Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg has admitted that the social networking giant could have done more to prevent foreign interference on its platforms, but said that the government also needs to step up its intelligence sharing efforts.
The remarks are ahead of an open hearing at the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, where Sandberg and Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey will testify on foreign interference and election meddling on social media platforms. Google’s Larry Page was invited, but declined to attend.
“We were too slow to spot this and too slow to act,” said Sandberg in prepared remarks. “That’s on us.”
The hearing comes in the aftermath of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Social media companies have been increasingly under the spotlight after foreign actors, believed to be working for or closely to the Russian government, used disinformation spreading tactics to try to influence the outcome of the election, as well as in the run-up to the midterm elections later this year.
Both Facebook and Twitter have removed accounts and bots from their sites believed to be involved in spreading disinformation and false news. Google said last year that it found Russian meddling efforts on its platforms.
“We’re getting better at finding and combating our adversaries, from financially motivated troll farms to sophisticated military intelligence operations,” said Sandberg.
But Facebook’s second-in-command also said that the US government could do more to help companies understand the wider picture from Russian interference.
“We continue to monitor our service for abuse and share information with law enforcement and others in our industry about these threats,” she said. “Our understanding of overall Russian activity in 2016 is limited because we do not have access to the information or investigative tools that the U.S. government and this Committee have,” she said.
Later, Twitter’s Dorsey also said in his own statement: “The threat we face requires extensive partnership and collaboration with our government partners and industry peers,” adding: “We each possess information the other does not have, and the combined information is more powerful in combating these threats.”
Both Sandberg and Dorsey are subtly referring to classified information that the government has but private companies don’t get to see — information that is considered a state secret.
Tech companies have in recent years pushed for more access to knowledge that federal agencies have, not least to help protect against increasing cybersecurity threats and hostile nation state actors. The theory goes that the idea of sharing intelligence can help companies defend against the best resourced hackers. But efforts to introduce legislation has proven controversial because critics argue that in sharing threat information with the government private user data would also be collected and sent to US intelligence agencies for further investigation.
Instead, tech companies are now pushing for information from Homeland Security to better understand the threats they face — to independently fend off future attacks.
As reported, tech companies last month met in secret to discuss preparations to counter foreign manipulation on their platforms. But attendees, including Facebook, Twitter, and Google and Microsoft are said to have “left the meeting discouraged” that they received little insight from the government.
Source: TechCrunch
“From a simple business perspective and to serve the public, Twitter is incentivized to keep all voices on the platform”. That’s Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s argument for why “Twitter does not use political ideology to make any decisions” according to his prepared statement for his appearance at tomorrow’s hearing with the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
But it’s also validates criticism of why Twitter is reluctant to ban Nazis, hate-mongers, and other trolls that harass people on the service: It makes money off of them.
Twitter has been long-known to ignore reports of threats or abuse. It’s common to see people posting the screenshots of the messages they get back from Twitter saying that sexist, racist, homophobic, and violent remarks don’t violate its policies. Only when they get enough retweets and media attention do those accounts seem to disappear.
In fact, a Wall Street Journal report claims that Dorsey told a confidante that he’d personally intervened to overrule his staff in order to allow Infowars’ Alex Jones to remain on the app and to reinstate alt-right figure Richard Spencer.
To avoid being labeled overly liberal which could lead to a flight of conservative users, Twitter has bowed to the abusers and weakly enforced its own rules. And since these trolls can be highly engaged with Twitter, they can rack up lots of ad views. Dorsey’s statement is emblematic of that stance, prioritizing user count, share price, and revenue over safety and civility.
Elsewhere in the statement, Dorsey makes a much stronger argument for why Twitter isn’t biased against conservatives via data instead of market forces. He says that Twitter compared tweets by Democrats and Republicans and found that “controlling for the same number of followers, a single Tweet by a Republican will be viewed as many times as a single Tweet by a Democrat, even after all filtering and algorithms have been applied by Twitter.” It’s that fact Dorsey should point to, not that Twitter isn’t biased because his hands are tied by Wall Street.
Dorsey also claims Twitter is making progress by tuning its algorithm to limit the distribution of abuse. He notes that signals that reduce a tweet’s prominence include if the author has “no confirmed email address, simultaneous registration for multiple accounts, accounts that repeatedly Tweet and mention accounts that do not follow them, or behavior that might indicate a coordinated attack”, as well as “how accounts are connected to those that violate our rules and how they interact with each other.” That’s supposedly led to “a 4 percent drop in abuse reports from search and 8 percent fewer abuse reports from conversations”.
But that progress would likely to come faster if Twitter was willing to make sacrifices to its bottom line. Facebook pledged to double its security and moderation team from 10,000 to 20,000 members despite the impact that would have on profits. Twitter has yet to make a pledge as direct and quantifiable. Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg will also appear before Congress tomorrow to face tough questions about whether that hiring and its product changes are actually protecting democracy. But at least it’s throwing money at the problem.
Dorsey didn’t say Twitter was “incentivized to keep all civil voices on the platform” or “all voices that abide by our policies” — just “all voices”. But when Twitter lets trolls bully and shout down those they hate, it’s the victims’ voices that are silenced by ‘free speech’. It’s effectively endorsing censorship, not of those with conservative or even extremist views, but of the marginalized who most deserve that voice.
Hopefully during tomorrow’s House hearing, we’ll see members of congress use Dorsey’s own words to question whether his “simple business perspective” is what’s keeping such an ugly place to have a conversation.
Source: TechCrunch
Amazon is picking up the pace when it comes to unveiling its line of “stores of the future,” today opening its second cashier-less Amazon Go convenience store in the last week. More Amazon Go locations are expected to land in other cities soon, though the company has yet to confirm any plans.
The latest location is its third overall and third in Seattle, where it’s headquartered. The 2,100 square feet store sits on the corner of Boren Ave. and Thomas St. and is its largest yet. The first iteration of the Amazon Go store was 1,800 square feet; it opened its doors to the public in a surprise opening in December 2016. The second, measuring 1,450 square feet, began doing business last Monday.
In case you’re unfamiliar, Amazon Go stores cut out the check-out process by charging customers for what the pick up in-store using the Amazon Go app. The company relies on cameras, which are mounted all over the stores, and weight sensors on the shelves to track what shoppers are picking up and to make sure they are charged correctly.
The newest store will have breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack options for sale, a stocked selection of foods, including bread, milk and locally made chocolates, as well as Amazon Meal Kits, a product the company launched in 2017 to go head-to-head with Blue Apron and other meal kit delivery services.
Source: TechCrunch
Netflix is doubling down on its merchandising efforts with its hiring of former Disney exec Christie Fleischer to head its global Consumer Products team. Previously the head of merchandise for parks, experiences and consumer products at Disney, Fleischer will now lead a team at Netflix focused on overseeing retail and licensee partnerships, publishing, interactive games, merchandising and experiential events, the company says.
This role will include developing consumer products across all categories for Netflix original series and films.
Merchandise is an area Netflix has dabbled in before – like those “Stranger Things” tees at Target and other items at Hot Topic, for example – but not at scale. However, the company today has a number of original series and films where merchandising and other products make sense. This includes not only more mainstream fare like “Stranger Things,” but also originals aimed at kids where toys and games could be the next step in connecting with fans.
Netflix’s plan to push into merchandise has been known for some time.
Bloomberg reported last year that the company had posted a job opening for a “licensing, merchandising and promotion” senior manager who would pursue consumer products in order to “drive meaningful show awareness.”
The job description referenced merchandise like books, comics, gaming, toys, collectibles, soundtracks and apparel.
Fleischer’s background at Disney makes her a good fit for the role. Before working as head of merchandise, she was the Senior Vice President of retail & merchandise for Parks & Resorts, where she oversaw merchandise product strategy, product development, planning, visual merchandising, store design, supply chain and logistics.
She also worked in merchandise management for Warnaco Inc, American Pacific Enterprises and The Disney Store.
The hire is also notable as Disney is planning its own Netflix-like service, launching in 2019 – making the two companies even more of direct competitors than they were before. And this isn’t the first time Netflix has siphoned off Disney talent for itself – it also just landed top Disney production exec Tendo Nagenda last month.
Licensed merchandise could be a multi-million dollar – or even billion dollar – business for Netflix, if all goes well. As Statista noted last fall, the top 10 merchandise licensors are each pulling in billions in this market, led by Disney – which makes around $57 billion thanks to big-name franchises like “Star Wars,” “Frozen,” and others.
Netflix doesn’t have its own “Star Wars,” but it does have 130 million paying customers worldwide, most of whom watch several of its original series and movies. That’s a good start.
“Christie brings a wealth of experience and creativity from the consumer products world. She has helped to build some of the world’s most beloved brands and we’re thrilled that she will join us to give our fans more opportunities to interact with Netflix in new and exciting ways,” said Kelly Bennett, Chief Marketing Officer, in a statement about the new hire. “We want to create the highest quality experience for our fans in everything we do.”
Fleischer begins work in L.A., starting today.
Source: TechCrunch
Google proposes that URLs must be killed to make the internet safer, but it hasn’t offered a solution. Google hopes to have its proposal for how an internet without web addresses will look like by fall or spring.
The post To make the web safer, Google says URLs must die appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
An all-in-one PC are the perfect way to reduce desktop clutter and simplify your computing experience. Balancing performance, display quality, and value, these are the best all-in-one PCs.
The post The best all-in-one computers of 2018 appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
Por primera vez en la historia, la lista global de ganadores de Innovadores menores de 35 incluye más mujeres que hombres. Este año, además, la inteligencia artificial, que antaño parecía una tecnología marginal, se erige como una de las áreas más populares y con impacto
Source: MIT
Microsoft is giving Outlook for Windows a design overhaul, replacing the standard three-row Ribbon for a single-row Simplified Ribbon. You can personalize the ribbon by pinning frequently used buttons to it.
The post Outlook for Windows gets simplified single-row ribbon in UI makeover appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
The governor of Arizona announced Tuesday that Jon Kyl will replace the Senate seat vacated by the late John McCain. He may now further push to regulate tech giants like Facebook.
Source: Wired
Nvidia’s Turing architecture is about to go mobile. A new listing suggests that Nvidia is prepping the launch of its GeForce RTX 2080 Mobile GPU, bringing more power to gaming laptops with a slim Max-Q design.
The post Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Mobile sighting hints at more powerful gaming laptops appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends