Five UK broadband and landline providers will now compensate users when services do not work.
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Sunday, March 31, 2019
How To Back Up All Your Gmail Emails To Your Computer Hard Drive
We all know very well that the tech giant Google’s well-known email platform, of course, Gmail is the most used email service in the world, as basically, it is an online service that allows us to access mail from any site and device connected to the Internet. But if there is something that most users […]
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Meet The World’s Cheapest 3D Smartphones
We all know very well that the world of smartphones does not stop surprising, although to find this type of curiosities we must move away from traditional signatures. The idea of DeJoria is to bring the 3D experience to the entry and midrange devices. To do this, he has created a line of three smartphones […]
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10 Must-Have MIUI Apps That You Should Try On Your Android Device
We all know very well that the well-known Chinese smartphone manufacturer, Xiaomi is a company known for its smartphones, a large number of devices belonging to entry, middle and high ranges that have something in common, of course, the price. now we will tell you the applications of Xiaomi, of course, MIUI apps that you […]
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Saudi Arabia 'hacked Amazon boss's phone', says investigator
An investigator working for Jeff Bezos says Saudi Arabia accessed data on the Amazon boss's phone.
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Google Accidentally Reveals Its All-New Smart Screen
We all know very well that the tech giant Google has bet heavily on smart devices with its well-known and one of the smartest digital assistant available on the market, of course, I am talking about none other than the Google Assistant. As in November of the previous year, 2018, the tech giant Google increased […]
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Saturday, March 30, 2019
Mark Zuckerberg asks governments to help control internet content
Mark Zuckerberg writes an open letter calling for new laws to monitor internet content.
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Mark Zuckerberg actually calls for regulation of content, elections, privacy
It’s been a busy day for Facebook exec op-eds. Earlier this morning, Sheryl Sandberg broke the site’s silence around the Christchurch massacre, and now Mark Zuckerberg is calling on governments and other bodies to increase regulation around the sorts of data Facebook traffics in. He’s hoping to get out in front of heavy-handed regulation and get a seat at the table shaping it.
The founder published a letter simultaneously on his own page and The Washington Post, the latter of which is an ideal way to get your sentiments on every desk inside the beltway. In the wake a couple of years that have come with black eyes and growing pains, Zuckerberg notes that if he had it to do over again, he’d ask for increased external scrutiny in four key areas:
- Harmful content – He wants overarching rules and benchmarks social apps can be measured by
- Election integrity – He wants clear government definitions of what constitutes a political or issue ad
- Privacy – He wants GDPR-style regulations globally that can impose sanctions on violators
- Data portability – He wants users to be able to bring their info from one app to another
The story of why the letter breaks down each doubles as kind of recent history of the social network. Struggles and missteps have defined much of Facebook’s last few years, with several controversies often swirling around the social network at once. Not every CEO gets asked to testify in front of Congress. Facebook houses and controls an incredible collection of data, playing a key role in everything from ad targeting and interpersonal relationships to news cycles and elections.
“Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech, and frankly I agree,” Zuckerberg writes, three days after issuing a blanket ban on “white nationalism” and “white separatism.” He goes on to describe the company’s work with various governments, along with its development of independent oversight committee, before anyone can accuse the company of completely passing the buck.
“One idea is for third-party bodies to set standards governing the distribution of harmful content and to measure companies against those standards,” Zuckerberg writes, “Regulation could set baselines for what’s prohibited and require companies to build systems for keeping harmful content to a bare minimum.”
Zuckerberg goes on to encourage increased legislation around election tampering and political advertisements. Notably, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development hit Facebook earlier this week with charges that its targeted ads violate the Fair Housing Act.
The op-ed rings somewhat hollow, though, because there’s plenty that Facebook could do to improve in these four areas without help from the government.
Facebook’s harmful content policies have long been confusing, inconsistent, and isolated. For example, Infowars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was removed from Facebook but not from Instagram. Meanwhile, bad actors can just hop between social networks to spread problematic posts. Facebook should apply enforcement of its policies across its whole family of apps, publicly work through its logic for why it does or doesn’t remove things instead of having those discussions leak, and cooperate better with fellow social networks to coordinate blanket takedowns of the worst offenders.
As for election integrity, Facebook made a big advance this week by placing all active and old inactive political ad campaigns into keyword-searchable Ad Library. But after pressure from news publishers who didn’t want their ads promoting politicized articles to be included beside traditional campaign ads, Facebook exempted them. Those ads can still influence the electorate, and while they should be classified separately, they should still be archived for research.
On privacy, well, there’s a ton to be done. One major area where it could improve is allowing people to more completely opt out of search, including by their phone number, to avoid stalkers. And better controls should be available for how Facebook uses your contact info when uploaded in the address books of other users.
Finally, with data portability, Facebook has been dragging its feet. A year ago, we published a deep dive into how Facebook only lets you export your social graph as a list of friends’ names which can’t be easily used to find them on other social networks. Facebook must make its social graph truely interoperable so users don’t lose their community if they switch apps. That would coerce Facebook to treat users better since leaving would actually be a viable option.
Taking these steps would show regulators that Zuckerberg isn’t just paying lip service in hopes of getting a more lenient sentence. It would demonstrate he’s ready to make change that serves society.
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10 Best Tricks And Codes For Searching Google Like A Pro
We all know very well that the tech giant Google extends its services every day simply to improve the experience of its users, and currently, it allows you to do almost everything, as in Google now you can even find out if your favorite bar is full or not, and not only that even it […]
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Top 5 Best Adware Removal Apps For Android 2019
Removing adware from a computer is easy because there are plenty of Adware removal tools available for desktop operating systems. However, things become difficult when it comes to Android. So, here we have decided to share some of the best Adware removal tools for Android 2019. If you keep great interest in the security world, […]
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How to Fix ‘Ethernet doesn’t have a valid IP configuration’ Error
Sometimes, the DHCP is unable to get the valid IP Address from the Network interface card (NIC) which leads to the ‘Ethernet doesn’t have a valid IP configuration’ error message. So, here in this article, we have discussed a few best methods to fix ‘Ethernet doesn’t have a valid IP configuration’ error. We are pretty […]
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Top 15 Best iPhone Apps To Increase Internet Speed
As we all know, internet users are increasing day by day and that’s why internet bandwidths are getting slower and also expensive. However, you can use some apps to free up your reserved bandwidth from your iOS. We have stated the 5+ best iPhone apps that will help you increase your internet speed. Go through […]
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No internet? The Google App Has A New Hidden Game
According to the latest reports, in the presentation of Stadia, the tech giant Google made a small joke about the most played game in the world: the dinosaur that jumps when we access Chrome while we do not have an internet connection. Now, they have created a new minigame that is now available for the […]
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25+ Best Android Apps To Transfer Files Over Wifi With High Speed 2019
Today all of us share files from one Android to another, Android to PC or vice versa and at that moment we use many apps to transfer files and we also use Bluetooth to transfer files, but the speed of file transfer using all these is not so high. So, We are going to share few […]
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How to Remove Duplicate Contacts From Your Android Device
Learn how to remove duplicate contacts from your Android device. Very often, we create more than one copies of a contact which makes it really difficult to navigate through the contacts. Therefore, we bought you a method through which you can remove or merge all contacts which get repeated on your Android device. Go through […]
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Friday, March 29, 2019
Google To Change This Feature Of Android Q That Nobody Wants
We all know very well that the first beta of Android Q was announced two weeks ago, and all users of Google Pixels can now enjoy it on their smartphones. As the tech giant Google introduces dozens of changes every year, both visually and functionally, but the company, of course, the tech giant Google often […]
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Top 5 Best UPI (Unified Payments Interface) Apps For Android 2019
UPI is an immediate real-time payment system which helps in instant transfer of funds between two bank accounts. Here in this article, we are going to share some of the Payment apps which integrates UPI platform. You can use these apps to send and receive money between the UPI linked accounts. Well, if we look […]
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Tech Tent: Apple, Lyft and feel-good tech
Lyft shares, Apple TV+, and those times when tech gets it right.
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Russia police probe 'dark net' murder case
Investigators are looking into claims that a killing was arranged and paid for via covert net forums.
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How To Fix a Phone That Won’t Charge
Well, having an Android phone that won’t charge is nothing less than a nightmare. However, it’s one sort of a problem that most of us have experienced at some point. So, here in this article, we are going to share a few methods that would help you to fix a phone that won’t charge. Well, […]
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Top 10 Best Math Problem Solver Apps For Android
Are you looking for the best apps to solve mathematics questions? If yes, then you have landed in the right place. Here in this article, we are going to list down 10 Best Android apps that can help you solve math problems. So, let’s explore the list of best math apps for Android. We are […]
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Top 10 Best Android Apps To Chat With Strangers
There are lots of Android apps available on the Google Play Store that allows users to chat with strangers. With these free apps, you can talk to strangers or can make new friends. Here we have shared 10 Best Android apps for chatting with strangers Making new friends and talking with strangers is always fun, […]
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Top 15 Best Website To Learn Photoshop For Free 2019
Top 10 Best Website To Learn Photoshop For Free 2019: We must admit that Photoshop is hard. There are few resources available on the web that can help you to learn photoshop for free. Here are 15 best online websites for learning Photoshop on the web. We always want to look cool in our photos […]
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Top 15 Best Cheaper Alternatives to Photoshop
Let’s have a look at Best Cheaper Alternatives to Photoshop 2019 that you can try in devices and they will give you better results in very low-cost prices. And some of the tools are available to download offline and some of them can easily be used Online. So have a look at the complete tutorial […]
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Snap CEO’s sister Caroline Spiegel starts a no-visuals porn site
If you took the photos and videos out of pornography, could it appeal to a new audience? Caroline Spiegel’s first startup Quinn aims to bring some imagination to adult entertainment. Her older brother, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, spent years trying to convince people his app wasn’t just for sexy texting. Now Caroline is building a website dedicated to sexy text and audio. The 22-year-old college senior tells TechCrunch that on April 13th she’ll launch Quinn, which she describes as “a much less gross, more fun Pornhub for women”.
TechCrunch checked out Quinn’s private beta site, which is pretty bare bones right now. Caroline tells us she’s already raised under a million dollars for the project. But given her brother’s success spotting the next generation’s behavior patterns and turning them into beloved products, Caroline might find investors are eager to throw cash at Quinn. That’s especially true given she’s taking a contrarian approach. There will be no imagery on Quinn.
Caroline explains that “There’s no visual content on the site– just audio and written stories. And the whole thing is open source, so people can submit content and fantasies, etc. Everything is vetted by us before it goes on the site.” Caroline is building Quinn with a three-woman team of her best friends she met while at college at Stanford including Greta Meyer, though they plan to relocate to LA after graduation.
“His dream girl was named ‘Quinn'”
The idea for Quinn sprung from a deeply personal need. “I came up with it because I had to leave Stanford my junior year because i was struggling with anorexia and sexual dysfunction that came along with that” Caroline tells me. “I started to do a lot of research into sexual dysfunction cures. There are about 30 FDA-approved drugs for sexual dysfunction for men but zero for women and that’s a big bummer.”
She believes there’s still a stigma around women pleasuring themselves, leading to a lack of products offering assistance. Sure, there are plenty of porn sites but few are explicitly designed for women, and fewer stray outside of visual content. Caroline says photos and videos can create body image pressure, but with text and audio, anyone can imagine themselves in a scene. “Most visual media perpetuates the male gaze . . . all mainstream porn tells one story . . . You don’t have to fit one idea of what a woman should look like.”
That concept fits with the startup’s name “Quinn”, which Caroline says one of her best guy friends thought up. “He said this girl he met — his dream girl — was named ‘Quinn.'”
Caroline took to Reddit and Tumblr to find Quinn’s first creators. Reddit stuck to text and links for much of its history, fostering the kinky literature and audio communities. And when Tumblr banned porn in December, it left a legion of adult content makers looking for a new home. “Our audio ranges from guided masturbation to overheard sex, and there’s also married stories. It’s literally everything. Different strokes for different for folks, know what I mean?” Caroline says with a cheeky laugh.
To establish its brand, Quinn is running social media influencer campaigns where “The basic idea is to make people feel like it’s okay to experience pleasure. It’s hard to make something like masturbation cool, so that’s a little bit of a lofty goal. We’re just trying to make it feel okay, and even more okay than it is for men.”
As for the business model, Caroline’s research found younger women were embarrassed to pay for porn. Instead Quinn plans to run ads, though there could be commerce opportunities too. And since the site doesn’t bombard users with nude photos or hardcore videos, it might be able to attract sponsors that most porn sites can’t.
Evan is “very supportive”
Until monetization spins up, Quinn has the sub-$1 million in funding that Caroline won’t reveal the source of, though she confirms it’s not from her brother. “I wouldn’t say that he’s particularly involved other than he’s one of the most important people in my life and I talk to him all the time. He gives me the best advice I can imagine” the younger sibling says. “He doesn’t have any qualms, He’s very supportive.”
Quinn will need all the morale it can get, as Caroline bluntly admits “we have a lot of competitors”. There’s the traditional stuff like Pornhub, user generated content sites like Make Love Not Porn, and spontaneous communities like on Reddit. She calls $5 million-funded audio porn startup Dipsea “an exciting competitor” though she notes that “we sway a little more erotic than they do, but we’re so supportive of their mission.” How friendly.
Quinn’s biggest rival will likely be outdated but institutionalized site Literotica, which SimilarWeb ranks as the 60th most popular adult website, 631st most visited site overall, showing it gets 53 million hits per month. But the fact that Literotica looks like a web 1.0 forum yet has so much traffic signals a massive opportunity for Quinn. With rules prohibiting Quinn from launching native mobile apps, it will have to put all its effort into making its website stand out if it’s going to survive.
But more than competition, Caroline fears that Quinn will have to convince women to give its style of porn a try. “Basically, there’s this idea that for men, masturbation is an innate drive and for women it’s a ‘could do without it, could do with it’. Quinn is going to have to make a market alongside a product and that terrifies me” Caroline says, her voice building with enthusiasm. “But that’s what excites me the most about it, because what I’m banking on is if you’ve never had chocolate before, you don’t know. But once you have it, you start craving it. A lot of women haven’t experienced raw, visceral pleasure before, [but once we help them find it] we’ll have momentum.”
Most importantly, Quinn wants all women to feel they have rightful access to whatever they fancy. “It’s not about deserving to feel great, You don’t have to do Pilates to use this. You don’t have to always eat right. There’s no deserving with our product. Our mission is for women to be more in touch with themselves and feel fucking great. It’s all about pleasure and good vibes.”
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Facebook begins new EU political ads rules
The new rules, are part of attempts by the social network to clamp down on election abuse.
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NSA contractor pleads guilty to data theft
The former programmer could get a jail sentence of nine years for stealing terabytes of sensitive data.
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Facebook challenges Belgian tracking ban
The company faces a fine of 250,000 euros per day for not complying with a request to delete personal data.
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Meet The World’s First Smartphone With The Most Unusual Front-Facing Camera
We all know very well that the well-known Chinese smartphone manufacturer, of course, Vivo presented the first selfie pop-up camera with the Vivo V15 Pro, and now OPPO has taken the design to a new level with the most unusual front-facing camera. Meet The World’s First Smartphone With The Most Unusual Front-Facing Camera The well-known […]
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How To Turn On Post And Story Notifications In Instagram
We all know very well that if you are following a large number of users on the well-known social network platform of Facebook, of course, I am talking about Instagram, then it becomes practically impossible to keep up to date with all the publications or posts of each of the members of the platform, of […]
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Thursday, March 28, 2019
Ahrefs To Launch Its New Powerful Search Engine To Beat Google
Recently, the developer of one of the well-known and best SEO tools on the internet, of course, I am talking about the Ahrefs who has recently, promoted its plans to create its own search engine simply to compete with the tech giant Google. And the most interesting thing is that this was stated by the […]
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Facebook’s handling of Alex Jones is a microcosm of its content policy problem
A revealing cluster of emails leaked to Business Insider offers a glimpse at how Facebook decides what content is objectionable in high profile cases. In this instance, a group of executives at Facebook went hands on in determining if an Alex Jones Instagram post violated the platform’s terms of service or not.
As Business Insider reports, 20 Facebook and Instagram executives hashed it out over the Jones post, which depicted a mural known as “False Profits” by the artist Mear One. Facebook began debating the post after it was flagged by Business Insider for kicking up anti semitic comments on Wednesday.
The company removed 23 of 500 comments on the post that it interpreted to be in clear violation of Facebook policy. Later in the conversation, some of the UK-based Instagram and Facebook executives on the email provided more context for their US-based peers.
Last year, a controversy over the same painting erupted when British politician Jeremy Corbyn argued in support of the mural’s creator after the art was removed from a wall in East London due what many believed to be antisemitic overtones. Because of that, the image and its context are likely better known in the UK, a fact that came up in Facebook’s discussion over how to handle the Jones post.
“This image is widely acknowledged to be anti-Semitic and is a famous image in the UK due to public controversy around it,” one executive said. “If we go back and say it does not violate we will be in for a lot criticism.”
Ultimately, after some back and forth, the post was removed.
According to the emails, Alex Jones’ Instagram account “does not currently violate [the rules]” as “an IG account has to have at least 30% of content violating at any given time as per our regular guidelines.” That fact might prove puzzling once you know that Alex Jones got his main account booted off Facebook itself in 2018 — and the company did another sweep for Jones-linked pages last month.
Whether you agree with Facebook’s content moderation decisions or not, it’s impossible to argue that they are consistently enforced. In the latest example, the company argued over a single depiction of a controversial image even as the same image is literally for sale by the artist elsewhere on both on Instagram and Facebook. (As any Facebook reporter can attest, these inconsistencies will probably be resolved shortly after this story goes live.)
The artist himself sells its likeness on a t-shirt on both Instagram and Facebook and numerous depictions of the same image appear on various hashtags. And even after the post was taken down, Jones displayed it prominently in his Instagram story, declaring that the image “is just about monopoly men and the class struggle” and decrying Facebook’s “crazy-level censorship.”
It’s clear that even as Facebook attempts to make strides, its approach to content moderation remains reactive, haphazard and probably too deeply preoccupied with public perception. Some cases of controversial content are escalated all the way to the top while others languish, undetected. Where the line is drawn isn’t particularly clear. And even when high profile violations are determined, it’s not apparent that those case studies meaningfully trickle down clarify smaller, everyday decisions by content moderators on Facebook’s lower rungs.
As always, the squeaky wheel gets the grease — but two billion users and reactive rather than proactive policy enforcement means that there’s an endless sea of ungreased wheels drifting around. This problem isn’t unique to Facebook, but given its scope, it does make the biggest case study in what can go wrong when a platform scales wildly with little regard for the consequences.
Unfortunately for Facebook, it’s yet another lose-lose situation of its own making. During its intense, extended growth spurt, Facebook allowed all kinds of potentially controversial and dangerous content to flourish for years. Now, when the company abruptly cracks down on accounts that violate its longstanding policies forbidding hate speech, divisive figures like Alex Jones can cry censorship, roiling hundreds of thousands of followers in the process.
Like other tech companies, Facebook is now paying mightily for the worry-free years it enjoyed before coming under intense scrutiny for the toxic side effects of all that growth. And until Facebook develops a more uniform interpretation of its own community standards — one the company enforces from the bottom up rather than the top down — it’s going to keep taking heat on all sides.
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Facebook launches searchable transparency library of all active ads
Now you can search Facebook for how much Trump has spent on ads in the past year, which Pages’ ads reference immigration or what a Page’s previous names were. It’s all part of Facebook’s new Ad Library launching today that makes good on its promise to increase transparency after the social network’s ads were used to try to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.
Facebook’s Ads Archive that launched in May 2018 previously only included ads related to politics or policy issues, but now shows all active ads about anything, as well as inactive political and issue ads. It displays Page creation dates, mergers with other Pages, Page name changes and where a Page is managed from, and the option to report an ad for policy violations — all of which will be visible on a new Page Transparency tab on all Pages. Users can search political and issue ads by keyword or other ads by Page name, and Facebook will lend a hand with auto-fill suggestions and previous searches. The Library also displays Pages’ total political ads in the past week or since May 2018. And in mid-May, Facebook will move to offering daily downloadable Ad Library reports as well as monthly and quarterly ones instead of just weekly ones as it currently does.
The improved transparency could allow researchers, government investigators, journalists or anyone play watchdog to ensure ads aren’t being misused to spread misinformation, suppress voting, exacerbate polarization or otherwise be sketchy.
Facebook stopped short of putting all expired and inactive non-political ads in the archive. It wouldn’t say why, but some advertisers have expressed concern that it could let competitors copy their messaging and targeting strategies. Another exemption will be news publishers, who teamed up to complain that sticking “Paid for by” labels on their ads promoting their political coverage made them look like they were campaigning for a certain side. Facebook exempted U.K. publishers in November, and now Facebook will use third-party lists of legitimate U.S. publishers to exempt their ads from the labels and Politics tab of the Ad Library as well.
Facebook is also bringing its political ad labeling to the whole European Union after launching in the U.K. in October. Political and issue ad buyers will have to submit documents and pass technical checks to verify their location and identity that will be reviewed by automated systems and audited by users who can report ads without proper labels. The goal is to prevent people from outside of a country from using ads to meddle in different nations’ elections. Facebook will also add a “Paid for by” label to all political and issue ads on Facebook and Instagram and place active and inactive ones in the Ad Library. The labels will review who bought the ad, their contact details, the budget for that ad, how many people saw it and the age, location and gender demographic details.
Facebook notes that it now has transparency tools revving up in Brazil, India, Ukraine and Israel as those nations prepare for elections. Facebook plans to have political and issue ad-transparency tools available globally by the end of June.
Meanwhile, Facebook is expanding researchers’ and developers’ programmatic access to Ad Library API, which was previously in closed beta. Now anyone with a Facebook developer account who goes through the Identity Confirmation process and agrees to the platform terms of service can use software to sift through and spot trends in the data. To prevent another Cambridge Analytica situation, Facebook tells TechCrunch it will impost rate limits on the API, but won’t disclose them to ensure bad actors can’t toe the line. When asked how else Facebook would safeguard the API given people don’t necessarily abide by the TOS, Satwik Shukla, product manager on the Business Integrity team at Facebook, told me, “this is why we have the Identity Verification process in place. We want to know the identity of someone accessing the data so if they do abuse our platform terms of service . . . we have the ability to revoke access.”
One fascinating move here is that the Ad Library and reports can be accessed even if you don’t have a Facebook account. That could ward off some critics and Congress members who’ve ragged on Facebook for requiring users sign up to access transparency information or stop it from collecting data on them.
Between the depth and convenience of access to Facebook ad data, watchdogs could spot problematic campaigns before influencing too much of the electorate. If someone spots a campaign trying to convince people they can vote by text message, that the Pope endorsed Trump or that are purposefully stoking anger to boost engagement, they could flag the ads to Facebook for removal.
As Facebook being charged with housing discrimination by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development today proves, Facebook has repeatedly failed to stop problematic ads on its own. By opening itself up to assistance, it might not alleviate scrutiny, but at least all the eyes on it can help battle election interference and other abuse.
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Top 5 Best DNS Changer Apps For Android 2019
In this article, we have decided to share a few best DNS Changer apps for Android that could help you to change default DNS to Public DNS. So, let’s explore the list of 5 best DNS Changer apps for Android 2019. Well, if you have been using the internet for a while, then you might […]
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Top 8 Best Sites To Download Free Photoshop Brushes 2019
Are you searching for the best websites to download Photoshop brushes? If yes, then here we are going to share some of the best sites to download Photoshop brushes 2019. So, let’s explore the list of best sites to download Photoshop brushes for free. It’s of no doubt that Photoshop is right now the most […]
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Twitter introduces a battery-saving ‘Lights Out’ dark mode option
As promised back in January by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, the company today is rolling out an even darker version of the app’s existing dark mode. Before, Twitter’s dark theme was more of a blue-ish shade instead of a true black, which not everyone seemed to like. Now, there’s an optional setting that makes the current dark mode more of a pitch black.
To use the new feature, you’ll first visit the Twitter app’s “Settings and Privacy” section, then click on “Display and Sound.” From there, you can toggle on the “Dark mode” which enables the current blue-black theme.
A second option, “Lights out” is offered below. If checked, dark mode ditches the blue tones and becomes black instead.
It’s an interesting choice to not just darken the existing theme, but rather introduce a third option. Most apps offering a dark mode don’t do this – they just offer a bright, white theme and another darker one. Twitter – which doesn’t always do things by the book to say the least – has gone a different route.
A tweak to the dark mode may seem like a minor adjustment to be concerned with, but dark modes today have grown in popularity as larger phone screens became the norm – particularly because they can help to conserve battery life on high-end OLED devices. (And especially on apps used as regularly as Twitter!)
Some people also feel a dark mode is just easier on the eyes when apps are used for long stretches of time.
The topic of dark modes even made its way to The Wall Street Journal which made a case for darker themes becoming standard not only for the battery benefits, but also because they may help lessen device addiction and improve sleep.
Today, a number of apps support dark themes including YouTube, Google, Medium, Reddit, Instapaper, Pocket, iBooks, Kindle, Google Maps and Waze, and others. WhatsApp is also reportedly working on a dark mode, according to recent reports.
Dorsey first announced Twitter’s plans for a new dark mode a few months ago, in response to a customer complaint which called Twitter’s dark mode a “weird blue.”
Twitter says the new Lights Out mode is rolling out today.
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10 Most (Horror) Terrifying Games Of All Time 2019
Do you like video games and fear both? Then you have come to the right place, as in this post, we are going to talk about what we consider to be the 10 most terrifying games of all times which will make you feel the real nightmares and discover the fear in a very different […]
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Chad - where social media has been cut for a year
Activists in Chad are demanding that the government restore access to social media after it was cut a year ago.
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HUD hits Facebook with housing discrimination charges over ad targeting
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development this morning hit Facebook with charges of housing discrimination. The filing states that the the online giant has violated the Fair Housing Act through its ad targeting tools, which allow sellers to limit listings based on categories like race, sex and nation of origin.
The charges are the result of an investigation initiated in August of last year, investigating a formal complaint that homesellers and landlords can target ads across a broad range of different categories.
“Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live,” HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in a statement tied to the news. “Using a computer to limit a person’s housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone’s face.”
Facebook said it was “surprised” by the decision, in a statement offered to TechCrunch. A spokesperson for the company went on to discuss “significant steps” taken to above the discrimination detailed in HUD’s filing.
“Last year we eliminated thousands of targeting options that could potentially be misused, and just last week we reached historic agreements with the National Fair Housing Alliance, ACLU, and others that change the way housing, credit, and employment ads can be run on Facebook,” the company says. “While we were eager to find a solution, HUD insisted on access to sensitive information – like user data – without adequate safeguards. We’re disappointed by today’s developments, but we’ll continue working with civil rights experts on these issues.”
Last week, the social network avoided legal woes by reaching an agreement with The ACLU, Outten & Golden LLC and the Communications Workers of America. The deal is designed to help adhere to section VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, with Facebook removing gender, age and race-based targeting from housing and employment ads and creating a new one-stop portal for listings.
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Xiaomi Posts Promo Video Of Its Foldable Smartphone
After both the South Korean giant Samsung and the giant Chinese smartphone manufacturer, Huawei now the well-known Chinese brand Xiaomi wants to make its place in this new and unexplored market, of course, Xiaomi to launch its own foldable smartphone. Xiaomi Posts Promo Video Of Its Foldable Smartphone While we expect both the South Korean […]
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Grindr 'up for sale on security grounds'
The app's Chinese owner, Kunlun Group, is reportedly seen as a security risk by US authorities.
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10 Easy Steps to Clean Your Infected Computer
Fixing an infected computer is not a difficult task, you just need to utilize the right resources at the right time. Below, we are going to share a few tips that will help you to clean your infected computer. So, let’s check out some of the easy steps to clean an infected computer. Well, we […]
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10 Tools that Automatically Download Stunning Images Everyday
Let’s have a look at the 8 Tools that Automatically Download Stunning Images. Everyday that you can use as your desktop backgrounds to have a good change every day. So have a look at the complete guide below. What will you have to do if you wish to grab some high quality and stunning looking images? […]
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Salesforce.com sued over links to trafficking site
The software firm is accused of helping a site known to be involved in the trafficking of women.
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Top 13 Best Free Stock Video Sites 2019
Video content can be expensive to create because we need to have proper tools and proper resources to create videos which can cost you a lot. Therefore, to make thing little bit easy, we are going to share some of the best free stock video sites to grab unique clips. It’s of no doubt that […]
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Top 10+ Best Online PDF To Word Converter 2019
In this article, we are going to share some of the best online PDF to Word converter that will convert your PDF files in Word document in no-time. So, let’s check out some of the best PDF to Word Converters. Well, if we talk about the best means to share documents, without any doubt, PDF […]
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Facebook to ban white nationalism and separatism
The social media firm is under pressure after the New Zealand mosque attack was live-streamed.
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How To Monitor Real Time Data Usage In Windows
We are going to share the easiest method that will help you monitor your data usage in a proper way so as to avoid the extra charges of overusing internet plans. The methods are pretty simple and depends on some cool tools that will allow you to track your network packets. Moreover, this will show […]
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How To Switch To Google DNS To Speed Up Web Browsing
Public DNS servers like Google DNS and OpenDNS can improve your internet browsing speed because it improves the resolve time. Google Public DNS Server is one of the fastest DNS servers which many users are using. Here’s the best Google DNS Settings to speed up web browsing. How To Switch To Google DNS To Speed […]
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Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Google Just Added An Awesome New Feature To Gmail
We all know very well that in recent days, the tech giant Google has made several changes to its email clients, with changes such as the closure of Inbox and the limitation of use of IFTTT in Gmail. Now, the change of emails from static to dynamic will come not only to Gmail only but […]
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How To Forget Saved WiFi Connections On Any Android Device
We all know very well that our Android device simply remembers the Wi-Fi connections that we have connected to, so that we do not need to re-enter our password every time we connect. As over time, the list of Wi-Fi connections grows and simply become a big list, so, this situation could simply pose a […]
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Facebook is finally banning white supremacy that goes by other names
Facebook is abandoning a longstanding policy of allowing white supremacy to flourish on its platform under the guise of terms like white nationalism and white separatism.
Motherboard first reported that the decision came out of a conversation on platform moderation out of Facebook’s Content Standards Forum yesterday and will go into effect next week. Under the new rules, detailed in a Facebook Newsroom post, the company will direct users who search for content related to white supremacy to Life After Hate, an organization that helps individuals leave violent far-right groups.
As Facebook explains in its Newsroom post:
“… Over the past three months our conversations with members of civil society and academics who are experts in race relations around the world have confirmed that white nationalism and separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups. Our own review of hate figures and organizations – as defined by our Dangerous Individuals & Organizations policy – further revealed the overlap between white nationalism and separatism and white supremacy. Going forward, while people will still be able to demonstrate pride in their ethnic heritage, we will not tolerate praise or support for white nationalism and separatism.
As we wrote last year, Facebook foolishly took the distinction between white nationalism and white supremacy seriously even while most white supremacists don’t. For hate groups, hiding behind the guise of a slightly more benign term like white nationalism is a very useful way to obscure the fact that many of these superficially disparate ideologies have nearly total ideological overlap.
Last year, leaked internal documents revealed that Facebook policy formally distinguished between white supremacy and white nationalism. That misguided policy failed to see that white nationalism, white pride, and white separatism are guises for and generally synonymous with the ideals set forth by white supremacy, a dangerous form of race-motivated radicalism that inspires hate-based violence.
Image via Facebook
Six months ago, Facebook indicated that it would review its policy on white nationalism and white separatism after speaking with civil rights groups that decried the company’s stance toward forms of white supremacy on its platform.
“Color Of Change alerted Facebook years ago to the growing dangers of white nationalists on its platform, and today, we are glad to see the company’s leadership take this critical step forward in updating its policy on white nationalism,” Color Of Change President Rashad Robinson said of the upcoming policy shift.
“… Facebook’s update should move Twitter, YouTube, and Amazon to act urgently to stem the growth of white nationalist ideologies, which find space on platforms to spread the violent ideas and rhetoric that inspired the tragic attacks witnessed in Charlottesville, Pittsburgh, and now Christchurch.”
TechCrunch has reached out to Facebook for more details about the new policy on white nationalism and white separatism and will be following the story as it develops.
Facebook’s shift toward taking white supremacism in its many forms more seriously is a big deal. Online platforms, particularly those driven by algorithms, play a big role in funneling users toward suggested content. As long as white supremacy, under the guise of white nationalism or white separatism, has a place on major tech platforms, users expressing even passing interest in white supremacist themes and language will be funneled deeper down the radicalization rabbit hole.
Facebook has taken major strides in the last year, taking action against white supremacy-adjacent groups like the Proud Boys, which relied the platform for international recruitment. Still, it wasn’t very long ago that a simple search of a ubiquitous white supremacist term like “1488” would steer Facebook users toward a wealth of memes, posts and groups promoting violence against jews and the black community, normalizing race-based hate in the process.
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Britain's 'bullied' chatbots fight back
Chatbot designers are writing witty responses to abusive messages.
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Twitter took over a user’s account and joked about reading their DMs
At a time when tech giants have come under fire for failing to protect the private data of their users, Twitter took over one of its user’s accounts for fun and then tweeted jokes about reading the account’s private messages. The account, to be clear, was willingly volunteered for this prank by social media consultant Matt Navarra, who’s well-known in some Twitter circles for being among the first to spot new features on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
In fact, TechCrunch itself has credited Navarra on a number of occasions for his tweets about features like Twitter’s new camera, Facebook’s “time spent” dashboard, Facebook’s “Explore” feed, Instagram’s “Do Not Disturb” setting, and more. Several other tech news sites have done the same, which means Navarra’s private messages (direct messages, aka DM’s) probably included a lot of conversations between himself and various reporters.
He’s also regularly tipped off about upcoming features or those in testing on sites like Twitter. One could assume he has regular conversations with his network of tipsters through DM’s, as well.
Initially, we believed the whole “account takeover” was just a joke – perhaps a case of Navarra poking fun at himself and his own obsession with social media. After all, “takeovers” are a common social media stunt these days, particularly on Instagram Stories. But they usually involve an individual posting for a brand – not a brand posting for an individual.
Navarra had the idea on Monday, and tweeted out a call for someone to run his account for a day.
He tells TechCrunch he had a tragic incident in his family, and offered the chance for someone else to tweet as him for the day so he could take a day away from Twitter. He also thought it could be fun. (Twitter tells us he remained logged in while the company was tweeting from his account, however.)
Navarra says he was surprised that Twitter volunteered for the job, and he agreed to give them control. Most of his followers – fellow social media enthusiasts – were excited and amused about the plan, which they touted as “epic,” “gold,” and a “great idea!”
Navarra on Tuesday tweeted out photos of himself handing over his account key to Twitter in a DM thread.
On Tuesday, Twitter began tweeting as Navarra. This mostly involved some gentle roasting – like tweets about muting people asking for an “edit” button, and other nonsense. Twitter said then it was going to tweet out some of Navarra’s drafts, and posted things like “who has a Google Wave code?” and something about BBM, among other things. (Navarra says these were fake – not real drafts.)
But other jokes were less funny. Twitter said it was reading Navarra’s DMs, for example.
(At the time of posting, these embedded tweets were posted from “Tweet Navarra” as Twitter temporarily changed the account name while it was tweeting as Matt. But it’s been since changed back, so these embeds show the current account name, “Matt Navarra.”)
The company then posted a screenshot of his Direct Message inbox to poke fun at the fact that he had DM’d with an account called “Satan,” in one incident.
Navarra played along, joking from his new account for the day @realmattnavarra for Twitter to “ignore that DM from Zuck.”
While I personally had not DM’d Navarra anything compromising, I can’t speak for everyone who had ever messaged him. Even if Navarra had signed up to have his account taken over, those he messaged with had not volunteered to have their privacy violated. And though my conversations with him were innocuous, it was disconcerting to know that my message history with a private individual was accessible by someone at Twitter.
Reached for comment, Navarra claims his “DMs were all deleted” before Twitter entered his account. Unfortunately, there’s no way to verify this as DM deletion on Twitter is one-sided. That means that even if he deleted the DMs, the person who sent them could still view them in their own inbox.
It also appears from the screenshot Twitter posted that the entire inbox hadn’t been wiped.
At the end of the day, Navarra may have been misguided with this stunt – perhaps he should have first demonstrated that he had cleaned out his inbox by posting a tweet of it being empty – but he is not a public social media company. It’s completely nuts that Twitter thought this was a funny idea.
Whether or not Twitter actually saw private conversations, it’s bad optics for the company to take over a user’s account for a lark then joke about violating users’ privacy at a time when tech giants like Facebook and Google are under threat of increased regulations for not taking care of users’ private data.
Twitter did not provide a comment, but confirmed it logged into Navarra’s account for a few hours for the takeover in the hopes of starting fun conversations with his followers.
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How To Fix Microphone Problems On Android Smartphones
Recently, we have received multiple messages from readers regarding microphone failure. We have readers who reported that during the middle of a call, the other person couldn’t hear the voice. So, here in this article, we have discussed a few methods to fix Microphone problems on Android 2019 Well, if we look around, we will […]
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British-Canadian AI expert Geoffrey Hinton wins Turing Award
Geoffrey Hinton shares this year's award with two other leading figures in artificial intelligence.
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How To Disable Encrypted File Indexing In Windows 10
The biggest advantage of Windows 10 search tool is that it allows users to search for basically any type of files including images, videos, games, music, documents, etc. However, at the same time, it also displays the encrypted files. So, to stop Windows 10 search bar from showing encrypted files, we have shared a working […]
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How To Disable IPv6 On Windows 10
If we talk about IPv6 internet, the internet protocol can produce a delay in establishing a connection to the resources. Another thing is that IPv6 has few security flaws and it opens up possibilities for attackers to enter your network. So, it’s always better to disable IPv6 in Windows 10. So, here in this article, […]
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Report: Grindr’s Chinese owner Kunlun is selling the dating app after CFIUS raised personal data concerns
Grindr, the popular dating app for gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people, looks like it might be changing hands again, a year after it was acquired at a valuation of $245 million. According to a report in Reuters, Grindr’s owner Kunlun is looking for a buyer of the company after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) determined that having the app owned by a Chinese company poses a national security risk.
Kunlun originally acquired a 60 percent stake in the company in 2016 for $93 million and completed the acquisition in January 2018, reportedly paying an additional $152 million.
Kunlun also publishes games, provides online financial services, and has other internet holdings such as the Opera internet browser. It has something of a track record with regulators over data privacy concerns, but also of being okay with losing battles to win the war, so to speak.
In 2016, when the company was part of a consortium acquiring the internet company Opera for $1.2 billion, it eventually renegotiated the deal down to $600 million for only part of the business after regulators raised red flags over data protection concerns. Kunlun is now a 48 percent shareholder of Opera Software as part of the Chinese consortium that owns the Norwegian company.
In August, it was reported that Kunlun had started the ball rolling for an IPO of the Grindr app. That is a process that has now been halted, writes Reuters, with the investment bank Cowen now handling enquiries in a sale process instead.
Interested parties reportedly include investment groups and competitors. We have reached out to the Match Group (which owns Tinder), Bumble and Bumble’s owner Badoo to ask if they are among the bidders.
So far, Badoo’s founder and CEO Andrey Andreev has responded to say his company is not among the bidders.
“We are aware Grindr is looking for a new buyer,” he said, “however Badoo is not looking for any new additions to bring into our family. We are currently committed to our gay dating app and community, Chappy, along with the many other apps under our umbrella. As opposed to other technology groups, we have never bought an existing dating app as we believe in building and growing our own dating apps leveraging the technology and talent within the Group.”
We have also contacted Kunlun and Grindr for comment and will update this post as we learn more.
According to the report, the main reason for the CFIUS flagging Kunlun’s ownership is its concern over personal data protection.
Personal data protection has become a growing area of concern for government agencies because of an increasing number of data breaches, and how that data in turn gets used. The problem is not just private individuals, but specifically those who are in the government or military, who might be more vulnerable routes to disclosing confidential state information if their data gets compromised.
It’s not clear from the report what the specific concerns are that the CFIUS had with Grindr’s own data and how it is used. However, it’s notable that the company — which reported 3.3 million daily active users globally at the time of its acquisition last year, with some 27 million registered users overall as of 2017 — has been in the spotlight several times in the last few years over personal data and its handling of it.
Back in 2016, a researcher demonstrated how malicious hackers could pinpoint the location of users on the app. In 2018, it got embroiled in a controversy around how it shared users’ HIV status with third parties. Later in the year, the app was found again to be exposing users’ exact locations, this time to a third-party app that had gained unauthorized access to Grindr’s private API. And at a time when opinion has very much soured over just how much Facebook knows about us and how that information is used, Grindr was found (along with other apps) to be sending a lot of information to them, by way of its use of the Facebook login.
Agencies and others in positions of power in government have not been the quickest-responding to changing tides in technology, what the implications of those might be, and how they could and should act on behalf of consumers and the state to help protect them. (As one small example, if you watched any of the hearings involving Facebook and other internet companies, the elementary nature of some of the questions highlighted just how far behind certain decision makers are in their understanding of tech.)
In light of that, the CFIUS seems to be trying to redouble its efforts to help address that.
Notably, as Reuters points out, this is a very rare instance of the inter-agency committee flagging an acquisition that has already closed. Usually, it will halt a deal before it is completed, such as in the case of China’s Alipay dropping its planned acquisition of MoneyGram or Broadcom’s failed acquisition of Qualcomm, both stemming from objections by the CFIUS.
It seems that one of the reasons why the CFIUS has acted, or is in a position to be able to flag the sale after it’s completed, is because Kunlun never submitted its acquisition of Grindr to the agency for review at the time of either the first or second tranche of the deal, Reuters writes.
The twist that the acquirer happened to be Chinese, of course, is also notable.
China has been identified numerous times as the backer of many state-sponsored hacking groups; leading companies from the country, like Huawei, are embroiled in ongoing cases of corporate espionage; and more generally country is in the middle of a trade war with the US. That trade war concerns tariffs between the two countries, and technology is one of the leading actors in it because of the huge business that it represents. Beyond that, technology and specifically the data that can be collected using technology provide huge leverage in the power one country can hold over the other.
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Mozilla Just Launched An Awesome New App For Android
We all know very well that one of the most recommended measures to protect the authenticity and the security of an account is to use strong passwords, with special characters, numbers, etc. Hence, now Mozilla just launched an awesome new application for Android. Mozilla Just Launched An Awesome New App For Android One of the […]
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Twitter birth-year hoax locks users out of accounts
The social network says that changing your birth year to 2007 won't launch a colourful design on the site.
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Road safety: UK set to adopt vehicle speed limiters
The EU plans to make the technology mandatory from 2022 and the UK says it will follow suit.
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Aluminium firm cyber-attack cost at least £25.6m
Norsk Hydro is still recovering from the attack, with one part of the company remaining "at a standstill".
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11 Websites Where You Can Learn Anything For Free
We all know very well that the internet is wonderful and one of the best places for all those who seek knowledge. If one of your goals for this year is to learn something new, then let me clarify that on the internet you have all kinds of options, and in a huge number of […]
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Latest WhatsApp Beta Brings Dark Mode Feature For Android
We all know very well that while working in a dark mode for iOS, the well-known and the most used instant messaging application, of course, WhatsApp also devotes efforts to offer the alternative on Android devices. As the well-known and the most used instant messaging app, of course, WhatsApp has some areas that already support […]
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Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Three-unique-words 'map' used to rescue mother and child
How three words - "weekend", "foggy" and "earphones" - rescued a mother and child after a car crash.
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Top 5 Best Apps To Hide Messages On Android 2019
Are you searching for the best apps to hide messages on Android? If yes, then you have landed to the right webpage. In this article, we have shared some of the best Android apps that can hide SMS or text messages on your Android smartphone. So, let’s explore the list of best SMS lockers for […]
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Huawei shows off flagship camera phone
Two new smartphones from Huawei use artificial intelligence to create better exposures.
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European parliament votes for controversial copyright reform (yes, again)
The European Parliament has voted to pass a controversial reform of online copyright rules that critics contend will result in big tech platforms pre-filtering user generated content uploads.
The results of the final vote in the EU parliament were 348 in favor vs 274 against.
An amendment that would have thrown out the most controversial component of the copyright reform — aka Article 13, which makes platforms liable for copyright infringements committed by their users — was rejected by just five votes.
In an earlier vote last fall the EU Parliament also backed the copyright reform proposal, passing negotiations to the EU Council. Months of closed door negotiations followed between representatives of EU Member States and institutions, in so called trilogue discussions, culminating in a final text being agreed last month — which was then handed back to parliament for its final vote today.
Tweaks to the reform agreed by Member States agreed during trilogue appear intended to address criticism that it imposes so-called ‘upload filters’ by default — instead requiring larger platforms to obtain licences for certain types of protected content ahead of time. Though critics still aren’t impressed.
Speaking out against the proposals in the parliament ahead of the vote, Pirate Party member and MEP Julia Reda, who is part of Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance in the EU parliament, highlighted the scale of popular protests against the copyright reform, saying 200,000 people attended demonstrations in the region this weekend and five million have signed a petition against the reform — claiming there has “never been such broad protest” against an EU directive.
She also accused of the parliament of “thoroughly ignoring” the popular protests and warned it risks convincing young people there’s no point in engaging with democratic protest.
“The most tragic thing about this process is a new generation who are voting in the European elections for the first time this year are learning a lesson: Your protests aren’t worth anything, politics will spread lies about you, and won’t care for factual arguments if geopolitical interests are at stake,” said Reda in an impassioned speech in parliament this afternoon ahead of the vote.
Her speech was interrupted several times by shouts from other MEPs disagreeing.
Freedom of expression vs creative industry
The copyright reform campaign has been massively polarized throughout, with one side claiming it means the end of the free Internet and the death of memes because it will result in all online uploads being pre-filtered; and the other accusing opponents they’re in the pay of tech giants which they accuse of freeloading and leaching off Europe’s creative industries by monetizing copyrighted content without paying for use.
Both sides have also accused each other of spreading disinformation to further their cause. There’s been zero love lost across this divide as lobbyists from the two sides have piled on (and on).
Another element of the reform, Article 11, is a proposal to extend digital copyright to cover the ledes of news stories — which aggregators such as Google News scrape and display.
Unsurprisingly that measure has strong support among European media giants like Axel Springer and critics of the reform accuse its architects of being in hoc to the newspaper industry which hopes to benefit financially by being able to charge link aggregator platforms like Google for displaying its content in future.
In recent years a couple of individual EU member states have passed similar laws to extend copyright to news snippets — which led Google to pull Google News entirely from Spain, while in Germany publishers ended up providing their snippets for free. An EU-wide rule could change the dynamics, though.
It’s certainly a much bigger business decision for Google to pull the plug on Google News across the whole of Europe, rather than just in Spain. Though, equally, Google could just come up with a compliance workaround to evade the requirement to pay.
Less discussed elements of the reform include proposals around text and data mining (TDM), which have implications for AI research — including a mandatory copyright exceptions for TDM conducted for research purposes. Teaching and educational purposes are also exempt. But rightholders can opt out of having their works datamined by entities other than research organisations.
The European Commission’s VP for the Digital Single Market tweeted in support of the parliament’s vote today — dubbing it a “big step ahead” which he said will reduce fragmentation across the bloc.
But in a follow up tweet he sought to address concerns that the reform will chill freedom of expression online, writing: “I know there are lots of fears about what users can do or not – now we have clear guarantees for #FreedomOfSpeech, teaching and online creativity. Member States must make full use of these safeguards in national law.”
In a press release following the parliament’s vote the Commission confirms the text will need to be formally endorsed by the Council of the European Union — which will take place via another vote in the coming weeks, so likely early next month.
Assuming the Council gives its thumbs up the final text will be been published on the Official Journal of the EU, and Member States will then have 24 months to transpose the rules into their national legislation. So the timetable for the copyright directive coming into force is likely 2021.
An accompanying Commission memo on the directive also seeks to address some of the criticisms, with the Commission claiming it “protects freedom of expression [and] sets strong safeguards for users, making clear that everywhere in Europe the use of existing works for purposes of quotation, criticism, review, caricature as well as parody are explicitly allowed”.
“This means that memes and similar parody creations can be used freely. The interests of the users are also preserved through effective mechanisms to swiftly contest any unjustified removal of their content by the platforms,” it adds, in what critics will surely dub cold comfort attempts to paper over the overarching chilling effect on expression from pushing content liability onto platforms.
In another section of the memo, the Commission also writes that the directive does not “impose uploading filters” — nor add any specific technology to recognise illegal content.
“Under the new rules, certain online platforms will be required to conclude licensing agreements with right holders — for example, music or film producers — for the use of music, videos or other copyright protected content. If licences are not concluded, these platforms will have to make their best efforts to ensure that content not authorised by the right holders is not available on their website. The “best effort” obligation does not prescribe any specific means or technology,” it writes.
Though, again, critics argue that will simply translate into upload filters in practice anyway — as platforms will be encouraged to “over-comply” with the rules to “stay on the safe side”, as Reda tells it.
Also critical of the reform, former MEP Catherine Stihler, who’s now CEO of an open data advocacy not-for-profit, called the Open Knowledge Foundation.
In a reaction statement she dubbed the vote “a massive blow for every internet user in Europe”. “We now risk the creation of a more closed society at the very time we should be using digital advances to build a more open world where knowledge creates power for the many, not the few,” she suggested.
Following the vote, Tal Niv, GitHub’s VP of law and policy, also took a critical but more nuanced position, writing: “We’re thankful that policymakers listened and excluded ‘open source software developing and sharing platforms’ from the potential requirement to implement upload filters, which would have made the software ecosystem more fragile. However, the Directive that passed still contains challenges for developers.”
“Anyone developing a platform with EU users that involves sharing links or content faces great uncertainty. The ramifications include being unable to develop features that web users currently expect, and having to implement very expensive and inaccurate automated filtering. On the other hand, inclusion of a mandatory copyright exception for text and data mining in the Directive is welcome, and puts EU developers on a more even playing field relative to their US peers in the development of machine learning and artificial intelligence; looking ahead it will be crucial for member states to implement this exception in a consistent fashion.”
The Computer & Communications Industry Association reacted with disappointment too, warning in a statement that Article 13 undermines the legality of the social and sharing tools and websites that Europeans use every day and saying the reform falls short of “a balanced and modern framework for copyright” despite citing some “recent improvements”.
“We fear it will harm online innovation and restrict online freedoms in Europe. We urge Member States to thoroughly assess and try to minimize the consequences of the text when implementing it,” added Maud Sacquet, CCIA Europe’s senior policy manager.
Monique Goyens, director general of The European Consumer Organisation, BEUC, also described it as a “very unbalanced copyright law”.
“Despite the warnings and concerns of academics, privacy bodies, UN representatives and hundreds of thousands of consumers across Europe, the European Parliament has given its go-ahead to a very unbalanced copyright law. Consumers will have to bear the consequences of this decision,” she warned.
On the flip side professional content creators were jubilant.
“Through this historic vote, a message was sent by Europe to the world, in favour of culture, creation, authors, artists and journalists, and their right to fair remuneration in the digital world,” wrote the Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music in a wordy statement that goes into detail in an attempt to rebut specific various laid charges against the reform. (Such as pointing out that the final text of Article 13 includes an exception for startups — “whose growth will be promoted by clarifying their situation for the use of content protected by authors’ rights”, it suggests.)
“This vote was an act of European sovereignty and a victory for democracy, because it was possible despite one of the most violent campaigns of lobbying and disinformation in the history of the European Union, on the part of those who wanted at all costs to avoid adopting a balanced text,” it added.
In an analysis following the vote law firm Linklaters’ Kathy Berry suggests the controversy and polarization around the copyright reform debate is part of a broader “Hollywood v Silicon Valley” tension — between “content creators that want a high level of copyright protection based on traditional models, and the tech industry that wants to clear the path for new and innovative ways to use and share content”.
“While Article 13 may have noble aims, in its current it functions as little more than a set of ideals, with very little guidance on exactly which service providers will be caught by it or what steps will be sufficient to comply,” she writes delving into the implications for big tech. “This is likely to result in an ongoing lack of legal and commercial certainty until the scope of the Directive is fleshed out by either the Commission’s proposed guidance or by European jurisprudence.”
On Article 11 extending copyright to news snippets Berry says the final version of the text is “much watered down” — noting that it excludes both hyperlinks and “very short extracts” of publications — going on to suggest it’s “unlikely to have any significant impact on news aggregators like Google News after all”.
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