Favourite Spot

play.google.com Starbucks has announced it will suspend advertising on some social media platforms in response to hate speech. The coffee giant joins global brands including Coca-Cola, and Unilever which have recently removed advertising from social platforms. A Starbucks spokesperson told BBC the social media "pause" would not include YouTube, owned by Google. "We believe in bringing communities together, both in person and online," Starbucks said in a statement. The brand said it would "have discussions internally and with media partners and civil rights organizations to stop the spread of hate speech". But it will continue to post on social media without paid promotion, it said. The announcement came after Coca-Cola called for "greater accountability" from social media firms. Coca Cola said it would pause advertising on all social media platforms globally, while Unilever, owner of Ben & Jerry's ...

static.independent.co.uk Google has announced that it will begin automatically deleting some user data which is presently retained indefinitely by default.  Google CEO Sundar Pichai, announced a new set of privacy-focused features in a blog post, he emphasised the company’s commitment to privacy: “As we design our products, we focus on three important principles: keeping your information safe, treating it responsibly and putting you in control. Today, we are announcing privacy improvements to help do that, including changes to our data retention practices across our core products to keep less data by default.” Google will be moving from offering users the option to autodelete data which was introduced last year and accessible in Google’s Activity Controls section after three months or 18 months to deleting data after 18 months for new users by default. This will affect location history; search history; voice commands collected via Google Assistant, and YouTube vi...