Software

Tech Tip – Snip & Sketch

Posted on by Andy Miller

If you need to be able to quickly grab areas of your screen, annotate them and share them, Windows 10 has an easy to use Snip & Sketch app.

To use Snip & Sketch:

– Hold down the Windows key + Shift + S to bring up a snipping toolbar.

– Snip the required area of your screen which will then be automatically loaded to your clipboard.

– You will then receive an invitation (bottom right of the screen) to mark up and share the image you’ve clipped. Click on the words ‘Select here’.

– This will load the Snip & Sketch app.

– Annotate your image with the pen symbols and click on the save or share icons (top right).

Microsoft Announces New, Integrated ‘Office’ Suite App For Mobile Devices

Posted on by Andy Miller

Microsoft has announced that it is working towards the launch of its ‘Office’ mobile app (currently only available in public preview) which integrates Word, Excel, and PowerPoint mobile apps into a single app.

The ‘Office’ Vision

Microsoft says that the mobile app, called simply ‘Office’, represents their vision for what a productivity solution would look like if first built for mobile devices.

The idea is that users have all their Office documents together in one place, can reduce the need to switch between many different apps, and can reduce the amount of space that they use on their phone compared to multiple installed apps.

“Simple, Integrated Experience”

The ‘Office’ app is intended to provide users with what Microsoft describes as a “simple, integrated experience”.

The app combines Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, access to recent and recommended documents stored in the cloud or on a user’s device, the ability to search for documents across a user’s organisation if using a work account, and easy access to Sticky Notes e.g. for reminders and writing down ideas.

What Can You Do?

Microsoft’s Tech Community web pages say that users of ‘Office’ will be able to create content “in uniquely mobile ways” such as snapping a picture of a document and turning it into an editable Word file with just the press of a button or transforming a picture of a table into an Excel spreadsheet so that users can quickly work on the data. Also, a new Actions pane in the app will enable users to complete tasks such as creating PDFs with their camera and signing PDFs just by using their finger or scanning QR codes to open files and links.

Public Preview and Only On Phones

The Office app is currently available in public preview for Android and iOS, can be downloaded and used for free, and doesn’t require a sign-in to use it.  Those with work, school, or personal Microsoft Accounts can, however login and gain access to their files stored in the cloud via the app.

Microsoft has said that it will continue to support and invest in the existing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint mobile apps (‘Office’ isn’t replacing them), and that the new ‘Office’ app is currently only available for phones, although plans are afoot to extend this to tablets.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Back in February, Microsoft announced its new, free “Office” app for Windows 10 as an update to the former My Office app, and as a way for those who do have a 365 subscription and have Microsoft’s apps installed on their device to open Office from the Office app, and those who don’t have a subscription to be automatically directed to the online version.  This latest announcement of the preview stage, available to all, soon-to-be-launched ‘Office’ mobile app is a progression of Microsoft’s move to publicise, raise awareness about, and get more people using its (free) versions of Office.  This will also help Microsoft adapt and compete with rivals, such as Google, and appeal to business and other existing Microsoft Office users who are now used to being able to carry out most of their business on-the-go with mobile devices and apps.  Some of the features, such as taking a picture of a document and turning that into an editable file are likely to add value for many business users who are spending less time at the desktop.

The new app could mean time-savings (not switching between multiple apps), convenience and greater leverage of mobile capabilities for users, and for Microsoft, it offers them a way to keep existing users loyal to their OS and Office Suite, gain new users, and stay competitive in a rapidly evolving mobile working market.

Office 365 Voicemail Phishing Scam Warning

Posted on by Andy Miller

Security company McAfee has reported observing a phishing scam which uses a fake voicemail message to lure victims into entering their Office 365 email credentials into a phishing page.

How The Attack Works

According to McAfee’s blog, the first step in the phishing scam is the victim being sent an email informing them that they have missed a phone call.  The email includes a request to login to their account to access their voicemail.

The email message actually contains an HTML attachment which, when loaded, re-directs the victim to a phishing website. Although there are slightly different versions of the attachment, the most recent examples are reported to contain an audio recording which is designed to make the victim believe they are listening to the beginning of a legitimate voicemail.

Once re-directed to the bogus Microsoft account login page, the victim will see that their email address has already been loaded in the login field, thereby helping to create the illusion that this is their real Microsoft login page.

If the victim enters their password, the deception continues as they are shown a page saying that their login has been successful, and they are being re-directed to the home page.

Three Different Phishing Kits

Cybercriminals frequently buy-in phishing kits to launch their attacks. These are collections of software tools, created by professional phishers, that can be purchased and downloaded as a set. These phishing kits make it much easier for those with limited technical and coding skills or phishing experience to launch a phishing attack.

McAfee reports that as many as three different phishing kits are being used to make the fake websites involved in this scam. These are:

  1. Voicemail Scmpage 2019 – being sold on an ICQ channel, and used to harvest your email, password, IP Address and location details.
  2. Office 365 Information Hollar – similar to Voicemail Scmpage 2019 and used to harvest the same data.
  3. A third unnamed kit, which McAfee says is the most prevalent malicious page they have observed in the tracking of this particular campaign.  McAfee says that this kit appears to use code from 2017 malicious kit that was used to target Adobe users.

File Names For The Attachments

To help you spot this phishing attack McAfee has listed list the file names for attachments in the phishing email as being:

  • 10-August-2019.wav.html [Format: DD-Month-YYYY.wav.html]
  • 14-August-2019.html [Format: DD-Month-YYYY.html]
  • Voice-17-July2019wav.htm [Format: Voice- DD-MonthYYYYwav.htm]
  • Audio_Telephone_Message15-August-2019.wav.html [Format: Audio_Telephone_MessageDD-Month-YYYY.wav.html]

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Reports indicate that this phishing attack has proved quite successful up until now, partly because the pages and steps appear authentic (and load the users email address as real login page does), and it uses social engineering and urgency (with audio) in a way that may prompt may people to suspend their critical faculty long enough complete the few short actions that it takes to give their details away.

The advice to businesses is, therefore, to be vigilant and to not open emails from unfamiliar sources or with unfamiliar attachments.  You may also want to use Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) where possible, and enterprise users may wish to block .html and .htm attachments at the email gateway level so that they don’t reach members of staff, some of whom may not be up to speed with their Internet security knowledge.

There is also a strong argument for not using the same password for multiple platforms and websites (password sharing).  This is because credentials stolen in one breach are likely to be tried on many other websites by other cybercriminals (credential stuffing) who have purchased/acquired them e.g. on the dark web.

Keeping anti-virus and software patches up to date and making sure that staff receive training and education about cybersecurity risks and what procedures should be followed if suspicious emails or other messages are spotted can also help companies to maintain good levels of cybersecurity.

BBC Puts News On ‘Dark Web Browser’ To Avoid Censorship

Posted on by Andy Miller

The BBC has announced that it is making its International news website available via the ‘Tor’ browser (usually associated with the ‘dark web’), in order to get around censorship in other countries.

Blocking by Some Countries

The BBC is concerned that countries including China, Iran and Vietnam have tried to block access to its website or programmes in the past.

With this in mind, and with the BBC wanting to compete in the world broadcasting market and widen its audience, as well as wanting to maintain and extend the perception of its World Service as a trusted news source, the BBC has turned to the Tor browser as a way of stopping states from blocking/censoring its content.

Why Tor?

The ‘Tor’ browser, an acronym for ‘The Onion Router’ because of its many layers of encryption, is most well known as the browser that’s used to access the dark web. In these days of worries about privacy and the prying eyes of and rules imposed by states and their agencies, plus worries about cybercriminals and fraudsters, end-to-end encrypted communications channels have become more valuable and more widely available.

The Tor browser, which came out of a US Naval Research Laboratory (and which is partly funded by the US State Department) can hide a user’s location and identity due to its routing process through multiple node encryption points. Tor can, therefore, be used to browse the web (and dark web) anonymously, and to host hidden websites (with a .onion suffix).

International Edition On Tor

The BBC plans, therefore, to host a version of its international news website within Tor thereby evading restrictions imposed by others states and protecting the identity and quite possibly the safety of any viewers of that news who reside within a state where the BBC news online faces restrictions.

This version of the BBC’s international news website will not feature the BBC iPlayer service but will include foreign language services e.g. BBC Arabic, Persian and Russian.

Soft Power

The BBC’s World Service has been described by many as being part of the UK’s ‘soft power’ i.e. part of the UK’s ability to portray a certain image of itself overseas and to influence the thinking and action of others using the power of attraction as opposed to the power of coercion and threats.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

In western democracies and capitalist countries where certain freedoms of consumption are seen as good and necessary to maintain the market-based system, there is an interest in wishing to promote these values and beliefs around the world. This can lead to the widening of markets for goods, services and lifestyles as people in less open countries see them online or television, and this can be good news for businesses who are able to export.  Stable, open countries, with good diplomatic and trading relationships and freedom for communications, are good news for businesses who want to export or set up operations in those countries to gain access to bigger markets.

Sates that are seen to perhaps be more oppressive and authoritarian and which use censorship to maintain a certain power balance and message/perception of the outside world are likely to fear news reports and views which conflict with their own.  The BBC has found itself to be a global market media player as well as a national broadcaster with UK state interests and this, coupled with wider use of encrypted message and  web services have turned a browser that once had a dubious reputation (by association with the dark web) into a handy tool for accessing for expanding the corporation’s, the UK’s, and the democratised West’s reach into untapped market areas.  The hope would be that this would benefit the interests of all, including those citizens of censored states that are able to access a ‘trusted’ external news source for the first time in years.

ICO Warns Police on Facial Recognition

Posted on by Andy Miller

In a recent blog post, Elizabeth Denham, the UK’s Information Commissioner, has said that the police need to slow down and justify their use of live facial recognition technology (LFR) in order to maintain the right balance in reducing our privacy in order to keep us safe.

Serious Concerns Raised

The ICO cited how the results of an investigation into trials of live facial recognition (LFR) by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) and South Wales Police (SWP) led to the raising of serious concerns about the use of a technology that relies on a large amount of sensitive personal information.

Examples

In December last year, Elizabeth Denham launched the formal investigation into how police forces used FRT after high failure rates, misidentifications and worries about legality, bias, and privacy.  For example, the trial of ‘real-time’ facial recognition technology on Champions League final day June 2017 in Cardiff, by South Wales and Gwent Police forces was criticised for costing £177,000 and yet only resulting in one arrest of a local man whose arrest was unconnected.

Also, after trials of FRT at the 2016 and 2017 Notting Hill Carnivals, the Police faced criticism that FRT was ineffective, racially discriminatory, and confused men with women.

MPs Also Called To Stop Police Facial Recognition

Back in July this year, following criticism of the Police usage of facial recognition technology in terms of privacy, accuracy, bias, and management of the image database, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee called for a temporary halt in the use of the facial recognition system.

Stop and Take a Breath

In her blog post, Elizabeth Denham urged police not to move too quickly with FRT but to work within the model of policing by consent. She makes the point that “technology moves quickly” and that “it is right that our police forces should explore how new techniques can help keep us safe. But from a regulator’s perspective, I must ensure that everyone working in this developing area stops to take a breath and works to satisfy the full rigour of UK data protection law.”

Commissioners Opinion Document Published

The ICO’s investigations have now led her to produce and publish an Opinion document on the subject, as is allowed by The Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018), s116 (2) in conjunction with Schedule 13 (2)(d).  The opinion document has been prepared primarily for police forces or other law enforcement agencies that are using live facial recognition technology (LFR) in public spaces and offers guidance on how to comply with the provisions of the DPA 2018.

The key conclusions of the Opinion Document (which you can find here: https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/documents/2616184/live-frt-law-enforcement-opinion-20191031.pdf) are that the police need to recognise the strict necessity threshold for LFR use, there needs to be more learning within the policing sector about the technology, public debate about LFR needs to be encouraged, and that a statutory binding code of practice needs to be introduced by government at the earliest possibility.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Businesses, individuals and the government are all aware of the positive contribution that camera-based monitoring technologies and equipment can make in terms of deterring criminal activity, locating and catching perpetrators (in what should be a faster and more cost-effective way with live FRT), and in providing evidence for arrests and trials.  The UK’s Home Office has also noted that there is general public support for live FRT in order to (for example) identify potential terrorists and people wanted for serious violent crimes.  However, the ICO’s apparently reasonable point is that moving too quickly in using FRT without enough knowledge or a Code of Practice and not respecting the fact that there should be a strict necessity threshold for the use of FRT could reduce public trust in the police and in FRT technology.  Greater public debate about the subject, which the ICO seeks to encourage, could also help in raising awareness about FRT, how a balanced approach to its use can be achieved and could help clarify matters relating to the extent to which FRT could impact upon our privacy and data protection rights.

Tech Tip – See Your Top Sites

Posted on by Andy Miller

If you need to be able to quickly see and access any of your top 25 most visited websites, there’s an easy way to display this list in Windows 10 on the taskbar or Start menu.

– Right-click the Microsoft Edge icon to display the Jump List of your top 25 websites.

– Click on any website on that list to load the website in a browser.

– Right-click on any entry to remove it from the list.

“Stalkerware” Partner-Spying Software Use Rises By 35% In One Year

Posted on by Andy Miller

Kaspersky researchers have reported a 35 per cent rise in the number of people who have encountered the use of so-called ‘stalkerware’ or ‘spouseware’ software in the first 8 months of this year.

What is Stalkerware?

Stalkerware (or ‘spouseware’) is surveillance software that can be purchased online and loaded onto a person’s mobile device. From there, the software can record all of a person’s activity on that device, thereby allowing another person to read their messages, see screen activity, track the person through GPS location, access their social media, and even spy on the mobile user through the cameras on their device.

Covert, Without Knowledge or Consent

The difference between parental control apps and stalkerware is that stalkerware programs are promoted as software for spying on partners and they run covertly in the background without a person’s knowledge or consent.

Unlike legitimate parental control apps, such programs run hidden in the background, without a victim’s knowledge or consent. They are often promoted as software for spying on people’s partners.

Most Stalkerware needs to be installed manually on a victim’s phone which means that the person who intends to carry out the surveillance e.g. a partner, needs physical access to the mobile device.

Figures from Kaspersky show that there are now 380 variants of stalkerware ‘in the wild’ this year, which is 31% more than last year.

Most In Russia

Kaspersky’s figures show that this kind of surveillance software is most popular in Russia, with the UK in eighth place in Kaspersky’s study.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Unlike parental control apps which serve a practical purpose to help parents to protect their children from the many risks associated with Internet and mobile phone use, stalkerware appears to be more linked to abuse because of how it has been added to a device without a user’s consent to covertly and completely invade their privacy.  This kind of software could also be used for industrial espionage by a determined person who has access to a colleague’s mobile phone.

If you’d like to avoid being tracked by stalkerware or similar software, Kaspersky advises that you block the installation of programs from unknown sources in your smartphone’s settings, never disclose the passwords/passcode for your mobile device, and never store unfamiliar files or apps on your device.  Also, those leaving a relationship may wish to change the security settings on their mobile device.

Kaspersky also suggests that you should check the list of applications on your device to find out if suspicious programs have been installed without your consent.

If, for example, you find out that someone e.g. a partner/ex-partner has installed surveillance software on your devices, and/or does appear to be stalking you, the advice is, of course, to contact the police and any other relevant organisation.

Google Leadership Accused Of Developing Internal Surveillance Tool

Posted on by Andy Miller

Some Google employees have accused the company’s leadership of developing a browser-based file extension for all of Google’s in-house computers that could flag-up signs of workers trying to organise meetings and protests.

Google Employees

The story came to light in a memo written by a Google employee that is reported to have been seen and verified by 3 other anonymous Google employees and Bloomberg News.  In the memo it was alleged that a team within the company had developed a surveillance tool, disguised as a calendar, that could be added to the custom Chrome browser used on Google’s computers.

How?

The employee’s memo alleged that the browser extension would be able to report any staff who booked a calendar event which involved the need for more than 10 rooms, or scheduled an event with more than 100 people, and the alleged reason for flagging up these details was to warn the company’s leadership about any attempt to organise workers for the purposes of industrial action e.g. meetings and protests related to labour rights.

Reviewed

Reported employee memos have suggested that work on the tool started in September and that Google’s privacy team approved the tool’s release but also expressed some concerns about the culture at Google.

According to Google, however, the tool was developed over several months and was subject to Google’s standard privacy, security and legal reviews.

Rollout In October

According to reports of a memo posted on an internal staff message board, the surveillance tool is due to be rolled out this month (October), and there is a report of two Google workers in California saying that the tool has already been added to their browsers.

‘Trouble at Mill’

There has been speculation by some commentators that the tool may have been developed in response to recent outbreaks of organised activity by workers concerned about the company’s attitude to their rights, the ethics of some of the company’s projects, and how Google may have handled some complaints.  For example, some workers in the company’s Zurich office held an event about workers’ rights and unionisation, and some Google employees have protested about products such as the ‘Project Dragonfly’ search engine that could allow Google to re-enter the Chinese market by censoring certain terms.  Human rights groups had also been vocal in criticising this idea saying that it appeared to support state censorship.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For Google employees, many of whom are used to working in an environment of relative freedom where creativity and collaboration are encouraged, an apparent cultural shift (if indeed that is what is happening) towards a more authoritarian and less trusting approach where ethics could come lower down the list of priorities in the search for profits would be likely to be a shock, and could possibly damage the relationship and the trust between management and workers.  It is unlikely that workers anywhere would respond positively to being subjected to a kind of covert surveillance and internal censorship, particularly if they believed that it was being carried out to curtail certain aspects of their labour rights.  The resulting bad publicity could also damage a company’s brand and therefore, the company’s competitiveness and customer perceptions of the company.

It should be said, however, that the reports of the development of the browser tool in Google rest upon the alleged details of memos, and it is unclear to date how accurate the reports are.

Microsoft Beats Amazon to $10 Billion AI Defence Contract for ‘Jedi’

Posted on by Andy Miller

After a long and difficult bidding process, Amazon has lost out to Microsoft in the battle to win a $10bn (£8bn) US Defence Department AI and Cloud computing contract.

For ‘Jedi’

The contract was for the Joint Enterprise Defence Infrastructure (Jedi).  This infrastructure will be designed to enable US forces to get fast access to important Cloud-held data from whichever battlefield they are on. The project will also see AI being used to enhance and speed up the delivery of data to US forces, thereby potentially giving them an advantage.

Amazon Was Thought To Be In Front…Before Trump Comments

Amazon, led by Jeff Bezos, was believed by many tech commentators to have been the front-runner of the two tech giants in the battle for the contract as it is the biggest provider of cloud-computing services.  Also, Amazon had already won an important computing services contract with the CIA in 2013 and is already a supplier of cloud services and technologies to thousands of U.S. agencies.

Unfortunately for Amazon, in August the Pentagon appeared to put the brakes on the final decision-making process following concerns expressed by President Trump.

The President is reported to have said back in July that he was concerned about the contact not being “competitively bid” and that he had heard “complaints” about the contract with Amazon and the Pentagon.

The President, however, was not the only one with concerns as tech giant Oracle (which was also in the running for the contract at one point) had gone to the federal court earlier in the year with allegations (which were dismissed) that the bidding process had been rigged in Amazon’s favour.

Difficult Relationship

Many media reports have suggested that a difficult relationship between President Trump and Jeff Bezos in the past has possibly had some influence on the outcome of the Pentagon’s decision about the project.  For example, Mr Bezos has been criticised before by President Trump, and Mr Bezos also owns the Washington Post.  President Trump has been critical of several news outlets, such as CNN, the New York Times, and The Washington Post.  For example, it has been reported by the Wall Street Journal that President Trump has now instructed his agencies not to renew their subscriptions to those newspapers.

Great News For Microsoft

Winning the contract is, of course, good news for Microsoft which will receive a large amount of U.S. Defence funds for the Jedi contact, and possibly for another defence -related multi-billion-dollar contract (‘Deos’) to supply cloud-based Office 365.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

With a contract of this value up for grabs and the possibility of further lucrative contracts too, this was never going to be a clean and uncomplicated fight between the tech giants.  In this case, however, it being a defence contract, one of the key influencers was the U.S. President and it appears that his relationship with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos along with other factors may have played a part in Microsoft coming out on top.  The size and complexity of the contract meant that it was only ever going to be something for the big, established tech names, and Microsoft winning the contract was undoubtedly an important victory against its competitor Amazon, will add value to its brand, will bring in a sizeable source of revenue at a time when it’s already seen a 21 per cent rise in its profits on last year, and puts Microsoft in a much closer 2nd position behind Amazon’s AWS in the cloud computing services market.

Facebook ‘News’ Tab on Mobile App

Posted on by Andy Miller

Facebook has launched the ‘News’ tab on its mobile app which directs users to unbiased, curated articles from credible sources in a bid to publicly combat fake news and help restore trust in its own brand.

Large US Cities For Now

The ‘News’ tab on the Facebook mobile app, which will initially only be available to an estimated 200,000 people in select, large US cities, is expected by Facebook to become so popular that it could attract millions of users.

What?

The News tab will attempt to show users stories from local publishers as well as the big national news sources.  The full list of publishers who will contribute to the News tab stories has not yet been confirmed, although online speculation points to the likes of (U.S. publishers initially) Time, The Washington Post, CBS News, Bloomberg, Fox News and Politico.  It has not yet been announced when the service will be available to UK Facebook users. It has been reported that Facebook is also prepared to pay many millions for some of the content included in the tab.

Why?

Facebook has been working hard to restore some of the trust lost in the company when it was found to be the medium by which influential fake news stories were distributed during the UK Brexit referendum, the 2017 UK general election, and the U.S. presidential election.  There is also the not-so-small matter of 50 million Facebook profiles being shared/harvested (in conjunction with Cambridge Analytica) back 2014 in order to build a software program that was used to predict and generate personalised political adverts to influence choices at the ballot box in the last U.S. election.

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, was made to appear before the U.S. Congress in April to talk about how Facebook is tackling false reports, and even recently a video that was shared via Facebook (which had 4 million views before being taken down) falsely suggested that smart meters emit radiation levels that are harmful to health. The information in the video was believed by many even though it was false.

Helping Smaller Publishers Too

Also, Facebook acknowledges that smaller news outlets have struggled to gain exposure with its algorithms, and that there is an opportunity to deliver more local news, personalised news experiences, and more modern digital-age, independent news.  It is also likely that, knowing that young people get most of their news from online sources but have been moving away to other platforms, this could be a good way for Facebook to retain younger users.

Working With Fact-Checkers

Back in January, for example, Facebook tried to help restore trust in its brand and publicly show that it was trying to combat fake news by announcing that it was working with London-based, registered charity ‘Full Fact’ who would be reviewing stories, images and videos, in an attempt to tackle misinformation that could “damage people’s health or safety or undermine democratic processes”.

Personalisation

The News tab will also allow users to see a personalised selection of articles, the choice of which is based upon the news they read. This personalisation will also include the ability to hide articles, topics and publishers that users choose not to see.

The Human Element

One of the key aspects of the News tab service that Facebook sees as adding value, keeping quality standards high, and providing a further safeguard against fake news is that many stories will be reviewed and chosen by experienced journalists acting as impartial and independent curators.  For example, Facebook says that “Unlike Google News, which is controlled by algorithms, Facebook News works more like Apple News, with human editors making decisions.”

Not The First Time

This is not the first time that Facebook has tried offering a news section, and it will hopefully be more successful and well-received than the ‘Trending News’ section that was criticised for bias in the 2016 presidential election and has since been phased out.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Only last week, Mark Zuckerberg found himself in front of the U.S. Congress answering questions about whether Facebook can be trusted to run a new cryptocurrency, and it is clear that the erosion of trust caused by how Facebook shared user data with Cambridge Analytica and how the platform was used to spread fake news in the U.S. election have cast a long shadow over the company.  Facebook has since tried many ways to regain trust e.g. working with fact-checkers, adding the ‘Why am I seeing this post?’ tool, and launching new rules for political ad transparency.

Users of social networks clearly don’t want to see fake news, the influences of which can have a damaging knock-on effect on the economic and trade environment which, in turn, affects businesses.

The launch of this News service with its human curation and fact-checking could, therefore, help Facebook kill several birds with one stone. For example, as well as going some way to helping to restore trust, it could increase the credibility of Facebook as a go-to trusted source of quality content, enable Facebook to compete with its rivals e.g. Google News, show Facebook to be a company that also cares about smaller news publishers, and act as a means to help retain younger users on its platform.