Posted On 07 Jul 2020

Bad Vibe(r) for Facebook
The messaging app Viber (1 billion users) has severed all links with Facebook, according to a company statement on Thursday. The company stated that this was due to Facebook’s failure to deal with data breaches or hate speech on its platform.
Viber has immediately stopped buying advertising on Facebook, and Facebook SDK, Facebook Connect, and Giphy will be removed from the app imminently.
The company said that the breaches of data privacy highlighted by the Cambridge Analytica scandal were already highly concerning, and the fact that Facebook had, in their opinion, not done enough to prevent hate speech spreading across the platform in the wake of the George Floyd killing and Black Lives Matter protests, sealed their decision.
Viber stated that the company was also fully in support of the #StopHateForProfit movement, established by the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League; this movement has called for advertisers to withdraw their spending on Facebook for the whole of July to send a message that the company must do more to address the issues that led to Viber’s decision.

New Covid-19 Information Available on Yelp
The online business directory, review, and reservation service, Yelp, has announced that every business page will now contain a section letting customers know about the action that a business is taking to keep its workers and customers safe during the ongoing pandemic.
The new section will outline the health and safety precautions in place for each business and what options it can offer, e.g., eating in, outdoor dining areas, personal visits, virtual assistants, delivery, or curbside pickup. The section will also allow potential visitors to see what steps a business has taken to enforce social distancing, what sanitation procedures are in place, and whether employees are required to use PPE. Additionally, customers will be able to find out what other requirements a business has of them, for example, whether a potential customer will have to have their temperature checked, and whether it will be compulsory to wear a mask when visiting a business.
This is not the first initiative Yelp has launched to help businesses in these difficult times: contact-free delivery options were added to the directory in March, and a GoFundMe button was added to business pages so that customers could choose to make a contribution for businesses suffering losses.