russia has spent a decade crumbling online freedoms


How Russia has spent a decade crumbling online freedoms

Aleksandr Litreev was on a way to a business meeting last February when his life changed forever. En route to a hotel in Yakaterinburg, a day's drive east of Moscow, Litreev was pulled over by police. When they asked him to hand over his phone, the then-24-year-old knew it was no routine traffic stop. 

"They took me to a police station," Litreev recalls, "and magically some drugs appear." Litreev said he was arrested by around 10 armed policemen, beaten into confessing to ecstasy possession, and then detained for a month. He managed to flee to Estonia after being released into house arrest. 

Litreev is a member of Russia's liberal opposition. Rather than rousing people to the ballot box, he builds internet tools that help everyday Russians fight against an increasingly controlling state. As part of the tightest squeeze on freedoms in Russia this century, critical online media publications have been labeled foreign agents, and platforms like Twitter and Facebook are being pressured to purge their platforms of content the Kremlin disapproves of. 

With Russia's parliamentary elections running on Sept. 17 through Sept. 19, the Kremlin has stepped up censorship. It's demanded keywords associated with the opposition be blocked from Google and Yandex, the domestic search giant, and that Google and Apple kick an opposition-made app from their app stores.

Litreev has been fighting back for years, creating an app that sends lawyers to defend arrested protesters and joining the "digital resistance" that countered the government's attempt to block encrypted-messenger Telegram.

"If I go back to Russia now, I will get something like lifetime imprisonment," Litreev said. "Not gonna happen." 

Before fleeing to Estonia, Litreev also worked with Alexei Navalny, who, for the last 10 years, has been the face of Russia's opposition to President Vladimir Putin. Navalny was poisoned by Russian spies in August 2020 and has since been jailed. Navalny's case shows how the Kremlin has lost any of the patience it once had: He was tolerated for nearly a decade -- as a popular blogger, investigative journalist and later an opposition politician -- before authorities attempted to eliminate him altogether.

"The things that are happening now have never happened before," said Litreev, explaining that authorities poisoning an opposition candidate would have been inconceivable as recently as 2017. "And now we're here." 

Aleksandr Litreev, a software developer who fled to to Estona amid Russia's opposition crackdown.

Aleksandr Litreev

Digital wargames 

In 2017, Litreev made his first significant venture into opposition politics. A YouTube expose from Navalny alleged that then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev had embezzled over $1.2 billion, sparking protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg that turned into a general rebuke of widespread corruption and political repression.

Litreev's contribution was an app called Red Button. If protesters thought they were at risk of arrest, they could open the app and press the big red button it presented. That would automatically call a lawyer, who also receives the protester's emergency contact details and a GPS signal of their location.

"It's basically Uber, but for a lawyer," Litreev said. It was used extensively by demonstrators at the time, which got the attention of Kremlin authorities. "That's the point where pressure on me started," he added.

Litreev, then 21 and fresh out of university, was motivated to join the opposition movement as he watched the Kremlin ratchet up internet restrictions. A 2014 law allowed the telecommunications regulator, Roskomnadzor, to block access to online media that called for "unsanctioned mass public events." In 2016, Putin signed a bill requiring telecommunications companies to store their customers' text messages and phone calls for up to six months. 

The law was used as a pretext to ban Telegram, a platform created by eccentric Russian-born developer Pavel Durov that doubles as an instant messenger and a social media platform. (Durov is now based in Dubai.) It allows for encrypted messages between people, like WhatsApp, but also for public figures and groups to create "channels" that can have millions of followers. Russian authorities wanted control over Telegram, and stopping them became Litreev's next project.

Thousands rallied for "internet freedom" in 2018 after Roskomnadzor banned Telegram. Many protested by bringing paper planes, Telegram's symbol.

Mikhail Tereshchenko/Getty

In 2018, the Kremlin ordered Durov to hand over keys that would allow the FSB, the successor to the Soviet KGB, to unscramble the app's encrypted messages. Roskomnadzor's stated goal was to fight terrorist attacks, like a 2017 train bombing in St. Petersburg, which it claimed were spreading thanks to Telegram and apps like it. Durov refused, calling the request both unconstitutional and technically untenable. What followed was a game of hide-and-seek that lasted for two years.

Roskomnadzor banned Telegram in April 2018, pulling down the app's servers. Scores of Russian internet users -- dubbed the Digital Resistance -- countered by hosting Telegram on proxy servers, which Roskomnadzor found and banned too. For his part, Litreev helped create software that deployed millions of proxy servers at once, making it impossible for Russian authorities to manually pull them down individually.

"They got tired of banning IP address by IP address, so they started to ban whole subnetworks, ranges of IP addresses," he said. "At some point, when we got our service hosted on Amazon and on Google Cloud, they accidentally banned a huge subnet which belongs to Google."

Those attempts to ban Telegram were unsuccessful. Not only did the service remain accessible, its Russian user base actually grew. Meanwhile, with authorities hastily banning up to 19 million IP addresses, Google and Amazon services were briefly unusable throughout Russia.

Roskomnadzor had a choice: either block a huge range of IP addresses and risk more catastrophic blackouts, or rescind the ban on Telegram. "It was a fight for all or nothing," Litreev said.

After two years, Roskomnadzor relented, lifting its Telegram ban last June on the grounds that the company would help it with terrorism inquiries in the future. The Digital Resistance won this battle, the latest in a war that had been going on since 2012. 

Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin in 2012. 

Natalia Kolesnikova/Getty

The first ruling 

Russia is often grouped with China as a troublesome autocracy. A common misconception related to this comparison is that Russia has always had a fiercely censored internet. But unlike China's internet, which was built from the ground up not to rely on Western companies or users, Russia's internet largely grew freely from the mid-'90s. 

That began to change in 2012, when Putin became president for the second time.

Much like the US, Russian presidents were bound by the constitution to serve no more than two consecutive four-year terms. So in 2008, when Putin swapped places with Dmitry Medvedev, becoming prime minister while Medvedev assumed the presidency, many suspected it was a ploy to circumvent constitutional limits. Those suspicions were confirmed when he announced his intention to run as president again in 2011.

When Putin's United Russia party retained a majority in the parliamentary elections two months later -- elections local monitors and the EU said were fraudulent -- protests erupted. Tens of thousands demanded free elections and the release of political prisoners. But what concerned the Kremlin wasn't the demonstrators, but how they managed to organize themselves. These protests were the biggest the country had seen since the '90s, and they were powered by social media.

"The driving force back then was the internet -- social media, Facebook and Twitter," said Andrei Soldatov, a journalist and co-author of The Red Web, a book that details Russia's tightening grip on internet freedoms. "That was the moment the Kremlin started paying attention to this new threat, and it was absolutely clear that it was the big thing for years to come."

The "Snow Revolution" protests in Moscow, 2011.

Epsilon/Getty

Online freedoms began unraveling a month after Putin took office in 2012. The Russian Duma (the lower house of the Federal Assembly) started drafting an internet restriction bill that lawmakers claimed was necessary to protect minors from child sexual abuse material, online drug markets and content that encouraged self harm. In practice, it allowed government authorities to create an internet blacklist.

Roskomnadzor now had legal cover to pull down websites it didn't like. Today, the internet in Russia is still markedly more open than it is in countries like China, Egypt and Vietnam. But Russia's strategy of censorship is more subtle, focused less on suppressing speech than on oppressing competition.

"The idea is not to prevent you from getting information," Soldatov said. "The idea is to discourage you from participating in political activities of any kind, online or offline." 

The Kremlin's aversion to political opposition explains why political protests are often followed by a tightening of controls. The Moscow demonstrations of 2011 and 2012 led to the first internet restriction bill, and Telegram was targeted in 2018 after protests were organized on the platform. 

Then, in 2019, the opposition began translating online engagement into electoral victories.

A new era

Activists, journalists and opposition politicians had proven adept at maneuvering around the digital barriers the Kremlin had been throwing up since 2012. Navalny continued to use his prominent online platform to trouble authorities. Though demonized on state TV, many of his YouTube documentaries on shadowy Kremlin activities racked up hundreds of millions of views. Older Russians who regularly watched Russian television thought Navalny was a menace. Many middle-class, internet-savvy Russians, however, were receptive to his cause.

Though the Kremlin punished Navalny in various ways, convicting him on trumped-up fraud charges and barring him from running for office, authorities showed some restraint in suppressing his movement.

"Navalny was tolerated for a decade," said William Partlett, a professor at Melbourne Law School who researches post-Soviet societies and is authoring a book on Navalny. "He was exposing high-level corruption among very important, powerful people in the inner circle of the Kremlin. And he was allowed to do that, and I think the idea was, 'we can manage this guy.'" 

That changed in 2019. Navalny, unable to run for Moscow city council himself, encouraged his followers to adopt the "smart voting" doctrine. It meant voting for anyone other than the ruling United Russia party, be they liberals, avowed communists or hardcore nationalists. The plan worked: The "systemic opposition" won 20 of Moscow's 45 seats, reducing the United Russia Party's majority from 38 to 25.

The same system was used successfully in regional elections, ousting three United Russia governors. In a world where freedom of expression is fine up until the point where it infringes on Kremlin control, this was all unacceptable. Navalny's opposition movement was powered by online platforms, from Telegram to Twitter, and now it was producing tangible offline results. 

"Now the question for Putin becomes, is the internet manageable?" Partlett said.

The Kremlin cracked down hard. An online libel law was enacted last December, allowing sites to be blocked and people to be jailed for "defaming" public figures. Specific activists and journalists have been targeted: one journalist was jailed for 25 days for retweeting a photo that carried the date and time of a planned protest, while a video of police violently interrogating blogger Gennady Shulga was leaked by the police themselves, Shulga said, "to show people what the authorities can do." 

Navalny's treatment played out in front of the world. He was poisoned in an airport in August 2020, then flown to Berlin, where he recuperated. After returning to Russia, he was immediately imprisoned. Meanwhile, Putin amended the constitution in April to allow him to rule as president until 2036. 

Alexei Navalny, the face of Russia's liberal opposition, is currently jailed in Russia. 

Dmitry Serebryakov/Getty

Taking on big tech

Litreev talks about his exploits like a nimble David outmaneuvering a lumbering, sluggish Goliath. He knows the battle will be perilous but expects he and his fellow activists will ultimately prevail. 

"The level of expertise and level of professionalism on the government side is much lower than our side," he said.

Litreev points to a spat between Twitter and Kremlin as evidence. In March, Roskomnadzor demanded Twitter take down thousands of tweets dating back to 2017 that encouraged illegal activity -- which includes child porn, drug markets and, of course, news stories related to opposition candidates. To motivate Twitter to fulfill the request, the telecoms regulator throttled Twitter's speed for months. 

But, in a flashback to the Roskomnadzor inadvertently blocking Google amid a clumsy attempt to ban Telegram, sites like Reddit.com and Microsoft.com went down too. People realized that authorities had targeted the "t.co" link-shortening formation Twitter uses, which clobbered any website that ended with the letter "t."

It was a conspicuous fumble on the part of Roskomnadzor, but authorities did manage to isolate and slow down Twitter. The initial missteps masked the use of a concerning new suite of powers that had been signed into law in 2019, called "the sovereign internet," or RuNet. 

The law requires ISPs to connect a new range of state hardware to internet exchange points. These "big red boxes" all direct to a control center in Moscow and allow the Kremlin to manage the flow of traffic from one region of the country to another. The system has been called a "digital Iron Curtain," akin to China's Great Firewall that separates its internet from the rest of the world. 

Soldatov says this comparison is inaccurate. The Kremlin isn't interested in isolating itself from the rest of the internet, he says, since that would prove economically ruinous. Rather, it's a tool to control the flow of information from one region of the country to the next.

"The sovereign internet was never about the West. It's about what's going on inside the country," he said. "The most sensitive content is generated inside the country."

Moscovites protesting the jailing of Navalny in April.

Anadolu Agency/Getty

Roskomnadzor was able to pair the new sovereign internet hardware with existing data surveillance technology to selectively slow Twitter traffic. In the future, the Kremlin could use the same technology to, for example, throttle certain apps to prevent livestreams from a protest in Moscow from reaching other parts of the country. 

It was the government's first known experiment with its newest online tools -- and it worked.

Twitter has removed over 6,000 tweets, according to Roskomnadzor. In the months since, Russian authorities have demanded Facebook take down content, fined Google $81,000 for not taking down content, and told Facebook and Twitter to store all data of Russian users within the country. On Aug. 26, Twitter and Facebook were both fined for not storing such data quickly enough.

Facebook, Google and Twitter declined to comment. Roskomnadzor was contacted but didn't respond. 

Just as the Kremlin pressures Facebook, Google and Twitter, it fosters local substitutes like RuTube, a YouTube alternative owned by the state gas company. Law requires Android phones to come preloaded with 16 Russian-made apps, including the VK social media app and the Yandex search engine, while Apple is required to prompt Russians to download the apps during the setup process of new iPhones. It's part of a plan meant to better allow authorities to control online platforms so that anti-Kremlin content can't go viral. 

"The tools the Russian government uses are evolving with time. They are much more advanced if we compare them to, say, 2018," Litreev acknowledged. "But modern problems require modern solutions." 

The modern problems

Litreev's latest project is Solar Labs, a decentralized VPN that's based on blockchain and incentivized with cryptocurrency. The Solar Labs platform will allow people around the world to host their own VPN servers, for which they'll be paid with Solar Labs cryptocurrency tokens. If enough people from a variety of countries host their own VPN servers, it'll be impossible for all servers to be taken down at once. 

"Even if the government will do whatever it takes to block our service, they will not succeed unless they just shut the whole internet for the whole country," he said. Solar Labs is designed to be useful not just for Russians, but also Iranians, Chinese and Belarussians, all of whom face strict internet censorship. 

Litreev says the Kremlin's crackdowns on activists, journalists and dissidents are acts of hysteria. The more extreme the measure, the more desperation it reflects. 

And the measures have gotten extreme. It's not just in Russia, either. In May, Belarus' ruler, who's closely aligned with Putin, used military force to ground a RyanAir plane midflight to detain a dissident journalist. The whole region's rules are being rewritten.

Litreev wants to go home to see old faces and places, but says people like him need to work to create a safe Russia. He hopes that Solar Labs' VPN, which launches in September, will be part of that process. Meanwhile, Litreev feels safe in Estonia -- though he makes sure any flights he takes avoid both Russian and Belarusian airspace. 

Soldatov, living in London, is less hopeful. He said he was optimistic five years ago, when he co-authored The Red Web, but that the events since then have sapped his confidence.

"We use this word, 'unprecedented,'" he said. "The problem when something is unprecedented is you cannot calculate your risks, because you do not know where they are going to stop." 


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Thailand Outlawing Crypto Payments. This Week's Top Bitcoin And Crypto News


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Thailand Outlawing Crypto Payments. This Week's Top Bitcoin and Crypto News


Thailand Outlawing Crypto Payments. This Week's Top Bitcoin and Crypto News

Welcome to Nonfungible Tidbits, a weekly roundup of news in crypto, NFTs and their related realms.

Our lead story this week is Thailand's upcoming ban on crypto payments for goods and services. We'll also cover Jerome Powell's remarks on crypto laws, a new debit card from Robinhood, NFL blockchain sponsorships and recent trademarks filed by Meta regarding crypto. 

Stay tuned for more next week.


Thailand bans crypto payments for goods and services

gavel image
Getty/Lambert

Thailand's securities regulator announced that crypto payments for goods and services will be outlawed starting April 1. The ban is intended to fend off financial instability, according to the country's Securities and Exchange Commission. The risk of cyber theft was cited as another concern.

The barring of crypto payments comes when cryptocurrency ownership in Thailand is high. Over 20% of the population ages 16 to 64 owns cryptocurrency, according to the Bangkok Post. Though crypto payments will be illegal, cryptocurrency investments are still allowed. 


Fed Reserve Chairman says crypto needs new rules

gettyimages-1228687332
Getty

During a banking panel on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell raised concerns about the risks associated with cryptocurrency, noting more US regulation will likely be required. "Our existing regulatory frameworks were not built with a digital world in mind. Stablecoins, central bank digital currencies, and digital finance more generally, will require changes to existing laws and regulation or even entirely new rules and frameworks," Powell said.

Powell's remarks come after President Biden's executive order earlier this month, which directed federal agencies to come up with policy ideas for the cryptocurrency industry and look into the possibility of a US central bank digital currency


Robinhood unveils new debit card with crypto rewards

Robinhood
Getty

Robinhood announced the launch of a new debit card that allows users to earn crypto and stock rewards. Cardholders can round up purchases and invest the difference, aka "spare change," in crypto or stock, and Robinhood will offer a 10% to 100% bonus on rewards earned at the end of each week (this bonus is capped at $10 per week). This card will replace its existing crypto debit card and currently has a waitlist.

Robinhood made headlines last year during the GameStop stock frenzy, which created steep dips and rises in the stock price, and cost hedge funds billions. You can read about the GameStop stock saga here.

Read more about Robinhood's debit card here


NFL says limited blockchain sponsorships OK for teams 

gettyimages-492854507.jpg
Getty

The National Football League issued a memo this week allowing NFL teams to accept limited blockchain sponsorships. The sponsorships, which are subject to NFL approval, may last no longer than three years and stadium signage is prohibited. Restrictions for cryptocurrency and fan tokens will remain in place. The memo also noted that teams may accept NFT-related sponsorships, also subject to NFL approval. 


Meta (Facebook) files trademarks for crypto exchanges, tokens and wallets

Meta and Facebook
James Martin/CNET

This week Meta, the recently renamed parent company of Facebook, filed trademarks covering cryptocurrency exchanges, tokens and wallets. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced last week that NFTs would be coming to Instagram, another social media platform owned by the multinational technology conglomerate. 

Meta has held digital currency aspirations for some time. The company attempted to launch its own stablecoin cryptocurrency called diem, but abandoned its plans and sold off the remaining assets earlier this year. The new trademarks suggest Meta may be taking another shot at creating cryptocurrency products.


Thanks for reading. We'll be back with plenty more next week. In the meantime, check out this story from Queenie Wong on shopping in the Metaverse. 


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