Shelf Engine, a startup that helps grocery stores reduce food waste with data-driven shelf stocking optimizations, raises $12M Series A from Initialized and GGV — For the first few months it was operating, Shelf Engine, the Seattle-based company that optimizes the process of stocking store shelves …
Twitter announced Tuesday that many accounts spreading the pervasive right-wing conspiracy theory known as QAnon would no longer be welcome on its platform.
Citing concerns about “offline harm,” the company explained that it would begin treating QAnon content on the platform differently, removing related topics from its trending pages and algorithmic recommendations and blocking any associated URLs. Twitter also said that it would permanently suspend any accounts tweeting about QAnon that have previously been suspended, coordinate harassment against individuals or amplify identical content across multiple accounts.
Twitter says the enforcement will go into effect this week and that the company would continue to provide transparency and additional context as it makes related platform policy choices going forward. According to a Twitter spokesperson, the company believes its action will affect 150,000 accounts and more than 7,000 QAnon-related accounts have already been removed for breaking the rules around platform manipulation, evading a ban and spam.
QAnon emerged in the Trump era and the conspiracy’s adherents generally fervently support the president, making frequent appearances at his rallies and other pro-Trump events. QAnon’s supporters believe that President Trump is waging a hidden battle against a secretive elite known as the Deep State. In their eyes, that secret battle produces many, many clues that they claim are encoded in messages sprinkled across anonymous online accounts and hinted at by the president himself.
QAnon is best known for its connection to Pizzagate, a baseless conspiracy that accused Hillary Clinton of running a sex trafficking ring out of a Washington D.C. pizza place. The conspiracy inspired an armed believer to show up to the pizza shop, where he fired a rifle inside the restaurant, though no one was injured.
While the conspiracy theory is elaborate, odd, and mostly incoherent, it’s been popping up in other mainstream places. Last week, Ed Mullins, the head of one of New York City’s most prominent police unions, spoke live on Fox News with a mug featuring the QAnon logo within clear view of the camera. In Oregon, a QAnon supporter won her primary to become the state’s Republican nominee for the Senate.
Kantar: Amazon spent $6.9B on US advertising in 2019, making it the top US ad spender, ahead of Comcast's $6.1B, AT&T's $5.5B, P&G's $4.3B, and Disney's $3.2B — Amazon spent nearly $7 billion on U.S. advertising in 2019, making it the top ad spender in the country, according to a new analysis from Kantar featured in AdAge.
Bangladesh's regulator orders telcos and ISPs to stop providing free access to social media in zero-rating deals, citing criminal misuse by some users — Bangladesh's regulator has ordered telecom operators and other internet providers in the nation to stop providing free access to social media services …
In crackdown, Twitter says it will limit reach of QAnon content and permanently suspend accounts violating policies, banning 7K+ QAnon accounts in last 2 weeks — Twitter announced on Tuesday it has begun taking sweeping actions to limit the reach of QAnon content and banned …
Indonesia-based ride-hailing company and “super app” Gojek said today that it has named a new chief technology officer. Severan Rault, who previously held leadership positions at Amazon and Microsoft, takes over the role from Ajey Gore, who announced last month he was leaving for personal reasons.
In a statement, the company said Rault will oversee Gojek’s engineering teams in Southeast Asia and India and report to co-chief executive officer Kevin Aluwi.
Rault has a long history of leading engineering teams at large tech companies, as well as his own startups.
Before joining Gojek, Rault worked at Betawave, a virtual reality studio he founded in 2016. During his stint at Amazon, Rault was one of the founders of Prime Air, the company’s drone delivery program. At Microsoft, he was the principal architect of Bing, the company’s search engine. Rault’s other experience include founding Kikker Interactive, a wireless solutions provider that was acquired by Microsoft in 2008.
Rault’s appointment comes at a critical time for Gojek as it faces competition from rival Grab and deals with the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. Last month, Gojek said it was laying off 430 employees, or about 9% of its workforce, and closing GoLife, its lifestyle services division, to focus on its core payments, transportation and food delivery businesses as part of its long-term response to the pandemic.
Founded in 2010 as a motorcycle ride-hailing company, Gojek has since transformed itself into a “super app” that offers online payments and a roster of on-demand services, including transportation, ecommerce deliveries and logistics. Gojek recently added Facebook and PayPal to a list of high-profile investors, including Google and Tencent.
Gojek disclosed in March that it is valued at $10 billion and now has over 170 million users, but it faces fierce rivalry from Grab, another Southeast Asian on-demand ride-hailing and logistics platform that is also building an online financial services business. With a valuation of $14 billion, Grab is the larger company. Earlier this year, reports emerged that the two were discussing a merger, which Gojek denied and Grab declined to comment on.
In statement, Rault said, “It is a time like no other to be at Gojek. The company is entering a critical phase as it moves from startup to maturation and it’s special to be a part of that. Building systems and processes for a business of Gojek’s scale and complexity is a challenge one rarely enjoys in their career and I’m grateful for the opportunity.”
A new policy-focused nonprofit that emerged from the recent wave of big tech scrutiny is calling for members of Facebook’s Oversight Board to either step up or step down. In an open letter, Accountable Tech urges the five U.S.-based Facebook Oversight Board members to “demand the Board be given real authority” or quit their positions.
“Each of you were selected to serve on this Board because of your outspoken commitment to free expression, human rights, and democratic values,” the letter’s authors write. “Now is the time to uphold those principles. We humbly ask that you refuse to be complicit in this Facebook charade –– that you demand sweeping and immediate changes, or walk away.”
Accountable Tech is a progressive project founded by grassroots campaign organizer and director of the 2017 Tax March Nicole Gill and Jesse Lehrich, who served as foreign policy spokesperson for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid. Lehrich worked on the Clinton campaign’s response to Russian disinformation efforts that year, giving him a front row seat to emerging online threats to U.S. elections.
“Facebook specializes in window dressing,” Gill told TechCrunch. “They have been touting the Oversight Board for years as this grandiose solution, but the platform’s problems are more urgent than ever, and the Board is powerless.”
A handful of other groups also signed the open letter, including the Center For American Progress Action Fund, Free Press and the Sierra Club. The letter cites findings from Facebook’s recent civil rights audit that cast doubt on the board’s real power and also notes the oversight body’s delayed timeline. First announced in late 2018, the board won’t be up and running in time for the 2020 election.
Because it is ostensibly tasked with making decisions about what content should be removed from Facebook and Instagram, in theory the board could have played a role in ridding those platforms of election-related misinformation — a looming threat with November around the corner. But restrictive bylaws coupled with a focus on reviewing content takedowns rather than content left up meant the oversight effort was widely regarded as toothless from the outset.
Board aside, Facebook is making some efforts to at least disseminate useful voting information to users, a defensive posture the company feels more comfortable in compared to playing offense against potential rule breaking. Last week, the company rolled out info labels that link to vetted election information on all voting-related posts from federal elected officials, a feature that will soon expand to all voting posts in the U.S.
In early June, Accountable Tech launched a memorable Facebook ad campaign targeting the company’s employees on their own platform. The ads, which urged Facebook workers to hold the company to account, came a day after some employees staged a virtual walkout to protest a now-infamous post in which the president threatened to shoot people protesting the police killing of George Floyd.
Facebook also faced scrutiny recently for hosting Trump’s false claims about mail-in voting and those falsehoods remain live on the platform without context or correction. These instances and others are cause for concern as the stakes for social platforms during the 2020 election inch higher and higher, worries made explicit by the open letter’s authors.
“As we enter an unprecedented election season—amid a global pandemic, an inflection point for racial justice, and a crisis of truth—we cannot accept Facebook’s toxic status quo, much less a toothless Oversight Board that lends it a false air of legitimacy.”
Jared Perlo / NBC News : A US bill seeks to ban exports of DUV lithography tech to China, whose imports of chipmaking equipment reportedl...
