Check in each Friday afternoon for a roundup of the week’s most interesting digital campaigns and stories as selected by rotating members of Team Tunheim.
Elon Musk Sends Tweet via Spacex’s Starlink Satellite Broadband
Man-of the-future Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, The Boring Company and SpaceX, published a series of tweets via SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellites. Back in May 2019, 60 satellites were sent on their maiden voyage into low orbit, marking the first step of a multi-million dollar project designed to provide cheap broadband to people around the world. This week, Elon used the satellite network to send a tweet to his 28 million followers: “Sending this tweet through space via Starlink Satellite.” When the tweet was successfully posted, Musk posted a follow-up tweet reading “Whoa, it worked!”
BBC is Fighting Censorship in China, Making Their Content Accessible via Tor
The BBC made its international news website available via Tor, a platform that can help people in China and other countries avoid government surveillance and censorship. Tor is a network of worldwide servers that protects its users identities by moving their traffic across different Tor servers and encrypting traffic so it isn’t traced back to the user. Instead of visiting bbc.co.uk or bbc.com, users of Tor browser can visit the site at bbcnewsv2vjtpsuy.onion.
TikTok Continues to Lead Social App Download Rankings in September
Almost 60 million people downloaded Tik Tok in September, keeping it at the top of download rankings. The countries with the most installs of the app during this period were India at 44% of its total downloads and the US at 8%. Although Tik Tok has not released any official data regarding its usage, reports have suggested that TikTok’s billion-dollar advertising push has helped it rocket up the download charts.
FTC Rules that Selling Followers and Likes is Illegal, Along with Posting Fake Reviews
Time may soon be up for fake sellers – and for those who’ve bought their way to significant social media followings. This week, the FTC has fined Florida businessman German Calas, Jr. $2.5 million over the sale of “fake indicators of social media influence” (followers, likes, and reposts). The FTC also issued a warning to Sunday Riley, who wrote fake reviews of her company’s products on Sephora’s website and ordered her employees to do the same.
