Big Tech Battle for Content Creators, Cybersecurity Insights

This week, the battle of big social media companies Facebook, TikTok and YouTube got tighter, prompting huge investments to attract content creators to their sites. On the other hand, Twitter announced the shutdown of its Fleets feature, which aimed to encourage its users to interact more on the platform. 

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More news below:

• Sophisticated cyberattacks usually target large enterprises but attacks against small and medium businesses have also become profitable, Claudio Martinelli, Managing Director for Latin America of Kaspersky wrote on Mexico Business this week. “Cybercriminals are more likely to conduct advanced attacks when the cost of organizing it is lower than the potential revenue,” he explains. Read the complete article here.
   

• Demands to remove content from Twitter by governments around the world increased 26 percent in 2H2020, reports the platform. India ranked the highest of all government information requests in 2H2020 with 9,492 in total, surpassing the US, which is ranked second and comprised 22 percent of global information requests. In third and fourth place are Japan and France with 17 and 14 percent. In Mexico, 486 information requests were reported in total. Read the full article here.

• Eight months after its global launch, Twitter will shut down its short-lived posting feature Fleets on August 3, after the product failed to gain the traction it had hoped for. “We hoped Fleets would help more people feel comfortable joining the conversation on Twitter,” the company said in a blog post. “But, in the time since we introduced Fleets to everyone, we have not seen an increase in the number of new people joining the conversation with Fleets as we hoped.”

• Facebook will invest US$1 billion to attract and engage content creators as it battles with platforms like TikTok and YouTube. The California-based company will distribute funds to content creators through shared advertising revenue and bonuses for time spent on Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, Facebook will, in some cases, offer seed funding to some creators who want to establish a presence on these sites. Get the full highlights here.

• Mexico ranked 52nd in its commitment to cybersecurity, an 11-spot jump from 2018 according to the International Telecommunication Union’s report for 2020. The country’s raw score was 81.68, fourth in the Americas. Mexico scored the highest in technical measures, which gauge the country’s national framework and preparedness to deal with cyber risks and incidents, thanks to its computer incident response teams (CIRTs) or Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs). Click for the full report here. 

• Microsoft plans to acquire cybersecurity firm RiskIQ for an undisclosed amount, announced the company on Monday. The deal aims to help Microsoft expand its security business, which is growing faster than other segments, according to CNBC. According to Bloomberg, the transaction will be worth more than US$500 million. Back in January, Microsoft said it earned more than US$10 billion in security revenue in the past 12 months, up more than 40 percent year over year.

• Mexico’s science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workforce has been growing at a fast pace as every year over 110,000 engineers graduate from local universities, according to shelter IVEMSA. This means that over 20 percent of all graduates in Mexico are engineers, which is more than what the workforce can readily incorporate. However, IVEMSA argues that this talent pool is attracting the interest of different tech corporations and venture capitalists in the world towards Mexico, either to invest or draft talent.