The Pulse by EllisX: Tech & Business Trends Worth Writing About — Jan 18

We made it. It’s 2021 and the first two weeks of January were anything but boring. The tumultuous events that marked the beginning of this year also showed us that some of the tech and business trends that we glimpsed in 2020 are set to continue and grow stronger in the new year. So, without further ado, here are the two trends that caught our attention over the last two weeks:

Data Privacy Is Becoming Cool

After more than a decade of willingly sharing their personal information with the likes of Facebook and Google, we might be ready to claim our personal data as our own. Since the beginning of the year, privacy-focused apps were among the most downloaded in the App Store, Signal got an endorsement from Elon Musk, and TikTok announced that it will have special policies to protect the personal data of users under 18. It seems like 2021 may be the year of Inrupt, the personal data sovereignty startup founded by the creator of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Politics Are Not Staying Out of the C-Suite

Following the riots on Jan 6, business leaders spoke out. According to Business Insider and the Boston Business Journal, the consensus among them was that they should speak up and let their stakeholders know what they and their companies stand for. This seems to continue a trend of business leaders’ open civic engagement and leadership that we’ve seen in recent years. While some companies (most notably Coinbase), have voiced the opinion that politics should stay out of business, this stance is unlikely to come in vogue.

Social Platforms Embrace Content Moderation

Last year, Twitter led the way by flagging tweets that contained misinformation and removing posts with hateful content. This year, it was the first social media platform to permanently ban the President of the United States, as well as many users that spread messages of violence. Facebook, Snap and TikTok followed suit, while YouTube temporarily suspended the President’s account. It seems like after years of reluctance to institute content moderation, social platforms are embracing it. What their policies will look like in the future remains to be seen, but it’s unlikely that they will go back to the Wild West of content free-for-all.

P.S. If you’re writing a story about any of these trends, you can always find qualified experts available to comment on them here.