Archives for January 2019

That immediately cut off Facebook’s 35,000 workers from its internal iPhone apps. And the problem snowballed when mobile apps like Workplace and Messenger — two internal communication tools — also stopped working, frustrating employees and resulting in hours of lost productivity.

Late Thursday, Apple relented and restored Facebook’s access. Yet the episode was a stark reminder of where the power really lies in the technology world. While Facebook is the world’s biggest social network, Apple controls the distribution of apps — including Facebook’s — on its phones. That power is a longstanding concern for Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, making his company beholden to the rules of others.

The spat underscored the tensions between two of Silicon Valley’s largest tech companies, which have competed for years over talent and new technologies. Recently, each has taken potshots at the other over data privacy, with Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, trading slights with Mr. Zuckerberg in interviews. Facebook also worked last year with a public-relations firm, Definers Public Affairs, to urge reporters to scrutinize Apple and other tech companies. And Apple has made changes to some of its tech features that limit the ability of Facebook and others to track users.

Apple did not immediately have a comment on Thursday after reinstating Facebook’s access to its internal apps. In a statement, Facebook said it was “getting our internal apps up and running” and added, “To be clear, this didn’t have an impact on our consumer-facing services.”

In an interview on Wednesday, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, said of the dispute with Apple, “Obviously we want to be in full compliance with all of our partners.” She added that the Facebook research app at issue hadn’t been a secret and had been operated only with its users’ consent.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/technology/apple-blocks-facebook.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Facebook shared information about the campaign with the lab before the posts were removed.

Last year, Facebook announced it had taken down two separate Iranian-linked disinformation campaigns. In October, the company said a campaign originating in Iran had been targeting people in the United States and Britain. In August, Facebook said it had found an influence operation that originated in Iran and Russia.

Two other disinformation campaigns that Twitter removed were from Venezuela, which is currently grappling with political turmoil as Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader, has declared himself the country’s acting president in a challenge to the incumbent, Nicolás Maduro. (Both men have taken to Twitter to champion themselves.)

One Venezuelan campaign that Twitter uncovered was made up of 764 accounts that posted about American politics and the midterm elections, while another network of 1,196 accounts posted political content targeted at Venezuelan citizens.

Twitter was able to determine that the domestic Venezuelan campaign was organized by the Venezuelan government because of digital clues linking the accounts to the country. The activity also followed specific guidelines that were laid out in a troll farm guide compiled by the country’s government and obtained by Bloomberg, a person familiar with the campaign said.

Twitter has said it is difficult to definitively tie accounts to specific countries or governments, though it uses information about how someone logs in and what kinds of content is posted to the account to determine its origin.

Twitter and Facebook made their announcements Thursday as part of an effort to increase transparency around the fake accounts the companies find on their platforms. Twitter, for example, has published new data on the issue periodically since last October as it has faced scrutiny over how its service can be gamed to sway people’s thinking. Twitter said that it challenges 8 million to 10 million suspicious accounts every week.

Twitter, Facebook and Google have been criticized by lawmakers, regulators and users around the world for not doing enough to curb disinformation.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/technology/twitter-disinformation-united-states-russia.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The pressure worked. Mr. Peretti met with the council on Monday and sent an email to employees hours later, informing them that the company would include payments for vacation and comp days as part of the severance packages.

The same day, The New Yorker published a letter to the editor by Mr. Peretti. It was his response to the magazine’s recent article on the state of the journalism business by the historian Jill Lepore. In the piece — whose tenor was summed up by an illustration of the Grim Reaper holding a newspaper — Ms. Lepore wrote that “speculation is that BuzzFeed is trying to dump” BuzzFeed News. In his letter, Mr. Peretti wrote: “This speculation is incorrect. Whatever challenges we face in this difficult environment for digital media, BuzzFeed News remains a key part of the future of BuzzFeed.”

Adding to the turbulence were the public complaints of BuzzFeed’s quizmaster, Matthew Perpetua, another victim of the layoffs. On Monday, Mr. Perpetua published a blog post informing readers that a number of the site’s most popular quizzes were created by unpaid contributors. One so-called community user, whom he identified only as a college student in Michigan, was “the second-highest traffic driver worldwide” among BuzzFeed’s quizmakers, Mr. Perpetua wrote.

This came as news to the quizmaker, Rachel McMahon, a 19-year-old student at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich. After writing on Twitter that she felt “horrible” that BuzzFeed may have been emboldened to lay off staff partly because of the popularity of her unpaid work, she had a moment in the media spotlight when she was interviewed at length for New York magazine’s Intelligencer site.

A BuzzFeed spokesman complimented Ms. McMahon’s work but disputed that she was the second most popular quizmaker in 2018, adding, “We’d be all too lucky to hire her when she graduates from college.”

Over the last week, many of the laid-off BuzzFeeders found themselves the recipients of ugly messages and tweets sent by trolls and alt-right Twitter accounts. The messages included some variation of “learn to code,” images of nooses and insults. One message sent by email included death threats, NBC News reported.

“I believe there is a special, dedicated section of Hell just for people with anime twitter avatars who tell laid-off journalists to ‘learn to code,’” Patrick George, the editor in chief of the automotive site Jalopnik, said on Twitter.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/business/media/buzzfeed-layoffs.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The copyright code has an exemption for nonprofits. Mr. Goodfriend, who does not draw a salary, said he has collected $10,000 in donations so far, mostly in $5 increments. He took out a high-interest loan, at around 15 percent, to fund the operation, which to date has cost more than $700,000.

Mr. Goodfriend is not a rich tech entrepreneur or a wealthy heir — just a lawyer who has made a decent living. Locast could still meet the fate of Aereo and be sued into financial oblivion by the networks. So why is he doing this?

The answer is partly principle, and partly intellectual mischief: With his public-private background, he has spotted an imbalance in the media ecosystem, he said, and decided to give the whole thing a shake.

“I ask people all the time, ‘Do you know you’re supposed to get television for free?’” Mr. Goodfriend said during an interview in Central Park, gesturing to a gaggle of visitors. “Most people under 50 don’t get it.”

Although his practice is in Washington, where he also teaches law at Georgetown and lectures at George Washington University, Mr. Goodfriend had come to New York to inspect the installation of the antenna, on the Trump International Hotel and Tower.

(This is another area where Locast has to operate carefully: The organization must install signal equipment in every city where it operates, because all broadcast stations are regional and retransmissions can be made only to local residents. If you live in, say, Miami, you can’t get Locast until Mr. Goodfriend puts up an antenna there.)

More Americans are receiving over-the-air TV signals for free lately — about 16 million households, up from 11 million eight years ago, according to Nielsen. But that number still pales in comparison with the 90 million homes that pay for video content, whether cable or satellite or Netflix.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/business/locast-streaming-free-network-tv.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

How did you wind up at Pepperdine University?

In my senior year of high school, I interned for Dina Ruiz, who was a local anchorwoman in Monterey. She gave me the seedling of an idea that I could become a broadcaster. I did my research and I came up with Pepperdine, but it was incredibly expensive. I got in early admission, and had no way of affording the school. So I signed up for U.C. Santa Barbara.

But my mom said, “If you really want to go to Pepperdine, you should tell them that.” So I wrote them a letter. Then, two days before I had to put down a deposit on U.C.S.B., I got this huge packet in the mail, and it was a complete financial aid package from Pepperdine.

How did you get started in Hollywood?

My first internship was on the set of “Friends,” at the height of the frenzy. My job was to hold the phone, and if it rang, I had to answer it and go find the person who was wanted. That was the worst job for me because A, I hate talking on the phone, and B, I’m kind of shy. I’d be standing there, and the phone would ring, and it would be like, “Hey, it’s Brad, can you get Jen for me?” And I’m like, “This sucks.”

I hated it. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough because of the energy. I’m an energy person. Maybe it was growing up in Santa Cruz or maybe I was just born with it, but human energy, I just feel it so much.

How did you get into tech?

Right after I met Kevin, I started going up to San Francisco on the weekends, and we’d go to parties where the PayPal guys were playing speed chess. Kevin was building Xoom, and he’d come down and practice his pitch deck on me a million times. I was in love, so I’d just sit there staring.

I was working at FX at the time, during this period where product placement started to become a thing. And I would be on the phone with Anheuser-Busch, getting yelled at because we didn’t have the Miller Lite bottle the right way for long enough or whatever. And Denis Leary would be on the other line going, “I’m not getting paid for this.” It was a slow-motion train wreck, and meanwhile, Kevin’s showing me the first YouTube videos, and I’m seeing how quickly things can move.

“If you’re working on the same spreadsheet, you’re going to be fighting over the mouse.” — Julia Hartz

How did you two start working together?

I found a job at a start-up cable network in San Francisco called Current TV, but they offered me less than what I was making at FX. Kevin said, “You shouldn’t go work for somebody else’s start-up and make less than what you’re worth. You should come do something with me and make no money, and we could put all of our savings into bootstrapping it.” I don’t know why I said yes, but I did. Literally, the next day, I’m pushing sawhorses and plywood into a warehouse in San Francisco, and I was thinking, “I really hope I’m not starting my life and the next phase of my career with a crazy person.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/business/julia-hartz-eventbrite-corner-office.html?partner=rss&emc=rss