Saildrone launches a 72-foot autonomous seabed-mapping boat

Mapping the ocean’s floor is a surprisingly vital enterprise, which helps with a range of activities including shipping, coastal protection, and deep-sea resource gathering. It’s also a very costly and time-consuming activity, which can be demanding and dangerous for those involved. Saildrone is a startup focused on building out autonomous exploratory vessels that can do lots of mapping, while making very little impact on the environment in which they operate, and without requiring any crew on board at all.

Saildrone’s newest robotic ocean explorer is the Surveyor, its largest vessel at 72-feet long. The Surveyor can spend up to 12 months at a stretch out at sea, and draws its power from wind (hence the large sail-like structure, which is not actually used like the sail on a sailboat) and the sun (via the solar panels dotting its above-water surfaces). Its sensor instrumentation includes sonar that can map down to 7,000 meters (around 22,000 feet). That’s not quite as deep as some of the deepest parts of the world’s oceans, but it’s plenty deep enough to cover the average depth of around 12,100 feet.

As Saildrone notes, we’ve only actually mapped around 20% of the Earth’s oceans to date – meaning we know less about it than we do the surface of Mars or the Moon. Saildrone has already been contributing to better understanding this last great frontier with its 23-foot Explorer model, which has already accumulated 500,000 nautical miles of travel on its autonomous sea voyages. The larger vessel will help not only with seafloor mapping, but also with a new DNA sample collection effort using sensors developed the University of New Hampshire and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, to better understand the genetic makeup of various lifeforms that occupy the water column in more parts of the sea.


Source: Tech Crunch

Mobileye is bringing its autonomous vehicle test fleets to at least four more cities in 2021

Mobileye, a subsidiary of Intel, is scaling up its autonomous vehicle program and plans to launch test fleets in at least four more cities over the next several months, including Detroit, Paris Shanghai and Tokyo.

Mobileye president and CEO Amnon Shashua said Monday during the virtual 2021 CES tech trade show that if the company can receive regulatory approval it will also begin testing on public roads in New York City.

The expansion announcement, along with details about a new lidar System on Chip product that is under development and will come to market in 2025, illustrates Mobileye’s ambitions to commercialize automated vehicle technology.

The selection of the cities and countries is based on two factors: customers and the regulatory environment, according to Jack Weast, a senior principal engineer at Intel and the Vice President of Automated Vehicle Standards at Mobileye.

“That’s why we put our cars in the U.S. in Detroit, rather than Silicon Valley because all major OEMs are in Detroit,” Weast said in an interview Monday, adding that Peugeot Renault are in Paris and Toyota and Nissan are in Japan. “The selection of the cities had a lot to do with putting the vehicles near our customers so that they would all have the opportunity to experience the technology firsthand because we expect our OEM customers to continue to be an important part of our business going forward even, even as we supply a complete self driving system.”

A test fleet is already on the road in Detroit, according to the company. Mobileye launched its first test fleet in Jerusalem in 2018 and added one in Munich in 2020.

Mobileye is taking a three-pronged strategy to developing and deploying automated vehicle technology that combines a full self-driving stack — that includes redundant sensing subsystems based on camera, radar and lidar technology— with its REM mapping system and a rules-based Responsibility-Sensitive Safety (RSS) driving policy. Mobileye’s REM mapping system essentially crowdsources data by tapping into nearly 1 million vehicles equipped with its tech to build high-definition maps that can be used to support in ADAS and autonomous driving systems. Shashua said Mobileye’s technology can now map the world automatically with nearly 8 million kilometers tracked daily and nearly 1 billion kilometers completed to date. 

This strategy will allow the company to efficiently launch and operate commercial robotaxi services as well as bring the technology to consumer passenger vehicles by 2025, Shashua said Monday.

Mobileye has long dominated a specific niche in the automotive world as a developer of computer vision sensor systems that help prevent collisions. In 2018, the company expanded its focus beyond being a mere supplier to becoming a robotaxi operator; now it’s aiming to bring autonomous vehicle technology to passenger cars by augmenting its computer vision technology with the new lidar SoC it is developing with Intel.

Mobileye has already partnered with Luminar to supply lidar for its robotaxis. However, Mobileye revealed more about the lidar SoC that it says will be ready for passenger vehicles by 2025. Shashua nor Weast would say if it planned to end its partnership with Luminar once its own lidar SoC is ready for the market.

The lidar, which will use Intel’s specialized silicon photonics fab, is notable because Mobileye is known for its camera-based technology. And yet it’s not backing away from that camera-first approach. Shashua explained Mobileye believes the best technological and business approach is to develop a camera-first system and use the lidar and radar as add-ons for redundancy.

“The idea is that you have this camera subsystem,” Shashua said. “Since it’s camera based, it’s at a consumer price level. So now you have scalable thinking. And this scalable thinking is really the cure for sustaining for a long time until level four becomes ubiquitous.”

Shashua pointed to its long-term high-volume agreement for advanced driver-assistance systems with Geely Auto as an example of how a camera-first approach could later be adapted. The lidar and radar can be added on to support greater automation capabilities once the market is ready.


Source: Tech Crunch

Healthvana’s digital COVID-19 vaccination records are about communication, not passports for the immune

As the vaccination campaign to counter COVID-19 gets underway (albeit with a rocky start), a number of companies are attempting to support its rollout in a variety of ways. Healthvana, a health tech startup that began with a specific focus on providing patient information digitally for individuals living with HIV, is helping Los Angeles County roll out mobile vaccination records for COVID-19 using Apple’s Wallet technology. A cursory appraisal of the implementation of this tech might lead one to believe it’s about providing individuals with easy proof of vaccination — but the tech, and Healthvana, are focused on informing individuals to ensure they participate in their own healthcare programs, not providing an immunity pass.

“I generally consider most of healthcare to look and feel like Windows 95,” Healthvana CEO and founder Ramin Bastani said. “We look and feel like Instagram . Why is that important? Because patients can engage in things they understand, it’s easier for them to communicate in the way they’re used to communicating, and that ends up leading them to better health outcomes.”

Bastani points out that they began the company by focusing this approach to patient education and communication on HIV, and demonstrated that using their software led to patients being 7.4 times more likely to show up for their next follow-up appointment versus patients who received follow-up information and appointment notices via traditional methods. The company has built their tooling and their approach around not only producing better health for individuals, but also on reducing costs for healthcare providers by eliminating the need for a lot of the work that goes into clearing up misunderstandings, and essentially hounding patients to follow-up, which can significantly dig into clinician and care staff hours.

“We’re actually also reducing the cost to healthcare providers, because you don’t have 1,000 people calling you asking what are their results, and saying ‘I don’t understand, I can’t log in, I don’t know what it means to be SARS nonreactive,’ or all those things we address through simplicity,” Bastani said. “That’s made a huge difference. Overall, I think the key to all healthcare is going to be to be able to get patients to pay attention, and take action to things around their health.”

That’s the goal of Healthvana’s partnership with LA County on COVID-19 immunization records, too — taking vitally important action to ensure the successful rollout of its vaccination program. All approved COVID-19 vaccines to date require a two-course treatment, including one initial inoculation followed by a booster to be administered sometime later. Keeping LA county residents informed about their COVID-19 inoculation, and when they’re due for a second dose, is the primary purpose of the partnership, and benefits from Healthvana’s experience in improving patient follow-up activities. But the app is also providing users with information about COVID-19 care, and, most usefully, prevention and ways to slow the spread.

While Bastani stresses that Healthvana is, in the end, just “the last mile” for message delivery, and that there are many other layers involved in determining the right steps for proper care and prevention, the way in which they provide actionable info has already proven a big boon to one key measure: contact tracing. In select municipalities, Healthvana will also prompt users who’ve tested positive to anonymously notify close contacts directly from their device, which will provide those individuals with both free testing options and information resources.

“Just us doing this in the greater Los Angeles area for less than two months, 12,000+ people have been notified that they’ve been exposed,” Bastani said. “Each of them likely lives with other people and families — this is how you can help slow the spread.”

Contrast that with the relatively slow uptake of the exposure notification tools built into iOS and Android devices via recent software updates provided by Google and Apple working in a rare collaboration. While the technology that underlies it is sound, and focused on user privacy, its usage numbers thus far are far from earthshaking; only 388 people have sent alerts through Virginia’s app-based on the exposure notification framework in three months since its launch, for instance.

Healthvana’s focus on timely and relevant delivery of information, offered to users in ways they’re mostly likely to understand and engage with, is already showing its ability to have an impact on COVID-19 and its community transmission. The startup is already in talks to launch similar programs elsewhere in the country, and that could help improve national vaccination outcomes, and how people handle COVID-19 once they have it, too.


Source: Tech Crunch

Following riots, alternative social apps and private messengers top the app stores

Alternative social media apps including MeWe, CloutHub and other privacy-focused rivals to big tech, are topping the app stores following Trump’s ban from mainstream social platforms like Facebook and Twitter and the more recent removal of conservative social app Parler from both the App Store and Google Play. In the days since the Parler ban, “free speech”-favoring social networks are seeing notable numbers of new downloads at a quick pace, data shows.

Next-generation social network MeWe, founded in May 2012, is one of those that’s seeing the largest bump in new installs.

The app has been steadily growing in the days since the U.S. Presidential Elections and the related increases in moderation of misinformation by larger platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Mainstream social networks enforced their policies and even created new ones to moderate content shared by Trump and his allies — including their baseless claims of election fraud that have not be substantiated by U.S. courts, despite dozens of lawsuits.

To date, MeWe has seen over 16 million global lifetime installs, according data from app intelligence firm Apptopia. However, since Wednesday of last week, the app has been downloaded nearly 200,000 times worldwide. A majority of those new downloads are coming from U.S. users, who accounted for nearly 143,000 installs.

Largely, those users came to MeWe following Parler’s ban from app stores. Apple gave Parler the boot late on Saturday, and MeWe popped in the charts as a result. Saturday through Sunday alone, MeWe gained 110,200+ new installs in the U.S.

The company told us it has seen 1 million new members sign up in the last 72 hours and now adds over 20,000 new members per hour.

Because app stores’ Top Charts reflect not just total downloads but also the velocity of those new installs, MeWe has gained a position in the top 10 very quickly due to recent trends.

As of Sunday, MeWe ranked No. 7 in the U.S. App Store’s Top Overall free charts. It’s already moving up today.

This is remarkable growth for the alternative social app, given that as recently as October the app was not ranked on the App Store’s Top Charts at all. (Being unranked means that the app is so far down on the charts, it’s lower than rank No. 1,500 — so its rank is basically untrackable.) MeWe did, however, chart in the Social Networking category at some points during this time.

Image Credits: App Store screenshot

Another app benefitting from recent events, including the Parler ban, is the relative newcomer, CloutHub.

The app was launched in January 2019 and claims to be a social network for “social, civic, and political networking” with a free speech angle. Its website says it wants to give “everyone a platform to have their voice heard.”

To date, CloutHub has seen just 255,000 total lifetime installs, but 31,000+ of these have come over the past week — or more specifically, since Wednesday. (CloutHub may be struggling with the surge of new users, as we found sign-ups and logins are often timing out). The app as of now ranks No. 11 on the U.S. App Store.

Image Credits: App Store screenshot

Two other apps that have moved into the top charts are cases of mistaken identity.

As Mashable recently reported, an app called “Parlor” is being mistaken for the now-banned “Parler” app. Its report cited Sensor Tower data that said “Parlor” has seen as many as 40,000 downloads in December alone.

Apptopia says the social chat app, founded in May 2011, has seen 8.6 million lifetime global installs. But from Wednesday through Sunday, it gained 115,846 new users — many who were likely looking for “Parler.” Of those, 99,220+ arrived on either Saturday or Sunday, just as the Parler ban was beginning to roll out. Even though Apple didn’t take action on Parler until later on Saturday, users may have come across “Parlor” by searching for it by this alternative spelling.

As of Sunday, “Parlor” became the No. 4 Top App Overall on iOS in the U.S.

Meanwhile, an app called “Gab News” — which is actually just a local news app for the Georgetown area — is also gaining ground. This is because it’s mistaken for the long since banned app “Gab,” which ex-Parler users are suggesting as an alternative. Apple had declined to host Gab back in 2016, citing its pornographic content and later, due to its policies against hosting apps that include hate speech. Though Gab was able to launch on Google Play in 2017, the app was quickly removed from there as well, also for hate speech.

“Gab News,” however, is currently ranking No. 44 on the App Store’s Top Free Apps Chart in the U.S., as of the time of writing. (Download data was not immediately available.)

Then there is Rumble, a conservative alternative to YouTube. The app has gained 2.4 million total global installs since its January 2020 launch, per Apptopia’s estimates. Since Wednesday, that included 91,916 new downloads, 73,700+ of which were in the U.S. It has also climbed to No. 78 on the U.S. App Store, up from No. 1,484 on December 19, 2020.

The Parler ban is not the only thing triggering these shifts, to be clear.

There’s also a general backlash underway against big tech, which many on both sides feel have become too powerful.

Governments have been examining the business models and practices of companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook over the past year in markets around the world with an eye on antitrust action. Facebook and Google are also being scrutinized by users for their privacy practices — especially as Apple is now forcing companies to add privacy labels to all apps that disclose what they do with user data.

As a result, some people were turning to alternative networking apps not just because they’re conservative, but because they valued privacy. As a result, encrypted messaging apps like Signal and Telegram are booming in recent days, as is the privacy-focused search engine, DuckDuckGo, a Google.com alternative.

These apps have also picked up steam over the past week. Signal is now No. 1 on the U.S. App Store, Telegram is No. 2, and DuckDuckGo is No. 8. This is rapid growth. Around mid-October 2020, these apps were ranked No. 618, 79, and 715, respectively, Apptopia says.

That said, it’s also worth noting that some users may be seeking out private messaging platforms in the wake of the U.S. Capitol riots, now that the FBI has begun to arrest insurgents. Signal has gained nearly 325,000 new installs since Thursday and Telegram gained 330,600+, for example.

This rapid shift to alternative social and messaging networks is indication of how difficult it may be in the weeks ahead for app stores to enforce their policies. Though the platforms typically crack down on apps hosting hate speech and those allowing incitement of violence, they tend to move slowly than the crowd downloading the next alternative app.

In the meantime, the apps that become popular may struggle with moderation. We’ve already come across examples of both extreme hate speech and calls for assassination on MeWe, for instance. even though the company’s public statements say it investigates and removes this sort of content. (MeWe has been asked to comment).

It’s unclear what the future for these free speech, alternative apps may hold, as platform providers such as Amazon (AWS) are now also declining to host them, and payment providers, like Stripe, which just cut ties with the Trump campaign, may decline to process future online payments. That could leave the networks to ultimately scramble for private funding to build their own infrastructure and stay afloat, as well as to seek out alternative distribution systems, like the web or even sideloading, to reach their users.

 

 


Source: Tech Crunch

Original Content podcast: Despite some odd choices, ‘The Undoing’ lays out a satisfying mystery

The HBO miniseries “The Undoing” wrapped up back in November, but the hosts of the Original Content podcast took advantage of the holidays to get caught up.

Based on a novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz, “The Undoing” tells the story of Grace Fraser (played by Nicole Kidman), a Manhattan psychologist whose husband Jonathan (Hugh Grant) is accused of a brutal murder. As the trial turns into a media spectacle, Grace tries to navigate how she feels about her husband and to discover who else might be guilty of the crime.

While Jordan had already watched the show as it aired, Anthony and Darrell were inspired to binge it thanks to an email from listener Michael Benedosso, who shared some amusing thoughts on Kidman’s wavering attempts at a New York accent — resulting in what he called “a world tour expressed via spoken word.”

We agreed that Kidman’s accent left a lot to be desired, and that her performance often felt a bit oblique (the latter, at least, was probably intentional).

We had other quibbles. For one thing, although the cast is relatively diverse, the story spends most of its time on the wealthy white family at its center, as their wealthy white friends. And there were perhaps a few too many red herrings that didn’t lead anywhere interesting.

Still, we were pretty satisfied in the end. With only six episodes and plenty of plot twists, there was really no time to get bored, and we were particularly impressed by Grant’s performance as Jonathan, as well as Noah Jupe as the Frasers’ adolescent son Henry and Noma Dumezweni as Jonathan’s steely lawyer Haley.

Before reviewing he show, we also discussed the recent launch of the Discovery+ streaming service.

You can listen to our review in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also follow us on Twitter or send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)

f you’d like to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:
0:00 Intro
0:30 Discovery+ discussion
6:41 “The Undoing” review
20:40 “The Undoing” spoiler discussion


Source: Tech Crunch

Lenovo launches AR glasses for enterprise

Lenovo seems to have gotten the memo that the real money in the augmented reality space is going to be made in enterprise. Ahead of tomorrow’s CES kick off, the hardware company announced the impending arrival of the ThinkReality A3, a pair of enterprise AR glasses that look to follow the lead set by companies like Epson and Microsoft.

The glasses are set to arrive at some point in the middle of the year. No word from Lenovo on pricing — which isn’t entirely surprising for an enterprise-only device. The headset sports a 1080p resolution, powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR1 chip. A pair of fish-eye cameras provide motion tracking, while an eight-megapixel RGB camera grabs video for remote use.

Image Credits: Lenovo

The device is designed to tether to a PC or a handful of Motorola (owned by Lenovo) phones via USB-C. The glasses follow the announcement of the ThinkReality A6 head-mounted display, which offers a more traditional form factor (insofar as there is a traditional form factor for AR, I suppose).

“For use in scenarios from factory floors and laboratories to busy retail and hospitality spaces, certified turnkey applications on the Think Reality platform powers remote assistance, guided workflows, and 3D visualization,” the company writes. “Now, industrial workers have a light, flexible, and scalable set of smart glasses to increase productivity and safety while decreasing error rates in daily tasks.”

Clearly Lenovo thinks the immediate future for AR is in the enterprise space. The company has dabbled with it a bit in the consumer space with products like the Star Wars Jedi Challenges headset, but for now at least, that feels like something of a one-off.


Source: Tech Crunch

These 6 browser extensions will protect your privacy online

The internet is not a private place. Ads try to learn as much about you to sell your information to the highest bidder. Emails know when you open them and which links you click. And some of the biggest internet snoops, like Facebook and Amazon, follow you from site to site as you browse the web.

But it doesn’t have to be like that. We’ve tried and tested six browser extensions that will immediately improve your privacy online by blocking most of the invisible ads and trackers.

These extensions won’t block every kind of snooping, but they will vastly reduce your exposure to most of the efforts to track your internet activity. You might not care that advertisers collect your data to learn your tastes and interests to serve you targeted ads. But you might care that these ad giants can see which medical conditions you’re looking up and what private purchases you’re making.

By blocking these hidden trackers from loading, websites can’t collect as much information about you. Plus by dropping the unnecessary bulk, some websites will load faster. The tradeoff is that some websites might not load properly or refuse to let you in if you don’t let them track you. You can toggle the extensions on and off as needed, or you could ask yourself if the website was that good to begin with and could you not just find what you were looking for somewhere else?

HTTPS Everywhere

We’re pretty much hardwired to look for that little green lock in our browser to tell us a website was loaded over an HTTPS-encrypted connection. That means the websites you open haven’t been hijacked or modified by an attacker before it loaded and that anything you submit to that website can’t be seen by anyone other than the website. HTTPS Everywhere is a browser extension made by the non-profit internet group the Electronic Frontier Foundation that automatically loads websites over HTTPS where it’s offered, and allows you to block the minority of websites that don’t support HTTPS. The extension is supported by most browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera.

Privacy Badger

Another extension developed by the EFF, Privacy Badger is one of the best all-in-one extensions for blocking invisible third-party trackers on websites. This extension looks at all the components of a web page and learns which ones track you from website to website, and then blocks them from loading in the browser. Privacy Badger also learns as you travel the web, so it gets better over time. And it requires no effort or configuration to work, just install it and leave it to it. The extension is available on most major browsers.

uBlock Origin

Ads are what keeps the internet free, but often at the expense of your personal information. Ads try to learn as much about you — usually by watching your browsing activity and following you across the web — so that they can target you with ads you’re more likely to click on. Ad blockers stop them in their tracks by blocking ads from loading, but also the tracking code that comes with it.

uBlock Origin is a lightweight, simple but effective, and widely trusted ad blocker used by millions of people, but it also has a ton of granularity and customizability for the more advanced user. (Be careful with impersonators: there are plenty of ad blockers that aren’t as trusted that use a similar name.) And if you feel bad about the sites that rely on ads for revenue (including us!), consider a subscription to the site instead. After all, a free web that relies on ad tracking to make money is what got us into this privacy nightmare to begin with.

uBlock Origin works in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge and the extension is open source so anyone can look at how it works.

PixelBlock & ClearURLs

If you thought hidden trackers in websites were bad, wait until you learn about what’s lurking in your emails. Most emails from brand names come with tiny, often invisible pixels that alerts the sender when you’ve opened them. PixelBlock is a simple extension for Chrome browsers that simply blocks these hidden email open trackers from loading and working. Every time it detects a tracker, it displays a small red eye in your inbox so you know.

Most of these same emails also come with tracking links that alerts the sender which links you click. ClearURLs, available for Chrome, Firefox and Edge, sits in your browser and silently removes the tracking junk from every link in your browser and your inbox. That means ClearURLs needs more access to your browser’s data than most of these extensions, but its makers explain why in the documentation.

Firefox Multi-Account Containers

And an honorary mention for Firefox users, who can take advantage of Multi-Account Containers, built by the browser maker itself to help you isolate your browsing activity. That means you can have one container full of your work tabs in your browser, and another container with all of your personal tabs, saving you from having to use multiple browsers. Containers also keep your private personal browsing separate from your work browsing activity. It also means you can put sites like Facebook or Google in a container, making it far more difficult for them to see which websites you visit and understand your tastes and interests. Containers are easy to use and customizable.


Source: Tech Crunch

Amazon Web Services gives Parler 24-hour notice that it will suspend services to the company

Parler is at risk of disappearing, just as the social media network popular among conservatives was reaching new heights of popularity in the wake of President Donald Trump’s ban from all major tech social platforms.

Amazon Web Services, which provides backend cloud services, has informed Parler that it intends to cut ties with the company in the next 24 hours, according to a report in BuzzFeed News. Parler’s application is built on top of AWS infrastructure, services that are critical for the operation of its platform. Earlier today, Apple announced that it was following Google in blocking the app from its App Store, citing a lack of content moderation.

Parler, whose fortunes have soared as users upset at the President’s silencing on mainstream social media outlets flocked to the service, is now another site of contention in the struggle over the limits of free speech and accountability online.

Parler CEO John Matze said that the platform would be offline for at least a week, as “they rebuild from scratch” in response to AWS’ communications. Some Parler users, as captured in screenshots shared on Twitter, seemed to respond with vague intentions to violently attack AWS data centers, perhaps proving Amazon’s point in the process.

In the wake of the riots at the Capitol on Wednesday and a purge of accounts accused of inciting violence on Twitter and Facebook, Parler had become the home for a raft of radical voices calling for armed “Patriots” to commit violence at the nation’s capitol and statehouses around the country.

Most recently, conservative militants on the site had been calling for “Patriots” to amplify the events of January 6 with a march on Washington DC with weapons on January 19.

Even as pressure was came from Apple and Amazon, whose employees had called for the suspension of services with the company, Parler was taking steps to moderate posts on its platform.

The company acknowledged that it had removed some posts from Trump supporter Lin Wood, who had called for the execution of Vice President Mike Pence in a series of proclamations on the company’s site.

Over the past few months, Republican lawmakers including Sen. Ted Cruz and Congressman Devin Nunes — along with conservative firebrands like Wood have found a home on the platform, where they can share conspiracy theories with abandon.

In an email quoted by BuzzFeed News, Amazon Web Services’ Trust and Safety Team told Parler’s chief policy officer, Amy Peikoff that calls for violence that were spreading across Parler’s platform violated its terms of service. The company’s team also said that Parler’s plan to use volunteers to moderate content on the platform would prove effective, according to BuzzFeed.

“Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms. It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service,” BuzzFeed reported the email as saying.

Here’s Amazon’s letter to Parler in full.

Dear Amy,

Thank you for speaking with us earlier today.

As we discussed on the phone yesterday and this morning, we remain troubled by the repeated violations of our terms of service. Over the past several weeks, we’ve reported 98 examples to Parler of posts that clearly encourage and incite violence. Here are a few examples below from the ones we’ve sent previously: [See images above.]

Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms. It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service. It also seems that Parler is still trying to determine its position on content moderation. You remove some violent content when contacted by us or others, but not always with urgency. Your CEO recently stated publicly that he doesn’t “feel responsible for any of this, and neither should the platform.” This morning, you shared that you have a plan to more proactively moderate violent content, but plan to do so manually with volunteers. It’s our view that this nascent plan to use volunteers to promptly identify and remove dangerous content will not work in light of the rapidly growing number of violent posts. This is further demonstrated by the fact that you still have not taken down much of the content that we’ve sent you. Given the unfortunate events that transpired this past week in Washington, D.C., there is serious risk that this type of content will further incite violence.

AWS provides technology and services to customers across the political spectrum, and we continue to respect Parler’s right to determine for itself what content it will allow on its site. However, we cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others. Because Parler cannot comply with our terms of service and poses a very real risk to public safety, we plan to suspend Parler’s account effective Sunday, January 10th, at 11:59PM PST. We will ensure that all of your data is preserved for you to migrate to your own servers, and will work with you as best as we can to help your migration.

– AWS Trust & Safety Team

Update January 9, 2020: Added a note about Parler users’ reactions.


Source: Tech Crunch

Apple suspends Parler from App Store

Apple confirmed that it has suspended the conservative social media app Parler from the App Store, shortly after Google banned it from Google Play. The app, which became a home to Trump supporters and several high-profile conservatives in the days leading up to the Capitol riots, had been operating in violation of Apple’s rules.

The company tells TechCrunch:

We have always supported diverse points of view being represented on the App Store, but there is no place on our platform for threats of violence and illegal activity. Parler has not taken adequate measures to address the proliferation of these threats to people’s safety. We have suspended Parler from the App Store until they resolve these issues.

In the wake of its decision Apple sent Parler’s developers the following note:

To the developers of the Parler app,

Thank you for your response regarding dangerous and harmful content on Parler. We have determined that the measures you describe are inadequate to address the proliferation of dangerous and objectionable content on your app.

Parler has not upheld its commitment to moderate and remove harmful or dangerous content encouraging violence and illegal activity, and is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.

In your response, you referenced that Parler has been taking this content “very seriously for weeks.” However, the processes Parler has put in place to moderate or prevent the spread of dangerous and illegal content have proved insufficient. Specifically, we have continued to find direct threats of violence and calls to incite lawless action in violation of Guideline 1.1 – Safety – Objectionable Content.

Your response also references a moderation plan “for the time being,” which does not meet the ongoing requirements in Guideline 1.2 – Safety – User Generated content. While there is no perfect system to prevent all dangerous or hateful user content, apps are required to have robust content moderation plans in place to proactively and effectively address these issues. A temporary “task force” is not a sufficient response given the widespread proliferation of harmful content.

For these reasons, your app will be removed from the App Store until we receive an update that is compliant with the App Store Review Guidelines and you have demonstrated your ability to effectively moderate and filter the dangerous and harmful content on your service.

Regards,

App Review Board

Conservative commentator and Parler investor Dan Bongino posted about Apple’s decision on the site:

The tech tyrants at Apple have pulled the app from their App Store. Apple is no different than the Chinese communist party in their preference for totalitarian thought control. I’m proud of the remaining liberty-loving people of this great country. And I’m embarrassed, and horrified by the tech totalitarians who’ve taken control of it.

Bongino was among those recently suspended from Twitter. He noted, however, that he had no intention to return to the site.

While Parler is no longer available through the store at present, it seems it will still be available to access for those who have already downloaded it. As The New York Times noted earlier this week,

If Apple pulls Parler from the App Store, people would not be able to download the app to their iPhones or iPads. People who had already downloaded the Parler iPhone app would still be able to use it, but the company would not be able to update the app, meaning it would eventually be rendered obsolete as Apple updated the iPhone software.

But Parler’s future remains more uncertain than most, as there’s a growing push inside Amazon to pull the plug on Parler, too.

The news comes shortly after Google banned it from Google Play. The app, which became a home to Trump supporters and several high-profile conservatives in the days leading up the Capitol riots, had been operating in violation of Apple’s rules, we understand. Apple’s App Store guidelines require apps hosting user-generated content to have moderation policies to remove content that incites violence.

Despite these policies, neither Apple nor Google had taken action to remove Parler in prior weeks, even though Trump supporters and other far-right users had used the app to call for violence and organize their plans to storm the Capitol. The insurrection left five people dead, over 50 police officers injured, and more than a dozen facing federal charges, in addition to the growing number of arrests emerging as suspects are identified.

Image Credits: Parler via the App Store

BuzzFeed News on Friday reported Parler had received a letter from Apple which warned that the app would be removed from the App Store within 24 hours, unless the company submitted a content moderation improvement plan.

Apple’s notice read:

We have received numerous complaints regarding objectionable content in your Parler service, accusations that the Parler app was used to plan, coordinate, and facilitate the illegal activities in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 that led (among other things) to loss of life, numerous injuries, and the destruction of property. The app also appears to continue to be used to plan and facilitate yet further illegal and dangerous activities.

(TechCrunch additionally confirmed BuzzFeed’s reporting.)

Parler CEO John Matze posted about Apple’s ultimatum to his own Parler account, saying he would not cave to “those authoritarians who hate free speech.” Earlier today, it was noted that the service reportedly removed a post from Trump associate Lin Wood over calls for violence against Vice President, Mike Pence.

Ahead of its removal, Parler had ranked No. 1 in News on the iPhone App Store and No. 13 Overall, according to data from App Annie. On Friday, it was ranking as high as No. 1, at times, on the iPhone’s Top Charts of free non-game apps, though final data was not available.

Image Credits: App Annie

Currently, the app is hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS), but it appears to be in violation of the AWS Acceptable Use Policy which could serve as grounds for its removal.

The collective action of tech company employees is playing a key role in some of the decisions being made regarding Trump and his supporters’ access to platforms to communicate and organize in the days following the Capitol riots. According to The Washington Post, for example, over 350 Twitter employees signed a letter urging CEO Jack Dorsey and other execs to permanently suspend Trump’s account before the company followed through.

Trump has now lost his ability to post to Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Twitch, to name a few. Meanwhile, Parler’s removal from both app stores will limit the reach of the more radical and violent Trump supporter movement to some extent, forcing them to more obscure corners of the web. However, many argue these measures have come too late, as the damage to not only Capitol, but to the nation’s psyche as whole, has already been done.

We have reached out to Parler for additional comment.


Source: Tech Crunch

The next Zoom wants to be nothing like Zoom

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In the past few months, there hasn’t been one conversation I’ve had about remote work that doesn’t include a mention of Hopin, a virtual events platform last valued at $2.1 billion.

For a company only a little older than a year, Hopin has a wild growth story. It grew its ARR from $0 to $20 million in nine months. It scooped up two businesses to differentiate its business, including StreamYard for $250 million just this week. And its last financing round left the company’s valuation at $2.1 billion.

Hopin’s growth amid Zoom’s fatigue is giving validation to a whole crop of remote-work-focused startups. I see startups in the category sitting in two camps: Either you’re betting that users want a more passive way to interact with video or you’re betting that users want a more active way to interact with video.

This week, for example, I wrote about Rewatch, which creates internal private channels for startups to archive all their videoconferencing meetings. The company is essentially turning live meetings into transcribed documents that employees can sift through on their own time, shifting from synchronous to asynchronous.

In contrast, I also covered Teamflow, a platform that wants to give a virtual space to companies to recreate the serendipity and productivity of an office. Unlike Rewatch, Teamflow thinks that employees want there to be more live moments in a distributed world.

Both previously in-stealth companies cited Hopin as an example of the need for innovation around how we interact virtually. Rewatch and Teamflow, respectively, see Zoom as a plug-in or competitor – not inspiration.

As I mentioned in this week’s podcast, it’s a dynamic I expect to play out even more over the next few months, as we evolve from a Zoom world to a Zoom alternative world. I want to hear from you, even if you disagree, about what companies in the remote work space should be on my radar. E-mail me at natasha.mascarenhas@techcrunch.com or tweet me @nmasc_ with companies you think should be on my remote-work radar.

The power of platform

This week, the U.S. Capitol building was stormed by pro-Trump insurrectionists in a fatal riot. Many in the tech community blamed Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg for not limiting hate speech on their respective platforms, thus stoking flames of domestic terrorism.

Here’s what to know:

Even as many see the response as too little too late, the events mark a crucial change in the way that regulation between government and tech works.

Etc: Reggie James, CEO and founder of Eternal, framed the issue in a tweet:

Image: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

FTC versus DTC

Sticking to our government and tech theme, P&G has officially terminated its plan to acquire razor startup, Billie, after the FTC sued over antitrust concerns.

Here’s what to know: Billie was founded in 2017 with the goal of fighting the “pink tax” on goods marketed to women, including razors and body wash. It was going to be acquired by P&G after raising just $35 million in venture capital.

Etc: Direct-to-consumer brands are not happy. The failed deal is not-so-subtly signaling to DTC brands that there is a cap to their scale, at least in the FTC’s eyes. Government regulation and limited scale also could hurt VC interest in the category.

The optimistic news is that VC funding might be falling out of favor with top D2C brands.

Many product-based brands, as it turns out, are no longer interested in chasing venture capital, playing the “grow-at-all-costs” game and relinquishing partial control to investors, despite the pandemic and the uncertain circumstances many founders find themselves facing.

Image Credits: Billie

IPOs, a direct listing, and sky-high valuations

My colleague Alex puts together a brilliant newsletter each week after his column, The Exchange. Subscribe to it for his in-depth analysis on the IPO market and late-stage startups. In the meantime, though…

Here’s what to know:

Etc: The Roblox Gambit

Green helium balloon carrying pink piggy bank with white strings on blue sky

Around TechCrunch

Remembering TechCrunch Japan’s Hirohide Yoshida (1971-2020)

Extra Crunch Live is back in 2021, connecting founders with tech giants and each other

A directory of the most active and engaged investors in VC: The TechCrunch List

The Mixtape Podcast: Behind the curtain of diversity theater

Across the week

Seen on TC

Elon Musk has a new title: world’s richest person

Waymo is dropping the term ‘self-driving,’ but not everyone in the industry is on board

VCs dispense political niceties during capitol riots: ‘Never talk to me again’

California vegan egg startup Eat Just yokes itself to China’s fast food chain

Detroit’s Ludlow Ventures goes for fund four

Seen on EC

Revenue-based financing: The next step for private equity and early-stage investment

5 questions about 2021’s startup market

What’s going on with fintech venture capital investment?

VCs discuss gaming’s biggest infrastructure investment opportunities in 2021

The tech-powered wave of smart, not slow, tutoring sessions

@EquityPod

If you’re new here, welcome! Equity is TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast. I chat with Alex and Danny about the most important tech news each week, from early-stage startups to IPOs, and crack a few jokes in the meantime. Produced by Chris, Equity is a perfect appetizer to this newsletter.

Despite your wishes for a slower and perhaps more uneventful year, tech clearly isn’t slowing down in 2021. The Equity team had a mountain of news to get through, from Twitter’s very active checkbook to a $185 million Series A round.

Here’s what you’ll hear about if you tune into our debut full-team episode for the year:

  • Why Hopin might be the fastest growing story of this era
  • How, and why, a Utah-based expense management company founded in 2018 is already a unicorn
  • What does a slew of acquisitions from Twitter and Amazon mean for the exit environment?
  • And a tip just for you: a ton of VC firms squeezed in SEC filings on New Years Eve bringing hundreds of millions of capital to potential startups.

Convinced? Good. Listen here, and make sure to check out our bonus episode with Roblox and gaming news that comes out on Saturday.

 

 


Source: Tech Crunch