Sunday, June 30, 2019
This American company has denied sharing chip technology with China
Tundra, a new zero-commission wholesale marketplace, announces $12M Series A; Tundra generates revenue via premium checkout options like faster shipping (Jordan Crook/TechCrunch)
Tundra, a new zero-commission wholesale marketplace, announces $12M Series A; Tundra generates revenue via premium checkout options like faster shipping — Tundra, a new zero-commission wholesale marketplace, has today announced the close of $12 million in Series A funding.
Vulgar Videos Made on Chinese Social Media Apps Now Infiltrate WhatsApp
Japan will restrict the export of some materials used in smartphones and chips to South Korea
Japan’s trade ministry said today that it will restrict the export of some tech materials to South Korea, including polyimides used in flexible displays made by companies like Samsung Electronics. The new rules come as the two countries argue over compensation for South Koreans forced to work in Japanese factories during World War II.
The list of restricted supplies, expected to go into effect on July 4, includes polyimides used in smartphone and flexible organic LED displays, and etching gas and resist used to make semiconductors. That means Japanese suppliers who wish to sell those materials to South Korean tech companies such as Samsung, LG and SK Hynix will need to submit each contract for approval.
Japan’s government may also remove South Korea from its list of countries that have fewer restrictions on trading technology that might have national security implications, reports Nikkei Asian Review.
Earlier this year, South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled several Japanese companies, including Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, that had used forced labor during World War II must pay compensation and began seizing assets for liquidation. But Japan’s government claims the issue was settled in 1965 as part of a treaty that restored basic diplomatic relations between the two countries and is asking South Korea to put the matter before an international arbitration panel instead.
Facebook civil rights audit says white supremacy policy is ‘too narrow’
Facebook’s second progress report pertaining to the civil rights audit conducted by former ACLU Washington Director Laura Murphy is here. Over the last six months, Facebook has made changes around enforcing against hate, fighting discrimination in ads and protecting against misinformation and suppression in the upcoming U.S. presidential election and 2020 Census, according to the progress report.
While Facebook has made changes in some of these areas — Facebook banned white supremacy in March — auditors say Facebook’s policy is still “too narrow.” That’s because it solely prohibits explicit praise, support or representation of the terms “white nationalism” or “white separatism,” but does not technically prohibit references to those terms and ideologies.
“The narrow scope of the policy leaves up content that expressly espouses white nationalist ideology without using the term ‘white nationalist,'” the report states. “As a result, content that would cause the same harm is permitted to remain on the platform.”
Therefore, the audit team recommends Facebook expand its policy to prohibit content that “expressly praises, supports, or represents white nationalist ideology” even if the content does not explicitly use the terms “white nationalism” or “white separatism.”
In Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s note today, she acknowledges the recommendation.
“We’re addressing this by identifying hate slogans and symbols connected to white nationalism and white separatism to better enforce our policy,” she wrote.
Sandberg also noted how Facebook recently updated its policies to ensure people don’t use Facebook to organize events intended to intimidate or harass people.
“Getting our policies right is just one part of the solution,” Sandberg said. “We also need to get better at enforcement — both in taking down and leaving up the right content.”
Sandberg is referring to the fact that Facebook has sometimes wrongfully taken down content meant to draw attention to racism and discrimination.
As Murphy noted in her report, “the definition and policing of hate speech and harassment on the platform has long been an area of concern. The civil rights community also claims that a lack of civil rights expertise informing content decisions leads to vastly different outcomes for users from marginalized communities.”
Facebook now says it’s taking steps to address this. One step, Sandberg says, is to have some content reviewers focus just on hate speech.
“We believe allowing reviewers to specialize only in hate speech could help them further build the expertise that may lead to increased accuracy over time,” Sandberg wrote.
Additionally, Sandberg has formalized a civil rights task force at Facebook. This task force will live on beyond the audit in order to continue building more awareness around civil rights issues on Facebook.
And ahead of the upcoming presidential election, Facebook says it is working on new protections against voter interference and is adding a policy that prohibits “don’t vote” ads. That policy is expected to go into effect before the 2019 gubernatorial election. On the census side, Facebook is working on an interference policy that it expects to launch this fall.
In March of this year, Facebook settled with the ACLU and others pertaining to discriminatory job ads. Just days later, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said Facebook was in violation of the Fair Housing Act through its ad-targeting tools. This case is still pending.
In the meantime, Facebook has since begun working on a new system so that advertisers running US housing, employment and credit ads will no longer be able to target by age, gender, race, religion or zip code.
When this system launches, there will be a limited number of options by which to target. Additionally, Facebook won’t make any new terms available without first running it by the ACLU and the other plaintiffs from the March 2019 settlement.
In order to implement this new system, Facebook will ask advertisers to explicitly note if the ad involves housing, employment or credit opportunities. If it does, advertisers will be directed to the new system. Facebook is also putting tools in place to identify ads that advertisers failed to flag.
Additionally, Facebook is working on a tool that will let users search active housing ads by the advertiser and by location, whether or not they are in the target audience. This is expected to be available by the end of this year. Down the road, Facebook plans to make similar tools available for employment and credit opportunities.
“Given how critical access to housing, employment and credit opportunities are, this could have a significant impact on people’s lives,” Murphy wrote in her progress report.
This audit began in May 2018 following one scandal after the other pertaining to misinformation, and Facebook’s policies and people of color on its platform. The first six months entailed Murphy conducting interviews with civil rights organizations to determine their concerns. This last six months largely focused on content moderation and enforcement. The civil rights audit is far from over, and Facebook says we can expect to see the next update early next year.
How journalists, researchers, and civil rights groups are using big data, which put gerrymandering on steroids, to easily and cheaply track redistricting (Louise Matsakis/Wired)
How journalists, researchers, and civil rights groups are using big data, which put gerrymandering on steroids, to easily and cheaply track redistricting — THE SUPREME COURT'S conservative justices ruled Thursday that the highest court doesn't have the power to address partisan gerrymandering …
ETtech Top 5: Paytm's profitability push, Investors eye social commerce startups & more
NSAB comes up with traceability to help WhatsApp
Malls stands tall despite the rise of online retail
Shell out fee on Paytm transactions from today
Japan will tighten restrictions on export of materials used in smartphone displays and chips to South Korea from July 4, over a dispute about war-time labor (Makiko Yamazaki/Reuters)
Japan will tighten restrictions on export of materials used in smartphone displays and chips to South Korea from July 4, over a dispute about war-time labor — TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan will tighten restrictions on the export of high-tech materials used in smartphone displays and chips …
Helo chases creators to meet 100 million user target
Asus 6Z 128GB, 256GB Variants to Go on Sale for First Time Today
CoinMarketCap acquihires the team of Hashtag Capital, which started as a crypto trading fund, to improve the easily faked volume-weighted crypto price estimates (Daniel Palmer/CoinDesk)
CoinMarketCap acquihires the team of Hashtag Capital, which started as a crypto trading fund, to improve the easily faked volume-weighted crypto price estimates — As its bid to improve its crypto data offering continues, CoinMarketCap is snapping up a firm building technology said to provide a “true price” for cryptocurrencies.
Anthropic cuts its list of unauthorized secondary market sellers from eight to four after the initial notice caused panic and pushback from investors (Yazhou Sun/Bloomberg)
Yazhou Sun / Bloomberg : Anthropic cuts its list of unauthorized secondary market sellers from eight to four after the initial notice cau...
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Sohee Kim / Bloomberg : South Korean authorities are investigating a data leak at e-commerce giant Coupang that exposed ~33.7M accounts; ...
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The first project we remember working on together was drawing scenes from the picture books that our mom brought with her when she immigrate...
