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Australia wants Five Eyes to squeeze tech firms on encryption
The political rhetoric against strong encryption continues to crank up. Reuters reports today that Australia will be pushing for greater powers for countries to tackle the use of encrypted messaging services by terrorists and criminals at an upcoming meeting of ministers from the so-called ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence network. Read More
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YouTube’s mobile app will soon better display all video formats, add messaging
On the heels of a major redesign of its desktop site which delivered an overall cleaner look-and-feel and a “dark mode” for nighttime watching, YouTube this week announced it will soon roll out an update to its mobile app, as well. The new app will better support video shot in other formats and orientations, by dynamically adapting its player to whatever video you’re… Read More
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Facebook expands its hate-fighting counterspeech initiative in Europe
Facebook has launched a third counterspeech initiative in Europe, partnering with the not-for-profit Institute for Strategic Dialogue for the launch of the Online Civil Courage Initiative (OCCI), which is aimed at tackling online extremism and hate speech. Read More
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Crunch Report | Apple Rolls Out Early Version Of Its Safe Driving Feature
Today’s Stories Do Not Disturb While Driving feature rolls out in Apple’s newest iOS 11 beta Sean Parker has left Spotify’s board; Padmasree Warrior, Thomas Staggs join in lead up to IPO Trump might kill next month’s new startup visa before it takes effect Facebook is testing a feature to prevent profile pictures being abused by other users Tantan, China’s… Read More
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Periscope vows fix for broadcasters mad that they forfeit tips by deleting replays
Periscope’s new Super Hearts tipping feature that launched yesterday quickly sparked a backlash from the creators it was designed to help earn money. Read More
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Facebook equips admins to protect and analyze their Groups
Facebook sees Groups as the core of its push to “build community,” as Mark Zuckerberg detailed in his 6,000-word humanitarian manifesto. So today at its Communities Summit in Chicago, where it assembled 300 admins of top Groups, Facebook is making good on Zuckerberg’s promise to give admins more tools to manage their flocks. Read More
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Facebook changes mission statement to ‘bring the world closer together’
“Making the world more open and connected” had one fundamental flaw: it didn’t push for any specific positive outcome from more connection. Technically, it could encompass digital voyeurism via the News Feed, trading in-person friendship for online acquaintanceship or the filter bubbles and echospheres that have further polarized the United States. Read More
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Snapchat acquires social map app Zenly for $250M to $350M
Snapchat’s newest feature, Snap Map, is based on its latest acquisition, social mapping startup Zenly. TechCrunch has learned that Snapchat has bought Zenly for between $250 million and $350 million in mostly cash and some stock in a deal that closed in late May. Snapchat will keep Zenly running independently, similar to how Facebook lets Instagram run independently. Read More
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Periscope lets you buy and send Super Hearts that broadcasters can cash in
Periscope has a new revenue stream and a new way to attract the best live video content to its Twitter-owned app. Today Periscope launches Super Hearts — in-app purchase virtual goods that users buy for real money, send to creators as animated hearts that get them attention in the comment reel and that broadcasters can then redeem with Twitter for a monthly cash payout. Read More
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Snapchat launches location-sharing feature Snap Map
Snapchat’s next big feature wants to get you to meet up with friends in real life rather than just watching each other’s lives on your phones. Snap Map lets you share your current location, which appears to friends on a map and updates when you open Snapchat. It’s rolling out today to all iOS and Android users globally. Read More
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Pinterest’s camera search Lens gets a new look
Pinterest’s camera search tool, Lens, is getting a makeover today with some updated including the ability to zoom in and out and tap to focus, and making it easier to search with Lens from photos they’ve already taken. Lens is very much a move to try to collapse the distance between the experience within Pinterest the app (or site) and the real world. Users point their camera… Read More
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Twist is Slack without the annoying distractions
When Slack implemented threaded conversations, it seemed like the holy grail for internal communications. Slack finally lets you talk about multiple things in separate conversations. But Slack remains a real-time messaging service at heart, so threads don’t feel native. It works well for many teams, but some companies would prefer something a bit more asynchronous and focused. At the… Read More
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Instagram Stories hits 250M daily users, adds Live video replays
Instagram Stories is widening its lead over Snapchat and rolling out new features to keep everyone shooting video. Instagram Stories now has 250 million daily active users. That compares to Snapchat’s total 166 million daily actives for its entire app and Instagram’s total 700 million monthly users. Read More
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Phhhoto shutters app and pivots to photobooths, blaming Instagram
Animated GIF capture tool and social network Phhhoto is shutting down its app due to server costs becoming unsustainable after getting slammed with competition by Instagram’s copycat Boomerang. Phhhoto will pivot to focus on its parent company HYPNO’s original business — physical photobooths for events. Read More
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Tumblr rolls out new content filtering tools with launch of ‘Safe Mode’
Tumblr this morning is rolling out a significant update to its content filtering system with the launch of a new “Safe Mode” for browsing content on its site. While the company already offered the ability to filter explicit content from its search results, Safe Mode goes a step further to also hide sensitive content in your Tumblr Dashboard. The Dashboard is Tumblr’s feed of… Read More
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Skype outage causing connectivity issues, company says it’s a “global incident”
Microsoft’s recently updated communications app Skype has been suffering connectivity issues which began on Monday, June 19th, and are continuing today. After hours of downtime on Monday, the company confirmed the issue via a blog post and tweet, which stated that an incident was causing users to either lose connectivity to the application or lose their ability to send and receive… Read More
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Nextdoor, now in 160,000 neighborhoods globally, expands to Germany
Nextdoor, the social network that connects you with people in your neighborhood, is taking another step up in its global growth, after launching in the Netherlands and the UK last year. Today, the company is opening for business in Germany, the largest internet market in Europe. The move comes as Nextdoor says it is now used in 160,000 neighborhoods across the US, UK and Netherlands, with… Read More
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Google to ramp up AI efforts to ID extremism on YouTube
Last week Facebook solicited help with what it dubbed “hard questions” — including how it should tackle the spread of terrorism propaganda on its platform. Yesterday Google followed suit with its own public pronouncement, via an op-ed in the FT newspaper, explaining how it’s ramping up measures to tackle extremist content. Read More
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Snap taps its IPO price as it continues to crash
Update: It happened! Snap fell down to its IPO price (for a few seconds) of $17 per share after its continued steady march south over the past several weeks. The company is now barely holding just above its IPO price. Snap’s last earnings report resulted in a disaster, and while the company still managed to stay above $20 for an extended period of time, a string of bad days for the… Read More
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