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Retail pharmacies are now giving out Covid-19 vaccines, and some of them are using it as an opportunity to profit off your information.

I became eligible to get the coronavirus vaccine on February 15. Hoping to get an edge on the millions of other newly eligible New Yorkers I’d be competing with for an appointment, I spent a few days before the big day figuring out how and where to sign up for a vaccine between the many portals for my state, my city, health care providers, and retail pharmacies that were distributing them.

And that’s when I noticed something about Walgreens:

Artists, influencers, and the NBA are making millions from non-fungible tokens.

Arc, a visual artist from Saudi Arabia, was initially skeptical of how cryptocurrency could be adopted in the art world. He didn’t know much about the technology and was doubtful of its reputation. Last year, a representative from KnownOrigin, a digital art marketplace powered on the Ethereum blockchain, approached Arc on Twitter and he agreed to give the platform a try. The representative helped him set up an artist account and a cryptocurrency wallet, and covered the “gas” fees Arc paid in order to upload and “mint” his artwork on the blockchain.

“I started posting on KnownOrigin without knowing what I was doing at all and just experimenting,” Arc told me. “A few days later, I got a notification that one of my pieces … Read the rest

Three charts that explain the streaming wars.

Paramount+, the latest entrant in the streaming wars, launches today, promising a mix of classic TV shows and movies, sort-of-early access to some Hollywood blockbusters, and some reboots of stuff you didn’t know you wanted rebooted: Welcome back, Frasier Crane.

But in some ways, the stuff that ViacomCBS’s new service offers may be less important than the timing of its launch. It comes after every other big media company has rolled out its own streaming service. Which means Paramount+ is entering a very crowded marketplace.

And that means, most likely, that ViacomCBS isn’t just trying to get someone to pay $10 a month for Paramount+ — it … Read the rest

Google’s video site has room for everything, from everyone. Is that a feature or a bug?

YouTube has more than 2 billion users. It generates $20 billion a year. But those numbers don’t begin to explain the size and impact of the world’s biggest video site.

So let’s try this: YouTube is so big that you almost don’t notice it. It’s just always there, always on. It seems fundamental to digital life, like texting or email. Maybe, like my kids, you actively go to YouTube for entertainment or education. Maybe you’re like a lot of other people and end up watching YouTube without even knowing you’re doing it: You’re just watching a … Read the rest

The company is introducing a new strike system that could lead to some users getting permanently banned.

Like other social media companies, Twitter has banned harmful misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccines out of concern that it could make people more hesitant to get inoculated. Now, the social media platform is adding more layers to its approach.

On Monday, Twitter said that posts deemed to be harmful misinformation will be subject to labels directing people to content curated by Twitter, public health resources, or the company’s rules. At the same time, users who continue to post such tweets will be subject to a strike policy. If a user posts too much vaccine misinformation and gets five strikes, their account could be permanently deleted from the app.

“Our goal with … Read the rest