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Forget Peak TV. We’re living in an age of Peak Content, period. There are so many cool shows and movies and games and weird internet videos you could consume at any given moment […]
The post British Bakers and American Spies: Let Geek Tell You What to Watch This Weekend appeared first on Geek.com.
For the past few Geek Picks we’ve been letting you know all about the promising upcoming products Logitech showed at its recent holiday preview. And for this last post on that event we […]
The post GEEK PICK: All of the Logitech Audio Stuff appeared first on Geek.com.
After starting off strong last week, the world of science-fiction had a bit of slump. Luckily the lack of glittering awards ceremonies made me ask what other aspects of the sci-fi genre would […]
The post The Best in Sci-Fi Books This Week (8/31/18) appeared first on Geek.com.
Apple AirPods Wireless Bluetooth Eartphones (New) for $144.99 These Airpods are as small as you can get for wireless headphones. They have great audio quality and inline controls for Apple devices. Best of […]
The post Daily Geek Deals: Apple AirPods, Spider-Man PS4 Pro Limited Edition, Bowflex, and More appeared first on Geek.com.
Is Searching good? It’s excellent! Seriously? Yes. The one that’s like Taken but the dad is just Googling stuff? Yes, but that’s not really a fair description of the film. It’s a combination […]
The post MovieBob Reviews: SEARCHING (2018) appeared first on Geek.com.
Physical board and card games are great fun, but the appeal of digital versions is hard to deny. No time spent setting up or taking down, no space constraints, and bringing a smartphone […]
The post Geek Deals: Get Digital Tabletop Games for $1 with Humble Bundle appeared first on Geek.com.
Last weekend I took my family to see Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Morgan Neville’s brilliant documentary about the life and work of Fred “Mr.” Rogers. As a true early 80s kid, it […]
The post We’re All Neighbors Now: Mr. Rogers and YouTube Culture appeared first on Geek.com.
Earlier this month, WhatsApp announced the launch of its first revenue-generating enterprise product, the WhatsApp Business API. The API allows businesses to respond to messages from WhatsApp users for free up to 24 hours, then charges for any responses after that point on a per message basis. Though still in a limited preview, the company is now supporting around 100 businesses directly on its API platform, including airlines, e-commerce companies, banks, and others like Uber and Netflix, and plans to onboard many more in the months ahead.
Because businesses have to first apply to gain access the API, there’s some misinformation floating around on backchannels about how to get approved.
For example, some industry sources have been telling partners that no U.S.-based businesses are being onboarded to the API at this point. This is untrue, WhatsApp says. In fact, there’s a public site where U.S. companies Uber and Wish are featured as “customer stories.” We also understand that U.S.-based Netflix is testing the API, though not for use in the U.S. for the time being.
Others listed on WhatsApp’s website include Booking.com, MakeMyTrip, B2W, iFood, Singapore Airlines, Melia Hotels, KLM, Bank BRI, absa, Coppel, and Sale Stock.
WhatsApp isn’t limiting access to the API based on where companies are located, it says, nor does it have requirements for those businesses – like how many messages they need to send per month.
The latter is another piece of misinformation out there, as businesses try to decipher who’s getting in. Some have been saying that API customers need to send at least 100,000 messages a month, if they expect WhatsApp to approve them during this preview phase. This is inaccurate, WhatsApp says.
There’s no requirement related to the number of messages being sent. Although the API is intended to be used by larger businesses, some today are using it for customer service which often means they’re receiving more messages than they’re sending, the company noted.
The API is now how WhatsApp generates revenue, as it ditched its subscription fee years ago. That’s why it’s worth tracking its progress. Businesses can also buy Facebook News Feed ads that launch customers into WhatsApp conversations they can respond to.
WhatsApp officially launched its Business app at the beginning of the year, which makes sense for smaller companies, and then rolled out the API this summer for the larger ones.
Bringing businesses into the WhatsApp ecosystem is a significant shift for the Facebook-owned company, as it turns what’s been a place where family and friends communicate into a place of business.
With that delicate balance in mind, WhatsApp says that businesses cannot reach out to customers using the API without the customers’ specific permission.
Instead, the API is designed to allow businesses to respond to customer inquiries, or provide them with other information they’ve requested. For example, an airline may send a boarding pass via the API; an e-commerce business may send a receipt; a bank may send over a bank statement.
Uber is using WhatsApp with its drivers to all them to connect to members of its team about questions and Netflix is sending account messages and suggestions as a part of its test.
Further down the road, the API could enable other types of customer interactions as well, like handling two-factor authentication requests, perhaps, instead of using SMS. But that’s not happening at present.
WhatsApp says there are now around 100 companies globally on the API platform.
The company is also working with a dozen or so solution providers. Businesses like VoiceSage, Nexmo, Infobip, Twilio, MessageBird, Smooch, Zendesk, and others are already advertising their services in this area.
Companies interested in gaining access to the API can work with one of the solution providers or sign up directly via the WhatsApp website.
As WhatsApp brings on more businesses, it’s only vetting requirement of sorts is that it’s looking for those interested in creating quality experiences for customers, the company says.
Of course, even the invited intrusion of businesses into WhatsApp changes the nature of the platform.
As users invite more businesses to communicate with them, WhatsApp may start to feel like more like an email inbox or even a Twitter-like support channel.
Making sure there are easy-to-find settings that let users terminate their connections with businesses will be just as critical as the API becomes more widely adopted going forward.
The International Space Station’s cabin pressure is holding steady after the Expedition 56 crew repaired an air leak on one of two Russian Soyuz spacecraft. A teeny tear in the fabric of the […]
The post ISS Pressure ‘Steady’ After Crew Repair Air Leak appeared first on Geek.com.
Vending machines dispense everything from chocolate bars and soda cans to full-sized books and live fishing bait. And, for all your carnivorous needs, locally sourced raw meat. Applestone Meat Company—from husband-and-wife team Joshua […]
The post 24/7 Meat Vending Machines Are a Glorious Thing appeared first on Geek.com.
In the year and half since I wrote this feature outlining just why I dislike the roguelike genre, I’ve played a lot more roguelikes. That’s because randomly generated, mechanics-heavy, permadeath games are a […]
The post Into the Breach and the Few Good Roguelikes appeared first on Geek.com.
As a child, I had a recurring nightmare that my dad was being chased by a hungry shark, and all I could do was stand on the end of an empty pier and […]
The post Two Genes Regulate How Much Humans Dream appeared first on Geek.com.
North America’s first (reported) sex doll brothel just got cockblocked. A week before Aura Dolls was scheduled to open its always-open den of high-tech iniquity in a Toronto strip mall, city officials shut […]
The post Plans for Toronto Sex Doll Brothel Thwarted appeared first on Geek.com.
You don’t have enough useful or funny feeds clogging your social media. We’re here to change that. Welcome to Geek.com’s Follow This, a weekly highlight of feeds and channels you should be following. […]
The post Follow This: Summoning Salt (YouTube Channel) appeared first on Geek.com.
Labor Day sales have hit very hard this year, and we’re seeing discounts on all sorts of gear. From the high-end gaming phone from Razer to 1440p monitors to tool kits, online retailers […]
The post Geek Deals: $150 off Razer 120Hz Gaming Phone, $10 Mystery Box appeared first on Geek.com.
For a time, we couldn’t touch our screens at all. Well we could, but it wouldn’t do anything besides leave a smudge. Then came resistive touchscreen technology letting us interact with our display […]
The post GEEK PICK: Logitech Crayon appeared first on Geek.com.
Recently, we were privy to a few early looks at what could potentially be Adidas’s upcoming Adidas x Dragon Ball Z sneakers. They were, in a word, awful. Grab some eye bleach and […]
The post These Dragon Ball Z x Adidas Kamanda “Majin Buu” Sneakers Are Actually Pretty Dope appeared first on Geek.com.
iBUYPOWER Intel i7 8700 6-Core GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Gaming Desktop with 8GB RAM and 1TB HDD for $1166 Where else can you get an Intel Core i7-8700 6-core GTX 1070 Ti equipped […]
The post Daily Geek Deals: $150 off Star Wars X-Wing Quadcopter Drone, Gloomhaven Board Game for $140 and More appeared first on Geek.com.
Scientists have discovered four new species of ancient parasitic wasps dating back many millenia. New research, published this week in the journal Nature Communications, provides the first set of definite proof of endoparasitism […]
The post Chestburster Wasps Named After ‘Alien’ Alien appeared first on Geek.com.
Twitter continues to roll out new policies aimed at increasing transparency, particularly around political advertising.
Amidst ongoing concerns about Russian election interference and misinformation on social media, the company recently announced political ad guidelines and launched an Ads Transparency Center where you can find more information about advertisers.
Initially, however, Twitter’s stricter standards were limited to ads for U.S. federal election candidates and campaigns. Now it’s announced a policy around the broader category of “issue ads.”
In a blog post, Twitter’s vice president of trust and safety Del Harvey and its general manager of revenue product Bruce Falck said the policy affects two categories:
* Ads that refer to an election or a clearly identified candidate, or
* Ads that advocate for legislative issues of national importance
In both cases, advertisers will need to apply for certification, which involves verifying their identity and location in the United States. Like election ads, issue ads will be labeled as such in the Twitter timeline, and they’ll allow users to click through and learn more about the advertiser. They’ll also be included in the Ads Transparency center.
As examples of the kinds of issues that would be covered, Harvey and Falck cited “abortion, civil rights, climate change, guns, healthcare, immigration, national security, social security, taxes, and trade,” though they also said that list will likely evolve over time.
News organizations that want to run ads around their political coverage can apply for an exemption. (Since the definition of what is and isn’t a news organization can be blurry, there are specific criteria that they’d need to meet, like providing editorial staff information online and not being “dedicated to advocating on a single issue.”)
“We don’t believe that news organizations running ads on Twitter that report on these issues, rather than advocate for or against them, should be subject to this policy,” Harvey and Falck wrote.
Twitter says it will start enforcing the policy (which, to be clear, is currently U.S.-only) on September 30.
I truly believe cosplay is for everyone and fully support what makes you feel good in your character. But as much as I love it, it can be a costly hobby. I’m fortunate […]
The post Closet Cosplay: Black Widow Undercover – Civil War appeared first on Geek.com.
After years of bouncing around different streaming services, there’s finally one place where you can watch all the classic 1990s Nickelodeon your slimy heart desires. VRV.co just added NickSplat to their offerings bringing […]
The post 10 Best Classic Nickelodeon Episodes on NickSplat appeared first on Geek.com.
As overall beer sales continue to decline across the country, manufacturers are being forced to get creative with their products. But is the latest trend—cannabis-infused brews—more trouble than it’s worth? As MarketWatch pointed […]
The post You’ll Have to Travel to Canada for Weed Beer appeared first on Geek.com.
An international team of astronomers this week revealed new details about a “monster galaxy” 12.4 billion light years away. Scientists from Japan, Mexico, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst uncovered previously unknown structural […]
The post Astronomers Make High-Res Gas Map of ‘Monster’ Galaxy appeared first on Geek.com.
“For AMANDA CASSIDY, the popular eSport Renegade Rule is her life’s passion, and she dreams of going pro on the global circuit. She lives and breathes the game and even has a not-so-secret […]
The post Renegade Rule Dominates eSports and Friendship for an Epic Win appeared first on Geek.com.
Some 3,000 Americans die each year of foodborne maladies—many of which could be prevented with soap, water, and a good scrub. Just 30 seconds of handwashing—what the Center for Disease Control called the […]
The post Wash, Dry, Scan: Device Detects Disease-Causing Germs on Hands appeared first on Geek.com.
The future of the DC movie universe largely rests on Aquaman, Wonder Woman and Shazam!, oddly enough. Movies that look fun, colorful and awe-inspiring just like the comics they’re based on. Everything we’ve seen from those […]
The post Batman Loses a Dad Again, Another Ben Affleck Update & More DC Movie News appeared first on Geek.com.
Facebook moderators temporarily removed a post by the Anne Frank Center which was seeking to raise awareness about the Holocaust, after the company was unable to distinguish between historical genocide and child nudity.
The post included an archive photograph of Jewish children who had been stripped and starved by Nazi Germany.
Between 1941 and 1945 the German state imprisoned and murdered millions of Jews in concentration and death camps — the child Anne Frank, who the Center is named after, being just one of them.
Frank died in 1945, aged 15, after her hiding place in Amsterdam had been uncovered. She was taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where, seven months later, she died of typhus.
In school history class as a teenager I remember being shown similar footage of the emaciated bodies of Jewish people starved and murdered during the Holocaust.
It’s not the kind of imagery you forget. It is terrible. Haunting. It is a shame of history, not pornography.
Facebook moderators apparently cannot tell the difference.
Around six hours after the Center complained on Twitter that the post had been taken down, Facebook reinstated it.
In a tweet replying to the Center’s complaint the company explains its actions, saying “we don’t allow nude images of children”, before ending with an apology for making the wrong decision in this case — owing to the image having “important historical significance”.
It wrote: “We put your post back up and sent you a message on FB. We don’t allow nude images of children on FB, but we know this is an important image of historical significance and we’ve restored it. We’re sorry and thank you for bringing it to our attention.”
If you’re getting an acute sense of deja-vu that’s because Facebook has similarly failed to understand historical context before — when, for example, in 2016 its moderators took down an iconic war photo of a child fleeing a napalm attack in Vietnam in 1972.
The violence had also stripped that child — clothing her with terror.
Again Facebook’s moderators simply couldn’t tell. So they scrubbed historical record from the platform. An outcry was necessary to reinstate it.
Called on that crime against history, Facebook described its moderating decision as a mistake — saying “we intend to do better”.
Two years later there’s no sign it’s living up to that stated intent.
Running the world’s biggest content platform without editorial oversight and with woefully under-resourced moderation is indeed a very hard problem. One that AI cannot hope to solve in any near or short term framework — if ever. Context is king for a reason.
The kicker here is that company founder Mark Zuckerberg continues to choose to provide a platform for Holocaust deniers on Facebook.
He could choose to ban Holocaust denial — which is, after all, an attack on both history and the Jewish people. But he prefers not to. He’s not for banning, unless it’s nudity. (Classic art nudes included, at times.)
And so we arrive at the tragi-ridiculous pass of true historical imagery of the Holocaust being scrubbed from Facebook — while vicious lies about the Holocaust are allowed to stand and swirl and take root via Facebook.
That’s what running a content platform without a moral compass looks like.
We asked Facebook to explain why it took down a post by the Anne Frank Center that was seeking to raise awareness about the Holocaust yet refuses to take down posts by Holocaust deniers who are seeking to undermine historical truth.
A company representative pointed us to its earlier response to the Center — but did not engage with our question.
Update: The Center has now sent us the following statement regarding Facebook’s actions:
Our original post was to draw attention to the fact that the Holocaust
is woefully undertaught across the USA and that ignorance on what
happened is a direct result of this. We have been working with
numerous state representatives across the nation to mandate K-12
Holocaust education through our 50-State Genocide Education project.While Facebook removes the AFC’s post promoting the need to educate on
the past, it continues to allow pages and posts that directly deny the
reality of the deaths of more than six million people.Holocaust denial dehumanizes people. It makes thousands feel unsafe.
It violates the very standards Facebook lays out for it users. Yet
these hate-filled propaganda pages remain.We have written to Facebook previously offering to work with them to
tackle the spread of Holocaust denial and hate on its platform and to
promote education.If Facebook is serious about its community standards it should start
tackling Holocaust denial and not the organizations who are trying to
educate people on discrimination, facts, and history.We understand the difficulty in assessing the context of potentially
controversial content. That said, it shouldn’t have taken us publicly
calling out Facebook to restore our post. Hopefully, Facebook can
revise their protocols.
We understand that the Center’s post was originally published on Facebook on August 21, before being taken down by Facebook moderators on August 27 — before subsequently being reinstated.
Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey and Facebook chief operations officer Sheryl Sandberg will testify in an open hearing at the Senate Intelligence Committee next week, the committee’s chairman has confirmed.
Larry Page, chief executive of Google parent company Alphabet, was also invited but has not confirmed his attendance, a committee spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch.
Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) said in a release that the social media giants will be asked about their responses to foreign influence operations on their platforms in an open hearing on September 5.
It will be the second time the Senate Intelligence Committee, which oversees the government’s intelligence and surveillance efforts, will have called the companies to testify. But it will be the first time that senior leadership will attend — though, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg did attend a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing in April.
It comes in the wake of Twitter and Facebook recently announcing the suspension of accounts from their platforms that they believe to be linked to Iranian and Russian political meddling. Social media companies have been increasingly under the spotlight in the past years following Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election with disinformation.
A Twitter spokesperson said the company didn’t yet have details to share on the committee’s prospective questions. TechCrunch also reached out to Google and Facebook for comment and will update when we hear back.
Make room in your DNA—next to the family vacation photos and entire text of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy“—to store your cryptocurrency fortune. Startup Carverr invites bitcoin miners to protect their digital […]
The post Store Your Bitcoin Fortune in DNA appeared first on Geek.com.
It’s time for more fashion-forward nerd outerwear with Volante Design’s Superhuman Streetwear! This time we’re looking at some modern-day assassin gear with the Augment-H2 hoodie. It’s a hooded sweatshirt, and it looks great. […]
The post Geek Pick: Volante Design Augment-H2 Hoodie appeared first on Geek.com.
One of the coolest hooks for a DC superhero story to me has been JLA: Tower Babel. In this comic, Ra’s Al Ghul steals Batman’s secret files containing the strengths and weakness of […]
The post DC Comics: Anatomy of a Metahuman Is a Superhero Textbook appeared first on Geek.com.
Goats, like most humans, prefer to interact with happy people, according to a new study. Scientists at Queen Mary University of London found that goats favor smiling faces over angry ones. While that […]
The post Goats Can Comprehend Human Expressions, Prefer Happy People appeared first on Geek.com.
50″ Sharp LC-50Q7030U 4K Smart HDTV for $279.99 If you want a big TV without breaking your budget, here’s a 50″ 4K Smart-enabled HDTV for well under $300, plus you get free shipping. […]
The post Daily Geek Deals: 50″ 4K Smart HDTV for Under $300, 23% off Batman Complete Animated Series and More appeared first on Geek.com.
Twitter: @moby_dickhead Instagram: @adamtots TeePublic: @adamtots Love Adam’s work? Preorder his new book ‘Super Chill: A Year of Living Anxiously’ right here. And you can see all of Adam’s work for Geek in one spot. Let us know what […]
The post AdamTots Presents: Good Good Tentacle Boys appeared first on Geek.com.
A British cave diving expert who helped save the young Thai football team that got trapped in caves this summer is preparing a legal action against Elon Musk for making “false and defamatory statements”, TechCrunch has confirmed.
BuzzFeed reported the development earlier, after obtaining a letter sent to Musk’s home on August 6 by a firm representing the diver, Vernon Unsworth.
The background here is that in a highly offensive and extremely bizarre episode last month — even for the famously ‘loose cannon online’ Musk — the Tesla and SpaceX CEO took to Twitter to attack Unsworth, branding him a “pedo guy”.
The bizarre attack came after Unsworth had given a critical interview to the media saying the mini sub which Musk had designed and brought to Thailand “had absolutely no chance of working”. Unsworth ended an interview segment by suggesting Musk should “stick his submarine where it hurts” — a tongue-in-cheek phrase which apparently triggered Musk’s Twitter outburst.
Facing a backlash over his comments about a man who had successfully helped rescue the boys, Musk subsequently deleted the offensive tweets and quasi-apologized for slurring Unsworth in a further set of tweets, on July 18, though these were only posted within a Twitter thread, rather than being broadcast to his ~22.4M Twitter followers.
At the time Musk said Unsworth’s comment had angered him, and that had made him lash out, but he also added: “Nonetheless, his actions against me do not justify my actions against him, and for that I apologize to Mr. Unsworth and to the companies I represent as leader. The fault is mine and mine alone.”
The public element of the episode might have ended there but earlier this week Musk dredged it all up again by repeating his offensive insinuation against Unsworth during a debate with ex-TechCrunch journalist Drew Olanoff — who had brought up the “pedo guy” attack as an example of Musk himself telling untruths.
Yet instead of reiterating his apology to Unsworth, Musk doubled down on his original offensive attack — writing: “You don’t think it’s strange he hasn’t sued me? He was offered free legal services.”
To which Olanoff replied: “What I think is especially strange here is that you’re wondering why he hasn’t sued you while the rest of us are wondering why you did something so egregious that he could sue you for in the first place.”
We contacted the law firm for confirmation that it is representing Mr Unsworth in a defamation suit against Musk. Partner Lin Wood was unavailable to speak about the matter when we called but he confirmed via email that the firm is representing Unsworth in a defamation suit against Musk, and that it is preparing a legal action.
In the letter sent by the firm to Musk’s home earlier this month Wood informs Musk he has been retained by Unsworth on account of the defamatory statements made by Musk on Twitter alleging that he is a pedophile.
Wood also writes that he is preparing a civil complaint of libel and invites Musk to contact him “in an attempt to avoid litigation and to see the public record corrected”.
It’s not clear whether or not Musk had seen the letter at the time of his tweets to Olanoff.
We’ve reached out to Musk (via Twitter) for comment on the legal action and to ask whether he will be withdrawing his repeat allegation against Unsworth. We’ll update this story with any response.
The Tesla CEO’s erratic behavior online has caused other high profile headaches for his companies in recent weeks, after he tweeted about taking Tesla private — triggering wild swings in the stock price and scrutiny (and potential problems) from the Securities and Exchange Commission, only for the idea to be nixed weeks later.
The associated risks for shareholders in a public company whose CEO uses Twitter as a weapon to indulge personal spats and feuds — and to spitball major business decisions — without, apparently, any thought for the legal and reputational consequences for him or his companies, are hard to quantify but equally difficult to deny.
Researchers have fully 3D-printed an array of light receptors on a hemispherical surface. In layman’s terms: We are one step closer to creating a “bionic eye.” The groundbreaking discovery is described in a […]
The post Researchers 3D-Print Bionic Eye Prototype appeared first on Geek.com.
I’m a fan of Japanese Role Playing Games but I’ve never gotten around to playing a Dragon Quest title. This is shameful considering how important the series is to the JRPG genre. This […]
The post Dragon Quest XI Is a Modern-Day JRPG Classic appeared first on Geek.com.
Facebook says it has corrected the issue of users’ deleted posts, which had affected those who had previously cross-posted their Tweets to their Facebook profile – a feature that’s no longer supported. Earlier this month, Facebook locked down its API to prevent third-party apps from being able to post to profiles as the logged-in user, and Twitter was one of those apps impacted by the change.
However, the changes to Facebook’s API would not have mass deleted all of users’ cross-posted Tweets. It should have only prevented Twitter users from continuing to automatically post from Twitter to their Facebook profile or business page.
But Twitter, for whatever reason – an accident, one would hope – requested its Facebook app be deleted. This resulted in removals of all the content that had been cross-posted by Twitter to Facebook being also deleted from users’ profiles.
Facebook was in touch with Twitter since then, and received permission to have the app re-enabled. (Though it took longer than expected – Twitter was made aware of the problem early in the evening on Tuesday but it wasn’t until the wee hours of the morning on Wednesday that Facebook confirmed it was restoring the content – which means they received permission from Twitter to do so. Obviously, Facebook can’t just turn on a third-party app again after the developer says to take it down – it had to ask. Twitter, we understand, didn’t give Facebook immediate permission to fix the problem. Maybe it’s still mad about the whole cross-posting thing being turned off?)
While, technically speaking, the error is on Twitter’s side here, Facebook probably should have had some kind of warning in place to alert the app developers – whomever they may be – of the consequences of their decisions. That is, deleting their app would also delete all the content shared through it over the years.
Many Twitter users had heavily relied on the cross-posting feature to maintain their presence on Facebook and continue their discussions with a new audience. The deletions meant they lost years’ worth of Facebook posts and conversations, in many cases.
Facebook says it has restored all the removed content, a spokesperson told TechCrunch via email around 1:20 AM ET on Wednesday. All impacted users should be able to see their cross-posts tweets and their discussions again.
Okay, this is going to take some context for the non-weebs out there. Tenga is a Japanese company that manufactures sex toys, particularly “onaholes” (male stimulation aids). Good Smile is another Japanese company […]
The post Good Smile’s Tenga Robot Is a Sex Toy Robot Toy appeared first on Geek.com.
Facebook Watch, the social network’s home to original video content and answer to YouTube, is now becoming available worldwide. The Watch tab had first launched last August, only in the U.S., and now touts over 50 million monthly viewers who watch at least a minute of video within Watch. Since the beginning of the year, total time spent viewing videos in Watch is up by 14x, says Facebook.
The company has continued to add more social features to Watch over the past year, including participatory viewing experiences like Watch Parties, Premiers, and those with audience involvement, like an HQ Trivia competitor, Confetti, built on the new gameshow platform.
Watch also offers basic tools for discovery, saving videos for later viewing, and lets users customize a feed of videos from Facebook Pages they follow.
Along with international availability, Facebook is introducing “Ad Breaks” to more publishers. These can be either mid-roll or pre-roll ads, or images below the video. Publishers can either insert the ads themselves or use Facebook’s automated ad insertion features. Facebook says 70+ percent of mid-roll ads are viewed to completion.
Ad Breaks are now offered to creators who publish 3-minute videos that generate over 30,000 1-minute views in total over the past 2 months; who have 10,000 Facebook followers or more; who are in a supported country; and who meet other eligibility criteria.
Supported countries today include the U.S., UK, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. Next month, that list will expand to include Argentina, Belgium, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, The Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Thailand, supporting English content and other local languages. More countries and languages will then follow.
Also new today is the global launch of Creator Studio, where Pages can manage their entire content library and business. This includes the ability to search across their library to view post-level details and insights, as well as manage interactions across Pages, Facebook Messages, comments, and Instagram. Other tools here focus on using Ad Breaks, viewing monetization and payments, and publishing the videos.
The Creator Studio is also seeing the addition of a new metric on audience retention added now, allowing publishers to better program their content.
YouTube, too, also this year launched an updated version of its Creator Studio, now called YouTube Studio, offering similar analytics for its own network.
Facebook isn’t the only one making a play for YouTube’s creators – Amazon’s Twitch has been offering deals to woo creators to its game-streaming site, a recent report claimed.
“Our goal is to provide publishers and creators with the tools they need to build a business on Facebook,” the company said in an announcement. “Facebook’s Fostering an active, engaged community and sharing longer content that viewers seek out and regularly come back to are key to finding success,” it noted.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” doesn’t apply to the DIY age, where people pay less and make more. Dissatisfied with the existing lineup of commercial music players, maker Bram built their […]
The post Make Your Own Raspberry Pi-Powered Portable Music Player appeared first on Geek.com.
“Ten-year-old fraternal twin Dylan Sandifer and her family have fallen down a rabbit hole full of secret implants, conspiracy theories, Mandela effects, extradimensional invaders, and organ thieves. As the attacks against them intensify, […]
The post Buy This Comic: HOUSE AMOK #1 appeared first on Geek.com.
Activists are calling for global support of a law to ban fully autonomous weapons systems—”before it’s too late.” As talks on the issue resumed Monday in the UN, Amnesty International warned of a […]
The post Activists Want to Ban Killer Robots ‘Before It’s Too Late’ appeared first on Geek.com.
Japan continues to take the cake with the “coolest snacks anywhere” honor, and this particular kind of gum is only exemplary of what the country can come up with. BoingBoing reports on the […]
The post This Creepy Japanese Gum Is an Awesome Treat for Horror Buffs appeared first on Geek.com.
There were a lot of pretty big firsts back in 1978. NASA introduced its first female astronauts. Garfield started gracing the comics pages in American newspapers. Lego unveiled its first minifigs. That’s right, […]
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Facebook users are complaining the company has removed the cross-posted Tweets they had published to their profiles as Facebook updates. The posts’ removal took place following the recent API change that prevented Twitter users from continuing to automatically publish their Tweets to Facebook. According to the affected parties, both the Facebook posts themselves, as well as the conversation around those posts that had taken place directly on Facebook, are now gone. Reached for comment, Facebook says it’s aware of the issue and is looking into it.
TechCrunch was alerted to the problem by a reader who couldn’t find any information about the issue in Facebook’s Help Center. We’ve since confirmed the issue ourselves with several affected parties and confirmed it with Facebook.
Given the real-time nature of social media – and how difficult it is to pull up old posts – it’s possible that many of the impacted Facebook users have yet to realize their old posts have been removed.
In fact, we only found a handful of public complaints about the deletions, so far.
For example:
Above: selected complaints from Twitter about the data loss
Above: a comment on TechCrunch following our post on the API changes
Some of those who were impacted were very light Facebook users and had heavily relied on the cross-posting to keep their Facebook accounts active. As a result of the mass removals, their Facebook profiles are now fairly empty.
TechCrunch editor Matthew Panzarino is one of those here who was impacted. He points out that the ability to share tweets to Facebook was a useful way to reach people who weren’t on Twitter in order to continue a discussion with a different audience.
“I’ve had tweet cross-posting turned on for years, from the early days of it even existing. This just removed thousands of posts from my Facebook silently, with no warning,” Matthew told me. “Even though the posts didn’t originate on Facebook, I often had ongoing conversations about the posts once my Facebook friends (and audience) saw them. Many of them would never see them on Twitter either because they don’t follow me or they don’t use it,” he said.
“It’s wild to have all of that context just vanish,” he added.
As you may recall, Facebook earlier this month made a change to its API platform to prevent third-party apps from publishing posts to Facebook as the logged-in user. The change was a part of Facebook’s larger overhaul and lockdown of its API platform in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where as many as 87 million Facebook users had their data improperly harvested and shared.
Since then, Facebook has been trying to plug up the holes in its platform to prevent further data misuse. One of the changes it made was to stop third-parties from being able to post to Facebook as the logged-in user.
For existing apps, like Twitter, that permission was revoked on August 1, 2018.
Above: Twitter’s cross-posting feature, on the day it was disabled by the Facebook API change
Before the API changes, Twitter users were able to visit the “Apps” section from Twitter on the web, then authenticate with Facebook to have their tweets cross-posted to Facebook’s social network. One enabled, the tweets would appear on the user’s page as a Facebook post they had published, and their friends could then like and comment on the post as any other.
In theory, the API changes should only have prevented Twitter users from continuing to cross-post their tweets to Facebook automatically. It shouldn’t have also deleted the existing posts from Facebook users’ profiles and business users’ Facebook Pages.
This is a breach of trust from a company that’s in the process of trying to repair a broken trust with its users across a number of fronts, including data misuse. Regardless of whatever new policy is in effect around apps and how they can post to Facebook, no one would have ever expected that Facebook would actually remove their old posts without warning.
We’re hoping that the problem is a bug that Facebook can resolve, and not something that will result in permanent data loss.
Facebook tells us while it doesn’t have further information about the problem at this time, it should have more to share tonight or tomorrow about what’s being done.
Instagram is at last quenching the thirst of its thirsty, thirsty unverified users.
The company just introduced a trio of new features designed to make Instagram a generally safer and more authentic place to hang out (third-party 2FA — enable it!) and for the first time the platform now offers users a straightforward way to request verification.
On Instagram, blue check marks are fairly rare, even among pretty big brands and public figures. Getting verified on the platform has long been the stuff of legend — no one quite knows what goes on behind the scenes but knowing a guy doesn’t hurt. Remarkably, there’s even a super sketchy black market where people charge thousands of bucks to hook you up with verified status (or more likely to just rip you off). The whole thing has always been kind of mysterious, with little blue checks quietly sprinkled around in no discernible pattern.
It looks like those days are over. While it’s too early to tell if Instagram will be handing out more verified badges to users, they’ve at least made the process much more transparent. Now, any user can request to be verified with a few steps. As a note: In our testing, the option to request verification is live now in iOS but hasn’t yet popped up in the updated Android app.
If you’re curious if you might qualify to begin with, here’s how Instagram framed the new verification system in its latest announcement:
“… The blue verified badge is an important way for you to know that the account you are interacting with is the authentic presence of a notable public figure, celebrity, global brand or entity. Today we are enabling a new way for accounts that reach large audiences and meet our criteria to request verification through a form within the Instagram app.”
Does that sound like you? Here’s what you need to do.
1) Request Verification
From your profile, navigate to the Settings menu and then find an option to “Request Verification.”
2) Show your stuff
Provide the relevant documents. Instagram accepts government-issued IDs (driver’s license, passport or other national ID cards). In lieu of that, you can submit official documents like a utility bill, tax filing, or article of incorporation. These documents won’t be public on your profile.
If your official documentation isn’t a match for your legal name, you might be out of luck. We’ve asked Instagram to clarify if these documents need to match your account information exactly or if they just need them on file for reference.
3) Wait and wonder
Wait while Instagram reviews your request. Instagram says that you’ll receive a notification letting you know if you’ve been approved or rejected, so look out for that. If you are rejected you can reapply after 30 days.
Before you apply, it’s worth reading over what Instagram requires for a verified account. According to its hub on verified badges, Instagram will evaluate your account for “authenticity, uniqueness, completeness and notability” — the criteria it must meet in addition to abiding by the platform’s terms of service.
What do those things mean? Instagram defines an authentic account as one that “represent[s] a real person, registered business or entity.”
When Instagram demands an account be “unique” what it really means is that it intends to only approve one account per business or individual except in cases of “language-specific accounts.” Instagram reminds users that it “[doesn’t] verify general interest accounts (example: @puppymemes).”
To make sure your account is complete, it must be public, with a profile photo, bio and one post minimum. Importantly, Instagram stipulates that your account “can’t contain ‘add me’ links to other social media services,” so prune anything like that.
The last criterion is the toughest. Instagram requires that your account be “notable.” You might think know that your account is [100 emoji], but unless you are a “well-known, highly searched for person, brand or entity” you probably won’t make the cut. Instagram explains further that it reviews accounts “featured in multiple news sources” and paid content doesn’t count. While Instagram’s process is way more transparent now, this bit does leave some room for interpretation.
Even with the new request form, keep in mind that most users won’t make the cut. Historically, it’s kind of unpredictable. Popular users who seem like a no-brainer for a verified account sometimes don’t have verified status, while others with a far less substantial public profile do. Even here at TC, some of us (like @panzer with his assiduous sneaker content) sport a little blue check while others don’t. We don’t know if there is more rhyme or reason to verification now, but at least the process is public and available for everyone.
