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Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Dispo, a disposable camera app co-created by YouTube star David Dobrik, raises $4M seed led by Alexis Ohanian's new fund Seven Seven Six (Logan Moore/Wall Street Journal)

Logan Moore / Wall Street Journal:
Dispo, a disposable camera app co-created by YouTube star David Dobrik, raises $4M seed led by Alexis Ohanian's new fund Seven Seven Six  —  Seven Seven Six fund leads a $4 million seed round for social-media platform Dispo, also known as David's Disposable



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Documents show that Airbnb spent $1.2B between mid-2019 and mid-2020, with the biggest portion of cash burn coming in Q1 2020 as it issued refunds amid COVID-19 (The Information)

The Information:
Documents show that Airbnb spent $1.2B between mid-2019 and mid-2020, with the biggest portion of cash burn coming in Q1 2020 as it issued refunds amid COVID-19  —  Airbnb burned through more than $1.2 billion in cash between mid-2019 and mid-2020, according to previously undisclosed figures …



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A UK parliamentary inquiry concludes clear evidence of collusion between Huawei and the CPC apparatus exists; Huawei says report is built on opinions not facts (Gordon Corera/BBC)

Gordon Corera / BBC:
A UK parliamentary inquiry concludes clear evidence of collusion between Huawei and the CPC apparatus exists; Huawei says report is built on opinions not facts  —  There is “clear evidence of collusion” between Huawei and the “Chinese Communist Party apparatus”, a parliamentary inquiry has concluded.



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Federal judge ordered Twitter to reveal identity behind @whyspertech, who allegedly forged an FBI doc to spread conspiracy theory on killing of DNC's Seth Rich (Bobby Allyn/NPR)

Bobby Allyn / NPR:
Federal judge ordered Twitter to reveal identity behind @whyspertech, who allegedly forged an FBI doc to spread conspiracy theory on killing of DNC's Seth Rich  —  A federal judge in California has ordered that Twitter reveal the identity of an anonymous user who allegedly fabricated …



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Samsung expects 58% profit bump in the third quarter - CNET

Company likely got a boost from increased demand for chips during the pandemic.

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The best Australian Prime Day 2020 deals: Echo Show 8, Echo Dot, and 3 months of Audible for free - CNET

We're almost ready to go! Here are the best Australian deals we've seen so far.

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A look at the scrutiny Google and Oracle faced from Supreme Court justices during the companies' arguments Wednesday, where no clear winner emerged (Tucker Higgins/CNBC)

Tucker Higgins / CNBC:
A look at the scrutiny Google and Oracle faced from Supreme Court justices during the companies' arguments Wednesday, where no clear winner emerged  —  - Things got technical at the Supreme Court as the justices heard arguments from Google and Oracle in a blockbuster copyright dispute that has captivated Silicon Valley for a decade.



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Amazon has filed a legal notice against Future Group, India's second largest retail chain, for selling a large portion of its business to Reliance Retail (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Amazon has filed a legal notice against Future Group, India's second largest retail chain, for selling a large portion of its business to Reliance Retail  —  Amazon has sent a legal notice to Future Group, India's second largest retail chain, for breaching the terms of its contract by selling …



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Facebook is banning political ads ... after the election

Biden and Trump at the debate on screens. Television screens airing the first presidential debate at the Walters Sports Bar in Washington on September 29. | Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images

The temporary ban doesn’t solve Facebook’s organic content problem or the problematic political ads appearing on its platform before voting.

Facebook is going to temporarily ban all political ads … but only after the 2020 election, a move that solves neither its organic content problem nor the problematic political ads appearing on its platform prior to voting.

On Wednesday, the social media giant announced that it will temporarily stop running social, electoral, and political ads in the United States after the polls close on Election Day, November 3. The measure is an effort “to reduce opportunities for confusion and abuse,” wrote Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity, in a blog post announcing the decision. The company will notify advertisers once it lifts the policy post-election, but it didn’t indicate when that would be. In early September, Facebook said it would ban new political ads the week before the election, but ads that have already been in the mix prior to then will continue to appear in News Feeds.

Also on Wednesday, Facebook said it would ban and remove posts that seek to intimidate voters, including ones that encourage poll watching “when those calls used militarized language or suggest that the goal is to intimidate, exert control, or display power over election officials and voters.”

These announcements are the latest in a series of small, slow, and iterative measures Facebook has introduced in recent months related to US politics and elections. And while they’re better than doing nothing, they are also too little, too late.

There’s a lot a political ad ban doesn’t do — it doesn’t stop politicians from lying in ads in the days leading up to the election, and it doesn’t stop giving political campaigns the ability to hyper-target ads to tiny groups of voters with very specific messaging. (Microtargeting makes it super easy to precisely target negative and misleading ads to certain voters, and it makes it harder for opponents and other groups to know those ads are out there and counter them.) Plus, banning political ads after the election doesn’t solve the, you know, before-the-election problem.

Some political strategists also argue that clamping down on political ads online hurts small campaigns more than it does the big ones. Facebook ads are a lot less expensive to run than television commercials — which means campaigns with big budgets can go to TV, while campaigns with small budgets can’t.

Also: Ads are just a small part of the equation. Facebook’s role in presenting voters with political information, disinformation, and conspiracy theories stretches far beyond advertising, and focusing too much on advertising allows it and other tech platforms to avoid the bigger problem: organic content. That means the type of stuff that goes on the platform for free — such as a false story in 2016 claiming Pope Francis had endorsed Donald Trump, or an unsubstantiated claim made by the president about mail-in-voting over the summer.

Misleading and polarizing organic content spreads fast and far on the platform all the time because social media thrives on engagement, and what engages people is content that evokes strong emotions. A political campaign doesn’t need to pay for a political ad to spread lies claiming Elizabeth Warren wasn’t born in the US or Marco Rubio has six secret love children — they can just post it.

The dangerous, preposterous QAnon conspiracy movement, which has shifted from the fringes to the mainstream, is a perfect example of social media’s failures. It has flourished on places like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter — not because of ads, but because of organic content. Facebook finally banned QAnon this week, but it has already reached far and wide on its platform, as Recode’s Shirin Ghaffary recently explained:

The theory continues to grow online, in both the number of followers and the strength of its political influence in the Republican Party. The growing political clout of the movement is especially worrisome for misinformation researchers who say QAnon is potentially becoming one of the largest networks of extremism in the United States. QAnon is gaining broad appeal not just with the extremely online, male-dominated, 4chan message board crowd, where QAnon was first born; it’s also increasingly popular with suburban moms and yoga-loving wellness gurus on Instagram and Twitter.

Misinformation about voter fraud and the election is spreading — and it’s not relying on paid ads to do it. While Facebook tries to catch misinformation and put warnings on it, falsities travel a lot faster than its content moderators. In a hypothetical post-election scenario where Joe Biden wins the election but President Trump refuses to concede or insists the election was rigged, he doesn’t need an ad to spread that sort of lie — again, he can just do it in a post. Facebook says it will attach an “informational label” to content seeking to delegitimize the outcome of the election. However, it seems unlikely it would take down such posts or outright fact-check them, given how reluctant it’s been to take such actions in the past.

Will it work? When I consider my own anecdotal experience, I doubt it. I spent hours browsing the Facebook pages of anti-maskers for a story over the summer and encountered multiple people who had such labels on content they shared. They just dismissed them by claiming Facebook was censoring them or hiding the truth. They had also often developed their beliefs because of content they saw on Facebook or other online platforms.

In a September 3 post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that the 2020 election is “not going to be business as usual.” But the iterative measures Facebook has introduced so far seem to be exactly that — business as usual.


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UK passport photo checker shows bias against dark-skinned women

Website flagged twice as many dark-skinned women's photos as those from light-skinned men in BBC test.

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5G on iPhone 12 probably won't be as great as you think, and here's why - CNET

Commentary: The biggest feature on the next iPhone is something being built by its carrier partners. That's foreign territory for Apple.

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Government to pay £2m to settle coronavirus testing case

The UK has settled a lawsuit brought by a tech firm over the government's contract bidding process.

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iPhone 12: Apple finally set the date for its latest iPhone's debut - CNET

The iPhone maker's biggest event of the year will be Oct. 13, when we expect to see the delayed announcement of the 5G iPhone 12.

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Privacy push could banish some annoying website popups and online tracking - CNET

The Global Privacy Control includes notable allies like Mozilla, The New York Times, Brave and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

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16 best movies to watch on Amazon Prime Video - CNET

Not sure what to watch on Amazon tonight? Let's round up some of its best gems.

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Best cold-brew coffee maker of 2020: Oxo, Filtron, Bialetti, Takeya and more - CNET

To make our picks for best cold-brew coffee makers, we tested many popular brands from Filtron, Oxo, Espro, Takeya and others.

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QAnon: What you need to know about this crazy conspiracy theory - CNET

The pro-Trump hoax is gathering steam as the election nears.

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Marvel's WandaVision, Falcon and Winter Soldier get McDonald's Happy Meal toys - CNET

Disney and McDonald's are offering a new collection of Marvel movie character toys of Falcon, The Winter Soldier, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Groot, Hulkbuster, Wasp, Hulk and Black Widow.

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Game of Thrones changed a Daenerys scene and made it 'worse,' says George R.R. Martin - CNET

And showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss never discussed it with him.

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Etsy says it will ban all merchandise related to the QAnon conspiracy theory, citing its policies against hate speech, inciting violence, and misinformation (Rachel E. Greenspan/INSIDER)

Rachel E. Greenspan / INSIDER:
Etsy says it will ban all merchandise related to the QAnon conspiracy theory, citing its policies against hate speech, inciting violence, and misinformation  —  A ghost. … - Digital marketplace Etsy has announced a ban on all items related to the QAnon conspiracy theory.



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