“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” - Aristotle
20th March 2020 / Issue #362
giffgaff Happenings
by bluemoonbaz
giffgaff’s response to COVID-19 coronavirus
Over the last week or so, our team has been talking a lot about how we can support giffgaff members as people’s behaviour changes and needs to change in response to COVID-19 coronavirus. Read about it here.
Top Tips & Life Hacks - during the Coronavirus outbreak
Give your tips and help to your fellow members in these stressful times over here.
giffgaff refurbished: a smart, savvy, sustainable way to buy your next phone 🙂
You'll have probably seen the billboards and adverts, but @kiesha_p brings us news on what this idea is all about. You can tell her and the team what you think about this new approach to selling phones here. Further news can be found here.
Testing a new Archive tag for older/mega threads
Well, giffgaff's community has been running for a long time, and we have lots of old content. To slimline and speed up the community, giffgaff have come up with an idea to try and help with this; by creating a master Archive, we would then use secondary tags (e.g Gameplan discussions, General Discussion) to tidy away old forums or threads. Head over here and see what @prescilla_g and the team have in mind.
Beta app update: purchasing a goodybag with credit is live!
Some great news from Amy. The App team have pushed live a new feature on the 'my giffgaff beta' app: Purchasing a goodybag with credit. Read about the new feature here. If you haven't already downloaded the beta version, it's super simple.
- Android: Download it from the Play Store and get the giffgaff beta app on your phone.
- iOS: Please install TestFlight on your phone and enable push notifications for the app, so that you will be instantly updated when we push a new feature. Once downloaded, click here to install the giffgaff beta app.
Our weekly round from our fellow members' recent discussion threads, head over and give them your views:
Say Hello!
by kathleen414
Please give our new member and community friend @clivebrown1952 a big welcome to giffgaff. Our newbie says: "Most know me as Buster". Well, it's a big hug and welcome to the community from me to you. Say hello to Buster here.
A warm welcome to giffgaff to our recent new joiner @joedw80. Our new friend asks: "What should I check out first?". I am sure your fellow giffgaffers can give you some pointers here.
Please give our new giffgaffer @flugelval a big welcome to giffgaff and our fab community. We hope you will settle in and become a part of our fab new community. Welcome our newbie here.
Lab Highlights
by ijustcantdoit
As you probably are aware, our labs discussion is well underway, on how we move forward in the coming months and years. Yes, things are moving slowly, but just a reminder of how well it does work, with a few of our member-led changes.
Photo Of The Week
by brulaw
This week's featured photo is My Beautiful Yellow Roses by @tinawilliams0410. Some of the comments on the photo included:
- "Oh they really are gorgeous. They cheer you up just looking at them" (netes81)
- "Absolutely lovely" (frenchielove)
- "Can't beat yellow / orange flowers. Always makes me think of sunshine and summer" (padiho)
- "Really beautiful and thanks for sharing with us" (haseebhejazi)
Once again, choosing just one image wasn't easy, as always you have all shared some really top class photos. In this difficult time, it's good to have something to brighten up our days. It's unfortunate that getting out and about is going to be restricted for a lot of us, so thank you to all of you for sharing your images. They're ALL winners.
On This Day In History
by jammydodge
1800 The discovery of the electric battery is reported to Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society of London, by Alessandro Volta.
1917 US President Woodrow Wilson meets with his cabinet, following the sinking of a further three merchant ships and decide that war is inevitable.
2015 The Financial Times Share Index (FTSE) 100 on the London Stock Exchange rose above 7,000 points for the first time.
Tech Developments
by revilo10
Coronavirus: How to avoid the misinformation highway
It is during times of crisis that we look to each other for support and guidance, and especially during 2020’s unpredictable COVID-19 pandemic, where we are being warned to distance ourselves from other people, however, it is driving us more and more to social media to find entertainment - especially for those of us with more time on our hands due to cancelled school, college, university or work (or social isolation itself). However social media is a minefield for misinformation and fake news. People purposefully make false allegations and claims to stir up confusion and mass-misinformation.
Only this week have I personally seen more than 3 fake allegations made by friends of mine on social media. One was related to a potential ‘shutdown’ of the entire UK, someone sent me a screenshot (Which I will not share due to the sensitive nature of some information displayed) from a Facebook Messenger group chat with a person informing the group “I have just been told by friends who work in London at the civil service/know people who work in government that national shutdown will be from Saturday onwards. It’s happening.” Unfortunately, it is increasingly common to find people sharing screenshots like this from unverified, unchecked sources in random group chats on Messenger and WhatsApp. Similar claims have been found on Facebook and Twitter, which is where a lot of the misinformation comes from, such as the tweet below, which claims soldiers were seen marching up and down the streets of Clapham, London in preparation for a national lockdown.
Whilst it is true that 20,000 troops have been put on standby to help out, this is merely to assist police and medical services in doing their jobs, we will by no means have roadblocks full of tanks and soldiers wielding heavy weapons looking to shoot anyone not inside! This tweet was quickly debunked by UK-based fact-checking charity Full Fact, who have in fact been regularly updating their site and have debunked dozens of false claims throughout the Coronavirus crisis.
One such claim I find personally interesting is that 5G and coronavirus are somehow linked. The claim is that 5G signals ‘weaken’ the immune systems of people and since China has been at the centre of launching 5G worldwide the poster, who put the below image on Facebook, claims that 5G, therefore, has directly contributed to the virality of COVID-19. As with all other false claims, Full Fact quickly shut it down and Facebook put a false information filter over the top of it.
But how do we spot fake news? The first thing to do is not believe everything you see on the internet! As patronising as it sounds, the reason these posts do so well is that people contribute to their spread by sharing them, liking them and overall just believing them without having proper evidence. I urge you to do your own research and find the facts yourself and do not share something unless you are sure it is true. Misinformation is dangerous.
Thanks for reading!
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