Bolu here,
Here are today's stories
- Nifemi's story
- A $9,000 Bolt prank
- Telegram CEO has been arrested
Bolt prank could have cost over $9,000
Last week, there was an online battle between Nigerians and South Africans, and Bolt was the battleground.
What happened? I followed the story the best I could on X (popularly known as Twitter), and the battle started when a South African posted that they booked fake rides in Nigeria, just to mess with the Bolt drivers in the country.
Fake bolt rides? Yeah, turns out you can set a pickup location in another country, and drivers from that country will come to that location. The only problem is, that there is no one to pick up there, and the drivers would have wasted their time driving to the place.
Nigerians got wind of this and decided to return the favour. People in Mushin Lagos were setting pick-up locations to some random place in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa.
Poor drivers: The pranks were funny, but the drivers at whose expense the jokes were being made were not laughing. According to our calculations, the pranks could have cost Nigerian and South African drivers over $9,000 in less than 24 hours.
One South African driver said he drove 50 kilometres to a pickup location only to find out that he was part of an online joke.
How did this prank cost over $9,000? Read this story, and you'll also learn how Bolt calculates your fares.
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Juggling 3 jobs went wrong
What is the most amount of jobs you can do at the same time? For Michael, the number is three.
In this week's edition of Work Life, he tells us about how he was able to combine three jobs and what it did to him.
The reason for putting himself in the position where he's working three jobs is so he can pay for a master's programme. A good reason, but was it worth the stress? Read Oluwanifemi's convo with Michael to find out.
Telegram CEO arrested
Telegram is that WhatsApp rival I wish I used more, however, I only use it when I want to trade crypto tokens with Bonkbot.
And that might be the reason the founder of the platform, Pavel Durov, was arrested in France on Saturday, 24 August 2023.
Arrested? Yeah. Durov was arrested while leaving his private jet at France’s Bourget airport. It is important to note, however, that news of his arrest is based on unnamed police sources.
The French police reportedly arrested him because he didn't cooperate with the government on content moderation, which now makes him an accomplice to money laundering, funding terrorism, and even child pornography.
Zoom out: Something smells fishy about Durov's arrest. He is a Russian citizen, and his platform is very pro-crypto. Russia and a lot of the other world powers like the US, UK, and France haven't been seeing eye to eye lately, and crypto is one way Russia has been avoiding sanctions from the US.
In fact, this arrest is coming at the same time Russia announced plans to launch a crypto exchange and a BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) stablecoin.
This is also not the first time authorities have had issues with the Telegram boss.
He left Russia after he was asked to provide data about Ukrainian protest leaders from his previous social network Vkontakte.
The Russian embassy in France has requested an explanation for Durov's arrest but there's been no response.
Have a fun weekend.
