Yelp Tool for Black-Owned Businesses; Tools to Blur Protesters’ Faces; Facebook Kills 200 Hate-Linked Accounts; Apple Will Extend Monthly Payments Beyond iPhones

Yelp will launch a searchable attribute allowing businesses to identify as black-owned, making it easier for customers to find them. According to mashable.com, in the past week, Yelp saw a 25x increase in searches for black-owned business across a variety of industries as compared with a year ago. The attribute is opt-in, so the businesses themselves will have control over their decision to identify as black-owned. The Yelp Foundation will donate $500,000 to the Equal Justice Initiative and NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

A number of developers have been rushing to build out apps and tools to blur faces of protesters and strip metadata from photos, so facial recognition systems can’t identify people. Techcrunch.com reports that many protesters have feared retaliation for participants in marches and protests. Everest Pipkin has built a web app that strips metadata and lets users blur faces or mask them entirely. It runs entirely in a browser, and doesn’t upload or store data. The code has been open-sourced. https://everestpipkin.github.io/image-scrubber/
There are several other apps now up for the purpose. Hit this link to the article and there are embedded links within that will take you to them. https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/06/protesters-blur-faces-anonymize-photos/

Facebook has pulled around 200 accounts that were found to be tied to hate groups like the Proud Boys and American Guard. Both those entities had previously been banned from the platform. Engadget.com says this came shortly after Facebook cracked down on the so-called ‘boogaloo’ groups….racists and white supremacists….who were attempting to pose as ‘antifa’ members to gin up violence.

Apple is getting set to add iPads, Macs, and AirPods to iPhones, and allow customers to make monthly installments via the Apple Card. According to theverge.com, the plan will be 12 months, with 6 months interest free. Apple already has a 24-month, interest free plan for iPhones. As with the iPhone plan, you will get 3% cash back.