TikTok Strikes Deal With Oracle
Last Friday, The Trump Administration announced their plans to remove WeChat and TikTok from U.S. app stores. The app removal was set to go into effect for TikTok at midnight on Sunday, September 20th. However, TikTok was able to reach an agreement with the U.S. software company, Oracle, that President Trump approved of on Saturday, September 20th. The deal will create a new U.S. company, TikTok Global, where Oracle and Walmart would own 20%. This agreement concludes weeks of drama between the Trump Administration and TikTok’s parent company ByteDance. But don’t hold your breath the deal still awaits formal U.S. approval. And if somehow you missed the TikTok saga, you can check out our past Social Spheres for the complete timeline!
U.S. Judge Blocks the Trump Administration’s Removal of WeChat From App Stores
The Trump Administration announced their plan to ban TikTok and WeChat, but the removal didn’t go through for either app. On Sunday, September 20th, U.S. Judge Laurel Beeler halted the plan from moving forward due to its First Amendment violations and wrongful targeting of Chinese students in U.S, students living in China, and people with Chinese business relationships. Beeler wrote, “Certainly the government’s overarching national-security interest is significant. But on this record — while the government has established that China’s activities raise significant national security concerns — it has put in scant little evidence that its effective ban of WeChat for all U.S. users addresses those concerns.”
Instagram Rolls Out New IGTV Feature
Instagram’s VP of Product, Vishal Shah, shares Instagram’s new feature: Automatic Captions. Automatic Captions is IGTV’s latest update that allows more people to use Instagram and successfully watch videos on IGTV. The more people use Automatic Captions the better the AI will get in order to improve quality. Instagram hopes to continue fostering an inclusive community and expand the number of countries and languages where this feature is available.
New Emojis Approved to Help Describe 2020
There’s no better way to describe 2020 than this new set of anguish emojis. The emojis were approved by Unicode Consortium and are set to hit our phones in 2021. Some emojis include: a face exhaling, face in clouds, heart on fire, and face with spiral eyes.