Instagram no longer allows people without an account to view photos and videos on computers, It turns out Nearly 50% of Twitter Accounts Talking about Coronavirus Might Be Bots, and the Air Force wants you to hack its satellite.
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Instagram has put up that annoying wall preventing unregistered people from viewing photos and videos from public profiles on computers and tablets. Until recently, public profiles, those that don’t have the padlock that restricts content to registered followers, have always been accessible regardless of login. Social media quickly pointed out how the change will lead to Instagram annoyingly populating search results the same way Pinterest does, some suggesting search engines should either remove or somehow identify results that require a login to get at the actual image.
Twitter is dealing with a pandemic of bots clogging the platform with misinformation about COVID-19. According to a story from Vice, researchers recently found that nearly 46% of users tweeting about the coronavirus have the characteristics of bots. That means they tweet more frequently than is humanly possible, for example, or appear to be in one country and then another a few hours later. At this point, it should be common practice to verify and cross-reference what you read, support local journalism, and maybe, just stay off Twitter a little more.
And lastly, after a successful inaugural hackathon last year, the U.S. Air Force is putting the call out once again to the nation’s best hackers to break into a F-15 fighter jet. What’s interesting is how easy it was to convince the Secretary of Defense to allow a bunch of hackers to compromise a military satellite, according to a story from TechCrunch, quoting an official who said there is great support behind the initiative. Don’t expect the results of these events to be publicized though, since the vulnerabilities are real, it’s not really the kind of info the government wants floating around.