Last week started off lukewarm for Technews, but then picked up speed. And with that: Hello to the very first iCare.report!
Facebook vs News Corp
Facebook vs Australia or rather Facebook vs Rupert Murdoch - that was one of the big questions and discussions of the last week. (In any case, I have changed my view on this point from one day to the other).
That Facebook is actually doing the right thing by blocking media content in and from Australia was out of the question for me from the beginning, because a link tax is simply a disaster for the internet - and for "small" media providers and journalists in particular.
But in fact this is not about Australia: Australia has rather let itself be harnessed by News Corp and is making a disastrous net policy for the media giant Rupert Murdoch.
And Facebook? As crazy as it may sound, Facebook is defending the open web - because in this case it has a vested interest in doing so. And we should support Facebook in this, whether we like Mark Zuckerberg's company or not.
And as we know today, Facebook has already won the battle - and perhaps also the war of the news that is raging here in Europe.
What's News
It was probably clear to most people that German companies would receive more notices of fines under the GDPR. Many more clerks at the data protection authorities of the federal states caused the number of notices to increase by 60% in 2020. And this is likely to continue in 2021 - and probably hit SMEs more and more often.
According to the BBC, you can buy fake Amazon reviews for as little as £8 - if you buy 1,000 of them at once. And that's what the third party retailers of the Amazon Marketplace like to do. Those who buy blindly according to reviews will certainly be disappointed again and again in future - despite all the content moderation by Amazon.
The only controversial question at the beginning of last week was that of location-based pay? And indeed: the first companies have already announced that they will pay lower wages to employees in (permanent) home offices who move to more favourable locations. This should be a logical consequence for many remote workers. However, where competition is particularly high, it is hardly possible to argue with locally low market prices - or perhaps it is?
iCare.report
The iCare.report is all about technology, media, politics. The weekly email report delivers the absolute essentials from the last episodes of the eicker.TV (German) livestream and is a purely private commentary by Gerrit Eicker on the most important tech news of the week.