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10 Ways to Make Money During the Pandemic – BOSS Magazine

Reading Time: 6 minutes

After the chaos of 2020, you are likely looking for ways to win money. The past year was a devastating one for many of us. A large multitude of businesses affected by the pandemic began to close or lay off their staff, and their former employees were left with no income to rely on. With the pandemic still going on, more and more people are starting to find ways to generate income while staying at home or limiting contact with other people. In this guide, we have some great ways you can generate revenue during these difficult times:

1.     Consider Remote Work

One of the best ways to continue making money in the pandemic is to work remotely. If the company you’re working on allows employees to work from home or remotely, take advantage of the opportunity. Working remotely allows you to generate income from your primary job without risking possible infection from your office mates. You can still finish all your workload at the comfort of your home. However, working at home can make you feel lethargic at times because of the temptation to sit around or lay in bed, so make sure that you have a designated workspace for you to remain productive and focused.

If you currently do not have a job, you can easily find remote work on the Internet. There are many sites you can use to find employers that hire people to work for them remotely. Some of these sites include:

Flexjobs

Just Remote

We Work Remotely

Working Nomads

Jobspresso

io

Upwork

Fiverr

Stack Overflow

You can find different jobs depending on your skills, previous job experience, and the hours you’re available to work per week. Be patient, and you’ll surely land that interview!

2.     Get Paid for Opinions

Your opinions matter—you can even earn money from them. There is always a high demand for public opinion data, and you can easily submit your views online. Some companies and websites pay you fees so that you answer their online surveys, reviews, quizzes, and more. It might not be the highest paying gig out there, but it’s still a nice source of extra income if you have the spare time to kill. It doesn’t take long for you to complete the surveys, and you can easily access them through your phone. This way, you can earn some dollars whenever you have downtime from your primary job.

3.     Sell Unused Stuff Online

Another way to get income is by selling your stuff online. If you have anything in your house that you do not use anymore, you can get money out of it! There are two major benefits you can get from doing this. You can make extra money and declutter your home at the same time. Some of the things you can consider selling are:

clothes

furniture

old decorative pieces

accessories

home appliances

books

DVDs and CDs

shoes

phones and computers

There are lots of things that you can sell online. If you feel like you don’t need any of these things, give them a new owner instead of letting them sit in your home.

4.     Find Part-Time Jobs

Working part-time can help you earn money if you do not want to commit to a full-time job or have yet to land that perfect long-term position. Despite businesses closing down, other essential businesses and stores remain open for people. You can work in grocery stores, pharmacies, supply chain companies, etc., that are constantly looking for workers to make up for customers’ demand for essential products.

5.     Tutor or Teach Online

If you’re confident about your teaching skills, you can consider tutoring kids and students online. You can make use of any previous tutoring experiences without going outside your home. It’s also a great way to earn money if you’re an education major and you just graduated.

With the pandemic, other students prefer to study online rather than attend the face-to-face classes. You can apply as a teacher to online teaching platforms and accommodate these students. Some of the platforms you can check out are Chegg, Club Z, Learn To Be, and Preply.

6.     Run Errands for a Cost

Many people rely on deliveries nowadays. You can offer delivery services and run errands for people who don’t want to go outside their homes. You can purchase and deliver groceries from them, pick up their packages, deliver mails, deliver take-out food, pick up laundry, and other delivery services that you can easily do.

Choose errands that can fit your transportation method. You can use a bike, motorcycle, or car. This way, you can make the most out of your vehicle despite the current situation.

7.     Babysit Kids

You can try to offer childcare services to parents who are essential workers and can’t work from home to watch their children. You can babysit your nearby neighbor’s kids or perhaps a relative of yours that lives in the same house—for a fee, of course.

You can also take a permanent babysitting job and stay-in with the family rather than going in and out of their homes. This way, you can prevent any infection if you spend too much time interacting with different people.

8.     Start a Business

If you’re fearless, you can try starting your own business! You can start by opening a small online store to sell items like:

pastries

candles

clothes

desserts

slime

You can start by selling them within your community and nearby places to deliver the products yourself. You can also opt to sell them on Facebook Marketplace, Etsy, and other online platforms if you want a bigger customer scope.

9.     Become a Freelancer

Become a freelancer if you hate wasting time! You can start earning big by deciding to do freelance work. It means that you have more flexible working hours than those who work full-time jobs. If you have a diverse skill set, you can make the most of them and simultaneously take on multiple jobs. The limit of jobs you can take depends on your availability, skills, and commitment to finish all tasks on the right deadline.

You can also try venturing into work categories you’re not familiar with as there are employers who are willing to take on entry-level workers to do the job for them. Taking on freelance gigs will also look good for your resume in the long run, so the more opportunities you accept, the better.

You can opt for product-based projects, work with flexible working hours, one-time designs, and even go for clients who are looking for long-term employees.

Here are some freelance job posting sites that you can check if you’re interested:

Fiverr

Upwork

Toptal

Simply Hired

PeoplePerHour

99Designs

TaskRabbit

Guru

Hireable

There are so many job opportunities out there. You can be a freelance writer, an editor, a social media manager, graphic designer, virtual assistant, customer service representative, and more. Hustle, and you’ll surely get the clients you are looking for.

10.  Sell Your Craft

If you’re artistically inclined, you can try selling your artworks and crafts. Some of the ways you can earn money are by selling:

prints

art commissions,

sticker sheets

stationery supplies

handmade decorations

macrame art

traditional paintings

accessories

custom shoes or clothing art

You can accept custom art commissions online as many people appreciate digital art now. This way, you can easily send the final products through their emails and messages. Find the best market for your products, choose the right range of prices, and be open to feedback and improve your artwork even more. People also love buying handmade decorative pieces that feel more personal and give a unique feel to their homes.

If you’re into journaling and drawing, you can consider creating stickers, postcards, and prints for planners and journals. Many people love to use journals, so these kinds of products sell fairly well. Decide on what art style you prefer and stationery supplies you can sell on online platforms like Etsy.

Make sure to accurately represent the value of your art—while low offers can be tempting for you to earn quick money, do not sacrifice the effort you put into your products, nor ignore the cost of materials it takes to make your products. You’ll be able to find the right audience that is willing to pay for your services. This way, you can earn more money without exhausting yourself too much to produce underpriced art commissions for your clients.

Take Away

There are lots of ways for you to earn money even with the ongoing pandemic. This might also be the perfect time to discover what you truly love doing or even learn new skills that you didn’t know what you can do before.

Fortunately, the Internet exists to help you! With just a click, you can easily search for all the opportunities you can earn money and become financially stable. Choose what you are most passionate about to ensure that you won’t feel burnt out when hustling for that paycheck. With the right opportunities, you will not only gain income but enjoy what you do as well.

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Mastercard to support cryptocurrency on its network – Mint

Mastercard has announced it will add cryptocurrency to its network. In a blog post on Wednesday, the international payments major indicated that it will give preference to ‘stable coins’ or cryptocurrencies that are linked to fiat currencies like the dollar.

“Whatever your opinions on cryptocurrencies — from a dyed-in-wool fanatic to utter skeptic — the fact remains that these digital assets are becoming a more important part of the payments world,” the post said. “We are preparing right now for the future of crypto and payments, announcing that this year Mastercard will start supporting select cryptocurrencies directly on our network,” it added.

Also Read | Inside the Mindtree makeover strategy

According to Mastercard, stablecoins must satisfy four conditions in order to be accepted on its network.

These are firstly consumer protections, including privacy and security of consumers’ information. Second, strict compliance including Know Your Customer, a requirement meant to snuff out illegal activity and deception in payment networks. Third, digital assets must follow local laws and regulations in the regions they are used. Fourth, crypto assets will need to offer the stability people need in a vehicle for spending, not investment.

The company has already teamed up with cryptocurrency players such as Wirex and Bitpay to launch cryptocurrency cards in the past, but those players were converting cryptocurrencies to fiat currencies at their end, the post added. “Our change to supporting digital assets directly will allow many more merchants to accept crypto — an ability that’s currently limited by proprietary methods unique to each digital asset,” the blog post said. The Mastercard move follows an announcement by PayPal in 2020 allowing users to hold cryptocurrency in their wallets. More recently, Tesla announced a $1.5 billion purchase of Bitcoin and announced plans to accept payments in bitcoin.

The move is likely to complicate the Indian government’s proposals to ban private cryptocurrencies. On 9 February, speaking in the Rajya Sabha Minister of State for Finance Anurag Thakur said that a law on the subject is being finalised and will shortly be sent to the Union Cabinet.

The cryptocurrency industry in India has launched an online initiative called ‘IndiaWantsCrypto’ to build public support in favour of the digital asset in India.

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10 Ways to Make Money Without a Job – MoneyWise.com

Note: If you’ve been affected by coronavirus

Evgenia Parajanian / Shutterstock

If you were laid off as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, or if you’ve been ill (or taking care of someone who is ill), you may qualify for income support.

If the two stimulus checks the federal government issued in 2020 didn’t cut it, there are ways to make your own stimulus check.

The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau has also set up a site for information on managing your finances in the pandemic.

But if the government support isn’t enough to get you through, read on to find out how you can bolster your bank account either through passive income, making money online or capitalizing on your talent and skills.

How to make money without a job — and make your first dollar today

diy13 / Shutterstock

You don’t have to be creatively inclined to start your own profitable side hustle — if you invest a little time and effort, you’re sure to come up with an income generator that makes use of your specific talents or surplus resources.

1. Earn money from unused space in your house

pics721 / Shutterstock

Do you have a finished basement? An extra bedroom or two? If this space isn’t currently in use or it’s reserved for rare occasions, you might consider using it to generate some real estate income.

While you may be thinking, “It’s just a single room,” that may be exactly what someone who wants to downsize from a larger rental property is looking for. It’s a win-win: your tenant finds more affordable housing and you get a bit of cash for a room that would otherwise sit empty.

You can explore short-term rentals through AirBnB, which allows you to list your space with photos, house rules and details of the amenities available.

If you’re going to list through AirBnB, be sure to take the time to vet potential renters before approving their stay. Especially if you’re going to be in the home with them, read through their reviews from previous hosts and make sure your guests are respectful and well-rated.

Your guests will also be leaving reviews about their stay with you. If you want to keep the rental income coming in, make sure you keep your space clean and try to be as inviting as possible. A five-star rating and glowing reviews will help you stand out.

2. Pocket a few dollars each time you shop

DGLimages / Shutterstock

All you need to make a few extra dollars every time you shop is a smartphone. It’s as simple as that.

An app like Dosh, once downloaded to your phone and linked to your banking cards, will reward you with cash back every time you shop, dine or travel.

And for groceries, there’s Fetch Rewards. All you’ll have to do is take a picture of your receipt from any grocery store, drug store, liquor store or hardware store and you’ll earn points.

Those points can then be exchanged for gift cards, charitable donations or monthly sweepstakes.

Eventually, you’ll watch those extra dollars turn into a chunk of change.

You never know when that cash supply will come in handy. You could even invest those funds through an app like Robinhood, which offers commission-free investing.

3. Get your spare change to grow on its own

NicoElNino / Shutterstock

The mobile app Acorns sets aside a small amount of money from each of your purchases to put towards micro-investing. It works like a digital piggy bank.

The app will automatically accumulate “change” every time you use your debit card or it will set aside a small amount from every paycheck — and then instantly invest it.

You won’t notice these small deductions, but they’ll be working away in the wings, multiplying for your future benefit.

4. Earn cash from surfing the web

Josep Suria / Shutterstock

Appropriately named Swagbucks is a rewards program that offers you gift cards and cash in exchange for the things you already do online.

All that’s required is to join the program. Once you’re a member, you’ll carry on with your regular activities — shopping online, watching videos, searching the web, playing games, answering online surveys — while earning points as you go.

Those points can then be redeemed for free gift cards or cash back through PayPal.

5. Become a mystery shopper

Prostock-studio / Shutterstock

This is another great way to get paid for something you either would normally be doing or want to do but can’t afford. You’ll even get to do it on your own schedule.

There are a number of different mystery-shopper companies you can sign up for: BestMark, Second to None, Market Force, Secret Shopper — and that’s only a few of them.

You can make money a few ways through this:

Cash payment. If you have to place a call or simply visit a store, the company will pay you for your time.

Reimbursement. This is common with restaurant mystery shopping. If you’re asked to dine out, you’ll be refunded the cost of your meal.

Cash payment and reimbursement. The holy grail. Not only do you get paid for your time, but you get to keep the products or services you purchase for free.

6. Keep earning money (and experience) from your skills

insta_photos / Shutterstock

All through the pandemic, we saw that even in an economic slowdown, there are still businesses out there looking for copywriters, graphic designers, web developers, translators, tutors and so on.

And with everyone working remotely for now, you can freelance from anywhere in the world.

If you have a special skill or talent, now’s the time to capitalize on it. While there’s always a large supply of available workers during economic slumps, your talent will help you stand out. As they say, the cream always rises to the top.

When you’ve got strong qualifications or an excellent track record, your first step should be engaging in some self-promotion.

Think about signing up on an online marketplace for freelance services. There are many out there and each caters to different types of freelancers:

Fiverr.

Upwork.

99designs.

Guru.

Outsourcely.

Freelancer.

Truelancer.

Toptal.

PeoplePerHour.

But if you’re serious about freelancing in the long term, you’ll want to set up a professional website. Maybe you can even use some of the cash you saved through Dosh to pay for a few months.

The great thing about freelancing on the side is that you’ll build up your experience and portfolio, which will be handy when the economy picks back up again.

7. Top up your bank account by decluttering your home

My Life Graphic / Shutterstock

Given how much time we’ve all spent at home over the last year, it should be fairly easy to identify what you don’t use or need anymore.

Take a tour of your home and set aside all the things of value you know you can part with. If there are items you only suspect you can live without, set those aside separately.

With the belongings you know you can part with, start to post and sell them through sites like eBay, Poshmark, ThredUp or Swap.com.

After a few weeks, return to the box of items you weren’t sure you could live without. If you haven’t thought of or needed anything from that pile since you put it away, maybe it’s time to add to your “to sell” pile.

Not only will you earn a little extra cash through this process, you’ll be decluttering your home as you go.

Who knows — maybe you’ll free up enough space to be able to use your basement or spare room for short-term rentals as well.

And you can channel the cash back into your other money-making efforts like investing or setting up your side business.

But don’t forget to plan for the future. It’s a good idea to set up an emergency fund or build some savings through a Betterment high-yield savings account.

8. Convert your car into an income magnet

structuresxx / Shutterstock

If you’ve just been sitting at home during the pandemic, we’re going to assume your car’s been in park all this time, too.

The hundreds of dollars you’re paying every month on your car lease or finance payment as well as your auto insurance have just been going to waste. You’ve basically been lighting money on fire without even burning gasoline.

But there’s a simple way to get some value out of your car: Why not consider using it to deliver groceries or takeout? Such services are in high demand, now that people are avoiding stores and restaurants.

When it comes to delivery services, there’s a whole assortment of options you can sign up for as a driver:

DoorDash.

Uber Eats.

GrubHub.

Seamless.

Postmates.

Instacart.

If you’re in between gigs or have plenty of spare time, you even can sign up for multiple services.

The best part about this option is that you don’t have to invite strangers into your car and can even choose contactless delivery if you’re anxious about the virus.

9. Tutor or teach kids

Maria Symchych / Shutterstock

If you have a useful skill like a second language, a STEM background, or musical or artistic talent, you can offer tutoring or teaching sessions for kids.

With everyone at home and remote learning becoming more familiar, it’s a great time to launch an online tutoring business.

To do this from home, you’ll only need an internet connection and a smartphone, laptop or tablet. And you’ll be saving on studio or office space and travel expenses, meaning you’ll get to pocket a greater proportion of the revenue.

10. Turn your hobby into a moneymaker

Do you have a hobby or personal interest that other people find interesting? Well, that can also be a source of income if you start a blog, podcast or YouTube channel.

You’d be surprised by what kinds of activities you can monetize these days:

Haircare.

Makeup application/reviews.

Nail design.

Video game playing/reviews.

Unboxing videos (which is exactly what it sounds like).

Knitting or sewing.

Popular-culture commentary.

With enough followers, you can start to generate a few hundred dollars a month through advertising and affiliate marketing.

If you build up a large enough audience, you can even set up a “fan funding” stream. A Patreon, Tipeee or YouTube Super Chat account allows you to collect tips or donations from your followers to support your work.

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How I’d earn a passive income with UK shares – Motley Fool UK

A passive income is generally defined as an income stream that does not require extra work. There are many different ways to earn a passive income stream. There’s no one-size-fits-all structure, and some of these methods might not be suitable for everyone. I’m using UK shares to build a passive income because I’m entirely comfortable investing in the stock market. Other investors might not be comfortable with this level of risk.

Likewise, I’m not particularly excited about buy-to-let property investing for myself. That doesn’t mean it’s not a good way to generate income. Indeed, over the past few decades, thousands of individuals have earned a passive income from rental property. I just don’t think I know enough about the industry to take the leap. 

Book and music royalties are other passive income alternatives, although as I’m not an author or musician, don’t think it would be a good use of my time to pursue this path. 

That’s why I’ve decided to build a passive income with UK shares. I know the stock market’s ins and outs, and I’m prepared to deal with the uncertainty in both the short and long term that comes with owning public equities. 

Buying UK shares

One of the main reasons I favour stocks and shares over other passive income alternatives is flexibility. For example, right now, I can go out and invest in some of the world’s largest companies, across different sectors and industries, at the click of a button.

Of course, going out to buy shares without any research isn’t a sensible investment strategy. So, before I click ‘buy’, I try to understand what I’m planning on buying and why I want to acquire it.

Another reason why I favour stocks and shares is the fact that there is never any obligation to buy a stock. If I don’t like the look of a company, I can avoid it. It is as simple as that. I’m more comfortable owning some businesses compared to others. 

Put simply, I only want to acquire UK shares that I think will meet my passive income goals. 

Passive income goals 

For a business to make it into my portfolio, it has to have several qualities. The company must have a strong balance sheet, a good dividend track record and international diversification.

These qualities by no way guarantee that a business will be a good investment, but I think they help narrow the field. Past performance can be a poor guide for future potential, so I try and keep an eye on how companies perform on a regular basis as well. 

Some businesses that I feel meet these criteria include consumer goods giants Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser. Both of these companies feature in my passive income portfolio.

One organisation that I have also been eyeing up is GlaxoSmithKline. I’ve not acquired this stock yet, but the company has maintained its dividend for the past five years (although its share price is currently no higher than it was five years ago). Although that track record does not guarantee the payout, it suggests to me that it might be worth taking a closer look at this pharmaceutical business as an income investment. 

Rupert Hargreaves owns shares in Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser. The Motley Fool UK has recommended GlaxoSmithKline and Unilever. Views expressed on the companies mentioned in this article are those of the writer and therefore may differ from the official recommendations we make in our subscription services such as Share Advisor, Hidden Winners and Pro. Here at The Motley Fool we believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors.

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Forget Bitcoin: The insane world of altcoin cryptocurrency trading – CNET

It was a Saturday morning and Adam was feeling bold. 

He’d made thousands of dollars on a single trade the night before, and was feeling lucky. But Adam wasn’t trading on the NASDAQ, pumping GameStop stocks or investing in a startup. He was about to sink $2,500 into a cryptocurrency called DeTrade.

It seemed safe. Adam had investigated the coin’s development team on LinkedIn, and watched a video of its CEO laying out a roadmap for the coin’s future. A newswire piece published on Yahoo touted DeTrade’s technology as advanced enough to disrupt cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin is very much back in the zeitgeist. On Monday it reached an all-time-high of over $47,000 thanks to a $1.5 billion investment from Tesla, quadripling its value from this day last year. But while for many people Bitcoin is synonymous with cryptocurrency, it’s not what crypto traders like Adam are interested in. Beneath Bitcoin and Ethereum, the second-best-known currency, is a strange underworld of different cryptocurrencies. 

Called altcoins or, sometimes, “shitcoins,” these are essentially penny-stock cryptocurrencies. And they’re crazy. Bitcoin tripled its value recently, but many altcoins explode 30, 40 or 50 times over within days. Arguably the most famous is Dogecoin, which recently shot up thanks to a potent combination of Reddit and Elon Musk, but there are thousands of altcoins, forming an Indiana Jones-esque Cave of Crypto Wonders. The spoils can be life-changing, but there are traps around each corner. Fortunes can be made and lost in seconds. Cons and fraudsters are everywhere, with traders vulnerable to scams at each step of the process. 

Case in point: Adam’s foray into DeTrade. The touted technology behind it wasn’t real. Nothing about the project was. DeTrade, for all intents and purposes, didn’t exist. The LinkedIn profiles were fake, and the video of its CEO was a deepfake created with AI. It was a scam. Those behind it, operating in the unregulated world of crypto, vanished. Adam lost his $2,500, but he got off easy. In total, those behind the scam took in around $2 million. 

Just a regular day playing with altcoins, says Adam.

Million-dollar joke

Adam got into cryptocurrency in September. When we spoke, it felt like he’d crammed years of trading into two months. He put in $4,000 and lost it in days. Then he turned $3,000 into $90,000. After withdrawing a third of that and then losing just over another third, he now had around $20,000 in crypto. 

Adam had seen some tempestuous trading in recent weeks. One person managed to flip $2,000 into over $40,000 on two different occasions, but lost it all to scams both times. Another put $150 in a coin and doubled his money in 15 minutes. Decent result, but his $150 would’ve turned into $28,000 if he’d waited only one more day. 

But despite the community’s enthusiasm, there’s a small problem. Right now cryptocurrencies don’t really do anything.

Bitcoin nearly tripled in price, from $15,000 to over $40,000, in two months. If you invested $1,000 in early November, you could have taken out $2,600 in early February.

Coin Desk

Investing in a stock means ascertaining its value — based on factors like competition, risks and, above all, profit generation — and then putting money into ones that are undervalued. If other investors follow you, the stock rises, giving you an opportunity to take profit. 

Speculation is naturally part of this: The Dot-com Bubble was all about pouring money into “pre-profit” companies in the hopes they’d make money someday. Cryptocurrency, however, takes speculation into the stratosphere. For the most part, cryptocurrency is pure speculation. People are investing in technology that produces nothing, and has no practical application. As I write this, a coin called Meme is selling for $517. That’s a little over four times the price of an Apple share. Doge, a coin marketed after the internet slang for “dog,” doubled in value earlier this month after a pornstar tweeted about it. After the price settled, it then rocketed once more when Reddit wanted to make it the GameStop of cryptocurrency. 

This disconnect between price and purpose has made many experts understandably skeptical. 

David Gerard is one such skeptic. He became interested in Bitcoin in 2013, when it first hit $1,000, and has since written two books on cryptocurrency. His most recent focuses on Libra, Facebook’s ill-fated attempt at digital currency. 

“The driving force of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is nothing to do with technology,” he told me during a Skype call. “It’s all about the chance that people might get rich for free. All of this is about the psychology of get-rich-quick schemes.” 

In his years working as an IT systems administrator, Gerard’s job has been to examine new technology and discern what’s useful and what’s not. Cryptocurrency, he told me, is not.

“Bitcoin burns a whole country’s worth of electricity for the most inefficient payment network in human history,” he said.

After launching at around $8 in August, the obscure Meme coin briefly reached a valuation of over $1,750 in September. If, with fantastic luck, you invested $1,000 at $8 and sold at $1,750, you’d be up $217,000. This is the allure of “shitcoins.”

Dextools

That’s no exaggeration. Cryptocurrencies are mined using powerful computers, and many enterprising types put together farms of computers used solely for the purpose of mining Bitcoin. As a result, Bitcoin is responsible for more energy consumption than Switzerland. 

Gerard says the only thing you can do with Bitcoin is buy it and sell it. He’s even harsher on altcoins.

“They’re absolutely useless objects. Even by the standards of Bitcoin, altcoins are useless,” he said. 

This is precisely what makes them so fascinating. Seemingly, all they can do is get internet punters to bet on their success. But this enables average people to become rich. That Meme coin I mentioned before? It was listed at $2.72 and a month later hit an all-time-high price of over $2,000. 

Imagine becoming a millionaire from a joke internet coin. 

Risk and reward

Crypto Spider has made millions with altcoins. Crypto Spider isn’t his real name. Like most people in the cryptocurrency community, he goes by a pseudonym. 

He’s gained renown in some Telegram groups over the past few months thanks to a “2K to 1M” challenge, where he endeavored to see how quickly, and with how few trades, he could turn the first number into the second. In cryptocurrency, you can follow someone’s portfolio if you have their wallet number, so the community was able to watch this challenge play out in real time.

Within two months, that $2,000 had grown to over $2 million. Much of that money was made off one trade: He chucked $50,000 into a project which, in the space of around a week, magnified 35 times in value, netting him $1.75 million. After passing $2 million, he cashed out. 

“You won’t ever see that type of explosive growth if you don’t trade in altcoins,” he told me, though he also said “95% of these coins are going to be nonexistent in the future.” 

Like Adam, Crypto Spider has no background in finance or trading. He lists college courses in game theory, basic algorithmics and some economics as useful to his crypto exploits — but in essence he’s a self-taught amateur. He declined to tell me his specific age, only that he was “20ish” when he first got into cryptocurrency in 2017.

He admits he was attracted by the “pretty numbers,” by seeing coins magnify in value 30, 40 and 50 times within a short period. He was enthusiastic enough to start a university club around cryptocurrencies, and how they’d be used in the future. 

Crypto Spider says cryptocurrency will play a “major part in the future of finance,” and speaks with the passion of a believer. He breathlessly transitions from how cryptocurrency is a part of the internet’s evolution to the possible use cases of blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin, in the next 10 years. But despite his enthusiasm, I couldn’t help but notice how chunks of what he said echoed Gerard. 

Cryptocurrencies are mined using powerful computers. More emissions are produced by global Bitcoin miners than by the entire country of Switzerland. 

Washington Post

For one thing, he looks back at all the projects he was excited about in 2017 and realizes most were almost entirely vaporware, technology that’s advertised but never delivered. 

Gerard calls the cryptocurrency community a pool of scammers. Spider notes that people often invest in altcoins they know don’t have a function, because there’s enough hype around the project to make money. “It’s a bubble,” he said, “we’re literally swapping money from each other. I somehow was able to game all the other people.” 

Spider says his performance is 60% luck. He first approached cryptocurrnecy trading with the mentality of, “I’m young, I’m dumb, I can lose all my money and it’ll be OK.”

Again, it reminded me of something Gerard said: “If you’re rich enough that your money is your own problem, fine. If you know zero is a number your investment could go to, fine.”

“But a lot of people are being ripped off, and that’s really bad.”

Trapdoors

People really are getting ripped off. Difficult to regulate and subsisting largely on hype, cryptocurrencies are particularly prone to scams.

Take OneCoin, a company that, through a presale for a cryptocurrency that didn’t exist, stole $4 billion from people around the world before its founder disappeared. Then there’s BitConnect, a coin that reached a $2.6 billion valuation by promising a 1% return on investment every day. It was eventually designated a Ponzi scheme by various authorities around the globe, causing it to lose 96% of its value before getting shut down months later. 

Those are two of the biggest instances of crypto-fraud. But millions of dollars are scammed from cryptocurrency markets every day in less dramatic ways. Coins are suddenly discontinued, with owners taking all the money with them in what the community calls “rug pulls.” Some have investment contracts, ignored like terms-of-service agreements, that prohibit you from taking your money out of a project. Other times, entire cryptocurrency exchanges — which sell coins like a stock exchange sells stocks — vanish.

“I think I’ve been scammed over 100 times,” Crypto Spider said, adding that he lost $250,000 through fraud in December. “Who knows who creates these projects. A lot of people are taking on pseudonyms, because they’re almost all money grabs.” 

But the deepfake used to scam $2 million adds a new vector. Coming into wider use in recent years, deepfakes are mostly used for pornographic purposes, but as the DeTrade scam shows, deepfakes can also be used in financial scams. 

OneCoin founder Ruja Ignatova at an event for the “revolutionary” cryptocurrency. Ignatova disappeared around the time OneCoin was discovered to be a fraud: The cryptocurrency the company sold didn’t actually exist. It’s reported to have scammed over $4 billion from people around the world. Ignatova has yet to be found.

OneCoin

Gerard says he’s never seen a deepfake used as part of a scam before. Crypto Spider says he’s seen it just once.

“We didn’t have that problem in 2017, where people would use deepfakes and rug pull like this,” he said. “The internet is evolving, but the scammers are also evolving.” 

Deepfake technology “is being democratized, and that may not be a good thing,” said Julie Inman-Grant. Now commissioner of the Australian government’s eSafety Commission, Inman-Grant formerly led public policy teams at Microsoft, Adobe and Twitter. 

“This kind of takes the art out of social engineering,” she explained, referring to the techniques usually used by scammers to get you to click a fraudulent link or hand over credit card details. “If they’re delivering a video of someone you respect and you really have no way of telling by the naked eye or ear if it’s fake or not, the potential for misuse could be devastating.” 

Ironically, it’s blockchain, the behind-the-scenes technology, that could be the solution to the burgeoning deepfake problem. In cryptocurrency, the blockchain is an unalterable ledger that tracks every transaction. Once it’s on the ledger, it can’t be altered. That same technology can be used to track anything — like the creation and distribution of a video, from studio to iPhone screen. There are already startups working toward this, like Truepic. 

When I asked about blockchain’s ability to neutralize deepfakes, Inman-Grant wasn’t entirely optimistic. 

“It’s definitely an arms race, but it’s not an arms race we’re winning right now.” 

Real or regulated? 

When Bitcoin hit $40,000 in December, before its Tesla-induced all-time-high, it was confirmation to enthusiasts that cryptocurrency is the future. For skeptics, a higher peak just means a more precipitous fall. 

“I think they’ll become increasingly regulated and less and less interesting,” Gerard said of cryptocurrency. That means less of the “pretty numbers” Crypto Spider was attracted to, but hopefully fewer scams.

For Adam, DeTrade actually had a happy ending. One aggrieved victim of the scam analyzed the metadata of the deepfake, which he used to track down the perpetrators. After some naming and shaming across Telegram, the money was returned. 

That unexpected $2,500 return was a big deal, equivalent to a few weeks pay. Good timing too: By the time Adam got it, a bad trade saw his crypto portfolio diminish from $10,000 to $2,000.

Just another day trading altcoins, Adam told me.

Correction, 1:30 p.m. PT: Removed incorrect statement that Netflix had yet to turn a profit.  

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Can You Earn Passive Income While Investing in Websites? | CoFounder – CoFounder Magazine

Websites are one of the best passive income sources in the modern world, but if you’re focused on optimizing your site and growing your investment, how much room is left to keep the site’s passive income for yourself?

By ERIC PORAT, online entrepreneur

If you enter the website flipping business, you’re doing so for profit. Even if you’re thinking of yourself as an “investor” you’re eventually planning on selling, most likely, once your site has been optimized, traffic has grown, and it’s worth significantly more than what it was worth when you bought it.

But can you make money while you’re growing your site? Obviously yes, but it’s more complicated than a simple yes or no.

“Websites are one of the best sources of passive income in the modern world. If you can build a site with reliable, diverse traffic, multiple streams of revenue, and a solid social media standing, you have the potential to earn quite a bit. Whether from affiliate marketing, ad revenue, or direct product or service sales, there is massive potential for high levels of passive income from a heavily trafficked site,” I have said before.

However, if you’re putting a lot of money into growing the site, improving SEO and UX, running email campaigns, and so on, then oftentimes a lot of that passive income coming in each month is reverted and poured back into site optimization.

So, can you earn reasonable passive income while investing in websites?

Yes, if you play your cards right. Below we’ll get into a few different ways in which you can maximize the monthly income your site is bringing in. Keep in mind these methods are only passive if you can have someone running the game here. However, if you have a site that’s growing, we’re assuming you have someone running it already.

Sponsored Posts

Sponsored posts are a great way to make more passive income if you have a self-sustaining blog with a reasonably engaged audience. Essentially, a sponsored post is when a brand or individual comes to you and pays you to have an article published on your site. You can reach out to them, or they might contact you to write and publish content regarding their products or services.

Sponsored posts are worth big money, depending on your audience size. That said, they generally require a writer on your end or the sponsor’s end. If you already have someone writing the blog, however, it isn’t any different to switch them over to writing sponsored posts, so this is an excellent way to make passive income. Try to negotiate long-term contracts with brands so that you’re publishing a certain amount of sponsored posts for them per month, for example. This saves time and keeps the process hands-free on your end.

Paywalls

You probably know what a paywall is, but in case you don’t, a paywall is basically just a barrier that requires readers or users to pay to access content beyond it. This means users have restricted access to some valuable pieces of content, and to reach that content, they have to pay for it.

This is really useful to gather email addresses and other key info about your readers so you can better reach out to them in the future. Also, by offering access to premium content for a fee, you’re earning passive income (ideally you want them paying a monthly or annual fee, as opposed to a flat rate). A hybrid gating experience is a great idea here, where you have different tiers of content and users can pay higher rates to get deeper access.

Generate and Sell Leads

Lead generation is another great option to monetize your site. What you do here is, through the content published on your site, you attract readers or users that can register as leads which a company will then turn into customers in the future. However, if you want to get paid for bringing in leads to a company, you need to make sure they’re qualified. The payment models are typically either pay per lead or pay per call.

Product Reviews

Writing product reviews is a fast method to get income for your site. Just choose products that are relevant to your niche and then have your writer pen product reviews. Your opinion on these products will matter to your users, and the product brands will pay you well, because you’re promoting their products to a target audience that is relevant for their brand. It’s that simple. You can also make money by signing up for an affiliate program with those products, earning a percentage of every sell you bring in.

Podcasts

Podcasts aren’t exactly passive, but if you get one up and running, it can generate a lot of income overtime. If you do well, you can start hiding it behind a paywall where users have to pay to access it. Brands will also pay for time on your podcast, product reviews, sponsoring various episodes to promote their product or service to your audience. The trick is getting a reasonable amount of listeners for your podcast, but if you’re already working on growing your site traffic, this should be your bread and butter anyway.

Monetization Plug-Ins

Don’t forget there are tons of widgets and plugins available on WordPress sites to monetize your site. These plugins allow you to insert ads or links into the posts or pages of the website. Via this method, you can earn a large amount of extra cash, if you have enough traffic.

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When law enforcement agencies tout their latest cybercriminal arrest, the defendant is often cast as a bravado outlaw engaged in sophisticated, lucrative, even exciting activity. But new research suggests that as cybercrime has become dominated by pay-for-service offerings, the vast majority of day-to-day activity needed to support these enterprises is in fact mind-numbingly boring and tedious, and that highlighting this reality may be a far more effective way combat cybercrime and steer offenders toward a better path.

Yes, I realize hooded hacker stock photos have become a meme, but that’s the point.

The findings come in a new paper released by researchers at Cambridge University’s Cybercrime Centre, which examined the quality and types of work needed to build, maintain and defend illicit enterprises that make up a large portion of the cybercrime-as-a-service market. In particular, the academics focused on botnets and DDoS-for-hire or “booter” services, the maintenance of underground forums, and malware-as-a-service offerings.

In examining these businesses, the academics stress that the romantic notions of those involved in cybercrime ignore the often mundane, rote aspects of the work that needs to be done to support online illicit economies. The researchers concluded that for many people involved, cybercrime amounts to little more than a boring office job sustaining the infrastructure on which these global markets rely, work that is little different in character from the activity of legitimate system administrators.

Richard Clayton, a co-author of the report and director of Cambridge’s Cybercrime Centre, said the findings suggest policymakers and law enforcement agencies may be doing nobody a favor when they issue aggrandizing press releases that couch their cybercrime investigations as targeting sophisticated actors.

“The way in which everyone looks at cybercrime is they’re all interested in the rockstars and all the exciting stuff,” Clayton told KrebsOnSecurity. “The message put out there is that cybercrime is lucrative and exciting, when for most of the people involved it’s absolutely not the case.”

From the paper:

“We find that as cybercrime has developed into industrialized illicit economies, so too have a range of tedious supportive forms of labor proliferated, much as in mainstream industrialized economies. We argue that cybercrime economies in advanced states of growth have begun to create their own tedious, low-fulfillment jobs, becoming less about charismatic transgression and deviant identity, and more about stability and the management and diffusion of risk. Those who take part in them, the research literature suggests, may well be initially attracted by exciting media portrayals of hackers and technological deviance.”

“However, the kinds of work and practices in which they actually become involved are not reflective of the excitement and exploration which characterized early ‘hacker’ communities, but are more similar to low-level work in drug dealing gangs, involving making petty amounts of money for tedious work in the service of aspirations that they may one day be one of the major players. This creates the same conditions of boredom…which are found in mainstream jobs when the reality emerges that these status and financial goals are as blocked in the illicit economy as they are in the regular job market.”

The researchers drew on interviews with people engaged in such enterprises, case studies on ex- or reformed criminal hackers, and from scraping posts by denizens of underground forums and chat channels. They focused on the activity needed to keep various crime services operating efficiently and free from disruption from interlopers, internecine conflict, law enforcement or competitors.

BOOTER BLUES

For example, running an effective booter service requires a substantial amount of administrative work and maintenance, much of which involves constantly scanning for, commandeering and managing large collections of remote systems that can be used to amplify online attacks.

Booter services (a.k.a. “stressers”) — like many other cybercrime-as-a-service offerings — tend to live or die by their reputation for uptime, effectiveness, treating customers fairly, and for quickly responding to inquiries or concerns from users. As a result, these services typically require substantial investment in staff needed for customer support work (through a ticketing system or a realtime chat service) when issues arise with payments or with clueless customers failing to understand how to use the service.

In one interview with a former administrator of a booter service, the proprietor told researchers he quit and went on with a normal life after getting tired of dealing with customers who took for granted all the grunt work needed to keep the service running. From the interview:

“And after doing [it] for almost a year, I lost all motivation, and really didn’t care anymore. So I just left and went on with life. It wasn’t challenging enough at all. Creating a stresser is easy. Providing the power to run it is the tricky part. And when you have to put all your effort, all your attention. When you have to sit in front of a computer screen and scan, filter, then filter again over 30 amps per 4 hours it gets annoying.”

The researchers note that this burnout is an important feature of customer support work, “which is characterized less by a progressive disengagement with a once-interesting activity, and more by the gradual build-up of boredom and disenchantment, once the low ceiling of social and financial capital which can be gained from this work is reached.”

WHINY CUSTOMERS

Running a malware-as-a-service offering also can take its toll on developers, who quickly find themselves overwhelmed with customer support requests and negative feedback when a well-functioning service has intermittent outages.

Indeed, the author of the infamous ZeuS Trojan — a powerful password stealing tool that paved the way for hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from hacked businesses — is reputed to have quit the job and released the source code for the malware (thus spawning an entire industry of malware-as-a-service offerings) mainly to focus his skills on less tedious work than supporting hundreds of customers.

“While they may sound glamorous, providing these cybercrime services require the same levels of boring, routine work as is needed for many non-criminal enterprises, such as system administration, design, maintenance, customer service, patching, bug-fixing, account-keeping, responding to sales queries, and so on,” the report continues.

To some degree, the ZeuS’s author experience may not be the best example, because his desire to get away from supporting hundreds of customers ultimately led to his focusing attention and resources on building a far more sophisticated malware threat — the peer-to-peer based Gameover malware that he leased to a small group of organized crime groups.

Likewise, the cover story in this month’s Wired magazine profiles Marcus Hutchins, who said he “quickly grew bored with his botnets and his hosting service, which he found involved placating a lot of ‘whiny customers.’ So he quit and began to focus on something he enjoyed far more: perfecting his own malware.”

BORING THEM OUT OF BUSINESS

Cambridge’s Clayton and his colleagues argue the last two examples are more the exception than the rule, and that their research points to important policy implications for fighting cybercrime that are often discounted or overlooked: Namely, interventions that focus on the economics of attention and boredom, and on making such work as laborious and boring as possible.

Many cybersecurity experts often remark that taking down domain names and other infrastructure tied to cybercrime businesses amounts to little more than a game of whack-a-mole, because the perpetrators simply move somewhere else to resume their operations. But the Cambridge researchers note that each takedown creates further repetitive, tedious, work for the administrators to set up their sites anew.

“Recent research shows that the booter market is particularly susceptible to interventions targeted at this infrastructural work, which make the jobs of these server managers more boring and more risky,” the researchers note.

The paper takes care to note that its depictions of the ‘boredom’ of the untrained administrative work carried out in the illicit economy should not be taken as impugning the valuable and complex work of legitimate system administrators. “Rather, it is to recognize that this is a different kind of knowledge and set of skills from engineering work, which needs to be taught, learned, and managed differently.”

The authors conclude that refocusing interventions in this way might also be supported by changes to the predominant forms of messaging used by law enforcement and policy professionals around cybercrime:

“If participation within these economies is in fact based in deviant aspiration rather than deviant experience, the currently dominant approaches to messaging, which tend to focus on the dangerous and harmful nature of these behaviors, the high levels of technical skill possessed by cybercrime actors, the large amounts of money made in illicit online economies, and the risk of detection, arrest, and prosecution are potentially counterproductive, only feeding the aspiration which drives this work. Conversely, by emphasizing the tedious, low-skilled, low-paid, and low-status reality of much of this work, messaging could potentially dissuade those involved in deviant online subcultures from making the leap from posting on forums to committing low-level crime.”

“Additionally, diversionary interventions that emphasize the shortage of sysadmin and ‘pen tester’ workers in the legitimate economy (“you could be paid really good money for doing the same things in a proper job”) need to recognize that pathways, motivations, and experiences may be rather more prosaic than might be expected.”

“Conceptualizing cybercrime actors as high-skilled, creative adolescents with a deep love for and understanding of technology may in fact mischaracterize most of the people on whom these markets depend, who are often low-skilled administrators who understand fairly little about the systems they maintain and administer, and whose approach is more akin to the practical knowledge of the maintainer than the systematic knowledge of a software engineer or security researcher. Finding all these bored people appropriate jobs in the legitimate economy may be as much about providing basic training as about parachuting superstars into key positions.”

Further reading: Cybercrime is (often) Boring: Maintaining the Infrastructure of Cybercrime Economies (PDF).

Tags: booter, Cambridge University, Cybercrime Centre, ddos-for-hire, Gameover ZeuS, Marcus Hutchins, Richard Clayton, stresser, wired, ZeuS Trojan

This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2020 at 4:23 pm and is filed under A Little Sunshine, DDoS-for-Hire, How to Break Into Security. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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Introduction

In late April, as residents of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) began to adjust to a new normal in the wake of the COVID-19 epidemic, Ele.me—one of the country’s biggest food delivery platforms—unveiled its latest innovation. In a viral post, a delivery man clad in Ele.me’s bright blue uniform steps into a steel-reinforced full-body “exoskeleton.” Three food crates, weighing over 100 pounds, are strapped to a metal rod that runs the length of his spine. Hiking up his face mask and adjusting his helmet, he takes his first tentative steps, mechanized joints straining. Surrounded by reporters and delighted onlookers, the delivery man’s stride grows quicker and more confident as he makes his way across a city square (Baidu, April 23).

The video spurred an outpouring of online commentary. Observing that the delivery person looked “barely human,” some netizens deemed the suit “overkill,” while others suggested such technology would be better utilized in medical or military capacities. But most remarked favorably on the advanced technology, likening the suit to those worn by characters in the popular new video game Death Stranding (Lei Feng Net, April 23; Phoenix Weekly Weibo, April 23).

Ele.me’s official social media accounts announced that the suits will allow delivery workers better access to elderly communities notorious for their lack of elevators, as well as neighborhoods that do not allow motorbikes. Touting their partnership with a prominent robotics lab, the company proclaimed that the prototype represents the next step in “inevitable trends of social development” (社会发展的必然趋势, shehui fazhan de biran qushi ) (Zhihu, April 22). Converging at the intersection of the technology industry and labor markets, this innovation is representative of the rapid transformation of China’s explosive gig economy.

The coronavirus epidemic of early 2020 has cast a brighter spotlight on gig workers, particularly couriers and food delivery people. Although people and government have recognized their vital logistic role in the throes of the pandemic, the daily perils they face has brought their plight into clearer resolution. In March, the PRC Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the PRC General Administration of Market Supervision, and the PRC National Bureau of Statistics jointly named sixteen official new occupations: among them, “online delivery people” (网约配送员, wangyuepei songyuan) (People’s Daily, March 4). Though increased recognition from the government and the public are steps in the right direction, without substantive changes to China’s labor laws and broader employment landscape, gig work will become both more expected and more dehumanizing.

Human Engines for China’s Economic Growth

China’s gig economy (零工经济, linggong jingji) has grown at a shocking rate in recent years. Confronting slowing economic growth and a looming demographic crisis, China’s leaders are striving to transform the economy from a low-cost, low-skill, low-tech manufacturing model to a modern service-based market. To address these challenges, Beijing’s top leaders have identified the digital sector as a “new engine for economic development” (State Council, 2015).

The manifestation of top-level directives and global technological advances is conspicuous in Chinese cities. Mobile payments made via WeChat Wallet and AliPay have rendered cash all but obsolete. It is difficult to hail a taxi without ride-sharing app DiDi Chuxing. Sidewalks are strewn with dockless shared bicycles from Mobike and Ofo. Food delivery workers for Meituan and Ele.me weave through traffic to reach their destinations. In rural China, e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and JD have connected remote communities with consumers around the world. The transition to a digitally-driven economy has opened a new, loosely-regulated frontier for the Chinese state, firms, and workers.

The proliferation of short term and freelance jobs has fundamentally changed how workers relate to the workplace. According to Zhaopin.com, China’s largest online recruiting firm, demand for part-time or freelance jobs has consistently outpaced growth for full-time work. At present, 20 to 35 percent of the working-age population already make a living through flexible employment—but this number is expected to skyrocket (SCMP, February 26, 2017). A recent report from the Ali Research Institute predicts that as many as 400 million people in China may be gig workers by 2036 (Sohu, June 17, 2019).

But with opportunities come challenges. The explosive growth of the gig economy has raised pressing concerns in China, as in other countries, about workers’ access to the benefits—such as social insurance, compensation, pensions, and health care—that come with a formal labor contract. Mistreatment of gig economy workers is well-documented (Hebei Youth Daily, May 13; E-Commerce, May 15). Chronically overworked and underpaid, migrant workers from China’s countryside, who lack proper documentation to work and access benefits in cities, have pushed back. Approximately half of all protests in early 2019 occurred in the service, retail, and transportation industries—sectors now heavily dominated by internet companies that offer gig work (China Labor Bulletin, May 15, 2019). Widespread strikes among e-commerce couriers and delivery drivers have, in some cases, seriously disrupted normal business operations (Linyi Hedong Net, February 22, 2019).

China’s primary pieces of labor legislation—the Labor Law (1995), Labor Contract Law (2008), Labor Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Act (2008), and Trade Union Law (2001)—have yet to catch up with these seismic shifts. Though “flexible” and “informal” employment were first officially recognized as early as 2001 in the 10th Five Year Plan, real structural changes and protections for gig economy workers have yet to be implemented.

Gig Economy Drivers Go Viral

The COVID epidemic of early 2020 brought the plight of gig economy workers to the fore of China’s social and political discourse. As Chinese families quarantined and businesses shuttered, delivery orders soared. Since the outbreak, Ele.me competitor Meituan Dianping has reported recruiting nearly half a million new riders (Zhihu, April 20). E-commerce platform JD.com saw online grocery sales more than triple year-over-year during a 10-day period between late January and early February (Vox, March 25).

In addition to increased work demands and the risk of exposure to illness, China’s millions of gig economy drivers have also been forced to adjust to more stringent health and safety protocols. Companies such as Yum China’s KFC, Ele.me, Meituan, and JD.com have implemented “contactless delivery,” and some meal deliveries come with notes detailing the temperature readings of the workers who prepared and delivered the food (Reuters, February 9). Drivers for ride-sharing company Didi Chuxing must post their body temperature and upload a video to Didi’s internal platform each day to show that they have sanitized their car (New York Times, May 12). As public transportation systems shut down, many delivery people faced long and circuitous commutes from the suburbs into the cities they serve. As expectations are raised on both sides and gig work becomes increasingly structured and socially vital, a tacit quid pro quo emerges: if workers are held to higher standards, they also must be afforded certain protections and benefits.

The bravery and sacrifice of delivery drivers has been highlighted in Chinese and international media, with a Meituan driver even appearing on the cover of TIME magazine (TIME, March 19). Tributes to heroic drivers braving the virus to deliver food and medicine to shut-in families have circulated widely (iFeng, March 31; Tangqi qisheng shenghuo shuo, March 13). These stories have drawn attention to the essential yet precarious role of gig economy drivers, prompting for the first time an outpouring of public support.

In the wake of the epidemic, prominent journalists and public figures have come out as advocates for policy changes around gig economy drivers’ employment status. Tu Yongqian, a researcher at the National Development and Strategy Research Institute of Renmin University, argued that: “the employment opportunities provided by the gig economy—especially during the epidemic period—are essential…traditional labor laws passed during the factory era must be appropriately expanded with the development of labor and employment, and the social security law must continue to eliminate the differential treatment workers based on identity” (Peng Pai News, April 28).

Similarly, a China Youth Daily columnist wrote that “part-time workers under the impact of the epidemic cannot be ignored…it is necessary to clarify the nature of the labor relationship in the gig economy at the legal level, so that it can be included in the scope of social security and management” (China Youth Daily, April 24). Another state media op-ed called for relevant government departments to provide gig economy workers with “diversified employment services such as vocational training, supply and demand matching, social security services, and commercial insurance” (Beijing Evening News, May 13).

Local governments and organizations have also been spurred to action. In Chongqing, a branch of the municipal government established the first ever legal service group to help delivery drivers navigate licensing and appointment issues (Chongqing Morning Post, May 13). In Hegang (Heilongjiang Province), the local Communist Youth League launched a volunteer program to support delivery workers through online advocacy and by donating supplies (China Youth Daily, May 13). And in Baicheng (Jilin Province), local authorities and company representatives engaged in much-needed conversations about driver safety (Peng Pai News, May 14).

Though these measures mark a step in the right direction, it remains unclear what long-term effect—if any—they will have on the employment status and livelihood of gig economy workers. What is clear is that takeout and delivery services will become increasingly essential as China, and the world, recover from the coronavirus epidemic. Reflecting the mainstream status of gig workers in the hearts and minds of the Chinese public, one netizen opined that “as long as you see the deliverymen still running, you know that life continues” (Sina, April 26).

The Road Ahead

China’s food delivery services alone have developed into a $46 billion industry—the largest in the world and twice the size of that of the United States. More than 400 million people (about half of China’s internet users) have ordered food deliveries (Zhihu, April 28). Among young, urban white-collar workers, “delivery brothers” (外卖小哥, waimai xiaoge) are fondly referred to as yishi fumu (衣食父母), an idiom that literally translates to “food and clothing parents”—the people one relies on for care and sustenance.

Aside from being a critical means of keeping China’s city-dwellers fed and clothed, the gig economy represents an important source of employment in the new, service-based economy that China’s leaders are working hard to promote. The gig economy has absorbed millions of laid-off workers from China’s manufacturing and industrial sectors, thereby heading off potential labor unrest. Nearly one-third of Meituan’s riders used to work in factories, and in 2018 the number of migrant workers engaged in the service industry surpassed the manufacturing industry for the first time (Zhihu, April 28). It is also becoming a more viable profession for young, educated people seeking flexible employment: a recent report released by Alibaba, Ele.me’s parent company, showed that around half of their delivery drivers were born post-1990, and identified as “slash youth” (斜杠青年, xiegang qingnian)—meaning they have multiple jobs (e.g.,  delivery driver/student/artist). In a difficult job market, college students comprise about 20% of the drivers (Sina, April 26).

While increased recognition from the public and central and local governments has shone a positive spotlight upon gig economy workers, larger, structural and institutional changes to labor laws and regulations are necessary in order for real change to be affected. The coronavirus epidemic has expedited the urgency of these changes, and China’s labor landscape must update to reflect the reality of a post-COVID-19 world. If it does not, the consequences could be dire—not only for gig workers themselves, but also for urban residents dependent on gig economy labor, and for China’s broader economic transformation.

Viola Rothschild is a PhD student in political science at Duke University. You can follow her on Twitter @vrothsch.

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From left: John Marshall Law School Dean Darby Dickerson and New York Law School Dean Anthony Crowell

Can an online law school class approximate the experience of being a summer associate at a law firm? We’ll soon find out.

At least two campuses have launched summer programs designed to help students develop the real-world skills they would normally pick up working at law firms or in internships, as many of those training opportunities have evaporated amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

New York Law School has partnered with Venable for its eight-week Summer Associate Simulation Program, which is modeled after the summer associate experience at a large law firm. The 200 enrolled students have been placed into “practice groups,” are attending online classes, and will work on simulated legal matters tied to the coronavirus outbreak.

Meanwhile, the University of Illinois at Chicago John Marshall Law School just kicked off a 10-week Summer Associate Training Academy for students and recent graduates that incorporates simulated legal matters and gives participants the opportunity to get feedback from attorneys and judges on a drafting assignment.

Both programs are intended to help fill the summer training gaps left by shortened or cancelled summer associate programs and internships, and those moved entirely online. A handful of large law firms have cancelled their summer associate programs outright citing COVID-19, while many more have whittled them from 10 weeks down to five weeks. The remaining programs will primarily happen virtually.

“This class—and the next two—face really difficult circumstances,” said James Leipold, executive director of the National Association for Law Placement. “They’ll face a tough job market, but they’ll also face a skills gap because all of the ways that people get experience over the summer are compromised. Anything schools, employers or bar associations do to provide practical, hands-on active learning is great. Do they entirely replace a summer associate position or a summer internship with a federal government agency? No. But are they way better than nothing? Yes.”

One major difference with the school-run programs, however, is that there will be no job offer awaiting participants at the end of the summer. Traditionally, nearly all summer associates at large firms receive offers to come onboard as an associate after graduation, though it remains to be seen whether associate offer rates decline this year as firms prepare for a pandemic-induced slowdown in work. (Neither New York Law School or UIC John Marshall are traditional Big Law feeder schools—they did not rank among the 50 schools with the highest percentage of 2019 graduates going to the largest 100 firms, according to Law.com’s 2020 Go-To Law Schools hiring report.) But Leipold said having practice skills training on their resumés will make participants in programs like these more marketable upon graduation. Venable partner Michael Volpe, who is spearheading New York Law School’s program alongside dean Anthony Crowell, agrees.

“From an employer’s perceptive, having this on your resume—working successfully on these different areas of law while at the same time managing the day-to-to ins and outs on a remote basis—I think, will make these folks particularly well suited for employers at larger law firms as they turn to a changing business model,” Volpe said.

New York Law School’s program kicked off Wednesday with 200 students who are earning academic credit for participating. (Demand outstripped the 120 seats that the school originally planned for, according to Crowell.) Alumni sponsors are covering their tuition for the class. Like summer associates at law firms, students have been divided into practice groups—in this case, litigation, corporate affairs and government affairs and policy. The approximately 70 students in each practice area have been further divided into groups of 10 that are supervised by a practicing attorney. The students participate in “staff meetings” to simulate working with partners and senior associates and are required to produce memos, client letters, motions and other documents that traditional summer associates would work on. Each of their simulated legal matters pertain to the coronavirus, be it employment matters, data privacy or public health law. Wednesday’s orientation included three law firm associates sharing their experiences and advice on navigating the law firm world as a young attorney, as well as an overview of law firm billing. Future sessions will address legal technology and leadership, in addition to substantive law.

“We’re presenting opportunities for students to understand how their world will be transformed as a result of [COVID-19] for the next few years, and we want them to be ready for it,” Crowell said.

The Summer Associate Training Academy at UIC John Marshall is taking a slightly different tack. The 100 participating students won’t earn academic credit for participating in the program, which is free and open to recent graduates as well as current students. But they are meeting online weekly for lectures and guest speakers, and they must complete two writing assignments over the course of the 10 weeks. They will also complete online simulations in which they are summer associates receiving assignments from a partner and interacting with their supervisors. Dean Darby Dickerson, who conceived of the academy, said it could become a regular, for-credit summer class if there continues to be student demand.

“I want them to leave with knowledge and some skills that I think they would have been more likely to pick up had they been in a summer associate or law clerk position, and could walk the halls and talk to people,” Dickerson said. “There are things you pick up from interacting with people. So I’m trying to fill those gaps.”

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Working in-house has long been viewed as an option for those wanting a better work-life balance. But intense company pressures resulting from the pandemic crisis combined with the need to work from home have left many general counsel feeling unable to maintain a distinction between work and home life.

Several U.K. based general counsel recounted their challenges to Law.com International as they attempt to act as trusted advisers to their company leaders while also seeking to have some periods of separation from the job.

“The liability of a GC is going up,” said Simon Nasta, general counsel at industrial giant GFG Alliance, who was a senior associate at Allen & Overy from 2005 to 2012.

Nasta said he has currently been busier than he was at the law firm during boom times.

He said it is “incredibly tough right now” for GCs, and the additional pressures mean it is a struggle to maintain a work-life balance and switch off.

“The lines were blurred before but are now increasingly being erased altogether,” he added.

A general counsel at a betting company added they have seen those lines blur particularly vividly recently, as his home and work lives have overlapped.

“Remote working can cause frictions – the hours are long and unsociable, but there are both positives and negatives. I see my daughter a lot more. But, negatives can include when I had to change her nappy during a call with the executive board. It feels like I’m not always doing right by her”. 

Similarly, one U.K. technology company general counsel said one perk of remote working has been able to give his children a bath in the evenings, but that he has had to return to work calls after that.

The betting company GC said as well as the bulk of usual work pressures, he has felt more responsible for looking after his team’s emotional well-being too.

“There’s also the added dynamic to look after the mental health of your team”, he said. “It’s a struggle to always emotionally engage without the face to face interaction and I think people are getting bored of pub quizzes.”

The comments mark a change to the traditional logic that private practice lawyers work longer hours. While in-house lawyers struggle to cope, many law firms have offered their lawyers shorter working weeks or the chance to move into busier departments given the drop in transactional work.

U.K. lawyers have recently expressed concerns about the impact of the coronavirus on mental health, according to research by U.K. mental health charity LawCare and Project First 100 Years.

Lesley Wan, general counsel at FBN Bank, added that the usual demands of a GC must still be juggled.

GCs “may also be expected to provide or contribute to calm, focused, reliable and empathetic leadership across the wider organisation”, she said, alongside the “uncharted territory”.

A GC for an online marketplace said discussions within the GC community have flagged similar pressure points, including a huge increase in emails and the amount of work making it “much harder” to switch off.

But she also said she finds the lack of commute means she has no extra time to “wind down” and separate work and home life.

“If you’re also a working parent, when you’ve finished work you then have to prepare meals, put children to bed as well as attempt to spend proper time with them.”

While times may be currently tough, Nasta says that, like the 2008-09 global recession, lessons learned will add to GC’s experience.

“Moments like this are educational as change is rapid. Slightly embarrassingly, as a world we now know much more about supply chains and the fragility of them – or not in the case of the dreaded toilet roll panic-buying!” 

Read More:

Mental Health and Gender Inequality Worries Affecting Women in Lockdown, First 100 Years Finds

Less Money, Furloughing and Being Forced Back to Offices: UK Lawyers’ COVID-19 Concerns

Why GCs Don’t Like It When Firms Impose Lengthy Partner Notice Periods

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Balancing technology without losing the human touch during Covid-19 – Kansas City  Kansas City Business Journal Source link

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The strategy is aimed not only at TikTok, which is not available in China, but all of ByteDance’s non-China focused businesses.

TikTok’s poaching of Disney’s Kevin Mayer to be its CEO was just the most visible part of a broader strategy by its Chinese owner to shift its centre of power away from China at a time of rising global tensions, several people familiar with the plans said. The short video app’s parent company ByteDance has quietly made a series of moves in recent months to transfer global decision-making and research capabilities out of its home country, the sources told Reuters.

The strategy is aimed not only at TikTok, which is not available in China, but all of ByteDance’s non-China focused businesses, the sources said. Such businesses also include units in India like social networking app Helo. ByteDance has expanded TikTok’s engineering and research and development operations in Mountain View, California, according to three sources. One of the people said it had hired more than 150 engineers there.

ByteDance has also hired a New York-based investor relations director to stay in touch with major investors including General Atlantic and KKR, relationships that were previously managed through Beijing, according to two sources. The new hire, Michelle Huang, is a former SoftBank investor who worked on the Japanese firm’s investment in ByteDance. Huang did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

The changes come at a time of heightened tension between the United States and China over trade, technology and the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as intense U.S. regulatory scrutiny of TikTok, which has rapidly gained popularity around the globe and counts the United States as one of its biggest market. Formerly Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) streaming chief Mayer, who was dually named ByteDance’s chief operating officer based in Los Angeles, will also be handed leadership for areas such as global corporate development. Many of his responsibilities were previously managed out of Beijing, according to three sources.

More broadly, ByteDance is also recruiting engineers around the world, including in Singapore, Jakarta and Warsaw, online job postings show. These significant organizational changes are being greeted warily by some ByteDance staff who support the company’s global operations from China, three sources told Reuters. They are concerned they may become less relevant in the next phase of expansion and have started to look for work elsewhere, the sources said.

AMERICAN MIGRATION For TikTok, the rapid expansion of the U.S. engineering team is part of efforts to migrate its technical resources to the West from China, where most of the work on the app has been done up to this point, according to two of the sources familiar with the company’s plans. It is not uncommon for multinational tech companies like Google to have engineers in China.

Although the engineering team on the app have previously reported to managers in China, TikTok is in the process of recruiting a high-level executive to run the engineering department from the United States, according to two sources. It has approached a senior Google employee in recent months, one source said. Severing ties with the China-based team will be difficult, however.

Some of the engineers in China support TikTok as well as ByteDance’s Chinese social media app Douyin, the three sources said. Separating development completely would be nearly impossible as both apps share some infrastructure, two of the sources said. TikTok, which allows users to create short videos with special effects, has become wildly popular with American teenagers doing viral challenges that pair dances with music clips from the app’s library.

Its Chinese ownership has, however, caused concerns in Washington about TikTok’s handling of personal data. The company uses sophisticated artificial intelligence to make video recommendations based on users’ behavior on the app. Separately from the hiring of 150 staff, the Mountain View team has poached a few dozen data engineers from U.S. tech giants to manage user data security, one source said.

‘ISSUE OF CREDIBILITY’ Since last year, TikTok has faced scrutiny by U.S. authorities over potential national security risks. An investigation by the U.S. Treasury’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is focused on the handling of personal data, Reuters reported in November. Legal experts said regulators would study TikTok’s latest actions to determine if they mitigated any potential risks and were more than cosmetic touches.

“With any attempted restructuring, the issue is one of credibility,” said Paul Marquardt, CFIUS lawyer at law firm Cleary Gottlieb, who is not involved in the TikTok review. “CFIUS would assess whether it actually believed that the operations were functionally independent and insulated from potentially hostile influence.” Republican Senator Marco Rubio was among U.S. lawmakers who last year urged CFIUS to review ByteDance’s 2018 acquisition of Musical.ly, a music video app popular in the United States.

When asked about whether TikTok’s recent moves could assuage U.S. regulatory concerns, he told Reuters: “As long as TikTok or any other application operates in a way that gives the Chinese government and Communist Party leverage, it is impossible to separate the dangers of using such an application from the reality that users’ information could be at risk.”

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As the country looks forward to the next phase of lockdown restrictions being lifted, James Byrne, marketing manager PML Group, with this week’s view from Out of Home.

We are now more than halfway through phase one of the government plan for the reopening of society and the economy and phase two will kick off in a little more than a week’s time on June 8th. Evidence of increased mobility of audience has built during phase one and we report on the latest figures for this week below. This increased mobility is also reflected in increased numbers being back in the workplace and this week saw the release of some revealing information regarding the workplace, which we also feature. We look at how technology will create opportunity for OOH advertisers and how home tourism will have a major impact on the OOH audience this summer.

Mobility

Locomizer

Latest data from Locomizer, based on analysis of mobile phone location data via anonymised app reporting, shows the growth in mobility across the Island of Ireland over the course of the pandemic, and as restrictions ease. By comparing user figures based on individuals generating at least one signal per small area district across two weeks; 6-12 April and 18-24 May, uplift in both auto (all forms) and pedestrian modes of movement is witnessed.

Over the five weeks auto mobility is up 79% in ROI and 69% in NI while pedestrian movement is up 166% in ROI and 46% in NI. Looking regionally, Leinster has seen the biggest rise in auto mobility at +115% while growth in pedestrian movement growth is at its highest in Dublin City at +196%. Data from multiple sources has indicated the initial drop off in mobility was lower in NI which accounts for the smaller increases over the period.

TII

Daily traffic data from Transport Infrastructure Ireland this week indicates a continued increase in road users. Following daily increases of between 25%-30% in the first week of phase 1 (w/c 18th), this week saw further increases of between 8%-9%. This means that traffic levels nationally are now at around 50% of that for the same week last year.

Apple Mobility Trends

Apple’s routing requests reveal daily trends in mobility in terms of driving, walking and public transport. The latest data, up to May 26th, shows that driving mobility is up 8% this week compared to last and 96% up on the low point of April 14th.  Transit is up 13% this week and has more than doubled since April 14th. Interestingly, walking is down 2% on the week, perhaps indicating a movement back to other transport forms as restrictions have been eased. As a whole, mobility is up 6% this week and 93% on the lowest point.

Apple mobility data also shows that average weekly driving activity in Northern Ireland at the beginning of April dropped to 42% of previous baseline levels. Since then there has been a steady rise in driving activity over the past 8 weeks, increasing to 73% of the baseline value (Apple data as of 24th May 2020). For the week ending 24th May the average driving activity increased by 21% compared to the prior week.

Footfall activity around Grocery locations remain strong at 85% of the baseline, an increase of 18% in activity over the past 8 weeks (Google data as of 21st May). The latest data also reports footfall activity around Parks at 108% of baseline, with a 50% increase in activity over the past 8 weeks. As restrictions continue to ease, we anticipate the mobility levels will increase accordingly.

Amárach Public Opinion Tracker

45% of males and 38% of females have travelled further than 5KM in a single journey in the past week, according to new figures from Amárach. The 35-44 age group is the one to have travelled more than 5KM the most in that period. The research also shows that Dubliners are stuck more rigidly to their 5KM radius with 30% travelling beyond that distance, compared to 46% in Munster.

For the vast majority (79%), the reason for their 5KM+ journey was for work or shopping, but 17% admitted to breaking the 5KM limit for exercising in phase one of the government roadmap.

Insight/Sentiment

Return to Work

Google’s latest Covid-19 Community Mobility Report (May 16th) indicates a significant move back to the workplace across the country. The report states that attendance at workplaces is now 40% down on pre-lockdown figures. This is a 12% increase on the April figures, which had been at 52%. This return to workplaces is more pronounced in more sparsely populated regional areas with counties such as Offaly and Tipperary registering workplace attendance now only 30% down on pre-Covid levels.

On the topic of workplaces in the Covid era, Irish researchers have released a paper this week – Covid-19, Occupational Social Distancing (SD) and Remote Working Potential in Ireland. It looks at how SD will impact the world of work and what sectors will be most affected. The authors, Dr. Frank Crowley and Dr. Justin Doran from Cork University Business School in UCC, generated two indices which will influence the effect of SD on a business. They generated two indices which capture the potential impact of Covid-19 through identifying firstly, the occupations which may be most able to implement social distancing procedures and secondly the occupations which have the greatest potential scope for remote working.

The social distancing index takes account of the prevalence of face to face communication, customer interaction and physical proximity for a given worker in a specific occupation. Workers who face high levels of face to face communication, customer interaction, and are in close proximity to others whilst working, score poorly for social distancing potential.

The remote working index accounts for jobs requiring daily work outdoors, whether the tasks entailed require the operation of vehicles, mechanised devices or equipment, and the degree to which electronic means of communication versus face-to-face communication is used. Those whose jobs require working outdoors or operating vehicles, or who work in close proximity to others score poorly for remote working potential.

The economic crisis in Ireland is likely to play out differently across places due to, firstly, existing occupational and industrial geographical clustering across Ireland, and secondly the associated social distancing and remote working potential required across occupations and sectors. In other words, the location of different types of jobs and sectors is going to matter.

They found that the potential for social distancing and remote work favours occupations located in the Greater Dublin region and provincial city regions. Donegal is an exception bucking this pattern. Some places are going to be better equipped than others to deal with this crisis.  At a town level, more affluent, better educated and better broadband provisioned towns have more workers with a greater potential for social distancing and remote working. Paradoxically, urban areas with greater density levels and higher populations have also greater social distancing and remote working potential.

The full paper can be found here.

The Next….how ‘Covid tech’ will influence OOH

Online shopping gurus. Netflix ninjas. E-commerce experts. Zoom zealots.

There is no doubt that technology’s influence in our lives has gone up a few notches in the last few months. As we move through the various phases set out by the government for the reopening of the economy and society, innovative technological solutions to the logistical issues of our changed environment may well have implications for OOH communications.

We are already seeing some evidence of this emerging as business across the world adapt for what’s coming next.

Digital Hand Sanitisers

Hand sanitizers are one of the first touch points that the public will encounter as they enter an outlet.  New digital advertising screens with built-in sanitizer dispensers are coming on stream.

Queuing Systems

As socially distanced queuing becomes a normal part of our day to day lives, companies have been looking at innovative ways to improve the customer experience. Cue intelligent digital signage and virtual queuing software.

Intelligent digital signage can be used to count customers entering and leaving retail outlets, thus delivering a real time stop/go system. Arnotts and BT announced this week that such a system will be in place for their customers when they reopen next month.

Asda, Britain’s third biggest retailer is beginning trials of a virtual queuing system. Customers will be able to get a virtual ticket by scanning an OOH poster and return to the safety of their car whilst waiting to be called via their mobile phone.

Lidl Ireland has announced that it is planning to introduce a new COVID-19 queue management system designed to control the number of customers entering and exiting the store at any one time, in order to maintain social distancing during busy periods. The innovative software controls an automated traffic light and monitor that signals to shoppers when they can proceed through the entrance based on individual customer limits that are in line with social distancing guidelines, the retailer said.

Self Service Interactive Screens and Mid-Air Haptic Technology

In order to minimise human contact, there has been a rise in self-service interactive kiosks and screens, similar to the interactive order screens often found in McDonalds restaurants. In an effort to eliminate the “touch” element, mid-air haptic technology is accelerating. Mid-air haptic technology allows you to interact with interactive digital screens using hand gestures rather than physical touch.

The pace of innovation has been impressive. Out of Home has shown itself to be nothing if not flexible and adaptive in the past decade. In a media sense, what we are experiencing is a shift in audience behaviour. Change brings opportunity. Out of Home is opportunity.

Knowledge Gaps still exist re Covid

In research by PML group in April we found that 77% of respondents agreed that OOH was a very effective channel for communicating public information messaging. The research from Amarach this week shows substantial knowledge gaps among the public regarding Covid – including how to protect against Coronavirus and information about decision by the authorities.

The pace of innovation has been impressive. Out of Home has shown itself to be nothing if not flexible and adaptive in the past decade. In a media sense, what we are experiencing is a shift in audience behaviour. Change brings opportunity. Out of Home is opportunity.

Participation in Sport

Unprecedented Number of People Cycling

Cycling Ireland this week reported on research that found an unprecedented number of adults are cycling every week. The latest figures show an estimated 510,000 people within the Republic of Ireland are enjoying cycling as a form of exercise, participating at least once per week. This marks an increase of approximately 260,000 people compared to the same time last year.

Cycling Ireland CEO Matt McKerrow welcomed the figures; “I think everyone in the cycling community has anecdotally noticed more people cycling in and around their towns and suburbs recently, but it is great to see the research with numbers quantifying the levels of increased participation.

The gradual easing of restrictions will allow new and returning cyclists to enjoy greater freedom on their bikes, benefiting from both a physical and mental health perspective.

Staying in (car) is the new going out

Research we conducted in April highlighted outdoor events such as festivals and concerts as one of the main things people were looking forward to doing again when restrictions eased. This week we saw how such events may look with social distancing a reality for the medium term at least. Gavin James was announced as headline act for a series of Drive-In live shows in July and August at venues in Limerick, Cork, Waterford and Kilkenny. Up to four ‘carevellers’ per vehicle will be permitted.

This is a trend we expect to see gain much traction and extend to other gatherings such as cinema, theatre and church services.

Such events will literally drive traffic to venues from all around the country and OOH is perfectly suited to engaging this new audience – both at the venues and en route.

Interest in Domestic Holidays Grows

With uncertainty lingering over travelling abroad, many holidays and foreign getaways have been cancelled or placed on hold for the time being.

As a result, staycations are set to soar in popularity this year. New research from Core Optimisation published on marketing.ie this week shows a piqued interest in domestic getaways. Online searches related to Irish hotels increased in May, indicating an increased interest in travelling domestically. The luxury travel market may emerge as the quickest to recover with the search term ‘luxury travel’ experiencing an upward curve since mid-March.

Research carried out by iReach insights also indicates a renewed interest in staycations with 20% of its respondents hoping for a staycation later in the year. A further 23% have given up on the thought of overseas travel and are now planning a staycation.

The lack of foreign travel in 2020 will inevitably lead to an increased domestic audience for OOH advertising, especially across the summer months.

OOH can be an important medium for reaching staycationers. With a significant portfolio of regional touchpoints, advertiser can reach staycationers at a time where they may be more difficult to reach through other modes of advertising.

Retail

FMCG Sales Surge Ahead

Off- trade alcohol sales surged by 59% in the week ending 10 May, compared to the same period last year, research conducted by Nielsen shows. Alcohol sales have reached a record €6million a day during lockdown, equating to €342.5 million spend in the past 8 weeks.

Typical pub drinks such as stout and gin rocketed by 155% and 38% respectively. The research also suggested shoppers are frequenting their corner shop for alcohol rather than including it as part of their weekly shop.

The same research concluded that overall FMCG sales reached €333million in the week ending 10 May, 12.5% higher compared to the same week last year.

More positive signs in the retail sector are emerging with retailers announcing plans for a return to business. Cineworld revealed plans to reopen all its cinemas in July.

McDonald’s is back to full drive-thru capacity next week, with the QSR announcing that all its drive-thru restaurants in Ireland will reopen by Thursday June 4. Its 95 restaurants contribute close to €200m to the Irish economy, according to the company.

Retailers are also beginning to look at more long-term social distancing strategies with Tesco, Lidl and Aldi announcing new queuing systems for entering stores, evidence that the queues we experience outside retailers will continue well into the future.

The buoyancy of the retail market is indicative of our reliance on retailers currently. With a wide range of OOH opportunities in the retail sector, advertisers can engage with guaranteed audiences at supermarket and convenience store entrances and retail screens in shopping centres where dwell time is particularly high.

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Twitter added a warning label early Friday to a tweet from President Trump implying that protesters in Minneapolis could be shot, in a move likely to escalate tensions between Mr. Trump and his favorite social media megaphone.

The company said Mr. Trump’s post violated its rules against glorifying violence, and it prevented users from viewing the tweet without reading a brief notice, the first time it has restricted one of the president’s messages in this way. Twitter also blocked users from liking or replying to Mr. Trump’s post, though they were still allowed to retweet it if they added a comment of their own.

But Twitter did not take the tweet down, saying it was in the public’s interest that the message remain accessible.

In the tweet, posted early Friday morning, Mr. Trump called the protesters “thugs” and said he had told Minnesota’s governor that the military was “with him all the way.”

“Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” the president wrote. “Thank you!”

Twitter said it had decided to restrict the tweet “based on the historical context of the last line, its connection to violence, and the risk it could inspire similar actions today.”

The company’s decision comes a day after Mr. Trump signed an executive order that seeks to limit the legal protections shielding social media companies from liability for the content posted on their platforms. The president had fulminated over Twitter’s decision earlier this week to add fact-checking labels for the first time to two of his tweets. In response, he accused Twitter of stifling speech and said that he would end the interference.

Hours after the warning label was added to Mr. Trump’s Friday tweet, he posted another that accused Twitter of targeting “Republicans, Conservatives & the President of the United States.”

Mr. Trump’s tweet about the Minneapolis protests echoed a comment by Walter E. Headley, the Miami police chief who attracted national attention in the late 1960s for using shotguns, dogs and a heavy-handed “stop-and-frisk” policy to fight crime in the city’s black neighborhoods.

Mr. Headley announced a “get tough” campaign in a December 1967 news conference that prompted anger among black leaders, The New York Times reported at the time.

“We haven’t had any serious problems with civil uprising and looting,” he said, “because I’ve let the word filter down that when the looting starts, the shooting starts.”

“We don’t mind being accused of police brutality,” Mr. Headley also said at that news conference. “They haven’t seen anything yet.”

Twitter has for years faced criticism over Mr. Trump’s posts on the platform, which he has used to issue threats, bully critics and spread falsehoods. The company has said repeatedly that the president did not violate its terms of service, however much he appeared to skirt the line.

The company has also said that blocking world leaders from the service or removing their tweets would hinder public debate around their words and actions. Twitter did announce last year, however, that it would in certain cases place warning labels on posts from political figures that broke its rules, the feature it used with Mr. Trump’s tweet about Minneapolis.

Twitter’s attitude appeared to shift this week after Mr. Trump posted about Lori Klausutis, a woman who died in 2001 from complications of an undiagnosed heart condition while working for Joe Scarborough, a Florida congressman at the time. The president has long feuded with Mr. Scarborough, now a host for MSNBC, and in recent days, Mr. Trump had posted conspiracy theories about Ms. Klausutis’s death, suggesting that Mr. Scarborough was involved.

Her widower wrote a letter to Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, asking to have the false tweets removed. “I’m asking you to intervene in this instance because the president of the United States has taken something that does not belong to him — the memory of my dead wife — and perverted it for perceived political gain,” Timothy Klausutis wrote.

Twitter did not honor the request. Instead, it placed links and warning labels on other tweets Tuesday in which Mr. Trump said mail-in ballots would cause the November presidential election to be “rigged.” That led him to sign the executive order, which he framed as an effort to fight social platforms’ biases.

Facebook appears to be trying to forestall such criticism. Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, told Fox News this week that he was uncomfortable with Facebook’s being “the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online.”

Frederike Kaltheuner, a tech policy fellow at the Mozilla Foundation, said that Twitter’s confrontation with Mr. Trump raised questions about how the platform would treat other world leaders. In March, the company deleted posts by the presidents of Brazil and Venezuela that contained unproven information about Covid-19 treatments.

“I doubt that Twitter has the resources to consistently apply rules to all heads of states that use their platform in all sorts of languages,” Ms. Kaltheuner said. “From all we know about the many inconsistent ways in which other policies are being enforced, my guess is that places that rarely make U.S. news will likely be overlooked.”

In Mr. Trump’s tweets about Minneapolis on Friday, he also criticized Mayor Jacob Frey’s response.

“I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City,” the president wrote. Mr. Trump said Mr. Frey, a Democrat, must “get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right.”

It was unclear if the president intended to send additional troops after Gov. Tim Walz activated the Minnesota National Guard to help restore order in the Twin Cities. Protests have raged there over the death on Monday of George Floyd, a black man who had been pinned down by a white police officer who pressed his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck.

Mr. Trump had previously described the video of Mr. Floyd’s death as a “very shocking sight” and “a very very sad event,” saying he had asked the F.B.I.’s investigation to be expedited.

Mr. Frey did not know about Mr. Trump’s tweets until a reporter read them aloud during a news conference early on Friday. The mayor shook his head and then gave a fiery retort, slamming a podium for emphasis.

“Weakness is refusing to take responsibility for your own actions,” he said. “Weakness is pointing your finger at somebody else during a time of crisis.”

“Donald Trump knows nothing about the strength of Minneapolis,” he continued. “We are strong as hell. Is this a difficult time period? Yes. But you better be damn sure that we’re going to get through this.”

Adam Satariano contributed reporting.

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Live updates: As some hard-hit regions move to reopen, pandemic’s hotbeds shift  The Washington Post Source link

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Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption International students are uncertain of the future in the wake of Covid-19

Two years ago, 29-year-old Raunaq Singh started working towards his dream of pursuing an MBA from one of the world’s top business schools.

In January 2020, he was waitlisted by UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business in California, and was asked to send more information to bolster his case for admission.

“So, I quit my stable job of five years and started working with a mental wellness start-up as a consultant,” Mr Singh says.

“I’m on a major pay cut because the purpose of joining this company wasn’t to earn money, but to add value to my application.”

Fortunately, he was accepted at Berkeley, and was due to start his course in September.

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But then the world changed as Covid-19 spread, plunging the immediate future into uncertainty.

Mr Singh is one of hundreds of thousands of Indian students who were planning to study abroad. But now they are not quite sure what will happen given international travel restrictions, new social distancing norms and the sheer uncertainty of what the next few months will bring.

After China, India sends more students abroad to study than any other country – more than one million Indians were pursuing higher education programs overseas as of July 2019, according to India’s foreign ministry.

Image copyright Meehika Barua

Image caption Ms Barua is one of the hundreds of thousands of Indians who wants to study abroad

Every year, in June and July, students flood visa centres and consulates to start the paperwork to travel and study abroad. But things look different this year.

“There’s a lot of stress and anxiety and tension at this time but not enough clarity,” says Meehika Barua, 23, who wants to study journalism in the UK.

“We don’t know when international travel restrictions will be lifted or whether we’d be able to get our visas in time. We may also have to take classes online.”

Some universities across the UK and the US are giving international students the option to defer their courses to the next semester or year, while others have mandated online classes until the situation improves.

The University of Cambridge recently announced that lectures will be online only until next year. Others, like Greenwich University, will have a mix of online and face-to-face approaches while its international students can defer to the next semester.

“It feels a little unfair, especially after spending a year-and-half to get admission in one of these schools,” Mr Singh says. “Now, a part of the experience is compromised.”

Like him, many others are disappointed at the prospect of virtual classes.

Image copyright PA Media

Image caption Cambridge University has announced that all lectures will be online

“The main reason we apply to these universities is to be able to get the experience of studying on campus or because we want to work in these countries. We want to absorb the culture there,” Ms Barua says.

Studying abroad is also expensive. Many US and UK universities charge international students a higher fee. And then there’s the additional cost of applications or standardised tests.

Virtual classes mean they don’t have to pay for a visa, air tickets or living expenses. But many students are hesitant about spending their savings or borrowing money to pay for attending college in their living room.

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Even if, months later, the situation improves to some extent, and students could travel abroad and enrol on campus, they say that brings its own challenges.

For one, Mr Singh points out, there is the steep cost of healthcare, and questions over access to it, as countries like the US are experiencing a deluge of infections and deaths.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Students are also unsure of finding jobs overseas after graduation

And then there are the dimming job prospects. The pandemic has squeezed the global economy, so employers are less likely to hire, or sponsor visas for foreign workers.

“For international students, the roller coaster has been more intense because there is increased uncertainty about their ability to get jobs in the US after graduation, and for some, in their ability to get to the US at all,” says Taya Carothers, who works in Northwestern University’s international student office.

The idea of returning to India with an expensive degree and the looming unemployment is scaring students – especially since for many of them, the decision to study abroad is tied to a desire to find a well-paying job there.

“The risk we take when we leave our home country and move to another country – that risk has increased manifold,” Mr Singh adds.

The current crisis – and its economic impact – has affected the decision of nearly half the Indians who wanted to study abroad, according to a recent report by the QS, a global education network.

Experts say universities are in a tough spot too.

International students add as much as $45bn (£37bn) a year to the American economy. In the UK, universities receive almost £7bn in fees from overseas students. So their finances will take a hit if too many foreign students rethink going abroad.

And logistics will also pose a challenge – colleges have to enforce social distancing across campuses, including dormitories, and accommodate students from multiple time zones in virtual classes.

“Regardless of how good your technology is, you’re still going to face problems like internet issues,” says Sadiq Basha, who heads a study abroad consultancy.

He adds that there might be a knee-jerk reaction as a large number of international students consider deferring their admission to 2021. But he’s positive that “in the long term, the ambitions of Indian students are not going to go down.”

Mr Singh is still waiting to see how things will unfold in the next few months, but he’s almost certain he will enrol and start his first semester of the two-year program online.

“Since I’ve been preparing for over a year now, I think mentally I’m already there,” he says.

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