As an American, it is not uncommon to stick to only American-made sites. It really helps that some of the biggest social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Snapchat, for example – are all American-made. However, for websites that aren’t popular throughout the world, it is a good idea for them to consider appealing to different cultures. This will allow them to appeal to a broader sense of the world by combining different cultural traits to make an “aggregate culture” of the countries the website is trying most to appeal to. The article mentions that the approach used oversimplifies each culture – which I agree with. In addition, many countries are not homogenous; there are different cultures within a lot of countries. For the result to be truly accurate, each culture within a country might have to be combined. Furthermore, many websites are taking the minimalist route, which I think appeals to a broader audience because it is less heavily weighed down with unneccesary detail and can allow people to put their own sense of self within a website. This can be done by “seeing what you want to see”, which might take away some of the cultural boundaries mentioned… meaning that language might be one of the only cultural boundaries to be found!

https://uxdesign.cc/ux-for-a-global-audience-how-to-map-cultural-needs-beyond-language-46b6b8af08f8

Dan Ammann, Cruise CEO, announced the companies first attempt at a driverless car on Tuesday. The Origin by Cruise will have no steering wheel or combustion engine. Some of the world’s major cities are beginning to restrict internal combustion engines and evicting fossil fuel vehicles, which was the inspiration for Ammann. Cruise is a subsidiary of General Motors, where they are striving to be one-hundred percent eco-friendly within the next 5 years. The Origins release data is not yet confirmed, but co-founder Kyle Vogt said “Soon.” The Origin will eventually be competition for Uber and Lyft. Read more here: https://qz.com/1789097/gms-cruise-reveals-its-driverless-shuttle-to-replace-the-car/

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Cyberbullying is a larger problem than regular bullying considering 95% of united states teens have access to the internet. Furthermore, this type of bullying happens around the clock and teens cannot seem to get away from it. Other forms of bullying usually happens face to face to teens can go home to escape it. With cyberbullying, teens can receive bullying all around the clock and it can harm their mental health at a more rapid speed than other forms of bullying.

But one thing many people don’t realize is cyberbullying can go past the teen years. This is often referred to as harassment (bullying) or online harassment (cyberbullying). As the article stated, 4 in 10 Americans have experienced online harassment. This shows that cyberbullying doesn’t go away as we get older and we will constantly have it around us.

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https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/cyber-bullying-statistics

New iPhone and operating system launch, but your phone seems to slow down. Coincidence. May want to purge your phone before an update. The more storage you have used up, the slower your phone will go. Your home wifi could affect your phone as well, so make sure you invest in your wifi router. See what else you can do for your phone.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/technology/personaltech/new-iphones-slow-tech-myth.html

Micro-targeting is the practice of targeting individuals or groups with specific interests and viewpoints with the intent of influencing their thoughts. This practice is effective by itself, but its’ potency skyrockets when used in conjunction with social media. A perfect example of this can be found in the 2016 United States presidential election, when Brad Parscale, digital media manager of Donald Trump’s campaign, ran “50,000 to 60,000 variations of Facebook ads each day.” (Wong, 2018). These advertisements would present one view to one audience then present a completely different spin to another. To learn more about social media and micro-targeting, check out this article on the Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/19/facebook-political-ads-social-media-history-online-democracy

The evolution of technology has dramatically changed over the past 30 years. It has become a way of life and we wouldnt be able to survey without it. The robot industry has changed the way we have done manufacturing and how we use our technology to help us everyday.https://www.moneycrashers.com/technology-effects-society-manufacturing/?fbclid=IwAR3wqmNIQLS1HaHwTon2VkpPgX-yGgg6OXNwphT574lwBNQcXwRtL70oo1E

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CNBC has reported that many users are looking to replace their Fitbit with another fitness tracker after they heard of Google’s acquisition of the company. Users said that they dont trust Google and that they think that they are being tracked by that device. CNBC reports further, since Google bought Fitbit last Nov, users have been searching for alternative fitness trackers and most have already switched.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/17/people-getting-rid-of-fitbits-after-google.html

Have you ever thought of how we are constantly being watched? It is said that the United States is almost turning into China when it comes to the constant surveillance every citizen goes through daily. This is an everyday event and no one is doing anything in order to stop it. Having “Alexa”, “siri”, face recognition, recordings, photos, and a ton more.

In the future this collection of data will be somewhat surveillanced by the government, if it is not already. In this article it is discussed how Apple refuses to to give out personal information on an IPhone or any other Apple product to the police and “untrustworthy” government if there is no consent to. Both Obama and Trump have wanted Apple to break their privacy code by letting government go through personal IPhones if they wanted to. This suggests that political leaders have neglecting following privacy policies when it comes to citizens of the United States. To read more click on the link below!

TikTok admits to suppressing videos from some persons with disabilities, LGBTQ2 community

TikTok, the popular video-sharing social networking service, faced scrutiny late last year for reportedly censoring the videos of people with disabilities and people in the LGBTQ community. This censorship was apart of of TikTok’s anti-bullying policy that aims to protect users they deem to be “susceptible to bullying or harassment based on their physical or mental condition”. TikTok prevented some users’ videos from showing outside of their home country, whereas others had their videos removed from the “For You” page after the video reached a certain view count. After the many criticisms of TikTok’s policy went public, TikTok issued a public statement admitting that the policy was wrong and that they would get rid of the censorship.

In my opinion, I think that TikTok’s anti-bullying policy is a double-edged sword. On one hand, I do think that it was great that TikTok cared so much about its users that they made a policy to attempt to decrease the chances of bullying and harassment on the platform. On the other hand, I sympathize with the users that TikTok deemed to be “susceptible to bullying and harassment”. If I were a TikToker, I wouldn’t like the fact that TikTok is deciding to suppress and censor my videos without my consent. Additionally, I think that this anti-bullying policy was one that could easily be interpreted the wrong way. For example, by repeatedly censoring the posts of LGBTQ users who use the rainbow flag emoji in their captions, it can easily seem like TikTok is discriminating against members of the LGBTQ community.

Overall, I think TikTok made a good decision to drop the censorship and state openly that the policy was wrong. I believe that the best way for TikTok to protect users from harassment and bullying is to have strict anti-bullying policies when it comes to what users can and cannot say in the comment section. If a user writes a comment on a video that gets flagged by many other users for bullying or harassment, TikTok should warn that user that their account could be deleted if they continue to post such comments.

With advancements in technology happening faster and faster, there may well be an adoption of more remote patient monitoring on the horizon this year. A large amount of hospitals and care systems are interested in expanding remote monitoring in the upcoming year, up to 88% of them. Among the focus is smartphones and tablets and the use of apps based reporting systems, along with the long-used teleconference systems. Also, use of electronic health records is increasing in the upcoming years. Eric Rock, CEO of Vivify Health states that a select few systems “have had positive outcomes toward meeting the quadruple aim – improved patient experience, improved clinical experience, better outcomes, and lower costs”. He also goes on to say that we need “Apps that can handle multi-condition across a wide range of devices to fulfill the true potential of RPM while remaining affordable”.We need intelligence built into the apps to filter the noise so it does not get ignored and create information fatigue. We also need to be connected to existing healthcare infrastructure, including standards such as HIPAA and others. Non-face-to-face relationships with patients also require patients to become involved in their own care and pay attention to the requirements of the doctors, which presents it’s own challenges. The chance for these new technologies to grow can only happen if the systems are easy to use and patients can understand what they are using. https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/remote-patient-monitoring-gain-big-momentum-2020