Thursday, October 31, 2019

TECH Solutions - Maids for sale: How Silicon Valley enables online slave markets

Domestic workers have been illegally sold via Instagram and other apps on Google and Apple's stores.

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8th Wall’s new Cloud Editor helps customers quickly build mobile AR experiences

The world of phone-based AR has involved a lot of promises, but the future that’s developed has so far been more iterative and less platform shift-y. For startups exclusively focused on mobile AR, there’s been some soul-searching to find ways to bring more lightweight experiences to life that don’t require as much friction or commitment from users.

8th Wall is a team focused on building developer tools for mobile AR experiences. The startup has raised more than $10 million to usher developers into the augmented world.

The company announced this week that they’ve built a one-stop shop authoring platform that will help its customers create and ship AR experiences that will be hosted by 8th Wall. It’s a step forward in what they’ve been trying to build and a further sign that marketing activations are probably the most buoyant money-makers in the rather flat phone-based AR space at the moment.

The editor supports popular immersive web frameworks like A-Frame, three.js and Babylon.js. It’s a development platform, but while game engine tools like Unity have features focused on heavy rendering, 8th Wall is more interested in “very fast, lightweight projects that can be built up to any scale,” the startup’s CEO Erik Murphy tells TechCrunch.

8th Wall’s initial sell was an augmented reality platform akin to ARKit and ARCore that allowed developers to build content that supported a wider breadth of smartphones. Today, 8th Wall’s team of 14 is focused on a technology called WebAR that allows mobile phones to call up web experiences inside the browser.

The main sell of WebAR is the same appeal of web apps; users don’t need to download anything and they can access the experience with just a link. This is great for branded marketing interactions, where expecting users to download an app is pretty laughable; moving this process to the web with a link or a QR code makes life much easier.

The startup’s cloud-based authoring and hosting platform is available now for its agency and
business users.



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TECH Solutions - On the inside of a hacking catastrophe

A massive data breach can cause chaos within a company and put IT staff under extreme stress.

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Tech Solutions -Teenager Syeda Aroob Shah earns maiden call-up; Sandhu, Fatima return for Bangladesh ODIs

Left-arm spinner Sadia Iqbal, who made her Pakistan debut in the T20I series last week has also been included

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TECH Solutions - Facebook sues OnlineNIC for domain name fraud associated with malicious activity

Facebook today announced it has filed suit in California against a domain registrar OnlineNIC and its proxy service ID Shield for registering domain names that pretend to be associated with Facebook, like www-facebook-login.com or facebook-mails.com, for example. Facebook says these domains are intentionally designed to mislead and confuse end users, who believe they’re interacting with Facebook.

These fake domains are also often associated with malicious activity, like phishing.

While some who register such domains hope to eventually sell them back to Facebook at a marked up price, earning a profit, others have worse intentions. And with the launch of Facebook’s own cryptocurrency, Libra, a number of new domain cybersquatters have emerged. Facebook was recently able to take down some of these, like facebooktoken.org and ico-facebook.org, one of which had already started collecting personal information from visitors by falsely touting a Facebook ICO.

Facebooks’ new lawsuit, however, focuses specifically on OnlineNIC, which Facebook says has a history of allowing cybersquatters to register domains with its privacy/proxy service, ID Shield. The suit alleges that the registered domains, like hackingfacebook.net, are being used for malicious activity, including “phishing and hosting websites that purported to sell hacking tools.”

The suit also references some 20 other domain names that are confusingly similar to Facebook and Instagram trademarks, it says.

Screen Shot 2019 10 31 at 1.27.38 PM

OnlineNIC has been sued before for allowing this sort of activity, including by Verizon, Yahoo, Microsoft, and others. In the case of Verizon (disclosure: TechCrunch parent), OnlineNIC was found liable for registering over 600 domain names similar to Verizon’s trademark, and the courts awarded $33.15 million in damages as a result, Facebook’s filing states.

Facebook is asking for a permanent injunction against OnlineNIC’s activity as well as damages.

The company says it took this issue to the courts because OnlineNIC has not been responsive to its concerns. Facebook today proactively reports instances of abuse with domain name registrars and their privacy/proxy services, and often works with them to take down malicious domains. But the issue is widespread — there are tens of millions of domain names registered through these services today. Some of these businesses are not reputable, however. Some, like OnlineNIC, will not investigate or even respond to Facebook’s abuse reports.

The news of the lawsuit was previously reported by Cnet and other domain name news sources, based on courthouse filings.

Attorney David J. Steele, who previously won the $33 million judgement for Verizon, is representing Facebook in the case.

“By mentioning our apps and services in the domain names, OnlineNIC and ID Shield intended to make them appear legitimate and confuse people. This activity is known as cybersquatting and OnlineNIC has a history of this behavior,” writes Facebook, in an announcement. “This lawsuit is one more step in our ongoing efforts to protect people’s safety and privacy,” it says.

OnlineNIC has been asked for comment and we’ll update if it responds.



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TECH Solutions - Facial recognition technology code of conduct call

The technology has the potential for "widespread invasiveness", the information commissioner said.

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For the first time in two years, the smartphone market shows signs of life

All is not lost for smartphone manufacturers. On the heels of two years’ of global stagnation, the category is finally showing some signs of life. Much of the bounce back comes as manufacturers are working to correct for dulled consumer interest.

I wouldn’t put too much weight in the numbers right now, as they’re little more than an uptick. Numbers from Canalys put shipment growth at 1% from Q3 2018 to Q3 2019. In most cases, that would be a modest gain, at best, but this is notably the first time in two years that the numbers have been heading in the right direction.

Samsung saw the biggest gains — a phenomenon the analyst firm chalks up to a shift in strategy to eat some of its profits. The move has paid off for the quarter, with an 11% growth in device shipments, to 78.9 million devices shipped. That gives the company the largest global market share, at 22.4%.

Huawei, too, saw impressive growth, year-over-year, commanding second place with 66.8 million units shipped. Much of its growth came from China, which has ramped up spending on the company’s products as it has run into regulatory scrutiny overseas. Resumption of sales in some international markets helped juice growth as well. Of the top three, Apple continued to struggle the most, with a 7% loss from 2018.

For now, at least, none of the these numbers qualify as full turnaround for a stagnant category, though the upcoming roll out of 5G coverage could help move numbers in the right direction in the coming year.



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TECH Solutions - 'I was a victim of the WhatsApp hack'

Faustin Rukundo had no idea that a strange call over WhatsApp had infected his phone with spyware.

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TECH Solutions - Daily Crunch: Twitter is banning political ads

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.

1. Jack Dorsey says Twitter will ban all political ads

Arguing that “internet political ads present entirely new challenges to civic discourse,” CEO Jack Dorsey announced that Twitter will be banning all political advertising — albeit with “a few exceptions” like voter registration.

Not only is this a decisive move by Twitter, but it also could increase pressure on Facebook to follow suit, or at least take steps in this direction.

2. Apple beats on Q4 earnings after strong quarter for wearables, services

Apple’s iPhone sales still make up over half of its quarterly revenues, but they are slowly shrinking in importance as other divisions in the company pick up speed.

3. Facebook shares rise on strong Q3, users up 2% to 2.45B

More earnings news: Despite ongoing public relations crises, Facebook kept growing in Q3 2019, demonstrating that media backlash does not necessarily equate to poor business performance.

4. Driving license tests just got smarter in India with Microsoft’s AI project

Hundreds of people who have taken the driver’s license test in Dehradun (the capital of the Indian state of Uttarakhand) in recent weeks haven’t had to sit next to an instructor. Instead, their cars were affixed with a smartphone that was running HAMS, an AI project developed by a Microsoft Research team.

5. Crunchbase raises $30M more to double down on its ambition to be a ‘LinkedIn for company data’

Good news for our friends at Crunchbase, which got its start as a part of TechCrunch before being spun off into a separate business several years ago. CEO Jager McConnell also says the site currently has tens of thousands of paying subscribers.

6. Deadspin writers quit after being ordered to stick to sports

The relationship between new management at G/O Media (formerly Gizmodo Media Group/Gawker Media) and editorial staff seems to have been deteriorating for months. This week, it turned into a full-on revolt over auto-play ads and especially a directive that Deadspin writers must stick to sports.

7. What Berlin’s top VCs want to invest in right now

As we gear up for our Disrupt Berlin conference in December, we check in with top VCs on the types of startups that they’re looking to back right now. (Extra Crunch membership required.)



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TECH Solutions - Google given green light for Toronto smart city

It is on a smaller scale than it had wanted and must treat any data it collects as a "public asset".

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Apple Card users can now finance iPhone purchases for 24 months, interest-free

It’s not quite an “Apple Prime” subscription, but it’s compelling. Apple on Wednesday introduced a new program that will allow Apple Card users to finance their iPhone purchases for 24 months, without paying interest. The program aims to appeal to consumers who frequently upgrade their iPhone to the latest model, but often turn to their carrier to finance those purchases.

With the Goldman Sachs Apple Card, those iPhone users will have another option — and one without the associated interest and fees of a traditional credit card purchase, Apple says. In addition, the Apple Card offers 3% back on purchases from Apple, which further sweetens the deal.

The program helps to lay the groundwork for what some believe may eventually become a larger subscription product for Apple, or a so-called “Apple Prime” — a name that references the Amazon Prime membership program that includes a variety of perks alongside its fast, free shipping.

An Apple hardware subscription could see users instead paying for the privilege of using the latest Apple hardware, while also bundling in other services, like AppleCare, similar to its current iPhone Upgrade Program today. But a true “Apple Prime” would include other Apple subscriptions under the same roof, like iCloud, Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple News+ and/or Apple Arcade, in some sort of bundle deal. 

Already, Apple has begun to experiment with subscription bundles. This week, for example, it announced a bundle for students that includes Apple Music and Apple TV+ for the same price as a student Apple Music subscription alone ($5/mo). And in a sense, Apple is already bundling its new Apple TV+ streaming service with its hardware, as it’s giving the service away for free with a new device purchase in its first year.

Apple has been steadily moving towards a more robust iPhone subscription program for some time.

In recent years, it has promoted iPhone trade-ins as something of a no-brainer for bringing down the cost of a new iPhone purchase. At the company’s iPhone 11 event in September, for example, Apple put up a slide that emphasized the new iPhone 11’s low price, when viewed under this model. Instead of a starting price of $699, the iPhone 11 could be as little as $399 — or $17 per month, Apple said — when you traded in your iPhone 8. The iPhone 11 Pro was $25 per month with an X trade-in, and the Pro Max, would be $29 per month with an X trade-in, Apple also said.

These sorts of promotions seem to be working, as more Apple customers are turning to trade-ins than in the past.

“We…continue to see great results from our trade-in program with more than five times the iPhone trade-in volume we had a year ago,” noted Apple CFO Luca Maestri on Apple’s earnings call.

The larger idea is to encourage Apple’s customer base to viewing the iPhone not as a big, expensive one-time purchase, but as just another monthly bill you have to pay. Tack on a few extras, like a warranty and some media and entertainment options, and Apple has the meat for a real iPhone-led subscription — it’s very own “Apple Prime,” so to speak. And thanks to the Goldman Sachs Apple Card, it has a way to incentive users to buy from Apple directly.

 

 

 



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Technical Solutions - Tech Talks #961 - Realme 6 Launch, PUBG Season 10, Whatsapp Pay, 16 inch Macbook, Mi Note 10

Tech Talks #961 - Realme 6 Launch, PUBG Season 10, Whatsapp Pay, 16 inch Macbook, Mi Note 10
TG Deals@ https://tg.deals/ New Channel: https://goo.gl/Jz6p5K Namaskaar Dosto, Tech Talks ke is Episode mein maine aapse kuch interesting Tech News Share ki hai jaise Realme 6 Launch, PUBG Season 10, Whatsapp Pay, 16 inch Macbook, Mi Note 10 Global Launch aur bahut kuch. Mujhe umeed hai ki yeh video aapko pasand aayega. Share, Support, Subscribe!!! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/1Wfsvt4 Android App: https://ift.tt/2mrm9Gy Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/TechnicalGuruji Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/technicalguruji Facebook: https://ift.tt/1Pi5LDP Facebook Myself: https://goo.gl/zUfbUU Instagram: https://ift.tt/1OW2vue Google Plus: https://ift.tt/1Pi5LDS Website: https://ift.tt/2mcM6KV Merchandise: https://ift.tt/2lN4Vbu About : Technical Guruji is a YouTube Channel, where you will find technological videos in Hindi, New Video is Posted Everyday :)


TECH Solutions - Facebook challenged over political ad policy

A California man is running for office in attempt to highlight flaws in Facebook's policies.

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TECH Solutions - Facebook content moderation firm Cognizant quits

It says the nature of the work was not in line with its vision for the company.

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Tech Solutions - Redmi Note 8 Pro vs Poco F1 Comparison | Konsa LU 14,999 mai ? | PUBG Gaming & Camera

Redmi Note 8 Pro vs Poco F1 Comparison | Konsa LU 14,999 mai ? | PUBG Gaming & Camera
Hi Friends: This is my Blog Technical Solutions created to share videos and content of technical solutions with the world. At this blog you can find videos about Free Search Engine Optimization Course, how to develope Android Applications and What is Computer hardware and software, you would be able to increse your channel views, or boost your website. so guys keep visiting my blog for learning technical things. Thank You!


Tech Solutions -Shadab, Fakhar give Pakistan roaring start to Australia tour

Rookies Musa, Qadir and Hasnain may have to wait for their chances as experienced bowlers shine

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TECH Solutions - Entire drone fleet grounded by US government agency

The 800 drones used to monitor endangered species and federal land are being investigated for security risks.

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Tech Solutions -Shadab, Fakhar give Pakistan roaring start to Australia tour

Rookies Musa, Qadir and Hasnain may have to wait for their chances as experienced bowlers shine

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Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Technical Solutions - Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Unboxing & First Look - The Premium Performer🔥🔥🔥

Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Unboxing & First Look - The Premium Performer🔥🔥🔥
Namaskaar Dosto, is video mein maine aapse Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 ke baare mein baat ki hai aur share ki hai Samsung ke isi latest flagship Tablet ki unboxing aur ek first look. Galaxy Tab S6 mein Snapdragon 855 Processor hai, saath mein 6GB/8GB RAM aur 128GB/256GB Storage hai aur ek 10.5inch ka QHD Super AMOLED Display hai. Tab S6 ke saath hum S-pen ko aaraam se use kar sakte hai aur isme In Display Finger Print Scanner bhi hai. Tab S6 ke saath maine Book Cover Keyboard ko bhi unbox kiya aur connect karke use kiya hai isi Galaxy Tab S6 ke saath mein. Yaha hume Samsung Dex ka support bhi mil jaata hai. Galaxy Tab S6 mein hum 4G SIM ko bhi use kar sakte hai. Mujhe umeed hai ki aapko Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 ki yeh unboxing aur ek first look video pasand aayegi. Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Price in India: 59,990INR Share, Support, Subscribe!!! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/1Wfsvt4 Android App: https://ift.tt/2mrm9Gy Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/TechnicalGuruji Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/technicalguruji Facebook: https://ift.tt/1Pi5LDP Facebook Myself: https://goo.gl/zUfbUU Instagram: https://ift.tt/1OW2vue Google Plus: https://ift.tt/1Pi5LDS Website: https://ift.tt/2mcM6KV Merchandise: https://ift.tt/2lN4Vbu About : Technical Guruji is a YouTube Channel, where you will find technological videos in Hindi, New Video is Posted Everyday :)


TECH Solutions - Twitter banning political ads is the right thing to do, so it will be attacked mercilessly

Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey announced abruptly — though the timing was certainly not accidental — that the platform would soon disallow any and all political advertising. This is the right thing to do, but it’s also going to be hard as hell for a lot of reasons. As usual in tech and politics, no good deed goes unpunished.

Malicious actors state-sponsored and otherwise have and will continue to attempt to influence the outcome of U.S. elections via online means including political ads and astroturfing. Banning such ads outright is an obvious, if rather heavy-handed solution — but given that online platforms seem to have made little progress on more targeted measures, it’s the only one realistically available to deploy now.

“Not allowing for paid disinformation is one of the most basic, ethical decisions a company can make,” wrote Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in a tweet following the news. “If a company cannot or does not wish to run basic fact-checking on paid political advertising, then they should not run paid political ads at all.”

One of the reasons Facebook has avoided restricting political ads and content is that by doing so it establishes itself as the de facto arbiter between “appropriate” and “inappropriate,” and the fractal-complex landscape that creates across thousands of cultures, languages, and events. Don’t cry for Mark Zuckerberg, though — this is a monster of his own creation. He should have retired when I suggested it.

But Twitter’s decision to use a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel doesn’t remove the inherent difficulties in the process. Twitter is just submitting itself for a different kind of punishment. Because instead of being the arbiter of what is appropriate, it will be the arbiter of what is political.

This is slightly less fraught than Facebook’s task, but Twitter will not be able to avoid accusations — perhaps even true ones — of partisanship and bias.

For instance, the fundamental decision to disallow political advertising seems pretty straightforward and nonpartisan. Incumbents rely on traditional media more and progressives tend to be younger and more social media–savvy. So is this taking away a tool suited to left-leaning challengers? But incumbents tend to have bigger budgets and their spend on social media has been increasing, so could this be considered a way to curb that trend? Who this affects and how is not a clear-cut fact but something campaigns and pundits will squabble about endlessly.

Or consider the announcement Dorsey made right off the bat that “ads in support of voter registration will still be allowed.” Voter registration is a good nonpartisan goal, right? In fact it’s something many conservative lawmakers have consistently opposed, because unregistered voters, for a multitude of reasons, skew toward the liberal side. So this too will be considered a partisan act.

Twitter will put out official guidelines in a few weeks, but it’s hard to see how they can be satisfactory. Will industry groups be able to promote tweets about how their new factory is thriving because of a government grant? Will an advocacy organization be able to promote a tweet about a serious situation on the border? Will news outlets be able to promote a story about the election? What about a profile of a single candidate? What about an op-ed on an issue?

The difference between patrolling the interior of the politics world, and patrolling its borders, so to speak, may appear significant — but it’s really just a different kind of trouble. Twitter is entering a world of pain.

But at least it’s moving forward. It’s the right decision, even if it’s a hard one and could hit the bottom line pretty hard (not that Twitter has ever cared about that). The decision to do this while Facebook is dismantling its credibility with a series of craven, self-interested actions is a canny one. Even if Twitter fails to get this right, it can at least say it’s trying.

And lastly it should be said that it also happens to be a good choice for users and voters, a rare exception to the parade of user-hostile decisions coming out of the big tech and media companies. Going into an election year, we can use all the good news we can get.



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TECH Solutions - Zuckerberg defends political ads that will be 0.5% of 2020 revenue

As Jack Dorsey announced his company Twitter would drop all political ads, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg doubled-down on his policy of refusing to fact check politicians’ ads. “At times of social tension there has often been an urge to pull back on free expression . . . We will be best served over the long term by resisting this urge and defending free expression.”

Still, Zuckerberg failed to delineate between freedom of expression, and freedom of paid amplification of that expression which inherently favors the rich.

During today’s Q3 2019 earnings call where Facebook beat expectations and grew monthly users 2% to 2.45 billion, Zuckerberg spent his time defending the social network’s lenient political ad policy.

One clear objective was to dispel the idea that Facebook was motivated by greed to keep these ads. Zuckerberg explained “We estimate these ads from politicians will be less than 0.5% of our revenue next year.” For reference, Facebook earned $66 billion in the 12 months ending Q3 2019, so Facebook might earn around $330 million to $400 million in political ads next year.

Zuckerberg also said that given Facebook removed 50 million hours per day of viral video watching from its platform to support well-being which hurt ad viewership and the company’s share price, Facebook clearly doesn’t act solely in pursuit of profit.

Facebook’s CEO also tried to bat down the theory that Facebook is allowing misinformation in political ads to cater to conservatives or avoid calls of bias from them. “Some people say that this is just all a cynical political calculation and that we’re acting in a way that we don’t really believe because we’re just trying to appease conservatives” he said, responding that “frankly, if our goal was that we’re trying to make either side happy then we’re not doing a very good job because I’m pretty sure everyone is frustrated.” 

Instead of baning political ads, Zuckerberg voiced support for increasing transparency about how ads look, how much is spent on them, and where they’re run. “I believe that the better approach is to work to increase transparency. Ads on Facebook are already more transparent than anywhere else. We have a political ads archive so anyone can scrutinize every ad that’s run.” 

He mentioned that political ads are run by “Google, YouTube, and most internet platforms”, seeming to stumble for a second as he was likely prepared to cite Twitter too until it announced it would drop all political ads an hour earlier.

Dorsey had tweeted that “We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.”

Twitter’s CEO took some clear swipes at Zuckerberg, countering his common arguments for allowing misinformation in politician’s ads. “Some might argue our actions today could favor incumbents. But we have witnessed many social movements reach massive scale without any political advertising. I trust this will only grow.” Given President Trump had outspent all Democratic candidates on Facebook ads as of March of this year, it’s clear that deep-pocketed incumbents could benefit from Facebook’s policy.

trump 2020 facebook ads 1558042973182 facebookJumbo v10 1 1

Trump continues to massively outspend Democratic rivals on Facebook ads. Via NYT

Miming Facebook’s position, Dorsey tweeted “It‘s not credible for us to say: ‘We’re working hard to stop people from gaming our systems to spread misleading info, buuut if someone pays us to target and force people to see their political ad…well…they can say whatever they want!”



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TECH Solutions - Facebook shares rise on strong Q3, users up 2% to 2.45B

Despite ongoing public relations crises, Facebook kept growing in Q3 2019, demonstrating that media backlash does not necessarily equate to poor business performance.

Facebook reached 2.45 billion monthly users, up 1.65 percent from 2.41 billion in Q2 2019 when it grew 1.6 percent, and it now has 1.62 billion daily active users, up 2 percent from 1.587 billion last quarter when it grew 1.6 percent. Facebook scored $17.652 billion of revenue, up 29 percent year-over-year, with $2.12 in earnings per share.

Facebook Q3 2019 DAU

Facebook’s earnings beat expectations compared to Refinitiv’s consensus estimates of $17.37 billion in revenue and $1.91 earnings per share. Facebook’s quarter was mixed compared to Bloomberg’s consensus estimate of $2.28 EPS. Facebook earned $6 billion in profit after only racking up $2.6 billion last quarter due to its SEC settlement.

Facebook shares rose to 1.84% in after-hours trading to $191.71 after earnings were announced, following a day where it closed down 0.56% at $188.25.

Notably, Facebook gained 2 million users in each of its core US & Canada and Europe markets that drive its business, after quarters of shrinkage, no growth, or weak growth there in the past 2 years. Average revenue per user grew healthily across all markets, boding well for Facebook’s ability to monetize the developing world where the bulk of user growth currently comes from.

Facebook says 2.2 billion users access Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger every day, and 2.8 billion use one of this family of apps each month. That’s up from 2.1 billion and 2.7 billion last quarter. Facebook has managed to stay sticky even as it faces increased competition from a revived Snapchat, and more recently TikTok. However, those rivals might more heavily weigh on Instagram, for which Facebook doesn’t routinely disclose user stats.

Facebook ARPU Q3 2019

Facebook’s earnings announcement was somewhat overshadowed by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announcing it would ban all political ads — something TechCrunch previously recommended social networks do. That move flies in the face of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s staunch support for allowing politicians to spread misinformation without fact-checks via Facebook ads. This should put additional pressure on Facebook to rethink its policy.

Scandals Continue, But So Does Growth

Overall, it was another rough quarter for Facebook’s public perception as it dealt with outages and struggled to get buy-in from regulators for its Libra cryptocurrency project. Former co-founder Chris Hughes (who I’ll be leading a talk with at SXSW) campaigned for the social network to be broken up — a position echoed by Elisabeth Warren and other presidential candidates.

The company did spin up some new revenue sources, including taking a 30% cut of fan patronage subscriptions to content creators. It’s also trying to sell video subscriptions for publishers, and it upped the price of its Workplace collaboration suite. But gains were likely offset as the company continued to rapidly hire to address abusive content on its platform, which saw headcount grow 28% year-over-year to 43,000. There are still problems with how it treats content moderators, and Facebook has had to repeatedly remove coordinated misinformation campaigns from abroad. Appearing concerned about its waning brand, Facebook moved to add “from Facebook” to the names of Instagram and WhatsApp.

While it escaped with just a $5 billion fine as part of its FTC settlement that some consider a slap on the wrist, especially since it won’t have to significantly alter its business model. But the company will have to continue to invest and divert product resources to meet its new privacy, security, and transparency requirements. These could slow its response to a growing threat: Chinese tech giant ByteDance’s TikTok.



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Facebook shares rise on strong Q3, users up 2% to 2.45B

Despite ongoing public relations crises, Facebook kept growing in Q3 2019, demonstrating that media backlash does not necessarily equate to poor business performance.

Facebook reached 2.45 billion monthly users, up 1.65 percent from 2.41 billion in Q2 2019 when it grew 1.6 percent, and it now has 1.62 billion daily active users, up 2 percent from 1.587 billion last quarter when it grew 1.6 percent. Facebook scored $17.652 billion of revenue, up 29 percent year-over-year, with $2.12 in earnings per share.

Facebook Q3 2019 DAU

Facebook’s earnings beat expectations compared to Refinitiv’s consensus estimates of $17.37 billion in revenue and $1.91 earnings per share. Facebook’s quarter was mixed compared to Bloomberg’s consensus estimate of $2.28 EPS. Facebook earned $6 billion in profit after only racking up $2.6 billion last quarter due to its SEC settlement.

Facebook shares shot up 3.45% in after hours trading to $194.75 after earnings were announced, following a day where it closed down 0.56% at $188.25.

Notably, Facebook gained 2 million users in each of its core US & Canada and Europe markets that drive its business, after quarters of shrinkage, no growth, or weak growth there in the past 2 years. Average revenue per user grew healthily across all markets, boding well for Facebook’s ability to monetize the developing world where the bulk of user growth currently comes from. Facebook says 2.2 billion users access Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger every day, and 2.8 billion use one of this family of apps each month.

Facebook ARPU Q3 2019

Facebook’s earnings announcement was somewhat overshadowed by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announcing it would ban all political ads — something TechCrunch previously recommended social networks do. That move flies in the face of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s staunch support for allowing politicians to spread misinformation without fact-checks via Facebook ads.

Overall, it was another rough quarter for Facebook’s public perception as it dealt with outages and struggled to get buy-in from regulators for its Libra cryptocurrency project. Former co-founder Chris Hughes (who I’ll be leading a talk with at SXSW) campaigned for the social network to be broken up — a position echoed by Elisabeth Warren and other presidential candidates.

The company did spin up some new revenue sources, including taking a 30% cut of fan patronage subscriptions to content creators. It’s also trying to sell video subscriptions for publishers, and it upped the price of its Workplace collaboration suite. But gains were likely offset as the company continued to rapidly hire to address abusive content on its platform, which saw headcount grow 28% year-over-year to 43,000. There are still problems with how it treats content moderators, and Facebook has had to repeatedly remove coordinated misinformation campaigns from abroad. Appearing concerned about its waning brand, Facebook moved to add “from Facebook” to the names of Instagram and WhatsApp.

While it escaped with just a $5 billion fine as part of its FTC settlement that some consider a slap on the wrist, especially since it won’t have to significantly alter its business model. But the company will have to continue to invest and divert product resources to meet its new privacy, security, and transparency requirements. These could slow its response to a growing threat: Chinese tech giant ByteDance’s TikTok.



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TECH Solutions - Twitter bans all political advertising

Twitter bans all political advertising, saying the reach of such messages "should be earned, not bought".

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TECH Solutions - Jack Dorsey says Twitter will ban all political ads

CEO Jack Dorsey just announced, via tweet, that Twitter will be banning all political advertising — with a few exceptions like voter registration.

“We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought,” Dorsey said.

He also said the company will share the final policy by November 15, and that it will start enforcing the policy on November 22.

Updating



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TECH Solutions - DeepMind AI achieves Grandmaster status at Starcraft 2

Artificial intelligence firm says its AI agents have achieved Grandmaster status at Starcraft 2.

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Technical Solutions - Tech Talks #960 - Galaxy Fold 2, OnePlus 8 Launch, Xiaomi Sale Record, Moto 360, vivo S5, Mavic Mini

Tech Talks #960 - Galaxy Fold 2, OnePlus 8 Launch, Xiaomi Sale Record, Moto 360, vivo S5, Mavic Mini
TG Deals@ https://tg.deals/ New Channel: https://goo.gl/Jz6p5K Namaskaar Dosto, Tech Talks ke is Episode mein maine aapse kuch interesting Tech News Share ki hai jaise Galaxy Fold 2, OnePlus 8 Launch, Xiaomi Sale Record, Moto 360, vivo S5, Dji Mavic Mini aur bahut kuch. Mujhe umeed hai ki yeh video aapko pasand aayega. Share, Support, Subscribe!!! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/1Wfsvt4 Android App: https://ift.tt/2mrm9Gy Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/TechnicalGuruji Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/technicalguruji Facebook: https://ift.tt/1Pi5LDP Facebook Myself: https://goo.gl/zUfbUU Instagram: https://ift.tt/1OW2vue Google Plus: https://ift.tt/1Pi5LDS Website: https://ift.tt/2mcM6KV Merchandise: https://ift.tt/2lN4Vbu About : Technical Guruji is a YouTube Channel, where you will find technological videos in Hindi, New Video is Posted Everyday :)


TECH Solutions - #TeamTrees: YouTube stars boost tree-planting campaign to over $8m

The campaign, supported by YouTubers such as Jeffree Star, has raised more than $8m in five days.

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TECH Solutions - Facebook agrees to pay UK data watchdog’s Cambridge Analytica fine but settles without admitting liability

Facebook has reached a settlement with the UK’s data protection watchdog, the ICO, agreeing to pay in full a £500,000 (~$643k) fine following the latter’s investigating into the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal.

As part of the arrangement Facebook has agreed to drop its legal appeal against the penalty. But under the terms of the settlement it has not admitted any liability in relation to paying the fine, which is the maximum possible monetary penalty under the applicable UK data protection law. (The Cambridge Analytica scandal predates Europe’s GDPR framework coming into force.)

Facebook’s appeal against the ICO’s penalty was focused on a claim that there was no evidence that U.K. Facebook users’ data had being mis-used by Cambridge Analytica.

But there’s a further twist here in that the company had secured a win, from a first tier legal tribunal — which held in June that “procedural fairness and allegations of bias” on the part of the ICO should be considered as part of its appeal.

The decision required the ICO to disclose materials relating to its decision-making process regarding the Facebook fine. The ICO, evidently less than keen for its emails to be trawled through, appealed last month. It’s now withdrawing the action as part of the settlement, Facebook having dropped its legal action.

In a statement laying out the bare bones of the settlement reached, the ICO writes: “The Commissioner considers that this agreement best serves the interests of all UK data subjects who are Facebook users. Both Facebook and the ICO are committed to continuing to work to ensure compliance with applicable data protection laws.”

An ICO spokeswoman did not respond to additional questions — telling us it does not have anything further to add than its public statement.

As part of the settlement, the ICO writes that Facebook is being allowed to retain some (unspecified) “documents” that the ICO had disclosed during the appeal process — to use for “other purposes”, including for furthering its own investigation into issues around Cambridge Analytica.

“Parts of this investigation had previously been put on hold at the ICO’s direction and can now resume,” the ICO adds.

Under the terms of the settlement the ICO and Facebook each pay their own legal costs. While the £500k fine is not kept by the ICO but paid to HM Treasury’s consolidated fund.

Commenting in a statement, deputy commissioner, James Dipple-Johnstone, said:

The ICO welcomes the agreement reached with Facebook for the withdrawal of their appeal against our Monetary Penalty Notice and agreement to pay the fine. The ICO’s main concern was that UK citizen data was exposed to a serious risk of harm. Protection of personal information and personal privacy is of fundamental importance, not only for the rights of individuals, but also as we now know, for the preservation of a strong democracy. We are pleased to hear that Facebook has taken, and will continue to take, significant steps to comply with the fundamental principles of data protection. With this strong commitment to protecting people’s personal information and privacy, we expect that Facebook will be able to move forward and learn from the events of this case.

In its own supporting statement, attached to the ICO’s remarks, Harry Kinmonth, director and associate general counsel at Facebook, added:

We are pleased to have reached a settlement with the ICO. As we have said before, we wish we had done more to investigate claims about Cambridge Analytica in 2015. We made major changes to our platform back then, significantly restricting the information which app developers could access. Protecting people’s information and privacy is a top priority for Facebook, and we are continuing to build new controls to help people protect and manage their information. The ICO has stated that it has not discovered evidence that the data of Facebook users in the EU was transferred to Cambridge Analytica by Dr Kogan. However, we look forward to continuing to cooperate with the ICO’s wider and ongoing investigation into the use of data analytics for political purposes.

A charitable interpretation of what’s gone on here is that both Facebook and the ICO have reached a stalemate where their interests are better served by taking a quick win that puts the issue to bed, rather than dragging on with legal appeals that might also have raised fresh embarrassments. 

That’s quick wins in terms of PR (a paid fine for the ICO; and drawing a line under the issue for Facebook), as well as (potentially) useful data to further Facebook’s internal investigation of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

We don’t know exactly it’s getting from the ICO’s document stash. But we do know it’s facing a number of lawsuits and legal challenges over the scandal in the US. 

The ICO announced its intention to fine Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica scandal just over a year ago.

In March 2018 it had raided the UK offices of the now defunct data company, after obtaining a warrant, taking away hard drives and computers for analysis. It had also earlier ordered Facebook to withdraw its own investigators from the company’s offices.

Speaking to a UK parliamentary committee a year ago the information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, and deputy Dipple-Johnstone, discussed their (then) ongoing investigation of data seized from Cambridge Analytica — saying they believed the Facebook user data-set the company had misappropriated could have been passed to more entities than were publicly known.

The ICO said at that point it was looking into “about half a dozen” entities.

It also told the committee it had evidence that, even as recently as early 2018, Cambridge Analytica might have retained some of the Facebook data — despite having claimed it had deleted everything.

“The follow up was less than robust. And that’s one of the reasons that we fined Facebook £500,000,” Denham also said at the time. 

Some of this evidence will likely be very useful for Facebook as it prepares to defend itself in legal challenges related to Cambridge Analytica. As well as aiding its claimed platform audit — when, in the wake of the scandal, Facebook said it would run a historical app audit and challenge all developers who it determined had downloaded large amounts of user data.

The audit, which it announced in March 2018, apparently remains ongoing.



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TECH Solutions - Smart meters will get to Star Trek phase, says minister

The technology will be a "friend" of consumers, a minister says, but he admits problems with the rollout.

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TECH Solutions - Microsoft's GitHub blocks Catalan protest app

Spanish authorities accuse the Tsunami Democràtic group of being a 'criminal organisation'.

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TECH Solutions - Amazon's push for Prime sign-up 'misleading', says ASA

The way payment options were presented was confusing and needs to change, the advertising watchdog rules.

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Spotify launches a dedicated Kids app for Premium Family subscribers

In a move to boost family subscriptions to its app, Spotify this morning announced the launch of a dedicated Kids application which allows children three and up to listen to their own music, both online and offline, as well as explore playlists and recommendations picked by experts, and more. The music selection is also filtered so songs won’t have explicit content.

The launch is a first in the online music streaming space, where kids on parents’ music plans typically sign in through the same app — just with a different login. But Spotify believes children deserve their own space, where the music they listen to is available in an ad-free environment, where they won’t accidentally encounter lyrics that parents disapprove of, and where content is hand-curated by editors.

Spotify Kids, essentially, is a set of hand-picked playlists across categories.

Comp 2 Browse 2

These span categories like Movies & TV, top hits, Activities (bedtime, homework, playtime, etc.), genres, seasonal, Spotify Originals, artist/groups and Stories.

These playlists are all programmed by human editors, not algorithms, who follow a set of guidelines about what’s appropriate for children.

The editors, Spotify says, have backgrounds from some of the most well-known brands in the children’s entertainment market, including Nickelodeon, Disney, Discovery Kids, Universal Pictures, Public Service (Sweden) and BookBeat (family and kids-oriented audio streaming service).

The app isn’t just for the preschool set. Instead, it can grow with the kids as they get older — but still aren’t ready for the parents’ application yet.

Comp 1 Home 2

In the younger kids’ version, children can listen to things like singalongs, lullabies, and soundtracks aimed at little kids. Older users have access to tracks and playlists of their own, including some popular tracks, that are appropriate and relevant for their age group. Parents will select the appropriate age group upon launch.

In time, Spotify will expand the app with more content and build enhanced parental settings and controls that allow parents to customize the kids app further.

The app also looks nothing like the main app — it’s colorful and bright, and has a look and feel that varies by the kids’ age group. For example, the younger kids see artwork that’s softer and character-based, while older kids have a more detailed experience.

Kids 1920x733

“Spotify is committed to giving billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by music and stories and we’re proud that this commitment now includes the next generation of audio listeners,” said Spotify’s Chief Premium Business Officer Alex Norström. “We are excited to be expanding the Spotify Premium Family experience with a dedicated app just for our youngest fans. Spotify Kids is a personalized world bursting with sound, shape and color, where our young listeners can begin a lifelong love of music and stories.”

The app is initially available in beta, while Spotify works to refine the experience based on additional insights gained from use as well as parents’ feedback. It requires a Premium Family plan to use.

Spotify Kids is available today in Ireland on iOS and Android, but is rolling out to all markets, the company confirms.

 



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Technical Solutions - Airpods Pro Unboxing & First Look - Airpods Pro Vs Airpods? Noise Cancelling "PRO"🔥🔥🔥

Airpods Pro Unboxing & First Look - Airpods Pro Vs Airpods? Noise Cancelling "PRO"🔥🔥🔥
Namaskaar Dosto, is video mein maine aapse Apple Airpods Pro ke baare mein baat ki hai, Apple Airpods Pro ek wireless bluetooth earphones ka system hai Apple ki taraf se jo ki ek upgrade hai Apple Airpods ka. Miane is video mein Airpods Pro ki unboxing ki hai aur ek first look share kiya hai aap sabhi ke saath, is baar hume Apple Airpods Pro mein hume Active Noise Cancellation ka option milta hai saath mein replaceable Ear Buds bhi hai. Mujhe umeed hai ki aapko Apple Airpods Pro ki yeh unboxing video pasand aayegi. Share, Support, Subscribe!!! Subscribe: http://bit.ly/1Wfsvt4 Android App: https://ift.tt/2mrm9Gy Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/TechnicalGuruji Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/technicalguruji Facebook: https://ift.tt/1Pi5LDP Facebook Myself: https://goo.gl/zUfbUU Instagram: https://ift.tt/1OW2vue Google Plus: https://ift.tt/1Pi5LDS Website: https://ift.tt/2mcM6KV Merchandise: https://ift.tt/2lN4Vbu About : Technical Guruji is a YouTube Channel, where you will find technological videos in Hindi, New Video is Posted Everyday :)


TECH Solutions - Facebook agrees to pay Cambridge Analytica fine to UK

The social network has dropped an appeal against a £500,000 penalty from UK's privacy watchdog.

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TECH Solutions - Netflix founder: 'Learn when to get out of the way'

You need to learn "when to get out of the way" as a start-up CEO, says Netflix founder Marc Randolph.

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Tuesday, October 29, 2019

TECH Solutions - WhatsApp sues Israeli firm over phone hacking claims

Facebook-owned WhatsApp alleges NSO Group was behind a cyber-attack on phones and messages.

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Samsung teases a clamshell foldable form factor

Last year at its developer conference, Samsung showed off an early glimpse of its upcoming foldable. In hindsight, the Galaxy Fold’s roll out could have gone more smoothly, but sometimes first gen products go that way, I suppose. At very least, it’s clear that the company won’t let a rocky start stand between it and broader foldable phone ambitions.

On stage at this year’s event, the company showed off another take on the foldable display. A video shows the Galaxy Fold form factor morphing into a clamshell more akin to traditional dumb phones.

Unlike last year’s event, this one shouldn’t be taken as a pre-product announcement. Rather, the company says it’s “explor[ing] a range of new form factors in the foldable category.” It’s something that’s been pretty clear from the outset: these earliest days of foldable are very much about seeing which form factors click. Samsung is currently working with developers to explore these concepts.

This latest is more in line with leaks we’ve seen of the rumored Motorola Razr reboot, with an elongated screen that can easily be folded up and stashed away in a pocket. Perhaps we’ll get more insight into the company’s plans as CES or MWC.

Perhaps.



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TECH Solutions - Currys PC World customers scammed via eBay

Criminals siphoned money from unwitting eBay customers who paid using PayPal.

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TECH Solutions - Tech giants still not doing enough to fight fakes, says European Commission

It’s a year since the European Commission got a bunch of adtech giants together to spill ink on a voluntary Code of Practice to do something — albeit, nothing very quantifiable — as a first step to stop the spread of disinformation online.

Its latest report card on this voluntary effort sums to the platforms could do better.

The Commission said the same in January. And will doubtless say it again. Unless or until regulators grasp the nettle of online business models that profit by maximizing engagement. As the saying goes, lies fly while the truth comes stumbling after. So attempts to shrink disinformation without fixing the economic incentives to spread BS in the first place are mostly dealing in cosmetic tweaks and optics.

Signatories to the Commission’s EU Code of Practice on Disinformation are: Facebook, Google, Twitter, Mozilla, Microsoft and several trade associations representing online platforms, the advertising industry, and advertisers — including the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and World Federation of Advertisers (WFA).

In a press release assessing today’s annual reports, compiled by signatories, the Commission expresses disappointment that no other Internet platforms or advertising companies have signed up since Microsoft joined as a late addition to the Code this year.

“We commend the commitment of the online platforms to become more transparent about their policies and to establish closer cooperation with researchers, fact-checkers and Member States. However, progress varies a lot between signatories and the reports provide little insight on the actual impact of the self-regulatory measures taken over the past year as well as mechanisms for independent scrutiny,” write commissioners Věra Jourová, Julian King, and Mariya Gabriel said in a joint statement. [emphasis ours]

“While the 2019 European Parliament elections in May were clearly not free from disinformation, the actions and the monthly reporting ahead of the elections contributed to limiting the space for interference and improving the integrity of services, to disrupting economic incentives for disinformation, and to ensuring greater transparency of political and issue-based advertising. Still, large-scale automated propaganda and disinformation persist and there is more work to be done under all areas of the Code. We cannot accept this as a new normal,” they add.

The risk, of course, is that the Commission’s limp-wristed code risks rapidly cementing a milky jelly of self-regulation in the fuzzy zone of disinformation as the new normal, as we warned when the Code launched last year.

The Commission continues to leave the door open (a crack) to doing something platforms can’t (mostly) ignore — i.e. actual regulation — saying it’s assessment of the effectiveness of the Code remains ongoing.

But that’s just a dangled stick. At this transitionary point between outgoing and incoming Commissions, it seems content to stay in a ‘must do better’ holding pattern. (Or: “It’s what the Commission says when it has other priorities,” as one source inside the institution put it.)

A comprehensive assessment of how the Code is working is slated as coming in early 2020 — i.e. after the new Commission has taken up its mandate. So, yes, that’s the sound of the can being kicked a few more months on.

Summing up its main findings from signatories’ self-marked ‘progress’ reports, the outgoing Commission says they have reported improved transparency between themselves vs a year ago on discussing their respective policies against disinformation. 

But it flags poor progress on implementing commitments to empower consumers and the research community.

“The provision of data and search tools is still episodic and arbitrary and does not respond to the needs of researchers for independent scrutiny,” it warns. 

This is ironically an issue that one of the signatories, Mozilla, has been an active critic of others over — including Facebook, whose political ad API it reviewed damningly this year, finding it not fit for purpose and “designed in ways that hinders the important work of researchers, who inform the public and policymakers about the nature and consequences of misinformation”. So, er, ouch.

The Commission is also critical of what it says are “significant” variations in the scope of actions undertaken by platforms to implement “commitments” under the Code, noting also differences in implementation of platform policy; cooperation with stakeholders; and sensitivity to electoral contexts persist across Member States; as well as differences in EU-specific metrics provided.

But given the Code only ever asked for fairly vague action in some pretty broad areas, without prescribing exactly what platforms were committing themselves to doing, nor setting benchmarks for action to be measured against, inconsistency and variety is really what you’d expect. That and the can being kicked down the road. 

The Code did extract one quasi-firm commitment from signatories — on the issue of bot detection and identification — by getting platforms to promise to “establish clear marking systems and rules for bots to ensure their activities cannot be confused with human interactions”.

A year later it’s hard to see clear sign of progress on that goal. Although platforms might argue that what they claim is increased effort toward catching and killing malicious bot accounts before they have a chance to spread any fakes is where most of their sweat is going on that front.

Twitter’s annual report, for instance, talks about what it’s doing to fight “spam and malicious automation strategically and at scale” on its platform — saying its focus is “increasingly on proactively identifying problematic accounts and behaviour rather than waiting until we receive a report”; after which it says it aims to “challenge… accounts engaging in spammy or manipulative behavior before users are ​exposed to ​misleading, inauthentic, or distracting content”.

So, in other words, if Twitter does this perfectly — and catches every malicious bot before it has a chance to tweet — it might plausibly argue that bot labels are redundant. Though it’s clearly not in a position to claim it’s won the spam/malicious bot war yet. Ergo, its users remain at risk of consuming inauthentic tweets that aren’t clearly labeled as such (or even as ‘potentially suspect’ by Twitter). Presumably because these are the accounts that continue slipping under its bot-detection radar.

There’s also nothing in Twitter’s report about it labelling even (non-malicious) bot accounts as bots — for the purpose of preventing accidental confusion (after all satire misinterpreted as truth can also result in disinformation). And this despite the company suggesting a year ago that it was toying with adding contextual labels to bot accounts, at least where it could detect them.

In the event it’s resisted adding any more badges to accounts. While an internal reform of its verification policy for verified account badges was put on pause last year.

Facebook’s report also only makes a passing mention of bots, under a section sub-headed “spam” — where it writes circularly: “Content actioned for spam has increased considerably, since we found and took action on more content that goes against our standards.”

It includes some data-points to back up this claim of more spam squashed — citing a May 2019 Community Standards Enforcement report — where it states that in Q4 2018 and Q1 2019 it acted on 1.8 billion pieces of spam in each of the quarters vs 737 million in Q4 2017; 836 million in Q1 2018; 957 million in Q2 2018; and 1.2 billion in Q3 2018. 

Though it’s lagging on publishing more up-to-date spam data now, noting in the report submitted to the EC that: “Updated spam metrics are expected to be available in November 2019 for Q2 and Q3 2019″ — i.e. conveniently late for inclusion in this report.

Facebook’s report notes ongoing efforts to put contextual labels on certain types of suspect/partisan content, such as labelling photos and videos which have been independently fact-checked as misleading; labelling state-controlled media; and labelling political ads.

Labelling bots is not discussed in the report — presumably because Facebook prefers to focus attention on self-defined spam-removal metrics vs muddying the water with discussion of how much suspect activity it continues to host on its platform, either through incompetence, lack of resources or because it’s politically expedient for its business to do so.

Labelling all these bots would mean Facebook signposting inconsistencies in how it applies its own policies –in a way that might foreground its own political bias. And there’s no self-regulatory mechanism under the sun that will make Facebook fess up to such double-standards.

For now, the Code’s requirement for signatories to publish an annual report on what they’re doing to tackle disinformation looks to be the biggest win so far. Albeit, it’s very loosely bound self-reporting. While some of these ‘reports’ don’t even run to a full page of A4-text — so set your expectations accordingly.

The Commission has published all the reports here. It has also produced its own summary and assessment of them (here).

“Overall, the reporting would benefit from more detailed and qualitative insights in some areas and from further big-picture context, such as trends,” it writes. “In addition, the metrics provided so far are mainly output indicators rather than impact indicators.”

Of the Code generally — as a “self-regulatory standard” — the Commission argues it has “provided an opportunity for greater transparency into the platforms’ policies on disinformation as well as a framework for structured dialogue to monitor, improve and effectively implement those policies”, adding: “This represents progress over the situation prevailing before the Code’s entry into force, while further serious steps by individual signatories and the community as a whole are still necessary.”



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