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Get Up to 58% Off on Smart Carry Tools, Wallets, Lighters, and More


You may only check for your phone, wallet, and keys before you head out the door, but there are so many more handy things you can bring along that won’t weigh you down. […]

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NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover Gets 7-Foot-Long Robotic Arm


NASA’s Mars 2020 rover got its eyes, legs and wheels and now, it has its arm — all 7 feet of it. On Friday, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, […]

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Watch: Cow Herd Gets Swept Away During Flash Flood in Minnesota


Over 50 cows were swept away during a flash flood in Minnesota and a shocking video of the incident shows the massive herd moving downstream at fast speeds. Early Friday morning, Bob Eustice, a […]

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Man’s Body Parts Found in Florida Alligator’s Stomach After Drowning Incident


A man who reportedly died near Fort Meade, Florida, was partially eaten by an alligator, according to local authorities. Polk County Sheriff’s Office officials are investigating the death of Michael Ford III, a 45-year-old […]

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Get Over 50% Off This Effective Wi-Fi Range Extender


Wi-Fi dead zones are pretty commonplace. What’s uncommon is finding solutions for them that are both practical and economical. And that’s what makes this offer for the Rock Space 1200Mbps Wi-Fi Range Extender, […]

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Swarm of Mayflies Invades Ohio, Shows Up on Weather Radar


Residents of northeastern Ohio are battling a crazy amount of mayflies that are hatching and invading parts of the state. The swarm has been so dense that it has been detected by a […]

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Ancient Palace Unearthed in Iraq After Drought Dries Up Reservoir


In what is being called a “surprising discovery,” archaeologists have unearthed a 3,400-year-old, Bronze Age palace at a reservoir in the Kurdistan region of Iraq after water levels dropped because of drought. The palace, […]

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Twitch Celebrates Prime Day With Live Shopping Show ‘Twitch Sells Out’


Amazon Prime Day is just around the corner, and streaming platform Twitch is prepping to make an exciting move for the two-day shopping event. When the sale kicks off on July 15, Twitch […]

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Michigan Resident’s Pet Alligator Escapes Home, Gets Hit By Car


A Michigan resident’s pet alligator tragically died after it escaped from its home and was struck by a car, according to authorities. Wally, a 21-year-old alligator, somehow left his home in Delta Township, […]

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Additive Breakthrough Makes EV Batteries Suck Less in the Cold


Electric vehicle sales continue to climb, and it’s now estimated that more than 300,000 are being sold around the world every month. Those numbers could climb even higher following a new battery breakthrough. […]

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Hands-On: ‘Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3’ Is the ‘Avengers’ Game You Want


Square Enix’s Marvel’s Avengers game should’ve been the biggest slam dunk in the world. After years of teasing that gave Final Fantasy VII remake a run for its vaporware money, the AAA superhero […]

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What to Stream on Hulu This Weekend


Hulu has a lot to offer, however, deciding what to watch on the platform isn’t always easy. If you need help choosing a flick for your next movie night, you’ve come to the […]

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Pay What You Want For These Massive Career Training Bundles


What’s better than a huge sale? How about just paying what you want for the product you’re after? From eLearning to cybersecurity, here are 7 digital bundles that are available for a price […]

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Top Movie and TV Trailers of the Week: ‘Bond 25,’ ‘Kengan Ashura,’ and More


TGIF. While you’re planning for the long weekend ahead, we’ve rounded up the top movie and TV trailers that you might have missed during the week. Another 007-themed adventure is in the works with […]

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Apple tries out the ‘choose-your-own adventure’ Twitter thread format that recently went viral

It looks like choose-your-own-adventure Twitter games won’t be a one-hit wonder, now that Apple’s social team has adopted the format. A new tweet from the @AppleTV Twitter account today helps users find a movie to watch by having them click through a series of Twitter threads. However, their effort (so far at least) pales compared with the original viral sensation — a Twitter choose-your-own-adventure style game that blew up earlier this month, where Twitter users try to not get fired as Beyoncé’s new assistant.

If you haven’t seen this masterpiece of Twitter handiwork, give yourself a break this Friday and go try it. It’s great fun.

The game is played by presenting you with a multiple choice question. You then click on your answer from among the Twitter replies presented by the original poster.

For example, you start your day by ordering Queen Bey her breakfast. You’re asked to choose between ordering a five-star breakfast or granola and yogurt. If you choose the former (spoiler alert!), you’re fired. If you click the right answer, you move on to the next task.

Further questions take you to new threads where you choose things like who Beyoncé should FaceTime, what activity you suggest while she waits for hair and makeup, what song to play for her when she asks for music, when she should get dressed for the event and where, whether you should photobomb her on the red carpet to fix her dress, where she sits at an event, and so on.

The game isn’t always simple A/B choices, either. The answers lead you down different paths. Your choice may not immediately result in being fired, but still could later on. For instance, if you send Beyoncé swimming, there’s no way to save your job when the next set of choices comes.

According to a TIME profile, the idea for the thread came from 19-year-old student Landon Rivera, who lives in L.A.

The thread, now which now has over a quarter million Twitter likes, was noticed by celebs like Chrissy Teigen and Questlove, the report also noted

After the Beyoncé game blew up into a viral hit, the creator started new threads about being Cardi B’s bodyguard and getting away with murder. These haven’t yet taken off to the extent the original Beyoncé thread did, which today stands at over 250K Likes on the thread placeholder tweet, and 97,300 retweets.

While it’s interesting that Apple’s social media team has now copycatted the idea, their choose-your-own-adventure thread falls short.

Actually, really short.

In fact, it’s not much of an adventure at all.

Instead, the movie suggestion thread doesn’t go much further than letting your pick between two movie watching scenarios, then directs you into a genre of your choosing…then, it dead ends with a movie suggestion.

This misses the reasons the Beyoncé game went viral in the first place: because it was lengthy, complex, multi-branched, and funny. You could get down several threads deep into the thing and then get booted out and lose.

The questions themselves also prompted commentary from those who knew Beyoncé actual habits (or at least, thought they did.)

Social media teams looking to replicate this formula for their own success will need to do more than create a handful of quick-to-end threads with little payoff. Either invest the serious effort in designing a clever branching narrative or just tweet as usual.

 

 

 



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How startups can make influencer marketing work on a budget

Influencer Marketing has ballooned into a $25 billion industry, yet many marketing managers are left confused by this, because for them, it’s really not delivering the results to justify the hype.

Here’s the thing. Influencer marketing is not a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy such as Facebook or Adwords advertising. Each company needs to take a closer look at what influencer marketing can achieve, where it falls down, and how you can do a better job with this latest form of marketing that delivers, on average, $6.50 of value for every $1 spent.

The analysis below relies on clients and case studies from our experience at OpenSponsorship.com (my company) which is the largest marketplace connecting brands with over 5500 professional athletes for marketing campaigns.

With over 3500 deals to date across clients as big as Vitamin Shoppe and Anheuser Busch, established players like Jabra and Project Repat, and new startups like Brazyn and Gutzy, we have seen a lot go wrong (who knew you could disable comments on a post!) and a lot go right (an unknown skiier’s $100 Instagram, posted right before the Winter Olympics, going viral after he won the Silver)!!

Thanks to our in-house data experts, integrations with IBM Watson, robust ROI tracking tools and 10 years+ of experience combining the learnings of sports sponsorship with influencer marketing, we have gained extensive insights into campaign strategies.

We will share our learnings about what criteria to consider when choosing the best influencer to work with, figuring out how much to pay the influencer, what rights to ask for in the deal, what terms and conditions are reasonable and how to track ROI for the deal.

image2 1


Table of Contents


Who is the right influencer? 

At OpenSponsorship, we match brands with athletes for marketing campaigns, with a view to further expand into other areas of media and entertainment such as music artists, comedians, actors. Even within the athlete world, there is the concept of micro-influencers such as yogis, triathletes, marathon runners, all the way to macro-influencers such as NFL Quarterbacks, starting NBA point guards and everything in between.

Our 3 recommendations for picking the right influencers are:



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Hands-On: ‘Luigi’s Mansion 3’ Busts All The Ghosts on Nintendo Switch


Luigi’s Mansion is so weird. Are there any other Nintendo games that are such specific riffs on a massive pop culture property? You could argue much of Metroid was inspired by Alien, they […]

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Watch: Lil Nas X Wears Thanos’ Infinity Gauntlet in Hilarious Video


Lil Nas X, an American rapper who has topped music charts with his song “Old Town Road,” might be taking over for Thanos: The music artist recently shared a video of himself wearing […]

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Hands-On: ‘Pokemon Sword and Shield’ Bring Spectacular Battles to Nintendo Switch


I’ve always enjoyed the Pokemon games. Since childhood catching colorful monsters has never gotten old, and they’re perhaps the only JRPGs that I can tolerate. But I can only tolerate them once every […]

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‘Undisturbed’ Ancient Roman Shipwreck Found Off the Coast of Cyprus


Archaeologists have discovered an ancient, Roman-era wooden ship, complete with cargo, off the eastern coast of Cyprus. In a statement, Cyprus’ Department of Antiquities said the wreck is the “first undisturbed Roman shipwreck” […]

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NASA’s TESS Mission Discovers Its Smallest Planet to Date


The solar system is home to some undiscovered hubs and NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) just spotted L 98-59b, a planet that is between the sizes of Mars and Earth, orbits an illuminated […]

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‘Tetris 99’ Is the Only Good Battle Royale Game


If you want to experience the joy of a Tetris battle royale game but haven’t gotten a chance to play Tetris 99 through Nintendo Switch Online soon you’ll have another chance. Tetris Royale […]

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Manure Pile Spontaneously Combusted, Sparked Wildfire in Spain, Officials Say


Spontaneous combustion of a manure pile on a farm amid a record-breaking heat wave likely sparked a wildfire now burning out of control in northeastern Spain, authorities say. Firefighters are battling the fire, […]

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Watch These Movies Before ‘Annabelle Comes Home’


If you thought the Child’s Play remake was the only creepy killer doll movie in theaters this weekend, apparently no one told you that Annabelle is coming home. This horror movie not only […]

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Police ‘Drop Charges’ Against Goat That Chased Woman in Maine


Authorities in a tiny Maine town have “dropped charges” against an adorable goat that recently chased a woman down the street. On Sunday, the Oakland Maine Police Department shared a cheeky post about […]

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What to Stream on Netflix This Weekend


It’s finally the weekend, which means it’s time to binge-watch some documentaries, TV shows, and films on Netflix. With so many good options available, deciding what to stream can be tough. To help you […]

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Italy stings Facebook with $1.1M fine for Cambridge Analytica data misuse

Italy’s data protection watchdog has issued Facebook with a €1 million (~$1.1M) fine for violations of local privacy law attached to the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal.

Last year it emerged that up to 87 million Facebook users had had their data siphoned out of the social media giant’s platform by an app developer working for the controversial (and now defunct) political data company, Cambridge Analytica.

The offences in question occurred prior to Europe’s tough new data protection framework, GDPR, coming into force — hence the relatively small size of the fine in this case, which has been calculated under Italy’s prior data protection regime. (Whereas fines under GDPR can scale as high as 4% of a company’s annual global turnover.)

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment.

Last year the UK’s DPA similarly issued Facebook with a £500k penalty for the Cambridge Analytica breach, although Facebook is appealing.

The Italian regulator says 57 Italian Facebook users downloaded Dr Aleksandr Kogan‘s Thisisyourdigitallife quiz app, which was the app vehicle used to scoop up Facebook user data en masse — with a further 214,077 Italian users’ also having their personal information processed without their consent as a result of how the app could access data on each user’s Facebook friends.

In an earlier intervention in March, the Italian regulator challenged Facebook over the misuse of the data — and the company opted to pay a reduced amount of €52,000 in the hopes of settling the matter.

However the Italian DPA has decided that the scale of the violation of personal data and consent disqualifies the case for a reduced payment — so it has now issued Facebook with a €1M fine.

The sum takes into account, in addition to the size of the database, also the economic conditions of Facebook and the number of global and Italian users of the company,” it writes in a press release on its website [translated by Google Translate]. 

At the time of writing its full decision on the case was not available.

Late last year the Italian regulator fined Facebook €10M for misleading users over its sign in practices.

While, in 2017, it also slapped the company with a €3M penalty for a controversial decision to begin helping itself to WhatsApp users’ data — despite the latter’s prior claims that user data would never be shared with Facebook.

Going forward, where Facebook’s use (and potential misuse) of Europeans’ data is concerned, all eyes are on the Irish Data Protection Commission; aka its lead regulator in the region on account of the location of Facebook’s international HQ.

The Irish DPC has a full suite of open investigations into Facebook and Facebook-owned companies — covering major issues such as security breaches and questions over the legal basis it claims to process people’s data, among a number of other big tech related probes.

The watchdog has suggested decisions on some of this tech giant-related case-load could land this summer.



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Facebook’s content oversight board plan is raising more questions than it answers

Facebook has produced a report summarizing feedback it’s taken in on its idea of establishing a content oversight board to help arbitrate on moderation decisions.

Aka the ‘supreme court of Facebook’ concept first discussed by founder Mark Zuckerberg last year, when he told Vox:

[O]ver the long term, what I’d really like to get to is an independent appeal. So maybe folks at Facebook make the first decision based on the community standards that are outlined, and then people can get a second opinion. You can imagine some sort of structure, almost like a Supreme Court, that is made up of independent folks who don’t work for Facebook, who ultimately make the final judgment call on what should be acceptable speech in a community that reflects the social norms and values of people all around the world.

Facebook has since suggested the oversight board will be up and running later this year. And has just wheeled out its global head of policy and spin for a European PR push to convince regional governments to give it room for self-regulation 2.0, rather than slapping it with broadcast-style regulations.

The latest report, which follows a draft charter unveiled in January, rounds up input fed to Facebook via six “in-depth” workshops and 22 roundtables convened by Facebook and held in locations of its choosing around the world.

In all, Facebook says the events were attended by 650+ people from 88 different countries — though it further qualifies that by saying it had “personal discussions” with more than 250 people and received more than 1,200 public consultation submissions.

“In each of these engagements, the questions outlined in the draft charter led to thoughtful discussions with global perspectives, pushing us to consider multiple angles for how this board could function and be designed,” Facebook writes.

It goes without saying that this input represents a minuscule fraction of the actual ‘population’ of Facebook’s eponymous platform, which now exceeds 2.2BN accounts (an unknown portion of which will be fake/duplicates), while its operations stretch to more than double the number of markets represented by individuals at the events.

The feedback exercise — as indeed the concept of the board itself — is inevitably an exercise in opinion abstraction. Which gives Facebook leeway to shape the output as it prefers. (And, indeed, the full report notes that “some found this public consultation ‘not nearly iterative enough, nor transparent enough, to provide any legitimacy’ to the process of creating the Board”.)

In a blog post providing its spin on the “global feedback and input”, Facebook culls three “general themes” it claims emerged from the various discussions and submissions — namely that: 

  • People want a board that exercises independent judgment — not judgment influenced by Facebook management, governments or third parties, writing: “The board will need a strong foundation for its decision-making, a set of higher-order principles — informed by free expression and international human rights law — that it can refer to when prioritizing values like safety and voice, privacy and equality”. Though the full report flags up the challenge of ensuring the sought for independence, and it’s not clear Facebook will be able to create a structure that can stand apart from its own company or indeed other lobbyists
  • How the board will select and hear cases, deliberate together, come to a decision and communicate its recommendations both to Facebook and the public are key considerations — though those vital details remain tbc. “In making its decisions, the board may need to consult experts with specific cultural knowledge, technical expertise and an understanding of content moderation,” Facebook suggests, implying the boundaries of the board are unlikely to be firmly fixed
  • People also want a board that’s “as diverse as the many people on Facebook and Instagram” — the problem being that’s clearly impossible, given the planet-spanning size of Facebook platforms. Another desire Facebook highlights is for the board to be able to encourage it to make “better, more transparent decisions”. The need for board decisions (and indeed decisions Facebook takes when setting up the board) to be transparent emerges as a major theme in the report. In terms of the board’s make-up, Facebook says it should comprise experts with different backgrounds, different disciplines, and different viewpoints — “who can all represent the interests of a global community”. Though there’s clearly going to be differing views on how or even whether that’s possible to achieve; and therefore questions over how a 40-odd member body, that will likely rarely sit in plenary, can plausibly act as an prism for Facebook’s user-base

The report is worth reading in full to get a sense of the broad spectrum of governance questions and conundrums Facebook is here wading into.

If, as it very much looks, this is a Facebook-configured exercise in blame spreading for the problems its platform hosts, the surface area for disagreement and dispute will clearly be massive — and from the company’s point of view that already looks like a win. Given how, since 2016, Facebook (and Zuckerberg) have been the conduit for so much public and political anger linked to the spreading and accelerating of harmful online content.

Differing opinions and will also provide cover for Facebook to justify starting “narrow”. Which it has said it will do with the board, aiming to have something up and running by the end of this year. But that just means it’ll be managing expectations of how little actual oversight will flow right from the very start.

The report also shows that Facebook’s claimed ‘listening ear’ for a “global perspective” has some very hard limits.

So while those involved in the consultation are reported to have repeatedly suggested the oversight board should not just be limited to content judgement — but should also be able to make binding decisions related to things like Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm or wider use of AI by the company — Facebook works to shut those suggestions down, underscoring the scope of the oversight will be limited to content.

“The subtitle of the Draft Charter — “An Oversight Board for Content Decisions” — made clear that this body would focus specifically on content. In this regard, Facebook has been relatively clear about the Board’s scope and remit,” it writes. “However, throughout the consultation period, interlocutors often proposed that the Board hear a wide range of controversial and emerging issues: newsfeed ranking, data privacy, issues of local law, artificial intelligence, advertising policies, and so on.”

It goes on to admit that “the question persisted: should the Board be restricted to content decisions only, without much real influence over policy?” — before picking a selection of responses that appear intended to fuzz the issue, allowing it to position itself as seeking a reasoned middle ground.

“In the end, balance will be needed; Facebook will need to resolve tensions between minimalist and maximalist visions of the Board,” it concludes. “Above all, it will have to demonstrate that the Oversight Board — as an enterprise worth doing — adds value, is relevant, and represents a step forward from content governance as it stands today.”

Sample cases the report suggests the board could review — as suggested by participants in Facebook’s consultation — include:

  • A user shared a list of men working in academia, who were accused of engaging in inappropriate behavior and/or abuse, including unwanted sexual advances;
  • A Page that commonly uses memes and other forms of satire shared posts that used discriminatory remarks to describe a particular demographic group in India;
  • A candidate for office made strong, disparaging remarks to an unknown passerby regarding their gender identity and livestreamed the interaction. Other users reported this due to safety concerns for the latter person;
  • A government official suggested that a local minority group needed to be cautious, comparing that group’s behavior to that of other groups that have faced genocide

So, again, it’s easy to see the kinds of controversies and indeed criticisms that individuals sitting on Facebook’s board will be opening themselves up to — whichever way their decisions fall.

A content review board that will inevitably remain linked to (if not also reimbursed via) the company that establishes it, and will not be granted powers to set wider Facebook policy — but will instead be tasked with facing the impossible of trying to please all of the Facebook users (and critics) all of the time — does certainly risk looking like Facebook’s stooge; a conduit for channeling dirty and political content problems that have the potential to go viral and threaten its continued ability to monetize the stuff that’s uploaded to its platforms.

Facebook’s preferred choice of phrase to describe its users — “global community” — is a tellingly flat one in this regard.

The company conspicuously avoids talk of communities, plural instead the closest we get here is a claim that its selective consultation exercise is “ensuring a global perspective”, as if a singular essence can somehow be distilled from a non-representative sample of human opinion — when in fact the stuff that flows across its platforms is quite the opposite; multitudes of perspectives from individuals and communities whose shared use of Facebook does not an emergent ‘global community’ make.

This is why Facebook has struggled to impose a single set of ‘community standards’ across a platform that spans so many contexts; a one-size-fits all approach very clearly doesn’t fit.

Yet it’s not at all clear how Facebook creating yet another layer of content review changes anything much for that challenge — unless the oversight body is mostly intended to act as a human shield for the company itself, putting a firewall between it and certain highly controversial content; aka Facebook’s supreme court of taking the blame on its behalf.

Just one of the difficult content moderation issues embedded in the businesses of sociotechnical, planet-spanning social media platform giants like Facebook — hate speech — defies a top-down ‘global’ fix.

As Evelyn Douek wrote last year vis-a-via hate speech on the Lawfare blog, after Zuckerberg had floated the idea of a governance structure for online speech: “Even if it were possible to draw clear jurisdictional lines and create robust rules for what constitutes hate speech in countries across the globe, this is only the beginning of the problem: within each jurisdiction, hate speech is deeply context-dependent… This context dependence presents a practically insuperable problem for a platform with over 2 billion users uploading vast amounts of material every second.”

A cynic would say Facebook knows it can’t fix planet-scale content moderation and still turn a profit. So it needs a way to distract attention and shift blame.

If it can get enough outsiders to buy into its oversight board — allowing it to pass off the oxymoron of “global governance”, via whatever self-styled structure it allows to emerge from these self-regulatory seeds — the company’s hope must be that the device also works as a bolster against political pressure.

Both over particular problem/controversial content, and also as a vehicle to shrink the space for governments to regulate Facebook.

In a video discussion also embedded in Facebook’s blog post — in which Zuckerberg couches the oversight board project as “a big experiment that we hope can pioneer a new model for the governance of speech on the Internet” — the Facebook founder also makes reference to calls he’s made for more regulation of the Internet. As he does so he immediately qualifies the statement by blending state regulation with industry self-regulation — saying the kind of regulation he’s asking for is “in some cases by democratic process, in other cases through independent industry process”.

So Zuckerberg is making a clear pitch to position Facebook as above the rule of nation state law — and setting up a “global governance” layer is the self-serving vehicle of choice for the company to try and overtake democracy.

Even if Facebook’s oversight board’s structure is so cunningly fashioned as to present to a rationally minded individual as, in some senses, ‘independent’ from Facebook, its entire being and function will remain dependent on Facebook’s continued existence.

Whereas if individual markets impose their own statutory regulations on Internet platforms, based on democratic and societal principles, Facebook will have no control over the rules they impose, direct or otherwise — with uncontrolled compliance costs falling on its business.

It’s easy to see which model sits most easily with Zuckerberg the businessman — a man who has also demonstrated he will not be held personally accountable for what happens on his platform.

Not when he’s asked by one (non-US) parliament, nor even by representatives from nine parliaments — all keen to discuss the societal fallouts of political disinformation and hate speech spread and accelerated on Facebook.

Turns out that’s not the kind of ‘global perspective’ Facebook wants to sell you.



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Google Maps Predicts How Crowded Your Train, Bus Will Be


Public transportation can be heaven or hell, depending on the day. One day you’re sitting back, relaxing, listening to your favorite podcast without interruption. The next, you’re being jostled around a crowded carriage […]

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Twitter Will Hide (But Not Delete) Politicians’ Abusive Posts


Donald Trump has broken pretty much every one of Twitter’s rules. So why hasn’t he been banned for life? According to the social media giant, words of elected world leaders are newsworthy; blocking […]

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Sir Jony Ive Leaves Apple to Start His Own Design Firm


Sir Jony Ive is leaving Apple later this year to form his own design firm. But while you can take the man out of Cupertino, you can’t take Cupertino out of the man: […]

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Mama Bird Feeds Chick a Cigarette Butt in Heartbreaking Photo


Pollution can negatively impact the tiniest creatures on Earth: A woman in Florida captured a photo of a mama bird feeding its chick a cigarette butt on the beach and the moment is […]

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‘Final Fantasy XIV’ and ‘Masters of Doom’ Are Your Next Video Game TV Shows

Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood

With Pokemon: Detective Pikachu finally proving that a truly excellent video game movie can exist, now it’s time to wonder when video games will inspire some good old-fashioned prestige television. It’s already starting to […]

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Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s New Training Shoe Is Awesome


Beloved readers, cherished readers, Geek.com faithful, I fear I must confess something to you all, much as it may pain me to do: I am not as strong as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. […]

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NASA’s Spitzer Telescope Spots Whirlpool ‘Warhol’ Galaxy in Space


NASA’s Spitzer Telescope recently observed a whirlpool galaxy and it looks like a cosmic Andy Warhol print. The multipanel image shows Messier 51 and NGC 5194/5195, a pair of galaxies that are distorting and […]

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‘Pokemon Masters’ Is An All-Star Trainer Rumble


While Nintendo’s mobile gaming partnership with developer DeNA has been slow and steady, the semi-independent Pokemon Company continues to release tons of Pokemon games on iOS and Android devices. If you created a […]

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Toronto Zoo Saves Woman Bitten By Venomous Snake on Thailand Vacation


A Canadian zoo saved a woman who was bitten by a Malayan pit viper, a poisonous snake that lives in Southeast Asia, with a very critical healing agent: snake antivenom. Shalaba Kalliath, who […]

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‘Apex Legends’ Season 2 Trailer Charges Onto the Battlefield


Apex Legends may have lost some of the unbelievable momentum of its surprise free-to-play February launch, but millions of people still enjoy the battle royale from the makers of Titanfall (and the upcoming Star […]

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Daily Crunch: Reddit quarantines Trump-focused community

It’s NEWSLETTER TIME get pumped! I know I am – it’s my first Daily Crunch in over a year. That’s right, your friendly neighborhood Anthony Ha is otherwise occupied today so I’m back to deliver this baby to you, devoted readers. And there’s news: Plenty o’ News.

1. Reddit puts r/The_Donald in a corner

Reddit has long had an uncomfortable relationship with one of its communities, a subreddit called r/The_Donald which focuses on all things related to the current U.S. President (still seems like a totally crazy thing to say).

quarantined

The so-called ‘front page of the Internet’ has finally had enough – or at least, the stage before truly ‘enough.’ It’s quarantined r/The_Donald, meaning that its content won’t ooze beyond the community into the rest of Reddit’s multi-community surfaces. So you have to choose to wallow in that filth, going in eyes wide open.

2. Apple makes a key chip talent hire

Apple loves using its own chips in its products, and keeps adding more chips all the time to handle things like on-device security and wireless connections with accessories. Now it’s brought on a leading ARM chip designer, which is obviously fuelling speculation that Apple could replace Intel with its own ARM-based processors to power next-generation Macs.

3. Live stream selling app expands to in-person sales

NTWRK is a weird hybrid of QVC and HQ Trivia, with people selling you stuff via live stream. The app is now expanding into physical events, which I guess will resemble flash sales mixed crossed with concerts?

4. Station F is launching a co-living space for startups

Station F is a gigantic co-working space in Paris that seemed like an unlikely proposition when it was first revealed. It got made and has been operating for years now, however. So maybe there’s a chance that its new ‘Flatmates’ co-living space, which can house up to 600 people in shared apartment arrangements, can do the same.

5. Amazon debuts counter pick-up at Rite Aid

Amazon is introducing a new counter pick-up service for packages at stores in the U.S, starting with 100 Rite Aid locations. Amazon has hollowed out the bodies of its retail hosts and is now parasitically using their corpses to propagate.

6. TripActions raises $250M and is now valued at $4B

That’s four unicorns stacked atop one another, if you’re counting. TripActions is an enterprise booking platform, which is big business, and if it’s at all an improvement over the various legacy ones I’ve used over the years, then it’s probably worth that high value assessment.

7. Volkswagen launches all-electric car sharing

A car sharing network made up of only electric vehicles?! Now there’s one from Volkswagen, called WeShare. It’s only live in Berlin as of today, and it probably isn’t destined for U.S. shores anytime soon, but it’s definitely a sign of the times.



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Lego Adds Two More ‘Overwatch’ Sets: Wrecking Ball and Junkertown


The Lego Overwatch world started with a single set last fall. It expanded almost immediately to a half dozen, and now Lego’s pushing out another update. Two more Overwatch sets have now been […]

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Queen Guitarist Brian May Explains ESA’s Hera Asteroid Deflection Mission


Astrophysicist and Queen guitarist Brian May recently explained the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hera mission in a video and it is an aspiring plan to save Earth from a potentially dangerous asteroid system. […]

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Here’s Everything Coming to Netflix in July 2019


The wait is almost over: Stranger Things 3, the third season of the hit Netflix sci-fi series will drop on July 4. But let’s be honest, you’ll probably be binge-watching all eight new […]

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‘Teen Titans Go! Vs. Teen Titans’ Trailer Doesn’t Anger Me


Not that I’m watching much Cartoon Network these days but even I know that wacky superhero comedy Teen Titans Go is one of the channel’s biggest hits. They even went to the movies […]

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Here’s How to Watch South America’s Eerie Solar Eclipse on July 2


A total solar eclipse will be visible in South America on July 2 and according to NASA, this “celestial coincidence” is a rare sight not to be missed by space fans. This eerie […]

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Play These Nintendo Switch Games Before ‘Pokemon Sword and Shield’


Although there’s no standout heavy hitter like Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, or Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, we’re still pretty stoked about the rest of 2019 when it […]

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Two Beluga Whales Flown on Boeing 747 Plane From China to Iceland


Two female beluga whales became the first residents of the world’s first beluga whale sanctuary, after completing a complicated journey that included being flown on a Boeing 747 plane from Shanghai, China to […]

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