Here's What Happens When Your Life Becomes An Alt-Right Meme

Meet Kyle Chapman, aka “Based Stickman.”

You might know him from this picture — taken at the recent violent political protests in Berkeley, California — which went pretty viral:

Or from the video of him breaking a wooden sign on the head of an anti-Trump counter-protester at a March 4 rally in Berkeley, California, which now has more than half a million views, and spawned dozens of YouTube remixes.

youtube.com

At the chaotic skirmishes that have overtaken Berkeley over the last few months, Chapman has been a fixture, clad in a shield, bike helmet, gas mask — and, of course, the big ol’ wooden stick that inspired his nickname, which is a combination of the slang term “based” (meaning “true to oneself and uncaring about others’ opinions“) and his weapon of choice.

Chapman did not respond to multiple requests for comment from BuzzFeed News, but according to local media outlet Berkeleyside, the 41-year-old is a diver by day; his Based Stickman Facebook page lists his location as Daly City, California. He describes himself on his personal Facebook page as a “Proud American Nationalist” and an “ardent Trump supporter.” And now, he's a human meme of the alt-right, with the webstore, rabid fanbase, and emergent movement to to go along with it.

Chapman has created Based Stickman accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to interact with his fans and solicit donations. His Reddit AMA in r/thedonald drew thousands of comments. He’s expressed interest in going to San Diego Comic Con to pitch a graphic novel about his persona, and used the right-wing crowdfunding site Wesearchr to bankroll the bail for his next inevitable arrest. (As of now, the page has raised $86,500.) On April 29, he and a number of other alt-right figures will host a gathering on California’s Mt. Baldy celebrating President Trump’s first 100 days. He’s partnered with right-wing apparel store Gruntworks to create an entire line of Based Stickman merch: hoodies ($39.99), T-shirts ($23.99), and stickers ($3-$5) in his likeness. Based Stickman is a brand.

View Video ›

Facebook: basedstickman

He&039;s also the celebrity leader of a nascent para-military wing of the alt-right. In a recent Reddit Ask Me Anything on the forum r/thedonald, he urged his fans to usher in “a resurgence of a warrior spirit to Western Society.” In the same AMA, one poster wrote, “Thank you for your service!”, mimicking the way people address military veterans. Chapman responded, “You&039;re welcome&033; It&039;s an honor to be of service to the people who love this country as much as I do.” On April 22, Chapman formed the “Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights,” a militant group within the alt-right fraternity The Proud Boys, which was started by Vice co-founder and right-wing media figure Gavin McInnes (he and Vice split ways 10 years ago). According to a Facebook post by Chapman, the group will focus on “street activism, preparation, defense, and confrontation.”

View Video ›

Facebook: video.php

According to a Proud Boys news site, the Alt-Knights will step in when police are told to stand down. At an April 15 clash in Berkeley, the Proud Boys were already doing essentially that, acting as bodyguards for Lauren Southern, one of the far-right-wing rally’s invited speakers, as she filmed the chaos. The Proud Boys are recognizable by their black and yellow polo shirts.

youtube.com

Though Chapman is an avowed member of the so-called alt-right — the loose confederation of white nationalists, libertarians, and other far right-wingers supporting Donald Trump that largely formed online — he seems to think the racially motivated parts of his movement aren’t the best thing for it. In April 25 Facebook post, he tried to disown people photographed in Seig Heil postures at the April 15th event in Berkeley. Some of his fans were not happy, saying that his negative views of white nationalism were a sign that liberals or “anti-fascists” had gotten to him.

Anti-fascists, Antifa for short, are Based Stickman’s sworn enemies, the Joker to his Batman. They’re the black-clad Left-wing protesters who have appeared in Berkeley in recent months, disrupting Milo Yiannopoulos’ plans for a speech and fighting right-wingers in Berkeley’s parks and streets.

As a result of his activities as Based Stickman, Chapman has been arrested on suspicion of committing a number of felonies, though the charges from the March 4 riot have been dropped. He may still face charges for participating in a riot, though, according to an April 18 Facebook post.

Chapman is a living meme, and he knows it.

He wrote in an April 22 Facebook post, “The value of our meme warriors cannot be understated. Hail the meme warriors, Hail 4chan&033;” (The post linked to a Wired article titled “Don’t Look Now, But Extremists’ Memes Are Turning Into Militias.”) He’s also said that before his internet fame, he didn’t spend much time online.

youtube.com

And yet: Stickman&039;s sphere of influence appears to be widening. A Based Stickman Facebook group has appeared in an attempt to establish a local chapter in Phoenix. Right-wingers have recently put out calls online to arm themselves and fight against protesters on Thursday, the evening Ann Coulter was set to speak at UC Berkeley (Coulter isn&039;t speaking, but the protests went on nonetheless.) In one forum, the first response to the summons is “Will Based Stickman be there?”

The UC Berkeley administration, when justifying its initial cancellation of Coulter’s speech, cited the exchange on the bodybuilding forum as evidence that violence would erupt on campus if the event were allowed to continue. Chapman himself has issued calls to fans to be there that day, and attended in full riot gear.

Here’s someone copying Chapman’s methods in downtown Berkeley:

Based Stickman is gearing up for war much in the way a Wrestlemania personality would. In a video posted yesterday on his Facebook page in advance of Thursday&039;s protest, he shouts out his fans: “my troops, patriots, freedom fighters, and warriors.” And much like a Wrestlemania hero, Chapman sees success as a foregone conclusion. “Guys, I’ll tell you right now. We will be victorious tomorrow. Our victory is all but guaranteed.”

Quelle: <a href="Here&039;s What Happens When Your Life Becomes An Alt-Right Meme“>BuzzFeed

Here's What Happens When Your Life Becomes An Alt-Right Meme

Meet Kyle Chapman, aka “Based Stickman.”

You might know him from this picture — taken at the recent violent political protests in Berkeley, California — which went pretty viral:

Or from the video of him breaking a wooden sign on the head of an anti-Trump counter-protester at a March 4 rally in Berkeley, California, which now has more than half a million views, and spawned dozens of YouTube remixes.

youtube.com

At the chaotic skirmishes that have overtaken Berkeley over the last few months, Chapman has been a fixture, clad in a shield, bike helmet, gas mask — and, of course, the big ol’ wooden stick that inspired his nickname, which is a combination of the slang term “based” (meaning “true to oneself and uncaring about others’ opinions“) and his weapon of choice.

Chapman did not respond to multiple requests for comment from BuzzFeed News, but according to local media outlet Berkeleyside, the 41-year-old is a diver by day; his Based Stickman Facebook page lists his location as Daly City, California. He describes himself on his personal Facebook page as a “Proud American Nationalist” and an “ardent Trump supporter.” And now, he&#039;s a human meme of the alt-right, with the webstore, rabid fanbase, and emergent movement to to go along with it.

Chapman has created Based Stickman accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to interact with his fans and solicit donations. His Reddit AMA in r/thedonald drew thousands of comments. He’s expressed interest in going to San Diego Comic Con to pitch a graphic novel about his persona, and used the right-wing crowdfunding site Wesearchr to bankroll the bail for his next inevitable arrest. (As of now, the page has raised $86,500.) On April 29, he and a number of other alt-right figures will host a gathering on California’s Mt. Baldy celebrating President Trump’s first 100 days. He’s partnered with right-wing apparel store Gruntworks to create an entire line of Based Stickman merch: hoodies ($39.99), T-shirts ($23.99), and stickers ($3-$5) in his likeness. Based Stickman is a brand.

View Video ›

Facebook: basedstickman

He&039;s also the celebrity leader of a nascent para-military wing of the alt-right. In a recent Reddit Ask Me Anything on the forum r/thedonald, he urged his fans to usher in “a resurgence of a warrior spirit to Western Society.” In the same AMA, one poster wrote, “Thank you for your service&#033;”, mimicking the way people address military veterans. Chapman responded, “You&039;re welcome&033; It&039;s an honor to be of service to the people who love this country as much as I do.” On April 22, Chapman formed the “Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights,” a militant group within the alt-right fraternity The Proud Boys, which was started by Vice co-founder and right-wing media figure Gavin McInnes (he and Vice split ways 10 years ago). According to a Facebook post by Chapman, the group will focus on “street activism, preparation, defense, and confrontation.”

View Video ›

Facebook: video.php

According to a Proud Boys news site, the Alt-Knights will step in when police are told to stand down. At an April 15 clash in Berkeley, the Proud Boys were already doing essentially that, acting as bodyguards for Lauren Southern, one of the far-right-wing rally’s invited speakers, as she filmed the chaos. The Proud Boys are recognizable by their black and yellow polo shirts.

youtube.com

Though Chapman is an avowed member of the so-called alt-right — the loose confederation of white nationalists, libertarians, and other far right-wingers supporting Donald Trump that largely formed online — he seems to think the racially motivated parts of his movement aren’t the best thing for it. In April 25 Facebook post, he tried to disown people photographed in Seig Heil postures at the April 15th event in Berkeley. Some of his fans were not happy, saying that his negative views of white nationalism were a sign that liberals or “anti-fascists” had gotten to him.

Anti-fascists, Antifa for short, are Based Stickman’s sworn enemies, the Joker to his Batman. They’re the black-clad Left-wing protesters who have appeared in Berkeley in recent months, disrupting Milo Yiannopoulos’ plans for a speech and fighting right-wingers in Berkeley’s parks and streets.

As a result of his activities as Based Stickman, Chapman has been arrested on suspicion of committing a number of felonies, though the charges from the March 4 riot have been dropped. He may still face charges for participating in a riot, though, according to an April 18 Facebook post.

Chapman is a living meme, and he knows it.

He wrote in an April 22 Facebook post, “The value of our meme warriors cannot be understated. Hail the meme warriors, Hail 4chan&033;” (The post linked to a Wired article titled “Don’t Look Now, But Extremists’ Memes Are Turning Into Militias.”) He’s also said that before his internet fame, he didn’t spend much time online.

youtube.com

And yet: Stickman&039;s sphere of influence appears to be widening. A Based Stickman Facebook group has appeared in an attempt to establish a local chapter in Phoenix. Right-wingers have recently put out calls online to arm themselves and fight against protesters on Thursday, the evening Ann Coulter was set to speak at UC Berkeley (Coulter isn&039;t speaking, but the protests went on nonetheless.) In one forum, the first response to the summons is “Will Based Stickman be there?”

The UC Berkeley administration, when justifying its initial cancellation of Coulter’s speech, cited the exchange on the bodybuilding forum as evidence that violence would erupt on campus if the event were allowed to continue. Chapman himself has issued calls to fans to be there that day, and attended in full riot gear.

Here’s someone copying Chapman’s methods in downtown Berkeley:

Based Stickman is gearing up for war much in the way a Wrestlemania personality would. In a video posted yesterday on his Facebook page in advance of Thursday&039;s protest, he shouts out his fans: “my troops, patriots, freedom fighters, and warriors.” And much like a Wrestlemania hero, Chapman sees success as a foregone conclusion. “Guys, I’ll tell you right now. We will be victorious tomorrow. Our victory is all but guaranteed.”

Quelle: <a href="Here&039;s What Happens When Your Life Becomes An Alt-Right Meme“>BuzzFeed

The Real Reason Twitter Doesn’t Allow GIF Avatars

I get one kind of DM-slide over and over. It’s never anyone trying to hit on me, and rarely even harass or troll me. It’s teens who do not follow me asking me how I got an animated GIF for an avatar.

Teens hounding me for info about my GIF avatar.

Sadly, I always have to explain to the teens that they must give up on their dreams, that their best try is not good enough, that they cannot hope to make an impact on the world. There’s no “trick” to having a GIF avatar other than doing something that’s anathema to most teens: not changing your avatar for 5 years.

Let me take you back to a simpler time: June 2012. GIFs were very cool, but still kind of a niche thing — there wasn’t an easy way to make your own without Photoshop, so most plebes couldn’t do it. Before Giphy, there also wasn’t an easy way to search for GIFs; savvy people saved ones they found into a “reaction folder” to use at the right moment. BuzzFeed had only enabled animated GIFs to play on the site a few months before, in April 2012.

And it was possible to upload an animated GIF as your Twitter avatar. Well, not officially, but there was a workaround. Basically, Twitter said animated GIFs weren’t allowed, but if you resized it to a certain ratio and tested it a bit, you could get it to work. A June 2012 article on BuzzFeed explained in detail how to do it, step by step.

This article prompted this exchange between BuzzFeed’s CEO, Jonah Peretti and Twitter’s CEO at the time, Dick Costolo:

After this exchange, the author of the BuzzFeed article, John Herrman, went ahead and made an suggested GIF avatar for Costolo:

Carolyn Penner, a senior manager for communications at Twitter at the time, even endorsed the GIF:

Shortly after this, Twitter closed the loophole to get GIFs. Now look, I can’t say for sure what exactly happened next (both Twitter and Costolo did not reply to requests for comment), but I think it’s completely reasonable to interpret from his tweets that Dick Costolo was not at all amused by GIF avatars. Perhaps he was enraged. Perhaps he ran through the halls of Twitter HQ, shouting, “goddammit, fix the GIF loophole, you chuckleheads&#033;&033;” before busting into the server room shirtless and roundhouse kicking the racks while tearing out fistfuls of wires. Look, I don’t know if that’s what happened, but it’s possible, right?

People who had previously uploaded a GIF avatar, such as myself, were allowed to keep them, but no new GIFs could be added. This means if I ever wanted to change my avatar, I could never get a GIF back. Basically, I have the grandma’s rent controlled apartment of Twitter avatars, and I feel sentimentally attached to it, even though to be honest, I sometimes wish I could change it to something more professional.

And as much as it deeply pains me to admit, it makes me feel cool and special to have a blinky thing no one else can have. I know, I know. Trust me, I feel just as disgusted with myself as you do for admitting to getting any sort of internal validation from Twitter.

There aren’t too many of us GIFtars left. People like switching up their avatars, and undoubtedly some former GIF-havers were sad to discover when they switched to a static image they couldn&#039;t go back to their GIF later on.

Leia Jospe, a photographer from Brooklyn, has an animated GIF of a phone battery charging.

Like me, Jospe can’t bear to change her avatar. As far as cool points, “if anything it means I&039;ve been on Twitter for a long time,” she said. “I guess in a way that is special cred, can be cool or sad depending on how you look at it.”

Leon Chang, who uses Twitter for fun and pranks, also feels trapped. “I don&039;t need to change it to anything else, but I have had nightmares of accidentally changing it and never being able to get it back.” On the other hand, he’s pleased. “I have the best GIF avatar on Twitter.”

I asked my old coworker John Herrman (keep in mind, he may be wholly responsible for the demise of the GIF avatar, so please tell him what you think of him: @jwherrman), who still has his blinky shark GIFtar what he thought about it. A sick and truly twisted look crossed his face, not unlike Jared Leto as The Joker. “Well,” he said, grinning ghoulishly, “looks like my GIF avatar outlasted Dick Costolo.”

Quelle: <a href="The Real Reason Twitter Doesn’t Allow GIF Avatars“>BuzzFeed

Amazon's New Device Will Tell You How Your Ass Looks In Those Jeans

Amazon

Today in Bizarre Gadget News: Amazon has unveiled a hands-free camera, powered by its voice-activated assistant Alexa, called Echo Look. It’s essentially an Amazon Echo speaker with eyes and no fear about telling you how your ass really looks in those jeans. The 5MP camera can sit atop a dresser or be mounted on a wall, and there’s a speaker, mic, and four LED lights built-ins. It also kind of looks like the dildo version of Eve from Wall-E.

An Internet-connected device with video and audio capture that you set up where you get dressed — what could go wrong?&#033; Crucial note: There’s a camera/mic mute button on the side.

The Echo Look’s marquee feature is “Style Check,” which uses “advanced machine learning algorithms” and advice of unidentified fashion specialists to determine which outfit looks best on you, “based on current trends and what flatters you,” kind of like a bizzaro version Cher’s wardrobe software from Clueless. You can also give Style Check feedback, which I imagine gets fed into some unique Amazon user profile to inform what kind of clothes will get recommended to you when you visit Amazon.

Amazon did not immediately respond to an inquiry about how the device will support its other businesses.

The Echo Look appears to target people who take photos of their ~lewk~ (like fashion bloggers). By saying, “Alexa, take a photo,” you can take “full-length photos and short 360º videos” of your outfit of the day. The photos are then uploaded to the Echo Look app. You can use the camera’s so-called “computer vision” software to blur the the background and make your pic look more professional and less like it was taken from, oh say, a voice-activated camera. Then you presumably share it on Instagram and slap on an #ootd hashtag?

Amazon

Aside from obvious privacy/surveillance concerns, the fundamental question is whether you trust an e-commerce and electronics company in Seattle to tell you what to wear. My hunch is, at least at first, no. But maybe I’m just afraid that trusting software will catalyze our transformation into a homogenous, J. Crew wearing society. And what if Style Check always chooses skinny jeggings over loose fit vintage jeans because it’s “more slimming”? That feels wrong.

If you saw this product announcement and never clicked on something so fast, @ me asap. This thing feels like such a classic example of solving a problem that really didn’t exist.

The Echo Look is the first major Echo release since the first-generation Echo Dot in March 2016 (the second-generation was basically the same thing, but cheaper). You can also do regular Alexa stuff with the Echo Look: “Alexa, turns the lights off,” “Alexa, will it rain today,” “Alexa, set a timer for seven minutes,” etc. It’s the most expensive Echo at $200 (the Echo speaker is $180 and the Dot is $50), but is currently only open via invitation.

If you love your frumpy vintage jeans, buy at your own risk.

Amazon

Quelle: <a href="Amazon&039;s New Device Will Tell You How Your Ass Looks In Those Jeans“>BuzzFeed

Palantir Cofounder Says Social Justice Warriors Are Responsible for Trump

J Rumans Photography

On Monday night, in the basement of a posh coworking space in downtown San Francisco, about 200 people gathered to hear the umpteenth panel discussion about how Silicon Valley should deal with Donald Trump. This event, however, had something most industry gatherings don&#039;t: a conservative bent.

Speakers included libertarian Joe Lonsdale, a Palantir cofounder turned high-profile venture capitalist; Steve Hilton, the CEO of the political startup Crowdpac, who has an upcoming show about populism on Fox; and Sam Altman, who runs Y Combinator’s parent company. The event was hosted by Lincoln Network, a right-of-center San Francisco-based political group whose motto is “where liberty and technology meet,” and whose logo used to be a drawing of Abraham Lincoln wearing pair of Google Glass. (With Glass on life support, now the logo is a drawing of Lincoln sporting noise-cancelling headphones favored by engineers or an Oculus Rift.) Panelists defended billionaire Elon Musk’s decision to join Trump’s business advisory council against the backlash that played out on social media. “This is one of the least healthy things that has happened to our country, really, in the last five or 10 years — is this kind of online mobs of social justice warriors trying to take [you] down if you misspeak,” said Lonsdale.

“— There’s your quote for tomorrow,” said Altman, calling back to a prediction that Lonsdale’s made earlier in the evening: if you “screw up” talking about Trump, your quote shows up in the newspaper. The crowd — which included political consultants who advise tech people, tech people who advise politicians, a representative from the Cato Institute, various associates of billionaire Peter Thiel, and the occasional beer bottle rolling past the folding chairs on the concrete floor — cracked up.

“I can’t help myself, that’s why I shouldn’t do this in public,” Lonsdale said, explaining that groups who use social media to “demonize their foes” helped trigger the rise of Trump. “Ironically,” Lonsdale argued, “the same people who are saying, ‘You’re not allowed to work with [Trump] at all. We’re going to attack you, even if you think you’re trying to help the country,’ They have a responsibility for causing this in the first place.”

Nitasha Tiku / BuzzFeed News

Lonsdale’s media prediction came at the start of the panel, when he claimed that he wasn’t expecting to discuss Trump. “Actually, Sam [Altman] and I were going to do a debate earlier on the future of jobs, and I just had my first kid a few weeks ago and I found out today we’re talking about Trump instead, which is terrifying because it’s slightly less easy to talk about in public. But anyways, this is better because now I can give a quote and be on the front page the next day if we screw up&#033;”

Lonsdale’s comments were hardly a screwup, certainly not with this crowd. Since before the election, prominent members of Silicon Valley’s priesthood have argued for more tolerance and acceptance towards Trump’s supporters (now his collaborators). This argument has persisted even as Trump’s actions in the first 100 days have actively undermined sacrosanct Silicon Valley causes like fighting climate change (Musk’s corporate raison d&039;etre), and promoting immigration of highly skilled workers.

On the panel, Altman — an independent who dines out on his anti-Trump stance — also insisted that cooperation with Trump was necessary. But the panelists’ hyper-awareness to the media doesn’t always stretch to self-awareness about Silicon Valley’s role in creating polarized public discussion. “I think absolutism is bad in any form and it has gotten us into this current mess we’re in,” said Altman. “The Internet has amplified the two-party political system so much and pushed us to the extremes of both parties that they’re both kind of imploding on themselves.”

“People can engage in different ways. Some people will run the resistance, some people will run for office, some people will join [Trump’s] advisory board, whatever that is, but I don’t think it’s an acceptable option to say I’m going to completely disengage and do nothing,” Altman argued, building up the image of a plug-your-ears progressive that doesn&039;t accurately describe his critics.

Hilton, who was David Cameron’s BFF until Hilton started backing Brexit, is better known as the husband of Rachel Whetstone, Uber’s very recently departed head of policy and communications, and he had his own caveat about the media.

Through his relationship with Whetstone, “I did see the dynamics of that unfold, for perspective, that’s all I’m saying, so I don’t want a headline about that,” Hilton said.

“Can we get the inside story?” Altman, butted in, asking the question on everyone’s mind.

Perhaps part of their willingness to cooperate stems from the fact that Trump’s policies are pro-business. “If we don’t figure out a way to unrig the system, which is currently in favor of a small number of deeply entrenched interests, then we’re going to continue to have a lack of economic justice and deeply frustrated people and candidates like this,” Altman argued. (In this case, he was talking about San Francisco real estate developers and not Silicon Valley giants like Facebook and Google, which have recently been under antitrust attack.)

Lonsdale’s latest effort, 8 VC, is a group of financiers and entrepreneurs, who raised more than $300 million to make a positive impact on the world. He told the crowd that he was most bothered by Trump’s immigration policy, which went against Silicon Valley’s culture. “I thought it was a mess and I thought it was bad branding for our country.”

But even there, Lonsdale saw a silver lining in increasing salaries for highly-skilled tech workers, and his own personal communication with the administration about top computer scientists who are unable to get visas to attend a computer science competition. “I sent an email to my friends at the White House at the request of a couple of CEOs a few days away — &039;This is ridiculous. This is obviously bad for our country not to allow the people who are being invited here, the top computer scientists, to compete. We should get them visas.&039; And my friends there agreed and said they’d work on it. So I guess that’s a positive thing I’d say: is there are a lot of practical good people who seem to be winning out in terms of how the White House works.”

Quelle: <a href="Palantir Cofounder Says Social Justice Warriors Are Responsible for Trump“>BuzzFeed

Here's The Thing With Free Apps And Services

John Lamb / Getty Images

If there’s only one thing you take away from this article, let it be this: there’s no such thing as free lunch.

The New York Times recently reported that Unroll.me, an email management app that promises to de-clutter your inbox, sold its users’ anonymized Lyft receipt data to Uber. Unroll.me claims that it’s “trusted by millions of happy users” — but it’s likely that those users weren’t aware that they were forking over their personal emails to Slice Intelligence, a digital commerce analytics company. Now, some users are pledging to remove their inbox access from Unroll.me and delete their accounts.

The Unroll.me/Uber fury is a good reminder of the ol’ Internet adage, “if you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer, you’re the product.”

But some sites are much more egregious than others. So here are some ways you can assess an app’s trustworthiness and find out if your free faves are problematic.

What does “you’re the product” even mean?

When you sign up for a free online service, you’re most likely giving up something in return: your data. On sites like Facebook and Google, that means the service uses your personal information (like your interests, location, gender, marital status, or age) to show you advertisements they think you’d be interested in. Last year, Facebook made more than $26 billion from advertising.

For many people, this sounds like a good trade off: You get to use something legitimately useful, like Gmail, for free, and the most visible consequence is an advertisement. But other companies go much farther. Unroll.me, for example, didn’t use user data to target ads — it looked at individual emails and sent them to Uber.

And if you found that story about Target knowing a teen girl was pregnant before her father did thanks to extensive customer data collection to be pretty creepy, you should know that that same kind of analytics-based-advertising-influence has probably been exercised on you.

How do I know what companies are doing with my data? Is it safe?

Be very careful about what kind of access you give apps. To do that, closely at what you’re agreeing to when you sign up.

For example, when you sign up for Unroll.me, you’re giving the service the ability to read, send, delete, and manage your email. This is a good time to ask yourself: Does the service really need all of these permissions? Do I trust this service?

Nicole Nguyen / BuzzFeed News

A good place to start looking for answers is the service’s FAQ page. If there’s a section on security or privacy, it may reveal why it asks for something specifically, like access to your contacts.

And this is something I can’t stress enough: it’s really important to read – or, at the very least, comb through – the terms and conditions when you’re using a *free* app or service, especially when it’s a you’re giving it full access to your inbox.

I know you’re thinking “Who the hell has time for all that legalese?&#033;” You’re right. Terms of service pages are often long, complicated, and vague which is why no one reads them. But there are two great sites that can help you make sense of this consumer contract.

One is Terms of Service; Didn’t Read, which rates and labels policies based on their user-friendliness. For example, when a service warns of allowing access to third-party apps, that gets a thumbs up. If the service says it can make changes to terms without notifying users at any time, that gets a thumbs down.

Another tool is TLDRLegal, which offers a short, plain-language synopsis next to the actual legal text of various company’s terms and conditions. This site is very new, so there aren’t many services on the platform yet, but you can currently look at YouTube’s, Apple’s, Dropbox’s, and Minecraft’s terms of service analyses to start familiarizing yourself with the legal language.

TL;DR Legal

If you’re really concerned about what you discover, contact the app’s support team or send them a tweet to see if there’s room for clarification. Might as well try&033;

Want to learn how to judge a privacy policy for yourself? Center of Plain Language created a great rubric for determining what makes a policy good and bad.

So, what are some things that I should do right now?

Take this time to review what apps are connected to your email or social accounts. You can easily revoke apps you don’t recognize or haven’t used in a while with access to Twitter, Google, and Facebook.

You should also see what the apps on your phone can access. In iOS, go to Settings > Privacy. Review which apps are using the microphone, location tracking, or your phone’s contacts. Then toggle permissions on and off for an app that, say, doesn’t need access to your photo library. On Android, you can go to Settings > Apps and tap on individual apps, then select where it says Permissions.

As previously mentioned, if you do use apps with access to your Gmail account, be extra vigilant.

Sanebox, a paid email management service similar to Unroll.me, specifically claims that they will never sell user data, “even aggregated information,” to another company. Unsubscriber, on the other hand, will use your personal info to improve advertising by third parties. Boomerang, an add-on that lets you schedule Gmails, says that “no personally-identifiable information will be sold or transferred to unaffiliated third parties” without permission, but isn’t clear about aggregate information, though the CEO did tweet that the company makes money from paid subscriptions, rather than selling data. Mailvelope, an email encryption extension, says that they do not share, sell, or market personal data unless you’ve given explicit consent.

Generally, stay away from free VPNs, or Virtual Private Networks. When you use provided Wi-Fi at a public venue like an airport, be aware that the service provider may sell your information to advertisers or use cookies to track website usage and access (Boingo and Gogo both do this). Additionally, note that some ad blockers like AdBlock Plus accept payment to let some advertisements through.

Consider using paid apps that prioritize user privacy above all else and have strong privacy language on their webpages.

And remember: if a service is free, look into how the company is making money and paying for server costs. If it’s with your data, make sure you know *exactly* what they’re doing with it.

cbc.ca / Via giphy.com

Quelle: <a href="Here&039;s The Thing With Free Apps And Services“>BuzzFeed

You Can Now Add Multiple Users To Google Home

Allyson Laquian / BuzzFeed News

Google Home, the voice-activated smart speaker powered by Google Assistant, is about to get smarter. The speaker will finally be able to support multiple Google accounts, rectifying one of my biggest gripes with the device when I first reviewed it five months ago. Last week, Ars Technica spotted a message in the speaker’s app reading, “Multiple users now supported,” but, as it turns out, that notification was just a glitch. Today, Google is officially rolling out the ability to add up to six accounts to a single Google Home.

Managing six different users in one household sounds like a logistical nightmare, but Google Home uses your voice as authentication, so you won’t have to fiddle with the app or learn extra commands. Rather than saying, “How long is Nicole’s commute?,” a user will be able to say, “How long is my commute?” and the speaker will be able to switch to the correct profile by analyzing the characteristics of the voice.

During profile setup, the Google Home app prompts users to say “Ok Google” and “Hey Google” repeatedly, so the software onboard the speaker can identify their voices’ distinct qualities. Every time someone activates Google Home, a neural network (in other words, a type of software that gets better over time) will perform an analysis that compares the voice input to those initial setup recordings. Apparently, the analysis occurs locally, on the device, rather than on a server, so it only takes milliseconds to complete.

This update means a household with multiple roommates or family members will be able to access their own personalized info when they interact with Google Home, rather than that of the primary owner. Each person can download the Google Home app and complete the set up process from their own device.

Google

However, it’s not clear what kind of content will – and won’t – be available in multi-user mode. Adding up to six different voices, especially if those voices are part of the same family and sound similar, makes profile authorization increasingly complicated.

And if the password to unlocking a profile’s private info is simply someone’s voice, then early multi-profile adopters may want to make sure that there isn’t something sensitive on, say, their calendars. Google Home may mis-identify a user’s voice and accidentally reveal the surprise party you’ve been planning for months, or the romantic date with a close friend you’ve been hiding from your roommate. It’s important to note that you can opt out of personal results, by opening the Google Home app > Menu > More settings > scroll down and toggle “Personal Results” to off.

In its announcement, Google specifically mentions personal commute times, calendars, shopping lists, news, and personal playlists. You can also check a flight’s status (based on your email history or calendar events) when you say, “Is my flight on time?” – but that feature isn’t cited in the press release.

Additionally, I’ll be curious to find out how multi-user mode handles third-party services, like music. Will multiple people be able to say, “Play my discover weekly on Spotify”? Also, will me and my partner be able to set two different timers and say, “How much time left on my timer”?

Unfortunately, this feature rollout, while useful, still doesn’t fix one of Google Home’s biggest flaw: being limited to only one calendar, the main calendar associated with your Google profile. So if someone shares their calendar with you, or if your employer uses Google Apps for Work, you won’t be able to add add these calendars to Google Home. This is bizarre — you can add multiple Google Calendars to Amazon Echo’s Alexa but not Google’s own Home&#033;

Nicole Nguyen / BuzzFeed News

Automatic voice recognition does, however, give the $129 Google Home an edge over the $180 Amazon Echo (or $50 Echo Dot). Echo users need to prompt Alexa to “switch accounts” to listen their own Spotify playlists or calendar agendas, and only two adults can be added to a household.

All US users will be able to add multiple accounts to their Home, starting today. UK customers won’t receive the feature for a few more months. When you open the app, you’ll see a prompt that says, “multi-user is available” and you can set up profiles there, or tap the “connected devices” icon in the top right, and select “Link your account.”

Quelle: <a href="You Can Now Add Multiple Users To Google Home“>BuzzFeed

We Tried Out Facebook's New Social VR App At F8

SAN JOSE — Facebook announced a new social virtual reality app for its Oculus Rift headset today at F8, the company&#039;s annual conference for software developers. It&039;s called Facebook Spaces, and you can download the beta version from the Oculus Store now.

In her keynote address, Rachel Rubin Franklin, Facebook&039;s head of social VR, said that Spaces signaled “the very beginnings of social VR.” People on Twitter said it looked a lot like Second Life and The Sims. Perhaps not coincidentally, Franklin previously worked as vice president at Electronic Arts managingThe Sims game.

Oculus Rift already supports the social game Altspace VR, made by an independent game publisher of the same name, where people can gather in virtual rooms via human or robot avatars and host events, play games, make art, watch 2D videos, or socialize.

Here&039;s how Spaces works:

First, you connect your Facebook account to Spaces in the “Devices Requests” tab of the Facebook mobile app. Then you&039;ll strap on your Rift headset and navigate to the Spaces app, which will appear in your library. You&039;ll need the Rift Touch controllers, which retail at $100 a pair, to use Facebook Spaces.

To create your virtual self, you choose from several versions of an avatar whose features are drawn from scans of your Facebook photos. You can customize some features, like hair, eye color, and glasses. The majority of the avatars seem to have large foreheads.

You can invite up to three friends to your space.

If they accept, you&039;ll find yourselves sitting around a virtual table. They&039;ll see your virtual avatar and the backdrop behind it. (You can choose from default backgrounds or use your own 360 pictures.) Your avatar can also video call friends via Messenger, which you can pull up as a flat menu in the virtual space. The video will appear as a 2D screen that you&039;ll be able to grab and move around. If they&039;re not in Facebook Spaces when you call, you&039;ll see their IRL face and surroundings, and they&039;ll see your avatar and your virtual setting.

If you get tired of your friends, Facebook included the ability to mute them or wholesale remove them from your virtual space. Gurl, bye.

Here&039;s a friend appearing&#033;

To entertain yourselves, you can draw in 3D and take selfies.

Here&039;s my virtual selfie with Christian, who works at Facebook.

I was really into the 3D marker. He was unamused.

And here&039;s BuzzFeed video producer Allyson Laquian&039;s selfie, where she has a piece of pizza in her head.

The background is a 360 video of the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt.

360 videos can totally change your environment

To play a 360 video, you&039;ll open a menu of options using the virtual control interface, and you select from content Facebook publishers have made or that you&039;ve recorded. When you grab a video from that menu, it&039;ll appear as a small orb in your virtual hand. To play it you can either put it in your avatar&039;s mouth or in the center of the communal table.

The videos will play all around you, turning your virtual environment into the video. You&039;ll also be able to view two-dimensional videos and pictures from Facebook publishers and your own timeline within Spaces as movable flat screens.

Facebook said in a statement that it&039;s hoping to bring the app to more platforms in the future but didn&039;t specify which ones.

Quelle: <a href="We Tried Out Facebook&039;s New Social VR App At F8“>BuzzFeed