It seems like yesterday that the year began, but finally the world is moving towards the last day of 2022. The internet as a whole has changed significantly throughout the year, experiencing new trends, seeing social networks transform and platforms acting carefully so as not to interfere in the Brazilian electoral period.
It was the year that artificial intelligence “artists” caught the attention of the web and were the subject of discussions about copyright and sentience; that urban mobility applications experienced a crisis due to the increase in fuel prices and that Russia “went offline” due to the boycott of the main Big Techs. However, it was also a moment marked by the World Cup in Qatar, which made Brazilian stars break international records in live broadcasts — but which, unfortunately, did not yield the sixth championship for the selection.
In a recap of everything that went down, the canaltech highlighted the main facts that circulated the web throughout the year, including momentary fevers, facts that marked the internet and facts that should still have consequences in 2023. Check everything below.
Telegram almost blocked in Brazil
On the verge of a turbulent electoral period, Brazilian authorities turned their attention to strengthening ties with social networks and communication platforms — Telegram was one of them. However, after the Federal Supreme Court (STF) tried to contact him several times, Pavel Durov’s application did not even respond and was almost suspended in the country.
The application even had an announced block, but the decision was suspended on the eve of its implementation. The retreat of the Brazilian supreme court only happened because representatives of Telegram finally manifested themselves and committed to partially comply with court decisions, including the creation of official communication channels for Brazilian bodies and the monitoring of the 100 most relevant channels.
Rising fuel prices affect mobility apps
The significant increase in fuel prices had a direct impact on several sectors, including mobility apps 99 and Uber. The increase in the price list made the driver management platforms increase the value of trips or improve the transfer to guarantee greater gains to partners.
This measure by Uber and 99, however, did not happen by chance: in mid-July, trips on the apps were canceled in droves. At the time, the Association of Application Drivers of São Paulo (Amasp) told Estadão that the transfer needed to be adjusted to improve the working conditions of workers.
Russia against the internet
When the conflict between Russia and Ukraine became more serious, the giants that control the main social networks in the world came into the crosshairs. It didn’t take long for the government of Vladimir Putin to announce blocking access to major Western platforms, including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
However, the consequences of the invasion of Ukraine do not stop there: several Big Techs suspended negotiations and providing services to the Russian government, including companies with a fundamental role for the country’s institutions. An example of this was the preparation of new policies on software adoption by the Russian Ministry of Digital Development aimed at replacing Windows with Linux across the entire national infrastructure.
Elon Musk bought Twitter
After a negotiation full of twists, Elon Musk finally bought Twitter. The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX began to venture into the management of social networks, denying the intention of making mass layoffs (which he did shortly after taking command), launching a Twitter Blue with a verification seal without identity authentication (naturally , creating chaos on the network) and much more.
One of the most controversial measures adopted by the billionaire was the return of former US President Donald Trump’s personal account, decided through a public poll on the network. In the same package, Kanye West also returned to the platform, but was banned once again for repeating his previous mistake and posting anti-Semitic content.
Recently, the CEO announced that he is looking for a replacement to take charge of the social network. It is not known when this will happen, but it could be a light at the end of the tunnel in the midst of so much internal and external chaos on Twitter.
twitter substitutes
The crisis experienced by Twitter caused alternative platforms to explode in popularity. The social network Mastodon saw its popularity grow significantly after the announcement of the purchase (and after every questionable announcement by Musk) and the social network Koo also became popular in Brazil, at least for some time.
The noise was so much that even Orkut Buyukkokten, the creator of Orkut, revealed that he was working on a new social network project. The programmer did not reveal details about the platform, nor did he give a release date, but the focus will probably be on providing well-being for users, serving as a virtual meeting point for friends, family and colleagues.
record world cup
If you followed the 2022 World Cup on the internet, you should know that the live broadcast by streamer Casimiro Miguel was an absolute success. The content creator broke the record for connected devices three times in a row, surpassing his own record every game for the Brazilian team.
Currently, Cazé’s record is 6 million devices connected at the same time — a total that should account for cell phones, smartTVs, dongles, consoles and more. The youtuber’s feat got more views than the live of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company, during the preparation of astronauts for a space mission.
The Qatar Cup also moved Google’s servers. The most famous search engine in the world received the highest traffic of all time on Sunday (18), the date of the final of the competition. Most likely, users from all over the world were curious to find out about the Argentina and France national teams, or check out where they could watch the match.
Wordle’s Fever
It seems like in another era, but the Wordle craze happened in early 2022. The word guessing game was all the rage for weeks, with many users sharing their deduction progress on Twitter and other social networks.
During the wave, several copies of the game appeared on the internet, including Termo and Letreco, two Portuguese versions of the game. Unfortunately, however, users have been leaving the site aside over time.
The WhatsApp Communities
One of the most important news for the platform, WhatsApp Communities was launched in mid-November 2022. The feature is nothing more than a kind of “umbrella” for smaller groups, making it easier to control conversations with thousands of people under the same management of administrators.
The novelty is huge and, given the relevance of the application in Brazil, it should significantly change the online communication of users in the country. However, the effects of this function can only be seen next year, as WhatsApp postponed the novelty until 2023. The company did not reveal the reason, but it is quite likely that the decision was taken to avoid impacts on the 2022 general elections .
Communities are currently available in several countries, but Brazilian users are unable to even join international channels. Unfortunately, so far there is no prediction of when the functionality will be released in Brazil, but it is very likely that it will be accompanied by a major announcement from the company.
Artificial intelligence making “art”
Another wave that took the world by surprise in 2022 was the presentation of “artistic” artificial intelligences — or, at least, their popularization. The DALL-E and Imagen projects were some of the highlights of the segment for presenting convincing works based on fairly simple text descriptions, raising discussions about the authenticity of art made by AI and copyright disputes with human artists.
However, the creations of artificial intelligence were not limited to still images. Meta, for example, launched Make-A-Video, a platform capable of generating GIFs from text descriptions, and CICERO, an AI that outperformed human players in the strategy game Diplomacy.
At the end of the year, the AI that most caught the attention of the internet was ChatGPT, an impressive chatbot capable of writing programming code, writing complex essays, giving decoration suggestions, presenting ideas for content and much more.
Technological advances in AI have been great enough to raise questions about the awareness of these mechanisms. A controversial example of the subject was the engineer who worked on LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), Google’s AI, who was removed from the company after publicly admitting that the project had become sentient.
Canaltech completed 10 years
2022 was also the year that the canaltech completed 10 years of existence. The site’s anniversary was marked by a series of special articles relating to changes in the world of technology in recent years, including social networks that have fallen by the wayside, a web retrospective, the best games of the decade and much more.
