“Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.” - Thomas Szasz
1st November 2019 / Issue #342
giffgaff Happenings
by bluemoonbaz
What does the giffgaff Community mean to you?
giffgaff are looking into the messaging of Community, and would love to know what the members think Community is for and what purpose does it serve for you? You can give your feedback here.
Volunteer to be a Tesco Store 'mystery shopper' (trial)
giffgaff in partnership with Tesco would like to see how many stores have a SIM card stand, also how often they are stocked. Is this something that grabs you? If you fancy going undercover 😎 head over and read what's involved here.
The place to leave feedback about the new community site is here
It's been a while now since the change over to our new platform. With all the new adventures, we find what does and doesn't on the way. So, head over here and give the team your feedback.
Member Run Competitor Intelligence Operation
An interesting trial experiment has taken place over the last few months. Head over and have a look here, maybe you would like to be a participant next time.
Our Members' Discussions
Here are a few of our fellow members' recent discussion threads, head over and give your views:
Say Hello!
by kathleen414
A big hello and welcome to our new friend @oceandriver, who joined recently. I am sure you're going to be very happy on giffgaff in our fab community. Say hi over here.
Please give our new member and friend @tabu41 a big warm giffgaff hug and welcome to their new community. Say hello over here.
Introducing Ritchie - our newest Junior Educator. Ritchie was a community member and says: "giffgaff community is such a lively, wonderful and amazing place with such fantastic people and to be able to work here is a dream come true for me". Spread the giffgaff love here.
Lab Highlights
by as7861 and ijustcantdoit
- Did you know ideas are getting reviewed faster now and current ideas are being categorised making it easier for product owners to review the ideas? This means ideas have a chance of getting reviewed more efficiently.
- A discussion around 5G is happening here. Also did you an idea about 5G exists as well here. Is yay or nay!
- What does Labs mean to you?
giffgaff Refurbished Tablets By @ausee
Our member states: giffgaff offer a place to purchase refurbished phones. I was looking to purchase an iPad in the near future but love giffgaff and I feel my budget will not stretch to a new one, so maybe its time you guys could offer a place to purchase refurbished tablets. Sounds like a great idea, what are your thoughts on this one?
Ask an Agent Via App by @jamietford
Our member's idea is: Given how difficult it is to find "ask an agent" via your website and the faff involved in logging in, how about allowing asking to "Ask an Agent" via the app; this would really be useful and make life easier. Would you like this to happen?
Using full limited goodybags while in Roaming by @pedrito
Our member's idea: all limited goodybags should be available to be used in full while in Roaming up to the 63 days. It makes absolutely no sense to only be able to use 50% of the 40Gb goodybag if you are in roaming for 25 days! Give us your views on this, please.
Photo Of The Week
by brulaw
This week's featured photo is Embleton Burn Estuary by @anth006. Some of the comments included:
- "What a wonderful place" (frenchielove)
- "That is a really great image" (cawallbank)
- "Anth that's a beautiful photo, and my favourite part of Northumberland" (yvonnearmstrong)
- "Such a gorgeous picture!" (annebrooke64)
- "Great reflections" (jeanlk)
Another photo of the week, and once again a terrific selection of images to choose from. The weather is changing and the evenings are getting dark earlier, but that won't stop our giffsnappers from grabbing some great pictures. As always, thank you for sharing and please keep them coming.
On This Day In History
by jammydodge
1512 Michelangelo's famous ceiling paintings in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican were unveiled to the public for exhibition.
1848 WH Smith opened its doors for the very first time as a railway bookstore at Euston Station. Since then it has grown into a multi-million-pound business with around 1,300 stores nationwide.
1558 Queen Victoria was proclaimed ruler of India after the unsuccessful events of the First War of Independence (Indian Mutiny). She took over from the reign of the East India Company who had previously ruled on behalf of the British Crown in India.
Tech Developments
by revilo10
Twitter announces ban on political ads
In the run-up to both the 2020 U.S Presidential election, and the upcoming UK General Election in December, Twitter has announced that it will stop the publishing of all political adverts on its site. The move comes as media companies are focusing more and more on privacy and battling misinformation after Facebook’s incident with Cambridge Analytica last year.
Twitter’s founder Jack Dorsey announced in a string of tweets on Wednesday that the firm would stop all paid advertising for political campaigns right across the site, stating “We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought,”. This ban does not ban politicians from Twitter as a whole, they are still free to tweet, get retweeted and spread their message on the platform. Twitter will just remove their ability to essentially pay to get reach.
Dorsey also stated that they initially considered just banning political candidates, however, the fact that issue adverts would remain present was deemed as a potential loophole to get around the ban, and so political adverts as a whole were wiped. He continued saying “We considered stopping only candidate ads, but issue ads present a way to circumvent. Additionally, it isn’t fair for everyone but candidates to buy ads for issues they want to push. So we're stopping these too,” Twitter will unveil the new policy on 15th November, with it coming into force on 22nd November. Furthermore, after the announcement, many called on Facebook to follow suit and do the same, however, Founder Mark Zuckerberg rejected these calls, saying that the ads make up a very small amount of their revenue.
Finally, although this ban sets a good precedent among media companies it is only the beginning of what is a slow and tedious road. Facebook is unlikely to do anything similar at any point in the foreseeable future since political advertising on its platform has grown to a scale at which it would be hard to reign back in. Hopefully, though, Twitter’s actions make media executives stop and check themselves.
Thanks for reading!
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