Communication

Emojis have come a long way since they first invaded our phones with their colorful cartoon depictions of food, faces, furry creatures, and other now-iconic symbols. Updates have given us mythical creatures, a hand taking a selfie, and a much-hyped avocado.

The most important change by far came in 2015, when an Apple update made emojis available for a diverse range of skin tones and same-sex couples for the first time. It was progress, but for a group of advocates that includes Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and Emojination founder Jennifer 8. Lee, it wasn’t progress enough.

They have joined forces with Tinder to launch a campaign to petition the Unicode Consortium to introduce interracial couple emoji. Currently, the emoji featuring couples only show people of the same race. Under the new proposal, 21 different combinations of gender and race would be possible.

Match Group has a new CEO, and she’s determined to provide a better online dating experience for women. In a recent interview with Marketwatch, Mandy Ginsberg revealed that Tinder will be debuting a new feature that lets women choose whether or not they want to make the first move. She has female-friendly plans for their other properties as well, including Match and OkCupid.

Tinder’s new feature competes directly with dating app Bumble, which has seen incredible growth since its debut. Bumble differs slightly in that women automatically get to make the first move, rather than choosing.

Ginsberg has also launched a new campaign for OkCupid that “emphasizes shared hobbies over hookups.”

Do dating apps kill the romance of dating, or are they actually helping bring more people together? A lively debate on this topic was held the night of February 6^th in New York, with a panel of experts arguing for and against the motion: Dating Apps Have Killed Romance.

Let’s face it, if you’ve tried online dating, or had a friend who’s dabbled in it (more than 49 million Americans have), chances are you’ve heard a few horror stories. This was the focus of the argument from Eric Klinenberg, co-author with Aziz Ansari of the book Modern Romance, and Manoush Zamoroti, podcast host and journalist who argued for the motion. Citing stories of dates and relationships gone wrong, they argued that not only have dating apps killed romance, they have killed civility among daters. Ultimately, apps have changed the dating culture, and not for the better.

They argued that online dating specifically breeds bad behavior, because people are able to hide behind a screen – or worse, they have stopped interacting or knowing how to interact in real life. Zamoroti gave an example of one of her podcast listeners walking into a bar and seeing a line of single men ordering drinks and swiping on Tinder, ignoring the people around them completely. Plus, some online daters have become emboldened to send lude messages online, which makes the experience even more painful and depressing for other daters.

Are you watching the Winter Olympics? Maybe you’ve fantasized about what it would be like to meet one of the athletes, especially because they are competing at peak physical fitness – what’s not to love?

Some Tinder users are taking it a step further and actually changing their locations to match with Olympic athletes.

Tinder users with a premium service such as Tinder Plus or Tinder Gold have the option to use the “Passport” feature, which allows them to change their location so they can swipe left and right on matches from any other city in the world. This feature was created for those who travel and want to connect with people in more than one place.

Image: wired

The next time you swipe right on a Tinder match when you’re sitting at a bar, consider that hackers might be taking notes.

Website MarketWatch reported that vulnerabilities were found in the popular app, exposing users to hackers. The vulnerability stems from Tinder not using encryption on users’ photos. Instead, they use a basic HTTP, an unsecure older protocol, rather than HTTPS. This means when you swipe, hackers have the ability to see not only profiles, but the actions you take with swiping, super-liking, and rejecting photos as well. Think of it as someone looking over your shoulder as you’re swiping.

Tech Times reported that users aren’t at risk of spies seeing their actions when they are swiping at home over a private Internet connection, but they are when using public WiFi networks.

Following the announcement that it has launched a multipoint strategy to embrace blockchain technology, Snap Interactive has announced the first new product of the initiative: a video-enabled secure messaging system.

Called Backchannel, the service enables real-time text, voice, and video messaging between both individuals and groups. It will leverage blockchain and other decentralization technologies to offer unique security benefits, furthering SNAP’s mission to provide global communication platforms with an emphasis on privacy.

Backchannel will adopt the end-to-end and forward secrecy encryption best practices currently used by communication apps like Telegram and WhatsApp. It will also authenticate users with a crypto identity that requires no personally identifiable information. With no link to the real-world identity of its users, Backchannel can never be subject to legal demands for disclosure and no personal data can ever be stolen by hackers.