LinkedIn violated data protection by using 18M email addresses of non-members to buy targeted ads on Facebook

LinkedIn, the social network for the working world with close to 600 million users, has been called out a number of times for how it is able to suggest uncanny connections to you, when it’s not even clear how or why LinkedIn would know enough to make those suggestions in the first place.

Now, a run-in with a regulator in Europe illuminates how some of LinkedIn’s practices leading up to GDPR implementation in Europe were not only uncanny, but actually violated data protection rules, in LinkedIn’s case concerning some 18 million email addresses.

The details were revealed in a report published Friday by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner covering activities in the first six months of this calendar year. In a list of investigations that have been reported concerning Facebook, WhatsApp and the Yahoo data breach, the DPC revealed one investigation that had not been reported before. The DPC had conducted — and concluded — an investigation of Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, originally prompted by a complaint from a user in 2017, over LinkedIn’s practices regarding people who were not members of the social network.

In short: in a bid to get more people to sign up to the service, LinkedIn admitted that it was using people’s email addresses — some 18 million in all — in a way that was not transparent. LinkedIn has since ceased the practice as a result of the investigation.

There were two parts to the supervision, as the DPC describes it:

First, the DPC found that LinkedIn in the US had obtained emails for 18 million people who were not already members of the social network, and then used these in a hashed form for targeted advertisements on the Facebook platform, “with the absence of instruction from the data controller” — that is, LinkedIn Ireland — “as is required.”

Some backstory on this: LinkedIn, Facebook and others in the lead-up to GDPR coming into effect moved data processing that had been going through Ireland to the US.

The claim was that this was to “streamline” operations but critics have said that the moves could help to shield companies a bit more from any GDPR liability over how they use process data for non-EU users.

“The complaint was ultimately amicably resolved,” the DPC said, “with LinkedIn implementing a number of immediate actions to cease the processing of user data for the purposes that gave rise to the complaint.”

Second, the DPC then decided to conduct a further audit after it became “concerned with the wider systemic issues identified” in the initial investigation. There, it found that LinkedIn was also applying its social graph-building algorithms to build networks — to suggest professional networks for users, or “undertaking pre-computation,” as the DPC describes it.

The idea here was build up suggested networks of compatible professional connections to help users overcome the hurdle of having to build networks from scratch — that being one of the hurdles in social networks for some people.

“As a result of the findings of our audit, LinkedIn Corp was instructed by LinkedIn Ireland, as data controller of EU user data, to cease pre-compute processing and to delete all personal data associated with such processing prior to 25 May 2018,” the DPC writes. May 25 was the date that GDPR came into force.

LinkedIn has provided us with the following statement in relation to the whole investigation:

“We appreciate the DPC’s 2017 investigation of a complaint about an advertising campaign and fully cooperated,” said Denis Kelleher, Head of Privacy, EMEA, for LinkedIn. “Unfortunately the strong processes and procedures we have in place were not followed and for that we are sorry. We’ve taken appropriate action, and have improved the way we work to ensure that this will not happen again. During the audit, we also identified one further area where we could improve data privacy for non-members and we have voluntarily changed our practices as a result.”

(The ‘further area’ is the pre-computation.)

There are some takeaways from the incident:

Taking LinkedIn’s words at face value, it would seem that the company is trying to show that it is acting in good faith by going one step further than simply modifying what has been identified by the DPC, changing practices voluntarily before it gets called out.

Then again, LinkedIn would not be the first company to “ask for forgiveness, not permission,” when it comes to pushing the boundaries of what is considered permissible behavior.

If you are wondering why LinkedIn did not get fined in this process — which could be one lever for pushing a company to act right from the start, rather than only change practices after getting called out — that’s because until the implementation of GDPR at the end of May, the regulator had no power to enforce fines.

What we also don’t really know here — the DPC doesn’t really address it — is where LinkedIn obtained those 18 million email addresses, and any other related data, in the first place.

Other cases reviewed in the report, such as the inquiry into Facial Recognition usage by Facebook, and how WhatsApp and Facebook share user data between each other, are still ongoing. Others, such as the investigation Yahoo security breach that affected 500 million users, are now trickling down into the companies modifying their practices.

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Upflow turbocharges your invoices

Meet Upflow a French startup that wants to help you deal with your outstanding invoices — the company first started at eFounders. If you’re running a small business, chances are you’re either wasting a ton of time or a ton of money on accounts receivable.

Most companies currently manage invoices using Excel spreadsheets, outdated banking interfaces and unnecessary conversations. Every time somebody signs a deal, they generate an invoice and file it in a spreadsheet somewhere.

Some companies will pay a few days later. But let’s be honest. Too many companies wait 30 days, 40 days or even more before even thinking about paying past due invoices. You end up sending emails, calling your clients and wasting a ton of time just collecting money. You might even feel bad about asking for money even though you already signed a deal.

In France, most companies use bank transfers to pay invoices. But business banking APIs are not there yet. It means that you have to log in to a slow banking website every day to check if somebody paid you. You can then tick a box in an Excel spreadsheet.

If everything I described resonates with you, Upflow wants to manage your invoices for you. It doesn’t replace your bank account, it doesn’t generate invoices for you. It integrates seamlessly with your existing workflow.

After signing up, you can send invoices to your client and cc Upflow in your email thread. Upflow then uses optical character recognition and automatically detects relevant data — the customer name, the amount, the due date, etc.

You can view all your outstanding invoices in Upflow’s interface to see where you stand. The service gives you a list of actionable tasks to get your money. For instance, Upflow tells you if you have overdue payments and tells you to contact your client again.

You can set up different rules depending on your clients. For instance, if you have many small clients, you can automate some of those messages. But if you only work with a handful of clients, you want to make sure that somebody has manually reviewed each message before Upflow sends them.

By default, you write your emails in Upflow so that your other team members can see what happened. You can browse invoices by client to see if somebody has multiple unpaid invoices. Upflow lets you assign actions to a particular team member if they’re more familiar with this specific client.

But all of this is just one part of the product. Upflow also generates banking information with the help of Treezor. This way, you can put your Upflow banking information on your invoices.

When a customer pays you, Upflow automatically matches invoices with incoming payments. This feature alone lets you save a ton of time. The startup transfers money back to your company’s bank account every day.

Upflow co-founder and CEO Alexandre Louisy drew me the following chart when we met. It’s probably easier to understand after reading my explanations:

In other words, Upflow has created a brick that sits between your company’s back office and your customers. Eventually, you could imagine more services built on top of this brick as Upflow is learning many things on your company.

According to Louisy, small and medium companies really need this kind of product — and not necessarily tech companies. Those companies don’t have a lot of money on their bank accounts, don’t have a big staff and need to save as much time as possible.

Now let’s see if it’s easy to sell a software-as-a-service solution to a family business that has been around for decades.

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Facebook policy VP, Richard Allan, to face the international ‘fake news’ grilling that Zuckerberg won’t

An unprecedented international grand committee comprised of 22 representatives from seven parliaments will meet in London next week to put questions to Facebook about the online fake news crisis and the social network’s own string of data misuse scandals.

But Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg won’t be providing any answers. The company has repeatedly refused requests for him to answer parliamentarians’ questions.

Instead it’s sending a veteran EMEA policy guy, Richard Allan, now its London-based VP of policy solutions, to face a roomful of irate MPs.

Allan will give evidence next week to elected members from the parliaments of Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Latvia, Singapore, along with members of the UK’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) parliamentary committee.

At the last call the international initiative had a full eight parliaments behind it but it’s down to seven — with Australia being unable to attend on account of the travel involved in getting to London.

A spokeswoman for the DCMS committee confirmed Facebook declined its last request for Zuckerberg to give evidence, telling TechCrunch: “The Committee offered the opportunity for him to give evidence over video link, which was also refused. Facebook has offered Richard Allan, vice president of policy solutions, which the Committee has accepted.”

“The Committee still believes that Mark Zuckerberg is the appropriate person to answer important questions about data privacy, safety, security and sharing,” she added. “The recent New York Times investigation raises further questions about how recent data breaches were allegedly dealt with within Facebook, and when the senior leadership team became aware of the breaches and the spread of Russian disinformation.”

The DCMS committee has spearheaded the international effort to hold Facebook to account for its role in a string of major data scandals, joining forces with similarly concerned committees across the world, as part of an already wide-ranging enquiry into the democratic impacts of online disinformation that’s been keeping it busy for the best part of this year.

And especially busy since the Cambridge Analytica story blew up into a major global scandal this April, although Facebook’s 2018 run of bad news hasn’t stopped there…

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The evidence session with Allan is scheduled to take place at 11.30am (GMT) on November 27 in Westminster. (It will also be streamed live on the UK’s parliament.tv website.)

Afterwards a press conference has been scheduled — during which DCMS says a representative from each of the seven parliaments will sign a set of ‘International Principles for the Law Governing the Internet’.

It bills this as “a declaration on future action from the parliaments involved” — suggesting the intent is to generate international momentum and consensus for regulating social media.

The DCMS’ preliminary report on the fake news crisis, which it put out this summer, called for urgent action from government on a number of fronts — including floating the idea of a levy on social media to defence democracy.

However UK ministers failed to leap into action, merely putting out a tepid ‘wait and see’ response. Marshalling international action appears to be DCMS’ alternative action plan.

At next week’s press conference, grand committee members will take questions following Allan’s evidence — so expect swift condemnation of any fresh equivocation, misdirection or question-dodging from Facebook (which has already been accused by DCMS members of a pattern of evasive behavior).

Last week’s NYT report also characterized the company’s strategy since 2016, vis-a-vis the fake news crisis, as ‘delay, deny, deflect’.

The grand committee will hear from other witnesses too, including the UK’s information commissioner Elizabeth Denham who was before the DCMS committee recently to report on a wide-ranging ecosystem investigation it instigated in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

She told it then that Facebooks needs to take “much greater responsibility” for how its platform is being used, and warning that unless the company overhauls its privacy-hostile business model it risk burning user trust for good.

Also giving evidence next week: Deputy information commissioner Steve Wood; the former Prime Minister of St Kitts and Nevis, Rt Hon Dr Denzil L Douglas (on account of Cambridge Analytica/SCL Elections having done work in the region); and the co-founder of PersonalData.IO, Paul-Olivier Dehaye.

Dehaye has also given evidence to the committee before — detailing his experience of making Subject Access Requests to Facebook — and trying and failing to obtain all the data it holds on him.

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BlueCargo optimizes stacks of containers for maximum efficiency

Meet BlueCargo, a logistics startup focused on seaport terminals. The company was part of Y Combinator’s latest batch and recently raised a $3 million funding round from 1984 Ventures, Green Bay Ventures, Sound Ventures, Kima Ventures and others.

If you picture a terminal, chances are you see huge piles of containers. But current sorting methods are not efficient at all. Yard cranes end up moving a ton of containers just to reach a container sitting at the bottom of the pile.

BlueCargo wants to optimize those movements by helping you store containers at the right spot. The first container that is going to leave the terminal is going to be at the top of the pile.

“Terminals spend a lot of time making unproductive or undesired movements,” co-founder and CEO Alexandra Griffon told me. “And yet, terminals only generate revenue every time they unload or load a container.”

Right now, ERP-like solutions only manage containers according to a handful of business rules that don’t take into account the timeline of a container. Empty containers are all stored in one area, containers with dangerous goods are in another area, etc.

The startup leverages as much data as possible on each container — where it’s coming from, the type of container, if it’s full or empty, the cargo ship that carried it, the time of the year and more.

Every time BlueCargo works with a new terminal, the startup collects past data and processes it to create a model. The team can then predict how BlueCargo can optimize the terminal.

“At Saint-Nazaire, we could save 22 percent on container shifting,” Griffon told me.

The company will test its solution in Saint-Nazaire in December. It integrates directly with existing ERP solutions. Cranes already scan container identification numbers. BlueCargo could then instantly push relevant information to crane operators so that they know where to put down a container.

Saint-Nazaire is a relatively small port compared to the biggest European ports. But the company is already talking with terminals in Long Beach, one of the largest container ports in the U.S.

BlueCargo also knows that it needs to tread carefully — many companies already promised magical IT solutions in the past. But it hasn’t changed much in seaports.

That’s why the startup wants to be as seamless as possible. It only charges fees based on shifting savings — 30 percent of what it would have cost you with the old model. And it doesn’t want to alter workflows for people working at terminals — it’s like an invisible crane that helps you work faster.

There are six dominant players managing terminals around the world. If BlueCargo can convince those companies to work with the startup, it would represent a good business opportunity.

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Silentmode’s PowerMask is a $200 connected relaxation mask

I barely slept, the second night in Chunking Mansions. The loud neighbors, the hot Hong Kong air, the landlord banging on the door after midnight. None of these things are particularly conducive to a peaceful rest, and for once in my life I actually looked forward to attempts at shut eye on the 15+ hour flight home in the morning.

For all the dread of returning to the notorious Hong Kong hostiles that evening, after a day of exploring the area, I was actually looking forward to the strapping this weird thing to my head — closing my eyes and embracing the luxury of forgetting where I was for a few precious minutes.

I’d tried Silentmode’s PowerMask earlier in the day, in the middle of the Brinc accelerator’s well-lit meeting room. The whole thing was oddly soothing, if fairly awkward — a big, foam black out mask with headphones embedded on either side. Probably not the sort of thing you want to wear out in the open, though Lucas happily modeled it above — because we clearly don’t have enough pictures of our in-house VR guy wearing weird crap on his head over at TechCrunch.com.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the minute or two I spent with the mask on, wondering if this is how pet parrots feel when you cover their cages with a blanket for the night. Maybe that’s just the jetlag talking.

It’s a momentary respite from the cloying terrors of the world, a way to briefly trick our overactive brains into thinking, yeah, sure, everything is just fine with some new agey music, breathing exercises and, most importantly, just complete, utter darkness.

I’m a sucker for this stuff. If have the Calm app on my phone and started getting pretty into the Muse headset before leaving for my two-week trip. I’ve shared the fact that I’m a bad and anxious meditator plenty of times before on these pages, but find even my failed attempts to be useful.

Someone described the PowerMask as a kind of small scale take on a sensory deprivation tank, and sure, why not? I’ve had worse nights.

A bit of a wrinkle in all of this: it isn’t a sleep device, exactly. Or at least the company isn’t branding it as such, Initially pitched as a “Power Nap” product, there does appear to be some in-house confusion with regard to how exactly to position the product. Certainly the startup wants to distinguish itself from the eight million connected sleep masks I see at tech events, particularly when traveling in Asia.

The company surprisingly doesn’t discuss current zeitgeisty startup phrases like meditation or mindfulness, either.

“We are on a much bigger mission to train the world in the art of relaxation,” cofounder Bradley Young writes in a followup email. The company’s site is far less subtle, with language rarely heard outside of supplement ads. “Reach peak state,” it writes in bold all caps font, “become a peak human.” I mean, sure, why not?

That last bit of hyperbole is courtesy of the company’s focus on something called CVT (Cardiac Vagal Tone). Silentmode claims the device can be used to help us normal folk achieve the resting heart rate of an athlete. Look, here’s a graph:

I won’t go too deep into that stuff here, because frankly, I don’t know what I’m talking about. Though I can see how buying some blackout curtains for your head b/w “psychoacoustic and therapeutic sonic experiences” could go a ways toward helping one chill the eff out. It did bring a momentary and much needed respite from my vaguely horrific lodging experiences.

Despite the company’s move away from sleep talk, it also went a ways toward helping me crash on this flight. The music is soothing, and while the padded headset isn’t a pillow exactly, it’s a lot more comfortable than just leaning your head on the seat in front of you. Assuming you can get over the awkwardness of wearing a giant thing on your head. Of course, no one looks good sleeping on a plane, weird head accessory or no.

At $199, it’s not cheap. And the company plans to offer up premium audio through an additional app subscription.  Silentmode is also working with some large companies to pilot these products in office spaces, where relaxation is a rare commodity indeed.

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Soundbrenner’s wearable metronome gets a modular upgrade

It took all of 14 minutes for the Soundbrenner Core to hit full funding. Not too shabby. Last week, the wearable maker closed out its campaign with more than 10x its $50,000 goal. A few days later, we sat down with the startup at the headquarters of Hong Kong-based accelerator, Brinc.

Soundbrenner has already made a bit of a name for itself with Pulse. The connected, wrist-worn device brought some clever innovation to the metronome, that old familiar piano-mounted accessory long banished to the dustiest corners of the music shop. The wearable offers haptic feedback that can be synced across an entire band to keep everyone on the beat. The company sold 60,000 of the things.

Admittedly, simplicity is one of the best things the product has going for it, but Soundbrenner figured it could take things a bit further — and apparently 2,477 Kickstarter backers agreed. The Core (which can be pre-ordered through the a separate Indiegogo page), is being positioned as a “4-in-1 tool.”

First is the vibrating metronome, which allows up to five musicians to sync to a beat, via feedback that’s around 7x that of a standard smartwatch. Wearers can also tap the screen to create a manual beat.

The most introducing bit here is probably the modularity (which arrives, fittingly, around the time the company started receiving mentorship from Mistfit co-founder Sonny Vu). The magnetic display snaps off and attaches to a guitar tuning pegs, where it can test tuning via vibration. There’s also a built-in decibel meter and some standard push notifications — though it’s far from full smartwatch functionality, which is probably for the best.

The Core is smaller than its predecessor, but it’s not small, exactly. The company says this was intentional, at least in part, as these devices have become a kind of calling card among musicians. Beats a secret handshake, I guess.

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Zizoo, a booking.com for boats, sails for new markets with $7.4M on board

Berlin-based Zizoo — a startup which self describes as booking.com for boats — has nabbed a €6.5 million (~$7.4M) Series A to help more millennials find holiday yachts to mess about taking selfies in.

Zizoo says its Series A — which was led by Revo Capital, with participation from new investors including Coparion, Check24 Ventures and PUSH Ventures — was “significantly oversubscribed”.

Existing investors including MairDumont Ventures, aws Founders Fund, Axel Springer Digital Ventures and Russmedia International also participated in the round.

We first came across Zizoo some three years ago when they won our pitching competition in Budapest.

We’re happy to say they’ve come a long since, with a team that’s now 60-people strong, and business relationships with ~1,500 charter companies — serving up more than 21,000 boats for rent, across 30 countries, via a search and book platform that caters to a full range of “sailing experiences”, from experienced sailor to novice and, on the pricing front, luxury to budget.

Registered users passed the 100,000 mark this year, according to founder and CEO Anna Banicevic. She also tells us that revenue growth has been 2.5x year-on-year for the past three years.

Commenting on the Series A in a statement, Revo Capital’s managing director Cenk Bayrakdar said: “The yacht charter market is one of the most underserved verticals in the travel industry despite its huge potential. We believe in Zizoo’s successful future as a leading SaaS-enabled marketplace.”

The new funds will be put towards growing the business — including by expanding into new markets; plus product development and recruitment across the board.

Zizoo founder and CEO Anna Banicevic at its Berlin offices

“We’re looking to strengthen our presence in the US, where we’ve seen the biggest YoY growth while also expand our inventory in hot locations such as Greece, Spain and the Caribbean,” says Banicevic on market expansion. “We will also be aggressively pushing markets such as France and Spain where consumers show a growing interest in boat holidays.”

Zizoo is intending to hire 40 more employees over the course of the next year — to meet what it dubs “the booming demand for sailing experiences, especially among millennials”.

So why do millennials love boating holidays so much? Zizoo says the 20-40 age range makes up the “majority” of its customer.

Banicevic reckons the answer is they’re after a slice of ‘affordable luxury’.

“After the recent boom of the cruising industry, millennials are well familiar with the concept of holidays at sea. However, sailing holidays (yachting) are much more fitting to the millennial’s strive for independence, adventure and experiences off the beaten path,” she suggests.

“Yachting is a growing trend no longer reserved for the rich and famous — and millennials want a piece of that. On our platform, users can book a boat holiday for as low as £25 per person per night (this is an example of a sailboat in Croatia).”

On the competition front, she says the main competition is the offline sphere (“where 90% of business is conducted by a few large and many small travel agents”).

But a few rival platforms have emerged “in the last few years” — and here she reckons Zizoo has managed to outgrow the startup competition “thanks to our unique vertically integrated business model, offering suppliers a booking management system and making it easy for the user to book a boat holiday”.

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Google lays outs narrow “EU election advertiser” policy ahead of 2019 vote

Google has announced its plan for combating election interference in the European Union, ahead of elections next May when up to 350 million voters across the region will vote to elect 705 Members of the European Parliament.

In a blog post laying out a narrow approach to democracy-denting disinformation, Google says it will introduce a verification system for “EU election advertisers to make sure they are who they say they are”, and require that any election ads disclose who is paying for them.

The details of the verification process are not yet clear so it’s not possible to assess how robust a check this might be.

But Facebook, which also recently announced checks on political advertisers, had to delay its UK launch of ID checks earlier this month, after the beta system was shown being embarrassingly easy to game. So just because a piece of online content has an ‘ID badge’ on it does not automatically make it bona fide.

Google’s framing of “EU election advertisers” suggests it will exclude non-EU based advertisers from running election ads, at least as it’s defining these ads. (But we’ve asked for a confirm on that.)

What’s very clear from the blog post is that the adtech giant is defining political ads as an extremely narrowly category — with only ads that explicitly mention political parties, candidates or a current officeholder falling under the scope of the policy.

Here’s how Google explains what it means by “election ads”:

“To bring people more information about the election ads they see across Google’s ad networks, we’ll require that ads that mention a political party, candidate or current officeholder make it clear to voters who’s paying for the advertising.”

So any ads still intended to influence public opinion — and thus sway potential voters — but which cite issues, rather than parties and/or politicians, will fall entirely outside the scope of its policy.

Yet of course issues are material to determining election outcomes.

Issue-based political propaganda is also — as we all know very well now — a go-to tool for the shadowy entities using Internet platforms for highly affordable, mass-scale online disinformation campaigns.

The Kremlin seized on divisive issues for much of the propaganda it deployed across social media ahead of the 2016 US presidential elections, for example.

Russia didn’t even always wrap its politically charged infowar bombs in an ad format either.

All of which means that any election ‘security’ effort that fixes on a narrow definition (like “election ads”) seems unlikely to offer much more than a micro bump in the road for anyone wanting to pay to play with democracy.

The only real fix for this problem is likely full disclosure of all advertising and advertisers; Who’s paying for every online ad, regardless of what it contains, plus a powerful interface for parsing that data mountain.

Of course neither Google nor Facebook is offering that — yet.

Because, well, this is self-regulation, ahead of election laws catching up.

What Google is offering for the forthcoming EU parliament elections is an EU-specific Election Ads Transparency Report (akin to the one it already launched for the US mid-terms) — which it says it will introduce (before the May vote) to provide a “searchable ad library to provide more information about who is purchasing election ads, whom they’re targeted to, and how much money is being spent”.

“Our goal is to make this information as accessible and useful as possible to citizens, practitioners, and researchers,” it adds.

The rest of its blog post is given over to puffing up a number of unrelated steps it says it will also take, in the name of “supporting the European Union Parliamentary Elections”, but which don’t involve Google itself having to be any more transparent about its own ad platform.

So it says it will —

• be working with data from Election Commissions across the member states to “make authoritative electoral information available and help people find the info they need to get out and vote”
• offering in-person security training to the most vulnerable groups, who face increased risks of phishing attacks (“We’ll be walking them through Google’s Advanced Protection Program, our strongest level of account security and Project Shield, a free service that uses Google technology to protect news sites and free expression from DDoS attacks on the web.”)
• collaborating — via its Google News Lab entity — with news organizations across all 27 EU Member States to “support online fact checking”. (The Lab will “be offering a series of free verification workshops to point journalists to the latest tools and technology to tackle disinformation and support their coverage of the elections”)

No one’s going to turn their nose up at security training and freebie resource.

But the scale of the disinformation challenge is rather larger and more existential than a few free workshops and an anti-DDoS tool can fix.

The bulk of Google’s padding here also fits comfortably into its standard operating philosophy where the user-generated content that fuels its business is concerned; aka ‘tackle bad speech with more speech’. Crudely put: More speech, more ad revenue.

Though, as independent research has repeatedly shown, fake news flies much faster and is much, much harder to unstick than truth.

Which means fact checkers, and indeed journalists, are faced with the Sisyphean task of unpicking all the BS that Internet platforms are liberally fencing and accelerating (and monetizing as they do so).

The economic incentives inherent in the dominant adtech platform of the Internet should really be front and center when considering the modern disinformation challenge.

But of course Google and Facebook aren’t going to say that.

Meanwhile lawmakers are on the back foot. The European Commission has done something, signing tech firms up to a voluntary Code of Practice for fighting fake news — Google and Facebook among them.

Although, even in that dilute, non-legally binding document, signatories are supposed to have agreed to take action to make both political advertising and issue based advertising “more transparent”.

Yet here’s Google narrowly defining election ads in a way that lets issues slide on past.

We asked the company what it’s doing to prevent issue-based ads from interfering in EU elections. At the time of writing it had not responded to that question.

Safe to say, ‘election security’ looks to be a very long way off indeed.

Not so the date of the EU poll. That’s fast approaching: May 23 through 26, 2019.

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Wluper, a London-based startup building a better conversational AI, picks up $1.3M seed

Wluper, the London-based tech startup building a conversational AI to power domain specific voice assistants, has raised $1.3 million in seed funding. Leading the round is “deep tech” VC IQ Capital, with participation from Seedcamp, Aster, and Magic Pony co-founder Dr Zehan Wang.

Founded in 2016 and originally backed by Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures, Wluper’s “conversational AI” is initially targeting navigation products with what it describes as “goal-driven dialogue” technology that is designed to have more natural conversations to help with various navigation tasks.

The ‘secret sauce’, as it were, is that Wluper believes voice assistants work much better when the underlying AI is tasked with becoming an expert in a more narrow and specialist domain.

“When we think of intelligent assistants like Alexa or Siri, the only time you’ll believe they’re really good is if they understand you properly; most of the time, they simply can’t,” says Wluper co-founder Hami Bahraynian. “It is not the speech recognition which fails. It is the missing focus and lacking reasoning of these systems, because they all can do a lot of things reasonably well, but nothing perfectly”.

Describing the goal of “general” conversation AI as one that could take 15, 20 or more years to achieve, Bahraynian says that in the interim what is needed is “intelligent agents” that are created for a certain purpose, now.

“This is exactly what we do,” he says. “We build domain-specific conversational intelligence, which does one thing, understanding everything transport-related, but that one thing perfectly”.

Furthermore, Wluper’s domain-specific approach is able to make clear assumptions regarding what the user is talking about, and therefore claims to be able to understand much more complex questions and in a more natural way. This includes multi-intent queries, and follow-up questions to enable a “true” conversation, says Bahraynian.

Meanwhile, Wluper’s seed investment will be used to hire more engineers and research scientists to expand the startup’s research and development capabilities.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Wluper, a London-based startup building a better conversational AI, picks up $1.3M seed https://ift.tt/2POWYl2

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October lets 11 public companies borrow money on its platform

French crowd-lending platform October (formerly known as Lendix), wants to educate more people about new ways to borrow money. That’s why the company is launching a project called Grandir Ensemble (grow together).

11 big companies are borrowing €100,000 each on October at a 2.5 percent interest rate. October users will be able to lend as little as €20 to one of these companies.

If you look at the list of companies, all those names will sound familiar to French readers and beyond. Most of them are public companies, most of them are originally from France — AccorHotels, Adecco Group, Allianz France, Arkéa, Edenred, Engie, Iliad, JCDecaux, Suez, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and Webhelp.

According to October, annual revenue of those companies ranges from €1.8 billion to €122 billion, with Allianz generating more revenue than anyone else.

At a press conference, October co-founder and CEO Olivier Goy explained the idea behind this project. Those credit lines won’t change anything for big public companies. But many of those companies work with small and medium companies.

Today’s partners will be able to refer small companies. October will wave the application fees for those companies up to €11 million in loans.

Thanks to this vote of confidence, you could imagine small companies applying to October because a big company they trust has done it before.

France’s Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire recorded a video message for the press conference, saying that he supports October and today’s campaign.

One of October’s key advantages compared to borrowing money from the bank is that it’s much faster. You can apply to a credit line and get an answer just a few days later. This is quite useful if you need to move quickly to launch a new product, open a new office and more.

October currently operates in France, Spain, Italy and soon the Netherlands. I already covered the company in depth back in June if you want to read more.

Lendix raises $37 million for its lending marketplace

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J October lets 11 public companies borrow money on its platform https://ift.tt/2DRsbOa

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Teaching STEM through the wonders of larva harvesting

There’s hardly enough room to turn around in Livin Farms’ office. Pretty standard, really, in Central, Hong Kong, where space is at a perpetual premium. It’s a small operation for the HAX-backed startup — there’s space for a few desks and not much more. The startup’s last product, the Hive, stands next to the door. It’s a series of innocuous trays stacked atop one another.

But it’s the Hive Explorer I’m here to see. The small tray sits in the middle of the room. Its top is open, the brightly colored bits of plastic drawing the eye from the moment you step through the door. Its contents pulsate with strange, random rhythms. Upon closer inspection, the browns are whites and blacks are alive, a small bed of mealworms wriggle atop one other, chowing down of the remnants of oats left behind by the team.

Above them, a neon yellow tray houses a trio of fully grown beetles and a couple dozen pupae. The former are constant on the move, butting up against one another and sometimes doing more with aims of continuing the life cycle. The pupae lie around, seemingly lifeless, occasionally twitching out a reminder that there’s still life inside.

The Explorer finds Livin Farms broadening its horizons into the world of STEM education. Where past products were focused on scalable sustainability, the new Kickstarter project is firmly targeted at youngsters. And there’s a fair amount to be learned in the bucket full of beetles. Mortality, for one. Founder Katharina Unger grabs a nearby jar and twists off the cap.

It’s filled to the top with dried mealworms. She pulls one out and pops it in her mouth, handing it to me, hopefully. I follow suit. It’s crispy. Not flavorless, exactly, but not particularly distinct. Maybe a bit salty. Mostly it just feels overwhelmingly morbid, showing down on on a little larva as its brothers continue to feast a few inches away.

Protein source of the future, now, to quote The Mountain Goats. Livin Farms also produces a unflavored larva-based powder and a surprising tasty granola as a kind of proof concept for its sustainable high-protein foodstuffs. The mission hits home here in one of the world’s most densely packed places.

[She gave me some to take home, if anyone’s hungry.]

The Explorer also offers youngsters a peak at what many consider the future of sustainable farming — assuming food manufacturers are ever able to break through the stigma of eating insects. Kids are encourage to harvest the larva to avoid overpopulation with a bit of dry roasting. The box serves as a relatively odor-free form of composting. Feeding the bugs simply entails tossing excess foodstuffs into the bin. The little buggers will tear through it, leaving a thin powder of waste in a tray below.

The setup also features a heat plate to keep the worms warm and a fan to regulate humidity, assuring that settings are ideal for the beetles to do their thing. Livin Farms is also opening up the controls to the system via Swift, in an attempt to bring a coding component to the system.

The Explorer went live on Kickstarter this week. Early bird pledges can pick up a the box of worms for ~$113.

https://ift.tt/2OWJCxL Teaching STEM through the wonders of larva harvesting https://ift.tt/2zp2f8u

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LinkedIn cuts off email address exports with new privacy setting

A win for privacy on LinkedIn could be a big loss for businesses, recruiters, and anyone else expecting to be able to export the email addresses of their connections. LinkedIn just quietly introduced a new privacy setting that defaults to blocking other users from exporting your email address. That could prevent some spam, and protect users who didn’t realize anyone who they’re connected to could download their email address into a giant spreadsheet. But the launch of this new setting without warning or even a formal announcement could piss off users who’d invested tons of time into the professional networking site in hopes of contacting their connections outside of it.

TechCrunch was tipped off by a reader that emails were no longer coming through as part of LinkedIn’s Archive tool for exporting your data. Now LinkedIn confirms to TechCrunch that “This is a new setting that gives our members even more control their email address on LinkedIn. If you take a look at the setting titled “Who can download your email”, you’ll see we’ve added a more detailed setting that defaults to the strongest privacy option. Members can choose to change that setting based on their preference. This gives our members control over who can download their email address via a data export.”

That new option can be found under Settings & Privacy -> Privacy -> Who Can See My Email Address? This “Allow your connections to download your email [address of user] in their data export?” toggle defaults to ‘No’. Most users don’t know it exists since LinkedIn didn’t announce it, there’s merely been a folded up section added to the Help center on email visibility, and few might voluntarily change it to ‘Yes’ since there’s no explanation of why you’d want to. That means nearly no one’s email addresses will appear in LinkedIn Archive exports any more. Your connections will still be able to see your email address if they navigate to your profile, but they can’t grab those from their whole graph.

Facebook shouldn’t block you from finding friends on competitors

Facebook came to the same conclusion about restricting email exports back when it was in a data portability fight with Google in 2010. Facebook had been encouraging users to import their Gmail contacts, but refused to let users export their Friends’ email addresses. It argued that users own their own email addresses, but not those of their Friends, so they couldn’t be downloaded — though that stance conveniently prevented any other app from bootstrapping a competing social graph by importing your Facebook friend list in any usable way. I’ve argued that Facebook needs to make friend lists interoperable to give users choice about what apps they use, both because it’s the right thing to do but also because it could deter regulation.

On a social network like Facebook, barring email exports makes more sense. But on LinkedIn’s professional network where people are purposefully connecting with those they don’t know, and where exporting has always been allowed, making the change silently seems surreptitious. Perhaps LinkedIn didn’t want to bring attention to the fact it was allowing your email address to be slurped up by anyone you’re connected with given the current media climate of intense scrutiny regarding privacy in social tech. But trying to hide a change that’s massively impactful to businesses that rely on LinkedIn could erode the trust of its core users.

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2DR4o0L LinkedIn cuts off email address exports with new privacy setting Josh Constine https://ift.tt/2R2gNSe
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Facebook has poached the DoJ’s Silicon Valley antitrust chief

Facebook has recruited Kate Patchen, a veteran of the U.S. Department of Justice who led its antitrust office in Silicon Valley, to be a director and associate general counsel of litigation.

Patchen takes up her post amid ongoing scandals and reputation crises for her new employer, joining Facebook this month according to her LinkedIn profile.

The move was spotted earlier by the FT, which reports that Facebook also posted a job listing on LinkedIn for a “lead counsel” in Washington to handle competition issues two weeks ago — suggesting a broader effort to bulk up its in-house expertise.

Patchen brings a wealth of experience on the antitrust topic to her new employer, having spent 16 years at the DoJ, where she began as a trial attorney before becoming an assistant chief in the antitrust division in 2014. Two years later she was made chief.

We reached out to Facebook about the hire and it acknowledged our email but did not immediately provide comment on its decision to recruit an specialist in antitrust enforcement.

The social media giant certainly has plenty playing on its mind on this front.

In 2016 it landed firmly on lawmakers’ radars and in hot political waters when the extent of Kremlin-funded election interference activity on the platform first emerged. Since then a string of security and data misuse scandals have only dialled up the political pressure on Facebook.

Domestic lawmakers are now most actively discussing how to regulate social media. Although competition scrutiny is increasing on big tech in general, with calls from some quarters to break up platform giants as a fix for a range of damaging impacts.

The FT notes, for example, that democratic lawmakers recently introduced legislation to address “the threat of economic concentration”. And the sight of Democrats pushing for tougher competition enforcement suggests the party’s love affair with Silicon Valley tech giants is well and truly over.

In Europe competition regulators have already moved against big tech, issuing two very large fines in recent years against Google products, with more investigations ongoing.

Amazon is also now on the Commission’s radar. While, at a national level, EU competition regulators have been paying increasing attention to how the adtech industry is dominated by the duopoly of Google and Facebook.

Patchen, meanwhile, joins Facebook at the same time as some long-serving veterans are headed out the door — including public policy chief, Elliot Schrage.

Schrage’s departure has been in train for some months but a leaked internal memo we obtained this week suggests he’s being packaged up as a convenient fall guy for a freshly cracked public relations scandal.

Last month Facebook announced it was hiring more new blood: Former deputy prime minister of the UK, Nick Clegg, to be its new head of global policy and comms — with Schrage slated then to be staying on in an advisory capacity.

In other recent senior leadership moves Facebook CSO Alex Stamos also left the company this summer. While chief legal officer, Colin Stretch, announced he would leave at the end of the year.

But according to a Recode report this month Stretch has now put his exit on hold — until at least next summer — apparently deciding to stay to help out with ongoing legal and political crises.

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Facebook has poached the DoJ’s Silicon Valley antitrust chief Natasha Lomas https://ift.tt/2DzAT2C
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Google Assistant iOS update lets you say ’Hey Siri, OK Google’

{rss:content:encoded} Google Assistant iOS update lets you say ’Hey Siri, OK Google’ https://ift.tt/2BoCve7 https://ift.tt/2A9uBmL November 21, 2018 at 07:26PM

Apple probably didn’t intend to let competitors take advantage of Siri Shortcuts this way, but you can now launch Google Assistant on your iPhone by saying “Hey Siri, OK Google”.

But don’t expect a flawless experience — it takes multiple steps. After updating the Google Assistant app on iOS, you need to open the app to set up a new Siri Shortcut for Google Assistant.

As the name suggests, Siri Shortcuts lets you record custom phrases to launch specific apps or features. For instance, you can create Siri Shortcuts to play your favorite playlist, launch directions to a specific place, text someone and more. If you want to chain multiple actions together, you can even create complicated algorithms using Apple’s Shortcuts app.

By default, Google suggests the phrase “OK Google”. You can choose something shorter, or “Hey Google” for instance. After setting that up, you can summon Siri and use this custom phrase to launch Google’s app.

You may need to unlock your iPhone or iPad to let iOS open the app. The Google Assistant app then automatically listens to your query. Again, you need to pause and wait for the app to appear before saying your query.

This is quite a cumbersome walk-around and I’m not sure many people are going to use it. But the fact that “Hey Siri, OK Google” exists is still very funny.

On another note, Google Assistant is still the worst when it comes to your privacy. The app pushes you to enable “web & app activity”, the infamous all-encompassing privacy destroyer. If you activate that setting, Google will collect your search history, your Chrome browsing history, your location, your credit card purchases and more.

It’s a great example of dark pattern design. If you haven’t enabled web & app activity, there’s a flashy blue banner at the bottom of the app that tells you that you can “unlock more Assistant features”.

When you tap it, you get a cute little animated drawing to distract you from the text. There’s only one button that says “More”. If you tap it, the “More” button becomes “Turn on” — many people are not even going to see “No thanks” on the bottom left.

It’s a classic persuasion method. If somebody asks you multiple questions and you say yes every time, you’ll tend to say yes to the last question even if you don’t agree with it. You tapped on “Get started” and “More” so you want to tap on the same button one more time. If you say no, Google asks you one more time if you’re 100 percent sure.

So make sure you read everything and you understand that you’re making a privacy tradeoff by using Google Assistant.

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Facebook appeals UK data watchdog’s £500k Cambridge Analytica fine

Facebook has said it will appeal against a £500,000 penalty issued by the UK’s data watchdog this summer following a lengthy investigation into the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal.

Facebook told the regulator an estimated one million UK users were among the 87M of its users whose private data was harvested by Dr. Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research — which passed the data to the now defunct political consultancy, Cambridge Analytica.

In July, the ICO announced it intended to fine Facebook the maximum possible amount under the UK’s old data protection regime — saying it was “clear” the company had contravened the law “by failing to keep users data safe” when its systems allowed Kogan’s app to scrape Facebook user data.

It confirmed the penalty a month ago, with commissioner Elizabeth Denham saying then: “Facebook failed to sufficiently protect the privacy of its users before, during and after the unlawful processing of this data. A company of its size and expertise should have known better and it should have done better.”

Although the text of its October decision includes the admission that the ICO had not found evidence that any UK Facebook users’ data had actually been passed to Kogan.

“Facebook has asserted that the only individuals whose personal data was used in this way [shared by Kogan with third parties including Cambridge Analytica] were US residents,” it writes on this, before adding that even if Facebook’s assertion is correct some US residents would also have been UK users “from time to time” (e.g. if visiting the UK) — and thus would fall under its remit.

It also pointed to “serious risk” to UK users’ data being material to its decision, writing: “Dr. Kogan and/or GSR were put in a position where they were effectively at liberty (if they so chose) to use the personal data of UK residents for such purposes, or to share such data with persons or companies who would use it for such purposes.”

On that basis, Facebook appears to be resting its appeal against the ICO decision on its own assertion to the ICO that there’s no evidence of UK users’ data being used.

Commenting on its decision to appeal against the ICO’s fine in a statement, Anna Benckert, its EMEA VP & associate general counsel, said:

We have said before that we wish we had done more to investigate claims about Cambridge Analytica in 2015. We made major changes to our platform back then and have also significantly restricted the information app developers can access. And we are investigating all historic apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform policies in 2014.

The ICO’s investigation stemmed from concerns that UK citizens’ data may have been impacted by Cambridge Analytica, yet they now have confirmed that they have found no evidence to suggest that information of Facebook users in the UK was ever shared by Dr Kogan with Cambridge Analytica, or used by its affiliates in the Brexit referendum.

Therefore, the core of the ICO’s argument no longer relates to the events involving Cambridge Analytica. Instead, their reasoning challenges some of the basic principles of how people should be allowed to share information online, with implications which go far beyond just Facebook, which is why we have chosen to appeal.

For example, under ICO’s theory people should not be allowed to forward an email or message without having agreement from each person on the original thread. These are things done by millions of people every day on services across the internet, which is why we believe the ICO’s decision raises important questions of principle for everyone online which should be considered by an impartial court based on all the relevant evidence.

We’ve reached out to the ICO for comment. Update: An ICO spokesperson said: “Any organisation issued with a monetary penalty notice by the Information Commissioner has the right to appeal the decision to the First-tier Tribunal. The progression of any appeal is a matter for the tribunal. We have not yet been notified by the Tribunal that an appeal has been received.”

Last month Denham explained the decision to impose the maximum penalty on Facebook by saying: “We considered these contraventions to be so serious we imposed the maximum penalty under the previous legislation. The fine would inevitably have been significantly higher under the GDPR. One of our main motivations for taking enforcement action is to drive meaningful change in how organizations handle people’s personal data.”

This summer her office issued its first ever enforcement notice under the new GDPR data protection regime against Canadian data firm AIQ, which had supplied software and services to the disgraced Cambridge Analytica.

But last month the ICO issued a narrower enforcement notice, replacing the earlier notice, after AIQ appealed.

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Facebook appeals UK data watchdog’s £500k Cambridge Analytica fine Natasha Lomas https://ift.tt/2r6Isq9
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CVCompiler is an robot that fixes your resume to make you more competitive

Machine learning is everywhere now, including recruiting. Take CVCompiler, a new product by Andrew Stetsenko and Alexandra Dosii. This web app uses machine learning to analyze and repair your technical resume, allowing you too shine to recruiters at Google, Yahoo, and Facebook.

The founders are marketing and HR experts who have a combined fifteen years experience in making recruiting smarter. Stetsenko founded Relocate.me and GlossaryTech while Dosii worked at a number of marketing firms before settling on CVCompiler.

The app essentially checks your resume and tells you what to fix and where to submit it. It’s been completely bootstrapped thus far and they’re working on new and improved machine-learning algorithms while maintaining a library of common CV fixes.

“There are lots of online resume analysis tools, but these services are too generic, meaning they can be used by multiple professionals and the results are poor and very general. After the feedback is received, users are often forced to buy some extra services,” said Stetsenko. “In contrast, the CV Compiler is designed exclusively for tech professionals. The online review technology scans for keywords from the world of programming and how they are used in the resume, relative to the best practices in the industry.”

The product was born out of Stetsenko’s work at GlossaryTech, a Chrome extension that helps users understand tech terms. He used a great deal of natural language processing and keyword taxonomy in that product and, in turn, moved some of that to his CV service.

“We found that many job applications were being rejected without even an interview, because of the resumes. Apparently, 10 seconds is long enough for a recruiter to eliminate many candidates,” he said.

The service is live now and the team expects the corpus of information to grow and improve over time. Until then, why not let a machine-learning robot tell you what you’re doing wrong in trying to get a job? That is, before it replaces you completely.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J CVCompiler is an robot that fixes your resume to make you more competitive https://ift.tt/2Bo9AXy

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Quantum Machines raises $5.5M to build control and operational layer for quantum computers

Quantum Machines, an Israeli startup launched by three Ph.D. physicists, wants to build the operational and control layer for quantum computing. Today, it announced a $5.5 million seed investment led by TLV ventures with participation from Battery Ventures.

The three principals have been studying quantum computing for a decade and they understand that to commercialize it, it’s going to require a complete solution. Right now the majority of the research is centered on increasing the number qubits at the processor level. Co-founder and CEO Itamar Sivan says in order to advance the technology, it’s going to take an operational and control layer to make it all work, and that is what the founders decided to concentrate the company’s efforts, he said.

Sivan explained that there is a point where the classical computers we use today and the quantum computers of the future will have to work together to pass data and interpret commands. He described three layers in a quantum computing stack. The first is the quantum processor. Next is a classical computing control layer with classical electronics you would find on any computer today. Finally, there is the software layer where you program a classical algorithm that has to be passed to the quantum processor.

He ways some companies are trying to build full stacks, but the bulk of research as been concentrated on building quantum processors. Quantum Machines decided to focus on one part of the stack. “We have come to the conclusion, that there must be a company laser-focused on a vertically integrated control solution that includes the classical hardware and software,” Sivan said.

“The power of quantum computers stems from their complexity and richness, though it is also this complexity which makes them incredibly difficult to control and operate— this is the problem our company is attempting to solve,” he added in a statement.

The company is currently working on prototype hardware to build this layer and is working with several Beta customers at the moment. It’s early days for the company, but the seed money should help them accelerate that vision and get a product to market more quickly.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Quantum Machines raises $5.5M to build control and operational layer for quantum computers https://ift.tt/2DAW3x6

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Facebook failed to stop a child bride being auctioned on its platform

Facebook failed to prevent its platform being used to auction a 16-year-old girl off for marriage in South Sudan.

Child early and forced marriage (CEFM) is the most commonly reported form of gender-based violence in South Sudan, according to a recent Plan International report on the myriad risks for adolescent girls living in the war-torn region.

Now it seems girls in that part of the world have to worry about social media too.

Vice reported on the story in detail yesterday, noting that Facebook took down the auction post but not until after the girl had already been married off — and more than two weeks after the family first announced the attention to sell the child via its platform, on October 25.

Facebook said it first learned about the auction post on November 9, after which it says it took it down within 24 hours. It’s not clear how many hours out of the 24 it took Facebook to take the decision to remove the post.

A multimillionaire businessman from South Sudan’s capital city reportedly won the auction after offering a record ‘price’ — of 530 cows, three Land Cruiser V8 cars and $10,000 — to marry the child, Nyalong Ngong Deng Jalang.

Plan International told Vice it’s the first known incident of Facebook being used to auction a child bride.

“It is really concerning because, as it was such a lucrative transaction and it attracted so much attention, we are worried that this could act as an incentive for others to follow suit,” the development organization told Vice.

A different human rights NGO posted a screengrab of the deleted auction post to Twitter, writing: “Despite various appeals made by human rights group, a 16 year old girl child became a victim to an online marriage auction post, which was not taken down by Facebook in South Sudan.”

Despite various appeals made by human rights group, a 16 year old girl child became a victim to an online marriage auction post, which was not taken down by Facebook in South Sudan. Sinking part is that people are now opting for social media for fulfilling orthodox rituals. pic.twitter.com/tj4cMADeFN

— H4Human (@h4humanrights) November 20, 2018

We asked Facebook to explain how it failed to act in time to prevent the auction and it sent us the following statement, attributed to a spokesperson:

Any form of human trafficking — whether posts, pages, ads or groups is not allowed on Facebook. We removed the post and permanently disabled the account belonging to the person who posted this to Facebook. We’re always improving the methods we use to identify content that breaks our policies, including doubling our safety and security team to more than 30,000 and investing in technology.

The more than two week delay between the auction post going live and the auction post being removed by Facebook raises serious questions about its claims to have made substantial investments in improving its moderation processes.

Human rights groups had directly tried to flag the post to Facebook. The auction had also reportedly attracted heavy local media attention. Yet it still failed to notice and act until weeks later — by which time it was too late because the girl had been sold and married off.

Facebook does not release country-level data about its platform so it’s not clear how many users it has in the South Sudan region.

Nor does it offer a breakdown of the locations of the circa 15,000 people it employs or contracts to carry out content review duties across its global content platform (which has 2BN+ users).

Facebook admits that the content reviewers it uses do not speak every language in the world where its platform is used. Nor do they even speak every language that’s widely used in the world. So it’s highly unlikely it has any reviewers at all with a strong grasp of the indigenous languages spoken in the South Sudan region.

We asked Facebook how many moderators it employs who speak any of the languages in the South Sudan region (which is multilingual). A spokeswoman was unable to provide an immediate answer.

The upshot of Facebook carrying out retrospective content moderation from afar, relying on a tiny number of reviewers (relative to its total users), is that the company is failing to respond to human rights risks as it should.

Facebook has not established on-the-ground teams across its international business with the necessary linguistic and cultural sensitivities to be able to respond directly, or even quickly, to risks being created by its platform in every market where it operates. (A large proportion of its reviewers are sited in Germany — which passed a social media hate speech law a year ago.)

AI is not going to fix that very hard problem either — not in any human time-scale. And in the meanwhile Facebook is letting actual humans take the strain.

But two weeks to notice and takedown a child bride auction is not the kind of metric any business wants to be measured by.

It’s increasingly clear that Facebook’s failure to invest adequately across its international business to oversee and manage the human rights impacts of its technology tools can have a very high cost indeed.

In South Sudan a lack of adequate oversight has resulted in its platform being repurposed as the equivalent of a high-tech slave market.

Facebook also continues to be on the hook for serious failings in Myanmar, where its platform has been blamed for spreading hate speech and accelerating ethnic violence.

You don’t have to look far to see other human rights abuses being aided and abetted by access to unchecked social media tools.

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Facebook failed to stop a child bride being auctioned on its platform Natasha Lomas https://ift.tt/2FwKRUL
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African investors and founders to judge Startup Battlefield competition in Nigeria

TechCrunch will soon be returning to Africa to hold its Startup Battlefield competition dedicated to the African continent, in Lagos, Nigeria, on December 11th.

The event will showcase the launch of 15 of the hottest startups in Africa on stage for the first time. We’ll also be joined by some of the leading investment firms in the region. If you want to be in the same room, you’d better grab your tickets now.

Here are just some of the investors and founders who will be judging the startups competing for US$25,000.

Eleni Gabre-Madhin, blueMoon

Dr. Eleni Gabre-Madhin is founder and chief executive of blueMoon, Ethiopia’s first youth agribusiness/agritech incubator and seed investor. Prior to this, she founded eleni LLC, Africa’s leader in designing, building and supporting the operations of commodity exchange eco-systems in frontier markets. Dr. Gabre-Madhin is also founder and former CEO of Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX), having successfully traded $1.2 billion annually after three years of operation.

Erik Hersman, BRCK

Erik Hersman is the CEO of BRCK a rugged wireless WiFi device designed and engineered in Kenya for use throughout the emerging markets. In 2010 he founded the iHub, Nairobi’s innovation hub for the technology community, bringing together entrepreneurs, hackers, designers and the investment community.

Minette Havemann, Naspers Ventures

Minette Havemann is strategy director at Naspers Ventures, which finds and backs promising technology startups across the world. She plays a leading role in identifying consumer and market trends shaping the team’s overall investment agenda and represents the team in Africa. Before this, Minette worked as General Manager of Strategy and Research at Media24 where she focused on business strategy development across a diverse portfolio spanning media, B2C e-commerce and classifieds assets.

Sangu Delle, Africa Health Holdings

Sangu is the co-founder and managing director of Africa Health Holdings, a company based in West Africa and focused on “building Africa’s healthcare future.” He also serves as Chairman of Golden Palm Investments Corporation, a holding company that has backed startups, including Andela, mPharma and Flutterwave. GPI portfolio companies have raised over $300 million in venture financing.

Wale Ayeni, International Finance Corporation

Wale Ayeni leads the IFC’s Venture Capital practice focused on Africa, South of the Sahara – the International Finance Organization is part of the World Bank Group. The IFC’s Venture capital team invests in technology companies in frontier markets, and has deployed over ~$800 million in early/growth stage tech investments over the past decade. Prior to the IFC, Wale led venture capital early-stage investments in disruptive startups across various technology sectors for Orange in Silicon Valley with representative investments in the U.S.

Get your tickets

Tickets to this event cost $10 (N3600 +VAT), and you can buy them right here.

Startup Battlefield consists of three preliminary rounds with 15 teams — five startups per round — who have only six minutes to pitch and present a live demo to a panel of expert technologists and VC investors. After each pitch, the judges have six minutes to grill the team with tough questions. This is all after the free pitch-coaching they receive from TechCrunch editors.

One startup will emerge the winner of TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Africa 2018 — and receive a US$25,000 no-equity cash prize and win a trip for two to compete in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2019 (assuming the company still qualifies to compete at the time).

https://ift.tt/2A88ddD African investors and founders to judge Startup Battlefield competition in Nigeria https://ift.tt/2Qb2Mol

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Berlin-based Wind Mobility raises $22M for its e-scooter rental service

Wind Mobility, a Berlin-based mobility startup that offers “dockless” e-scooter (and electric bicycle) rentals, has raised $22 million in seed funding, throwing its hat into the European competitor to Bird and Lime ring.

It follows recent raises by Sweden’s VOI ($50 million Series A led by Balderton) and Germany’s Tier (€25 million Series A led by Northzone). All three companies are attempting to be pan-European from the get-go.

In other words, you wait all year for the ‘Bird or Lime of Europe’ to appear and three contenders get funded at once. And that’s before we mention Taxify’s entrance into e-scooter rentals or Delivery Hero and Team Europe founder Lukasz Gadowski’s reported plans to enter the space, having picked up backing from the mobility arm of Target global.

Meanwhile, despite being U.S. companies, Bird and Lime have received substantial investment from three of Europe’s top venture capital firms. Index and Accel have backed Bird, and Atomico has backed Lime.

But I digress…

Investing in Wind Mobility’s rather large seed round is Chinese Source Code Capital, and Europe’s HV Holtzbrinck Ventures. The company says the investment will be used for global expansion and to further develop its e-scooter product. Wind current operates its e-scooter rental service in various cities in Spain, France, and the U.S., and its dockless bicycle rental service Byke in Germany.

Notably, Wind is currently developing its first proprietary model of electric scooters specifically designed for the sharing market, which co-founder and CEO Eric Wang tells me will become a significant differentiator going forward.

“Currently, almost all the scooters on the market are from Ninebot, which is designed for personal use rather than sharing,” he says. “Our own scooters are specifically designed for sharing: longer battery range, swappable battery, more capability to climb hills, sturdy and more fit for sharing. We can also tailor our scooters to the requirement of certain cities. This gives us an edge in continuing to adopt to customer needs and regulatory requirements”.

Alongside this, Wind Mobility has developed a proprietary “IoT technology and communication module” that it says gives it better location accuracy of its scooters. The system is also capable of delivering over-the-air updates to the Wind communication module to control certain functionality of its scooters remotely.

For example, it can tell a scooter light to flash via a tap on the Wind app so that users and operational personnel can spot the scooter more easily at night. “We can change the speed limit of the fleet in each city or certain scooters via our servers. We also limit the speed to zero via the communication module once a scooter is taken outside of the operating area,” adds Wang.

Like other European players in the space, Wind says it works in co-operation with local governments, with the goal of solving mobility problems and reducing congestion in urban areas.

“The scooter market in Europe is still relatively new,” says the Wind CEO. “The bigger competition is still to convert more users from using cars to using scooters along with public transportation. We are at the forefront of this transformation. We look forward to working with cities and authorities to serve this growing demand”.

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J Berlin-based Wind Mobility raises $22M for its e-scooter rental service https://ift.tt/2DC3iVP

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Internal Facebook memo sees outgoing VP of comms Schrage take blame for hiring Definers

TechCrunch has obtained an internal memo published by Facebook’s outgoing head of public policy Elliot Schrage in which he blames himself for hiring PR firm Definers. He admits to having the company push negative narratives about competitors, but says Facebook did not ask or pay Definers to publish fake news. COO Sheryl Sandberg left a comment on the memo, saying it was never Facebook’s intention to play into anti-semitic theories about George Soros.

The memo includes a Q&A regarding points raised by a New York Times article detailing how Definers worked to spread negative publicity about Google and other tech giants to make Facebook look better, and that the firm’s employees also published biased articles bashing Facebook’s competitors and critics through a news site called NTK Network that’s affiliated with Definers.

In the memo, Schrage justifies the use of opposition research, and chastizes Facebook employees for allowing internal finger pointing surrounding its troubled past two years to become public. He also notes that his replacement, Facebook’s new head of global policy and former UK deputy Prime Minster Nick Clegg will be reviewing its work with all political consultants, which could turn up more skeletons.

Facebook’s former head of policy and comms Elliot Schrage (left)

Schrage announced in June that he’d be stepping down in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but would stay on to help find a replacement. Many have asked who, if anyone, would be fired for putting Facebook in cahoots with Definers. As TechCrunch previously reported, Schrage was atop the chain of command here. Given his extensive experience in public policy, was likely well aware of the nature of Definers’ work. Schrage taking the blame provides a convenient solution to the issue, as he’s already on his way out.

“Responsibility for these decisions rests with leadership of the Communications team. That’s me. Mark and Sheryl relied on me to manage this without controversy” Schrage writes. “I knew and approved of the decision to hire Definers and similar firms. I should have known of the decision to expand their mandate . . . I’m sorry I let you all down. I regret my own failure here.” This explanation serves to protect Zuckerberg and Sandberg from additional blame, even as Sandberg strives to show she’s not passing the buck by noting “I want to be clear that I oversee our Comms team and take full responsibility for their work and the PR firms who work with us.”

Schrage’s defense of his bosses provides additional cover for Zuckerberg’s comments from a CNN interview that ran tonight in which he said he won’t step down as Facebook’s chairman and hopes to continue working alongside Sandberg for decades to come. The memo could have been aimed at quieting internal unrest about Facebook’s chief lobbyist Joel Kaplan. His ties to the GOP, support for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and involvement with Facebook’s latest PR troubles had led some employees to question his employment. Now Facebook has someone else to take the heat.

Schrage is effectively jumping on the grenade here.

The memo and comment can be found below:

Internal Facebook Memo By Elliot Schrage

Many of you have raised questions about our relationship with the Definers consulting firm. We’ve been looking into this and though it is close to a holiday for many of you I wanted to share an update on what we’ve learned and where things stand:

Why did we hire Definers?

We hired Definers in 2017 as part of our efforts to diversify our DC advisors after the election. Like many companies, we needed to broaden our outreach. We also faced growing pressure from competitors in tech, telcos and media companies that want government to regulate us.

This pressure became particularly acute in September 2017 after we released details of Russian interference on our service. We hired firms associated with both Republicans and Democrats — Definers was one of the Republican-affiliated firms.

What did we ask them to do and what did they do?

While we’re continuing to review our relationship with Definers, we know the following: We asked Definers to do what public relations firms typically do to support a company — sending us press clippings, conducting research, writing messaging documents, and reaching out to reporters.

Some of this work is being characterized as opposition research, but I believe it would be irresponsible and unprofessional for us not to understand the backgrounds and potential conflicts of interest of our critics. This work can be used internally to inform our messaging and where appropriate it can be shared with reporters. This work is also useful to help respond to unfair claims where Facebook has been singled out for criticism, and to positively distinguish us from competitors.

As the pressure on Facebook built throughout the year, the Communications team used Definers more and more. At Sheryl’s request, we’re going through all the work they did, but we have learned that as the engagement expanded, more people worked with them on more projects and the relationship was less centrally managed.

Did we ask them to do work on George Soros?

Yes. In January 2018, investor and philanthropist George Soros attacked Facebook in a speech at Davos, calling us a “menace to society.” We had not heard such criticism from him before and wanted to determine if he had any financial motivation. Definers researched this using public information.

Later, when the “Freedom from Facebook” campaign emerged as a so-called grassroots coalition, the team asked Definers to help understand the groups behind them. They learned that George Soros was funding several of the coalition members. They prepared documents and distributed these to the press to show that this was not simply a spontaneous grassroots movement.

Did we ask them to do work on our competitors?

Yes. As I indicated above, Definers helped us respond to unfair claims where Facebook was been [sic] singled out for criticism. They also helped positively distinguish us from competitors.

Did we ask them to distribute or create fake news?

No.

Who knew about this work, and who signed off on it?

Responsibility for these decisions rests with leadership of the Communications team. That’s me. Mark and Sheryl relied on me to manage this without controversy.

I knew and approved of the decision to hire Definers and similar firms. I should have known of the decision to expand their mandate. Over the past decade, I built a management system that relies on the teams to escalate issues if they are uncomfortable about any project, the value it will provide or the risks that it creates. That system failed here and I’m sorry I let you all down. I regret my own failure here.

Why have we stopped working with them?

Mark has asked us to reevaluate how we work with communications consultants. It’s not about Definers. It is about us, not them.

Mark has made clear that because Facebook is a mission driven company, he wants to hold us to a higher standard. He is uncomfortable relying on any outside firm to make decisions about how to make our case about our mission, policies, competitors and critics until he can become comfortable with our management, oversight and escalation.

Where are we now?

Many people across the company feel uncomfortable finding out about this work. Many people on the Communications team feel under attack from the press and even from their colleagues. I’m deeply disappointed that so much internal discussion and finger pointing has become public. This is a serious threat to our culture and ability to work together in difficult times.

Our culture has long been to move fast and take risks. Many times we have moved too quickly and we always learn and keep trying to do our best. This will be no exception.

What happens next?

Our legal team continues to review our work with Definers to understand what happened. Mark and Sheryl have also asked Nick Clegg to review all our work with communications consultants and propose principles and management processes to guide the team’s work going forward. We all want to ensure that we, our advisors and consultants better reflect Facebook’s values and culture.

Comment On The Memo From Sheryl Sandberg

Thank you for sharing this, Elliot.
I want to be clear that I oversee our Comms team and take full responsibility for their work and the PR firms who work with us. I truly believe we have a world class Comms team and I want to acknowledge the enormous pressure the team has faced over the past year.

When I read the story in New York Times last week, I didn’t remember a firm called Definers. I asked our team to look into the work Definers did for us and to double-check whether anything had crossed my desk. Some of their work was incorporated into materials presented to me and I received a small number of emails where Definers was referenced.

I also want to emphasize that it was never anyone’s intention to play into an anti-Semitic narrative against Mr. Soros or anyone else. Being Jewish is a core part of who I am and our company stands firmly against hate. The idea that our work has been interpreted as anti-Semitic is abhorrent to me — and deeply personal.

I know this has been a distraction at a time when you’re all working hard to close out the year — and I am sorry. As I said at the All Hands, I believe so deeply in the work we do and feel so grateful to all of you for doing so much every day. Thanksgiving seems like the right time to say a big thank you once again.

Facebook has other ties to Definers, the GOP-led opposition research group

Additional reporting by Taylor Hatmaker

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2QXPeJR Internal Facebook memo sees outgoing VP of comms Schrage take blame for hiring Definers Josh Constine https://ift.tt/2PITiB2
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