Happy Saturday, damned and damned! How are you? In Maldita, from one part of the world to another: Meta and our data to train its AI was paralyzed and we explain that in Latin America nothing had been announced about it; We address the hoaxes about the Joe Biden’s mental and health status to be president of USA and the misinformation about the president of Argentina, Javier Milei; and in United Kingdom a Just Stop Oil protest has dyed Stonehenge orange.
Meanwhile, there is something happening around the entire globe, wherever there is a mobile phone with a TikTok account: the social network has live video broadcasts where viewers can give and receive gifts, money through. There are murky things, like the fact that the real cost is not directly seen and that they use dynamics similar to those slot machines (and you already know that there are many minors on TikTok). Once again we go inside TikTok to see What risks does this have?.
TikTok coins and slot machines disguised as gifts
We have seen betting mini gamescontent that can enhance eating disorderserotic content that directs to websites with pornography and sexist videos. Today we tell you that on TikTok There is also a functionality that means that, in live broadcasts, users can aspire to get money and also spend it doing gifts to the streamers. You can read it in detail here and herebut I’ll tell you the most important thing.
The option to send gifts automatically appears on the screen the moment the user accesses a live broadcast within the platform. TikTok encourages the viewer to “show support” for the content creator by sending gifts, and makes it very easy.
What are those gifts? In the end, money, but it is not seen directly. There is a reward system and what is sent are some kind of objects and animals, sometimes animated. Its price ranges between 0.01 and 440 euros, but the user does not see the real price because there are own currencies on TikTok. Each TikTok coin is approximately equivalent to one euro cent, meaning that up to 44,000 TikTok coins can be sent.
Indeed, doing this conversion is a hassle. We have spoken with experts who have explained to him that tokens and virtual currencies confuse us and they do lose track of money. This happens on TikTok, and it happened a lot at music festivals and other events. And pay attention to this: this confusion worsens in minors and can carry risks such as massive expenses of which the user is not aware. you have it here.
Minors or not minors,What can lead someone to spend money on a TikTok live show?? To make ASMR requests and request sounds concrete with objects or body parts, for example. There are also broadcasts in which one or more people perform specific movements or start dancing when they receive gifts from viewers, and live shows in which two or more users meet. challenge to see who gets the most gifts.
And then there is what of the chests. They contain TikTok coins inside and the first user who “opens” them gets them at the end of the countdown launched by the streamer. They are usually done by TikTokers who play video games or try virtual games, and they encourage viewers to meet goals. Sometimes this also means that They have to spend money.
For example, the goal may be to receive a certain number of gifts. Let’s imagine a slot machine to which you have to add money thinking that when it reaches a certain amount it will give you the prize…Similar, No? In this case you don’t even know if it will be your turn– The more people there are connected, the more difficult it is to get the coins as a reward. Again, the chest model can entail large expenditure of money without users being fully aware, and can also be addictiveespecially in younger profiles.
It is assumed that only users over 18 years of age can send gifts and use virtual currencies within the platform, but we already know that age verification mechanisms sometimes are lax and they fail.
How come I don’t have space left for WhatsApp!?
One of the little nightmares of the digital age is running out of space on our mobile, computer or in the cloud (whatever it is where we save our files online). Well, if you have an Android phone and you used Google Drive, if you were already suffering because you had little space… put more pressure on the pot. Now the backup of your WhatsApp account (your messages, audios, photos, videos and gifs that you receive or send) also takes up space in Drive. Not before: there was an agreement between both companies and that backup did not mean a few extra megabytes or gigabytes for your limited space. For example, mine is currently taking up 4.2 gigabytes.
In case you didn’t know that this option existed, the backup It is a possibility that WhatsApp offers to safeguard periodically all your chats, photos, audios or videos received and sent through the application. You can automate within the app so that it is saved as frequently as you want (daily, weekly, monthly) or never. What is it for? In case you have a problem with your phone and your WhatsApp application is deleted, or if you change your phone and don’t want to lose your chats and files.
Total, now all of this adds to the available space on your Drive (because Google is also the only server where they can be saved on Android, on iPhone they are saved in iCloud where they have always taken up space). If we are at the limit, Here we leave you several ways for recover space and be able to make your copy of WhatsAppfor example by deleting unnecessary files, using a secondary account, or paying for additional storage.
in three bits
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When the sun heats. I do not know if where you live the same thing will be happening to you, but here we are already having really hot days. Furthermore, summer began on Thursday and we are already looking forward to the holidays. Although I will remind you of this topic when we are already in the middle of July and August, here I give you some recommendations so that your mobile does not suffer from the heat and get damaged. Because yes, high temperatures can affect our health and that of our mobile devices. Tips: do not put it directly in the sun (or bury it in the sand…), limit the use of apps and do not abuse fast charging. A recurring question, and can it explode if it overheats? The risk of explosion exists, but it is not common and there are safeguards in phones to prevent it.
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Stop spoilers. Is there a new season of a certain series and you still haven’t had time to catch up? Do you live in fear of swallowing a spoiler? Welcome to my life. If you are like me, take note of the advice in this article about how to silence terms on social networks and the internet to avoid topics that we do not want to see. Beyond the more playful aspect, this not only serves to avoid ruining the end of a movie or series. It is also useful to avoid finding topics on social networks that do not interest us or that we are not comfortable with.
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Don’t even trust the urls. Smishing, phishing, spoofing,… Our vocabulary is filling up with terms that we do not understand and that refer to forms of cyber attacks in which they can try to scam us. The important thing is not so much to memorize the name but to be alert, so today I will tell you one more: he cloaking. Scammers use it to hide the URL of fraudulent websites. That is, you click on a link that seems safe… and when you enter it turns out that It is a different and quite suspicious website. It is difficult not to fall for it, but the ideal would be to carefully review the context in which we find ourselves with that link, and ignore very striking messages or offers that are too good to be true.
Do you have questions about daily life online? Is there any topic in the world of technology that you are curious about and about which you would like us to provide more information? Do you want to share an interesting topic with the cursed community? Write to us at [email protected]! And do not forget subscribe.
