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Every week, we collect all the most interesting news about new technologies, startups and business. Today we will tell you how social networks take care of their users, how the USA keeps tabs on Huawei, how Yandex invades our private lives, and how FaceApp is going through a revival.

YouTube adds educational playlists without off-topic recommendations

YouTube users will now be able to create educational playlists without any recommendations to watch other videos. Company developers want to give everyone a chance to learn without any distractions. The service offers lessons across a variety of subjects, with educational content creators receiving $20 million total funding from YouTube. For user convenience, the materials are sorted by difficulty level: there are videos for both beginners and professionals.

‘Aging’ filter puts FaceApp in App Store leaderboard

This summer, FaceApp experienced a revival — a full two years after its creation. This newfound popularity was sparked by a filter that ‘ages’ the person in the photo. People all around the globe got caught up in a flashmob, sharing aged photos of themselves. However, the Russian developer of the app was also accused of spying on users and collecting personal data.

The company denied these accusations and updated the app with a warning, informing users that their photo will be uploaded to the cloud for processing.

Twitter introduces ‘hide replies’ feature

Twitter is launching a new ‘hide replies’ feature that will allow users to conceal replies to their tweets. Although completely deleting the reply is still impossible, the user can make sure it is hidden by default — this will indicate that the conversation under the tweet is unpleasant. The company hopes that this option will prevent conflicts and bullying on the social network.

Instagram tests feature that hides number of likes

Instagram will hide the number of likes under each post, leaving them visible only to the author of the post.

The creators of the app want to reduce pressure on users and increase their engagement: they will be able to stop caring about popularity and make posts without worrying about other people’s opinions. This might improve content quality.

The new feature is currently being tested in 7 countries: Italy, New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, Australia, Japan and Brazil. After reviewing the results of the experiment, Instagram will likely implement the feature in all other markets as well.

US Commerce Department suspects collaboration between Huawei and North Korea

The US Commerce Department has revealed suspicions that Huawei has been working together with Pyongyang since 2016. A recent investigation has revealed that the Chinese company had worked together with the DPRK to build the Koryolink wireless network.

According to the US Commerce Department, the two parties are continuing to collaborate on several projects. If this is the case, Huawei may be charged with illegal provision of US technologies to the DPRK.

At present, there is not enough tangible evidence to corroborate these claims. The US Commerce Department is currently engaged in discussions with the Chinese company.

Rospatent grants user surveillance rights to Yandex

Yandex has officially patented a new technology, ‘System and method for identification of mobile device user income’.

Neural networks will automatically calculate a user’s income and activity type, by analyzing data from GPS, background sounds and apps on their smartphone.

For example, taxi drivers will be identified by frequent location changes, musicians or journalists — by specialized apps on their phones, and factory workers — by the background noise levels.

Yandex has yet to reveal what it intends to do about personal data confidentiality, as representatives refuse to reveal their plans for the collected data.