Furthering our safety and privacy commitments for teens on TikTok

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People from all walks of life come to TikTok to be entertained, spark joy in their everyday, and share their creativity with others. Be it through viewing the latest book recommendations on #BookTok or showing off their new digs on #renovation, everyone can find their community on TikTok – and our goal is to foster a safe and welcoming platform for these vibrant, diverse communities.

TikTok offers a range of safety and privacy controls to empower people to make decisions about who they share their content with. They also believe it's important to ensure even stronger proactive protections to help keep teenagers safe, and have continually introduced changes to support age-appropriate experiences on their platform. This includes making accounts belonging to those under the age of 16 private by default, reserving features like Direct Messaging to people 16 and older, and enabling parents to guide their teen's TikTok presence with Family Pairing.

Today they are introducing a new set of changes for users aged 13-17 to further enhance these proactive protections. These changes will continue rolling out to their users globally over the coming months.

New changes to Direct Messaging privacy settings

TikTok wants to help teens make active decisions about their privacy settings, so when someone aged 16-17 joins TikTok, their Direct Messaging setting will now be set to 'No One' by default. To message others, they will need to actively switch to a different sharing option. Existing accounts who have never used DMs before will receive a prompt asking them to review and confirm their privacy settings the next time they use this feature. These updates build on their current messaging protections, such as not allowing images or videos to be sent in messages and disabling messaging for accounts under age 16.

Decide who can watch your videos

The process of making a TikTok is fun and creative – choosing music, picking effects, and getting the transitions right – but it is just as important to choose who that video will be shared with. To help teens understand the sharing options available to them, TikTok is now adding a pop-up that appears when teenagers under the age of 16 are ready to publish their first video, asking them to choose who can watch the video. They won't be able to publish their video until they make a selection.

With each video going forward, creators can decide who can watch before they post. Accounts aged 13-15 are set to private by default, and private accounts can choose to share their content with Followers or Friends, as the 'Everyone' setting is turned off. Duet and Stitch are also disabled for accounts under 16.

Choose who can download your public videos

TikTok is also providing additional context to help teens aged 16-17 understand how downloads work, so they can choose the option that's most comfortable for them. If they opt to turn the feature on, they'll now receive a pop-up asking them to confirm that choice before others can download their videos. Note that downloads are permanently disabled on content from accounts under the age of 16.

A mindful approach to push notifications

TikTok prioritises and supports the well-being of their community members, with features like Screen Time Management that can be enabled both by account holders or by parents as part of Family Pairing. They want to help their younger users in particular develop positive digital habits early on, and they regularly consult with leading pediatric experts and youth well-being advocates to develop their Youth Portal, bullying prevention guide, and other features that support youth-well being. Now, they will be drawing upon this research to make changes that reduce the time period during which their younger teens can receive push notifications. Accounts aged 13-15 will not receive push notifications from 9pm, and accounts aged 16-17 will have push notifications disabled starting at 10pm.

These changes continue to build on their ongoing commitments as there's no finish line when it comes to protecting the safety, privacy, and well-being of their community. They are working with teens, community organisations, parents and creators to further innovate and they're excited to share more over the coming months. To learn more about their efforts to support youth and families, you can read our Guardian's Guide.

How to Decrease the Cost of Manufacturing

Wazzup Pilipinas!?

We do business to make money, and you make money by selling at a price that is higher than the cost of production or service. You can increase that profit margin by increasing your prices or decreasing production costs. Increasing prices just to increase your profit might backfire and have you end up losing a significant number of customers.

This is why most businessmen focus on decreasing the cost of manufacturing. It requires experience and smart decisions to decrease the cost of manufacturing; otherwise, you would already be making the best profit margin. This article has discussed some practical tips to decrease the cost of manufacturing.


Invest in Automation

You should invest in automation not just to increase profit margins, but to strengthen your place in the market. Manufacturing automation allows you to optimize processes and save time and resources. You can cut additional phases of production and manual labor by automating manufacturing using products like Yaskawa drives with your machines.

This allows you to produce more in less time using fewer resources. Not only will you save on manufacturing but you will be able to provide a better and faster service to your clients. This increases your production capacity and scalability.


Keep Doing Research and Development

R&D is often an underestimated part of businesses. It’s not just something for large enterprises. If you want to get to their level and directly compete with them, you have to take research and development seriously even as a small business.

It’s important because you learn new ways of manufacturing that are still unknown to your market. Even if some companies know those methods, they have kept them confidential. You will learn how you can optimize your processes and build more with less.


Save from Shipping Cost

You should reconsider your shipping routes and have an expert conduct an analysis. Shipping significantly increases the cost of delivery, which is usually counted in the production cost.

You should look at ways you can save on shipping. See if you can use shorter routes or changing the mode of transportation can help. Try to manage routes in a way that one shipment can go through multiple destinations.


Increase Employee Productivity

You can get the work of weeks done within days if you keep your employees motivated. This doesn’t mean that you should burn out all your employees. Getting them to work overtime or more than their capacity is not going to increase productivity.

Instead, you should motivate them and align your goals with theirs. They will work more and efficiently if you have the same goals and they take pride in their work.


Sell Enough for Mass Production

You can significantly reduce the cost if you produce on a large scale. However, you can’t have large production if you can’t sell it. This is why you should try to get as many new projects as possible and start mass manufacturing.

You will get large quantities of material on wholesale at cheaper rates and the cost of labor will also reduce with the help of bigger machines.

Former Mayor Herbert Bautista's Facebook page got hacked

Wazzup Pilipinas!?

Iba ka talaga Mayor Bistek.

Official Facebook page ni dating Quezon City Mayor Herbert Bautista, na-hack!

Nagulantang ang mga netizen sa Facebook story ni dating Quezon City Mayor Herbert “Bistek” Bautista kung saan lumitaw ang isang babaeng hubad na ang tanging suot ay mga face masks na tumatakip sa maselang bahagi ng kanyang katawan.

Mayor Herbert Bautista's FB Story simply tells us that we should protect the most vulnerable parts of our bodies with face masks!

Ipinapaalam lang daw yata ni mayor kung paano gumamit ng facemask! Salamat sa paalala mayor! My virgin eyes could no longer under what I just saw.

Jusko 5 hrs na yung nakalipas pero nasa my day pa din. Ano yan hintayin sana mag expire na lang? Kung sabagay, malamang makatulog na yung admin dahil alanganing oras.

Thank you mayor for also raising awareness on how not to wear facemasks.

"Taga Pasig ako at idol ko mayor Vivo namin, pero iba ka Captain Barbell! Idol na din kita. Ganoon pala tamang paggamit ng face mask. Lahat pala talaga ng butas kailangan may mask para di pasukan ng virus. Thank you Idol!"

Samantala, natuwa naman ang mga netizens sa pagdamit sa nakahubad na larawan ng  babae:

Admin Statement of the Mayor Herbert Bautista- Quezon City Page

"We urge all followers of the Mayor Herbert M. Bautista - Quezon City" Facebook Page account to report it for investigation due to malicious and unauthorized access.  We deny the unsavory post that was uploaded in that socmed account. Please be guided accordingly"

Thank you very much. Stay safe and God bless us all.