The Round-Up 009: Call this any name you want
There is a scene in Lil Nas X's fantasy video for "Call Me By Your Name", where he appears to be on the ascent towards an angel in heaven. Then mid-flight and out of nowhere, he grabs hold of a stripper pole and slides all the way to hell in CK briefs. It's not the weirdest, albeit discombobulating, cut from Nas X's controversial video but it contrasts the fine philosophical line between light and darkness, a theme that is consistent with this week's Round-Up. Let's run through it quickly;
Ghosts of a past hack came back to haunt Facebook over the weekend when data sets of over 500 million users were found online. Business Insider suggests the data is likely old but adds to Facebook's ongoing shoddy track record with managing user information.
Following the Cambridge Analytica scandal back in 2018, the social media giant deactivated a feature that made it possible to search for users via phone numbers. The next year, the company revealed it had patched a vulnerability in its servers after over 400 million user records similarly surfaced online. Back then, TechCrunch reported: "Each record contained a user’s unique Facebook ID and the phone number listed on the account. A user’s Facebook ID is typically a long, unique and public number associated with their account, which can be easily used to discern an account’s username".
The latest leak of Facebook records has similar characteristics, only now, the released records also contain location data of users from 106 countries. Facebook has confirmed only 2.5 million emails from the records are valid, but experts are more worried about security. Precise user information like names, emails and phone numbers can turn users into victims of exploitation, identity theft and long-term advance-fee scams.
A little over 15 years ago —before Quora and three days after Reddit—Yahoo Answers launched as one of the pioneers of storied Q&A forums on the internet. For years the forum provided visitors with crowd-sourced knowledge that could range from informed academic responses to death metal conspiracy theories about your favourite childhood cartoon characters. But a lot of things have changed for its parent company, Yahoo since then. In 2017, its owners closed a $4.4 billion sale to American telecoms giant Verizon Media Group and since then tried to revamp a subscription model for some of its better-funnelled products.
In its email to The Verge, Yahoo acknowledged the role of Yahoo Answers in shaping 21st-century internet culture but also admitted it had become less popular over the years as user demands have changed. "To that end, we have decided to shift our resources away from Yahoo Answers to focus on products that better serve our members and deliver on Yahoo’s promise of providing premium trusted content", the email said.
Yahoo Answers is shutting down on the 4th of May, but current users will be able to download their data before then.
After logging 6-years of consecutive losses, totalling about $4.5billion, South Korean electronic manufacturer, LG has decided to bow out of the smartphone game. On July 31st, LG will be completely winding down its mobile phone business to focus on other tech development, like robotics, artificial intelligence and building electric car parts. In a global smartphone market dominated by Apple and Samsung in recent years, LG will join fallen mobile phone giants like Nokia and Blackberry, who didn't exactly transition past successes into revenue in the age of touchscreen phones.
In a Round-Up filled with a series of unusually glum headlines, we happy to report Egyptian VC firm Sawari Ventures has just closed a $71 million round of fundraising for North-African start-ups. Since it opened up its purse 10 years ago, Sawari's investment portfolio has included "ride-hailing service SWVL, software startup Instabug, and AI chat-based personal assistant Elves, but its sweet spots are the hardware, education, healthcare, cleantech and fintech sectors", TechCrunch reports. The newly raised round of funds will however see Sawari taking its ventures out of Egypt to neighbouring North African countries like Morocco and Tunisia. For Sawari, North Africa is an exemplar space for innovation, because available talent and technology are severely underfunded.
Sawari's bold moves in the North African VC world also makes sense within the context of the ongoing scramble for African users and tech ecosystems. Last year, Egypt trailed miles behind Nigeria and Kenya for investment in tech, raising only $211 million, against Kenya and Nigeria, where $564million and $747 million, were raised respectively. As the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfcFTA) takes effect this year and beyond, collective growth will be required for African nations to innovate away from some of the most pervasive problems on the continent like unemployment, illiteracy and poverty.