Facebook Is Testing Short, Disappearing Status Updates

Facebook is testing a new “temporary profile status” feature that will allow its users to post ephemeral, text-only updates of up to 101 characters, a company spokesperson confirmed to BuzzFeed News Tuesday.

Facebook began testing the new feature globally over the past week. The 'new' statuses, which you can also keep permanently, are reminiscent of the early days of Facebook, when the company's News Feed was blanketed with status updates instead of videos, links and advertisements you see today.

Before they became “posts,” Facebook statuses all began with an “is” (as in “Alex is jogging”), giving them a timely feel, and Facebook seems to be trying to bring some of that back with a “temporary profile status” feature.

“We're testing an update that lets people set a temporary status on their profile to let friends know what they're doing or feeling in the moment,” a Facebook spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. “People have the option to set an expiration date for the status and choose whether or not it appears in News Feed or only on their profile.”

A tipster shared the new profiles status compose box with BuzzFeed News.

Last year, Facebook scrambled to fix an “original sharing” decline after it discovered people were posting less on its platform. The addition of Facebook Live and later what was essentially a copy of Snapchat Stories have tempered that problem some, but the company's main product still never regained that raw, fun feeling it had in its early days. The addition of ephemeral status updates could be one, small step towards bringing it back.

Quelle: <a href="Facebook Is Testing Short, Disappearing Status Updates“>BuzzFeed

Facebook Executives Find A New Crisis Communications Tool: Twitter

As Facebook grapples with the unprecedented crisis that's arisen around its role in the 2016 US presidential election, some of the company's top executives have begun doing damage control on an unlikely platform — Twitter.

In recent weeks, these executives — Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos, VP of augmented and virtual reality Andrew Bosworth and News Feed chief Adam Mosseri — have been engaging in public and sometimes heated discussion on Twitter, sounding off in what has been a largely Facebook-antagonistic conversation about Russia's effort to use the company's platform to undermine American democracy.

Facebook's leadership has long ignored Twitter — Mark Zuckerberg last tweeted in 2012 and Sheryl Sandberg in 2013 — and its decision to do so has essentially freed reporters, academics and the general public to criticize and lambast the company unchallenged by those who know it best. Now, with Facebook executives wading deep into a particularly fraught Twitter discussion, it's clear the company has begun to view it as a tool critical to shaping public perception. Facebook might prefer to ignore Twitter, but it can't afford to do so when a conversation shaping how people perceive its most grave crisis is unfolding there.

“Journalists spend an outsized amount of time on Twitter often using it to formulate their stances somewhat out in the open,” Bosworth told BuzzFeed News. “I thought participating in some small way could add some balance, but for the most part I'm just representing in context points FB has already talked about through official channels.”

Though the three Facebook executives have been on Twitter for years, their concerted effort to shift public perception by using the product is new. Their Twitter offensive is a tacit acknowledgement of the platform's influence, Facebook's inability to crack news via its own platform (an exclusive Facebook Live Axios interview with Sandberg about the Russia ads netted only 33,000 views) and a clear indication that they view Facebook's current crisis with grave concern.

Stamos' tweets have attracted the most attention — particularly his 18 part tweetstorm cautioning Facebook's critics to be careful what they wish for. But he and his two colleagues have thoughtfully engaged the public on Twitter, offering counterpoints to criticism of Facebook, of which there is many.

“Impact of fake news/Russia still being explored but I believe it was marginal, even in a close election.”

Mosseri, for instance, disputed the notion that Facebook is blind to the downsides of its products: “More of us worry about worst case scenarios than you may think,” he wrote. And Bosworth argued that the Russian ads and fake news didn't significantly impact the 2016 election. “Impact of fake news/Russia still being explored but I believe it was marginal, even in a close election,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, Stamos cautioned people to consider the potential side effects of the changes they are demanding of Facebook. “A lot of people aren't thinking hard about the world they are asking [Silicon Valley] to build,” he said. “When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.”

The Facebook executives' Twitter blitz hasn't come without hiccups. Bosworth has been criticized for his blunt demeanor and Stamos has scolded journalists for not talking with people in the thick of the issues they cover, while seemingly forgetting his company would likely discipline those people for talking to journalists.

Still, the added candor from Facebook — whose employees are so well media trained they often speak in PR bullet points — is a welcome change for observers of the company. “These are important questions from Facebook's chief security officer—and no critic of Facebook or Google (hi, me!) should dismiss these,” academic and fierce Facebook critic Zeynep Tufekci wrote in response to Stamos' tweets.

It's worth noting that these frank Twitter conversations — a departure from Facebook's typically cautious communications strategy — are not being orchestrated by the company's PR team, according to Bosworth. “We’re engaging in our own way on the areas we care about and where we have expertise,” he told BuzzFeed News. “Yes, the PR folks are aware, but we are generally doing this on our own because we want to be more direct and straightforward as a company.”

Bosworth declined to say whether he and his colleagues plan to tweet like this from now on — though there likely will be plenty more opportunities for such engagement as Facebook heads toward open hearings with both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in early November. “It is an experiment,” he said. “I may or may not continue depending on how it goes.”

Quelle: <a href="Facebook Executives Find A New Crisis Communications Tool: Twitter“>BuzzFeed

Outbrain Is Investigating Whether Russian Trolls Used Its Platform For Election Propaganda

The content recommendation ad network Outbrain, whose clicky content sprawls across the web, is investigating whether Russian ads or other forms of election tampering took place on its service during the 2016 election.

Outbrain claims to reach more than 550 million visitors per month via content recommendation modules it places on websites of publishers such as CNN, People, and ESPN.

Outbrain is “currently conducting a thorough investigation specific to election tampering and continue[s] to monitor our index,” the company said in a statement to BuzzFeed News.

Outbrain.com

Outbrain's statement comes in the wake of Facebook, Google, and Twitter disclosing that a Russian troll factory purchased ads on their platforms to influence, and divide, Americans before and after the 2016 election. Facebook recently handed over more than 3,000 ads purchased on its platform by the Russians, while Twitter informed congressional investigators that the same group ran 200 accounts on its platform.

“The attempt to spread misinformation that impacts elections is obviously very concerning to us,” the Outbrain statement said. “Outbrain has been proactive in combating fake content in the past.”

Other large content ad networks contacted by BuzzFeed News said they checked for possible Russian ad purchases and have not found any.

“To our knowledge we do not have any ads on Taboola placed from Russian clients that fit the type disclosed by other advertising platforms,” Adam Singolda, the CEO of Taboola, which says it reaches 1 billion visitors per month, told BuzzFeed News. “These types of ads are strictly against our policy. We have a diligent review process, where we closely monitor our advertisers.”

Revcontent conducted a review after being contacted by BuzzFeed News and said its compliance team did not identify any Russian ad purchases.

“We just finalized our audit and we found we have no political oriented ads from suspicious Russian IPs,” said Katherine Mcdermott, the brand manager for Revcontent.

BuzzFeed News also contacted Content.ad to ask if it has investigated whether Russian ads were placed on its platform. The company did not immediately reply.

Quelle: <a href="Outbrain Is Investigating Whether Russian Trolls Used Its Platform For Election Propaganda“>BuzzFeed

At Long Last, You Can Buy Stuff Lots Of Places With Venmo

Venmo

Until now, Venmo's devoted users have only been allowed to use the app to pay people they know — and not to buy stuff, particularly from people they don't know.

That will change dramatically starting on Tuesday, when PayPal, the company that owns Venmo, will begin opening up the app to the more than 2 million US retailers that already accept PayPal for online payments. This will mean that Venmo devotees can use the app to shop at a wide variety of online stores, like Foot Locker and Forever 21.

Over the coming week, Venmo users will get a notification within the app notifying them that they can shop using Venmo, while merchants will be able to turn on Venmo payments.

The expansion firmly marks Venmo's transition from a peer-to-peer payment service to something that can compete with its older brother PayPal — and start generating revenue for their parent company.

“Venmo users want to use Venmo to pay for everything,” PayPal's Chief Operating Officer Bill Ready told BuzzFeed News.

And so do PayPal shareholders. “The monetization opportunity for Venmo is a very real one,” said John Rainey, the chief financial officer of PayPal, at a conference in September. “Venmo is something that — to say that it's the crown jewel of PayPal, I don't think is an overstatement.”

youtube.com

Since PayPal spun off from eBay in 2015, its stock price has climbed over 90%, with the market valuing at almost $81 billion, putting it just shy of American Express. Venmo processes “well in excess of $20 billion” annually, Rainey said. Between April 1 and June 30, about $8 billion of payments flowed through Venmo, more than doubling from the year before.

And some of those payments will finally be turned into revenue for PayPal. Anytime a user buys something with Venmo, it will charge a fee to the merchant for each transaction. What Venmo is offering the merchants in exchange isn't just a large pool of young potential customers, but also a way to reach them, by getting into the app that's intimately tied up with their financial lives.

“From the consumer's perspective, the beauty of Venmo for us is that there's an intrinsic social aspect, beyond just being a payment,” Jed Kleckner, the chief executive officer of Delivery.com and an early user of Venmo for payments, told BuzzFeed News. “People who don’t know about Delivery.com know their friends are using Delivery.com, it has a halo effect.”

While Ready, the PayPal chief operating officer, was adamant that Venmo wouldn't use its social feed as a place to sell ads, but he did see it as a way for businesses to get their brands in front of consumers' eyeballs. “One of the highest fidelity signals that a shopper or consumer gets is what a friend buys,” he said.

Venmo will also allow users to split their payments of what they buy online. This type of behavior is close to the core of Venmo's reason to exist — it canonically makes it easier to split a large restaurant bill. With merchant payments, users will be able to see the payment at the top of their feed and request portions of it from their contacts.

“The purchase will be sitting there, and you can share it, split it, or dismiss this — It’s right there waiting for you,” Ready said.

While Venmo's latest expansion only takes it as far as PayPal has tread in e-commerce in the US, Ready says that Venmo's eventual goal is to “let Venmo users buy anything they want.”

PayPal has been making strides to be more broadly accepted inside brick-and-mortar stores, which could perhaps set the groundwork for Venmo being used for real-life checkout as well.

Ready said that commerce is at the heart of PayPal's plan to turn Venmo into a more mature and sophisticated payment option. “The plan with Venmo was always that we would monetize through merchant payments,” he said.

People Are Getting Kicked Off Venmo For Breaking Its Very Long User Agreement

Parents Have Officially Found Their Kids On Venmo And No One Is Safe

Quelle: <a href="At Long Last, You Can Buy Stuff Lots Of Places With Venmo“>BuzzFeed

Twitter Has A Harassment Problem In India, And Targets Say The Company Isn’t Doing Much To Fix It

Amrita Marino for BuzzFeed News

Dhanya Rajendran, the editor-in-chief of an influential Indian website called The News Minute, is used to being trolled on Twitter. Still, she wasn’t prepared for what happened on a Sunday evening in August. A few minutes past 6, a coordinated deluge of rape and death threats flooded Rajendran’s Twitter mentions. One of the abusers wanted to penetrate her with a metal rod. Another wanted her to be a part of a gang bang.

Rajendran’s crime? Tweeting about how she had walked out of a movie starring Vijay, a South Indian superstar.

Within minutes, more than 31,000 notifications crashed Rajendran’s phone. Trolls had orchestrated the harassment campaign using a hashtag, #PublicityBeepDhanya (replace “beep” with an expletive of choice), which became one of the top five trends in India for hours.

The fact that a hashtag crafted specifically to abuse someone trended for hours became national news in India. Vijay, whose fans started the campaign, condemned the incident. The Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI), an organization that aims to promote gender equality within the Indian media, urged Twitter India to be “more sensitive to online abuse, specifically of women.”

And from Twitter? Dead silence. In fact, the social network did nothing about the hashtag until Rajendran picked up the phone and contacted a personal connection at the company, a member of Twitter India’s public policy team who offered to “put a word in,” Rajendran told BuzzFeed News. An hour later, Twitter India removed the hashtag from its list of trending topics (Twitter’s rules say the social network “may prevent certain content from trending,” including content that incites “hate on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease”).

Abuse and harassment have been a global problem for Twitter for over a decade. Just last Friday, women around the world called for a Twitter boycott for a day to protest the social network’s inaction on harassment, prompting Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to unleash yet another tweetstorm about how the company was going to be “more aggressive” about curbing harassment on its platform. Over the years, Twitter has introduced new safety features such as keyword filters, and established a Trust and Safety Council. But, say targets, none of this has been very effective in developing markets like India, which the company claims is its fastest growing market in the world.

“I have access to people from Twitter, but what about those who don't?”

BuzzFeed News’ interviews with more than a dozen people who are regularly harassed on Twitter in India reveal that the social network isn’t doing enough to address harassment concerns. In the trolls’ crosshairs are not just high-profile women, but Indian cricketers, male television anchors, and singers. In many cases, convincing Twitter to take down abusive accounts or remove obscene and abusive hashtags from its trending column has required harassment targets to ask favors of Twitter India employees they know personally.

And the fact that India has 22 official languages — of which Twitter supports six — complicates matters further. Twitter’s inability to deal with local language abuse in India typifies how American tech companies with global ambitions often stumble in unfamiliar international territories. After all, it’s hard to know from your San Francisco headquarters whether people responsible for reading abuse reports from India in Tamil and Bengali are doing a good job, especially since Twitter told BuzzFeed News that it’s focusing more on improving its abuse-filtering algorithms rather than hiring more humans to check multilingual harassment.

After several high-profile abuse incidents on Twitter in India over the last year, the conversation around trolling and harassment on social media has reached a fever pitch in the country. In July 2016, right-wing trolls targeted Neha Dixit, an independent journalist, after she published a story about the role of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a hypernationalist Hindu organization, in child trafficking. Trolls published Dixit’s street address on Twitter, and one of them threatened to rape her with a “thorny bush.”

In February this year, trolls threatened Gurmehar Kaur, a 20-year-old Delhi University student who had criticized the right-wing student organization Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), was so afraid of their retaliatory rape threats that she left Delhi for a few days. And in August, the Committee to Protect Journalists condemned Twitter attacks on Anna M.M. Vetticad, a journalist who writes primarily about films and is frequently subjected to misogynistic abuse and religious profiling on Twitter. Victims BuzzFeed News spoke to called Twitter’s response to these incidents “apathetic.”

“It’s definitely getting worse over time, not better,” Dixit told BuzzFeed News. “It’s kind of disturbing to think that these days, most of my discussions with other journalists, especially, are about how we are trolled on Twitter.”

In April, the Hindustan Times, a leading national newspaper, ran a high-profile campaign called “Let’s Talk About Trolls,” in which Mahima Kaul, Twitter India’s head of public policy, defended the platform. “We provide users with controls to limit who they follow, interact with, and who follows them,” she wrote, and described how users could mute conversations, keywords, and phrases from their timelines, how they could block and mute people, and report tweets and accounts for action. “Our job at Twitter is to ensure the platform continues to be a place where the expression of diverse viewpoints is encouraged and defended,” she wrote. Twitter declined BuzzFeed News' requests to interview Kaul.

“On occasions when I have reported harassment, my experience on Twitter has been pathetic,” Vetticad told BuzzFeed News. “Over the years, only one account I reported has been suspended. Otherwise, I’ve got the standard robotic response saying the tweet in question does not violate Twitter’s rules.”

“Both me and my friends have reported hundreds of accounts threatening me by now, but nothing ever happens,” said Rana Ayyub, a journalist who faces frequent identity-based harassment on Indian Twitter. “What is the point of the reporting tools? For every single account I block, 10 others pop up. I think if Twitter sets a few examples by banning a few high-profile accounts that are abusive, perhaps that will deter others.” This is something that Twitter has done in the United States. Last year, for example, it banned conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos for inciting followers to tweet racist and demeaning comments at actress Leslie Jones. But there haven’t been any high-profile suspensions in India so far. Nor has anyone in Twitter’s Indian leadership addressed the platform’s abuse problem directly in the country in its 11-year history.

A Twitter spokesperson declined to discuss details about specific accounts or the company’s approach to abuse prevention in India. They did tell BuzzFeed News that Twitter is trying to increase the sophistication of its abuse-detection algorithms, and that the company was taking a data-driven approach to controlling abuse in everything from policy to engineering.

But Twitter’s algorithm-based approach doesn’t appear to be working in India. When dozens of accounts started impersonating Dixit’s account last year, for instance, she said that reporting them through Twitter’s systems got her nowhere until she called someone she knew who worked at Twitter in India. “Nothing happened to the impersonators, but my account was instantly verified after I made that call,” she told BuzzFeed News.

“Twitter simply isn't very cooperative.” —Delhi Police deputy commissioner for cybercrime

Rajendran had a similar experience. “I told [someone in the public policy team] that they can’t have a million ways to report something and yet let a hashtag like #PublicityBeepDhanya trend nationally,” she said. “I have access to people from Twitter, but what about those who don’t?”

Twitter declined to tell BuzzFeed News whether it had a dedicated, in-country team handling abuse reports for its fastest-growing market, but said that it had teams all over the world including in Ireland, Singapore, and San Francisco reading abuse reports 24/7.

Abuse on Twitter in India has gotten so common over the last year that more Indian women are filing official police complaints when harassed online, cybercrime officials told BuzzFeed News. On Aug. 8, three days after the organized trolling campaign, for instance, Rajendran filed a police complaint against six of thousands of abusive Twitter handles — three for issuing direct rape threats, and three for actively encouraging people to use the hashtag in their tweets. In copies of complaints that BuzzFeed News reviewed, some abusive accounts cited in August were still active on Twitter.

That fits with Twitter’s own data that the company publishes in biannual Transparency Reports. According to Twitter, legal requests for account information received from India were up 55% over the previous six months (261 requests in the first half of 2017 versus 168 requests in the last half of 2016). Twitter provided Indian authorities with some information in 21% of the cases, compared to 77% of the cases in the US in the same period.

Still, law enforcement in India can’t do much, and convictions are rare. “We cannot initiate legal action in every case because everybody has the right to free speech,” said Delhi police spokesperson Madhur Verma. “Just slander is not a legal offense.”

Amrita Marino for BuzzFeed News

The only instances where authorities do approach Twitter and other internet companies about harassment complaints is if a message or a tweet explicitly violates specific sections of India’s primary criminal code, such as the ones that prohibit “words, gestures or acts intended to insult the modesty of a woman,” or the publication or transmission of “obscene material.” Under Indian laws, a person can be sent to jail for up to five years, and/or fined up to a million rupees for harassing a woman or stalking or bullying her online.

But Indian authorities say that dealing with Twitter itself isn’t great. “Twitter simply isn’t very cooperative,” Anyesh Roy, deputy police commissioner for cybercrime with the Delhi Police, told BuzzFeed News. “In most cases, they don’t even have the courtesy of responding to emails, so we don’t know whether they are processing the information or denying it. In cases where they do respond, the information they provide isn’t sufficient for us to actually make any progress. The Cyber Crime cell deals with internet companies all the time and I’d say that compared to Facebook or Google, the response of Twitter to Indian law enforcement is quite poor.”

“Our rules are our rules and we take action when appropriate.” —Twitter

In response, a Twitter spokesperson issued the following statement to BuzzFeed News about the company’s global efforts to crack down on harassment: “We’re now taking action on 10x the number of abusive accounts every day compared to the same time last year. We also now limit account functionality or place suspensions on thousands more abusive accounts each day. There are repeat offenders who create new accounts after being suspended for violations. Our new systems have removed twice the number of these types of accounts. Beyond the technology, our teams are continuing to review content daily and improve how we enforce our policies.”

Twitter told BuzzFeed News that the company only provides information to law enforcement when a piece of reported content violates its own rules about hate speech or threats of violence. A lot of what is reported to Twitter is not a violation of its terms of service, Twitter said, and stressed that platform had tools that individual users could use to mute or block tweets or people they didn’t want to see. “Our rules are our rules and we take action when appropriate.”

“I think that's a ridiculous excuse. Twitter’s standards for hate speech are ridiculous and farcical,” said Vetticad. “I’m all for freedom of expression, but the free speech right involves saying things within the parameters of decency and the law. How is it acceptable for someone online to call you a bitch or a prostitute or communally profile you?”

Detecting abuse can also be tricky in a country like India, which has so many official languages. When Rajendran, the News Minute editor, went to file a police complaint, for instance, authorities asked her to draw up a list of the most abusive tweets. Scrolling through her mentions, Rajendran discovered that hundreds of them were in Tamil, a language she doesn’t read. But she had friends with her who did. Together, they discovered that some of the harshest rape threats and abusive comments she got were in Tamil. In one instance, a man posted Rajendran’s picture and wrote a caption in Tamil that loosely translates to “If you look at this face itself, you will know that this thing sleeps around with many people.” The account that tweeted this was still active at the time of this story's publication.

Twitter

Twitter supports six Indian languages — Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, and Hindi — and told BuzzFeed News that its algorithms have the ability to detect abuse in every language offered on the platform. But sources close to Twitter told BuzzFeed News that Twitter is at a “very early stage of tackling regional language abuse in India and is still figuring out what the company can do about it.” A company spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that Twitter was currently focused on processing “more signals from more languages, and scaling that to be more efficient, and making sure that people who speak in Bengali or other Indian languages” report abuse, presumably to make Twitter’s algorithms more accurate.

Twitter did not specifically comment on its efforts to address the growing trend of harassment on its platform in India, but the company has had two public campaigns to acknowledge abuse on its platform in India. In 2016, it brought #PositionOfStrength, its global campaign to “empower women,” to India (a bunch of influential women tweeters have a series of roundtable discussions about abuse on Twitter and then tweet about it). And in 2017, it launched #TweeSurfing in partnership with the Centre for Social Research, a New Delhi–based organization that is a part of Twitter’s global Trust and Safety Council in India (a bunch of influential comedians, actors, lawyers, and marketing gurus address online safety issues by giving advice like “Don’t engage with trolls!”).

Ranjana Kumari, the head of the Centre for Social Research, did not respond to multiple interview requests from BuzzFeed News, but Twitter told BuzzFeed News that the objective of both campaigns was to partner with people who can talk about Twitter’s rules around abuse in a way that Indians can relate to.

“The least Twitter India could do when people like me highlight severe abuse, and especially when this abuse is called out by global organizations such as the Committee To Protect Journalists, is to contact us,” said Vetticad. “Since reaching us is easy for Twitter, I assume they don’t care enough to do so. If they need suggestions about what more they can do, ask people like me! Maybe we have useful ideas.” ●

Quelle: <a href="Twitter Has A Harassment Problem In India, And Targets Say The Company Isn’t Doing Much To Fix It“>BuzzFeed

If You Own An Android Phone, It Should Really Be A Pixel 2

Google’s new Pixel 2 has everything you want in a high-end smartphone: water-resistance, Portrait Mode, and a good-looking screen.

BuzzFeed News; Google

You probably don’t see a lot of people carrying around Google Pixels. In the US, nearly two-thirds of smartphone users in the US own either a Samsung or an Apple device. The Pixel accounts for less than 1% of the market, even though the company that designed it, Google, makes the Android mobile operating system, which runs 85% of the world’s smartphones.

What makes that stat even more surprising is that Google-designed phones are really damn good. Unlike Samsung’s phones, Google’s Pixel runs a version of Android that’s “clean.” In other words, it’s not full of crap, like preloaded apps, and displays the Android operating system the way that it was intended by the Android team (and not with an altered “skin” designed by the phone’s manufacturer). Above all, the Pixel will be the first Android phone to get the latest operating system updates, for at least three years, because Google guarantees it. Other Android users face wait times of up to a year to get new updates. All of which means it just looks and runs better.

The TL;DR is this: The Pixel 2 looks and feels like a really nice phone, especially when compared last year’s first-generation Pixel. Everything feels better and more expensive — from the more matte metal material to the vibration motor. Plus, like the rest of the “flagship phone class” (e.g., the iPhone and Galaxy Note), it’s water-resistant, so you don’t have to worry if you drop it in the pool or want to check emails in the shower.

Its killer features, though, are still software-side: free, unlimited, original-resolution storage in Google Photos for every picture you take with Pixel (which means it is literally impossible to use up all your space on pictures and videos), a dedicated gesture for direct access to Google Assistant, and the artificial intelligence–powered Portrait Mode, which gives photos DSLR-esque blurry backgrounds, even when you’re taking a selfie.

But, as with all of Google’s services, using Photos and Assistant — two of the Pixel’s core apps — means opting in to sharing your data. No, a Google engineer isn’t looking at all of your photos or listening to all of your Assistant commands in a dark room in Mountain View, but those anonymized data points are used to feed Google’s machine-learning algorithms, which in turn are used to identify every photo of your mom in your camera roll. (They can recognize your dog now too.) It’s similar to how Google reads your Gmail inbox to serve you more relevant ads.

Which is to say, if you are already deep in Google’s panopticon — maybe you use Gmail and Calendar and Search and Maps — it isn’t such a leap. I’ve been using the Pixel 2 for the past five days and find that, since I already rely on Google’s suite of apps, the tradeoff is worth it.

Nicole Nguyen / BuzzFeed News

The vibration (as previously mentioned) is much more subtle and satisfying in the Pixel 2. What felt like a way-too-forceful buzz in the first Pixel is now a subtle, very satisfying pop. When using the phone, it vibrates every time you unlock your phone, press the home button, and open app shortcuts. In other words, there are a lot of vibration-powered interactions, unless you turn off haptic feedback.

Additionally, there are significantly more volume levels (25 instead of seven) for music and, when you switch from iOS, the Pixel 2 will now download all the Android versions of your apps too. Previously, it could only sync contacts, calendars, messages, and media.

You can squeeze the sides of the Pixel to activate Google Assistant now.

I loved being able to this — especially because the Pixel 2 XL is so damn big, which makes it hard for my little thumb to reach the home button. Because you can set the squeeze sensitivity, it’s unlikely it’ll accidentally activate.

Nicole Nguyen / BuzzFeed News

According to Google, the Pixel’s most noteworthy feature is its camera.

The Pixel 2 has f/1.8 aperture, which means that it can take better low-light images than its predecessor (which had f/2.0 aperture). Its rear camera actually has slightly less megapixels (12.2 MP this year vs. 12.3 MP last year), but the difference is hardly noticeable.

DXOMark, a company that rates image quality, gave the Pixel 2 its highest smartphone score ever for the second year in a row, an achievement that Google touted during its keynote presentation. The rating is especially remarkable, given that the Pixel 2’s camera only has one wide-angle lens, while the iPhone 8 Plus and Galaxy Note 8 (the second- and third-place smartphones) have two lenses: one wide angle and one telephoto for optical zooming. DXOMark cited the Pixel 2’s “impressive dynamic range” and “the best autofocus we’ve ever seen.”

Nicole Nguyen / BuzzFeed News

And it makes food look really good.

Nicole Nguyen / BuzzFeed News

The video stabilization is really nice, too.

View Video ›

Here's a slo-mo vid. Google also applies stabilization to its version of Apple’s “Live Photos,” which it calls “Motion Photos.”

video-player.buzzfeed.com

Another big new feature: It’s water-resistant!

The Pixel 2 is rated IP67, which means it can withstand freshwater submersion in depths of about 3 feet for up to 30 minutes. I used the Pixel 2 in the shower and ran it under a sink and, as far as I can tell, the phone is still operational.

Nicole Nguyen / BuzzFeed News

It doesn’t have a headphone jack, so it comes with an audio jack to USB-C connector.

I’ve been living without a headphone jack for over a year and have fully bought into the Bluetooth-connected, wireless future. For traditionalists, there’s an included USB-C adapter that you can use for any set of wired headphones, and you can replace it for $9 when you inevitably lose it.

I understand that this may be a deal breaker for some — in that case, Samsung’s Galaxy S8 still has a headphone jack.

I keep the adapter permanently attached to my earbuds with a microphone, which I use to make calls, and it’s really not too bad. Because the battery life on the Pixel 2 is decent (for now), I haven’t run into the issue of needing to charge the phone and use headphones at the same time.

Nicole Nguyen / BuzzFeed News

Every day, I unplugged the device at 8 a.m. from its charging station. After a full day’s use (checking email, listening to Spotify, playing the occasional Facebook video, sending WhatsApp messages with photos and video), there was still between 50% and 60% power remaining. One day, I even used Strava (with GPS tracking on), a notorious battery drainer, for an hour, and the battery still lasted for another day.

Google claims one 15-minute “quick charge” session gives you seven hours of battery life, and I found this only to be true if I used the phone’s Battery Saver feature for the last few hours, which dims the screen and reduces background app activity.

The “Always-on Display” reduces battery life, but it’s useful.

This feature, also available in Samsung’s Galaxy phones, activates some pixels to always display the time (so you don’t have to turn on your phone to check it) and leaves other pixels turned off.

Nicole Nguyen / BuzzFeed News

It can also show whatever song is playing around you, Shazam-style.

If you elect to turn on a feature called “Now Playing,” the Always-on Display can also show you the title of whatever song is playing, whether it’s in a car or coffee shop. It can only identify the “official” version of the song, however (like, for example, the album version of Demi Lovato’s “Stone Cold,” but not the nearly identical “Live in Studio” version from Lovato’s official YouTube account).

Nicole Nguyen / BuzzFeed News

So, should you get the Pixel?

You can get a Pixel 2 unlocked from Google or through Verizon. The Pixel 2 is $649 for 64 GB, and $749 for 128 GB — or $27.04/month for two years — and comes in Kinda Blue, Just Black, and Clearly White (heh). The Pixel 2 XL is $849 for 64 GB and $949 for 128 GB — or $35.38/month for two years — and comes in Just Black and Black & White.

If you’re an Android user with an old phone or want one with a better camera, absolutely. It’s $100 less than Samsung’s Galaxy phones, it doesn’t have all of the app bloat, and it comes with all of the features you’d expect from a premium phone: water-resistance, a great camera, and a good screen.

If you’re an iPhone user, it’s a bit more complicated. If most of your family and friends use iMessage for texts or FaceTime for audio and video calls, it’s very hard to go green bubble. Android doesn’t have a consolidated messaging platform, unlike iOS. The Duo app comes pre-loaded on Pixels, but it’s only for video and audio calls (not texts), and it’s not widely adopted. You’ll have to convince your inner circle to move to WhatsApp, Signal, or Messenger, or face group text hell.

That being said: The free, unlimited photo storage in Google Photos is a pretty compelling sell for those who want to try something new. By switching to the Pixel, you’ll save $50 (compared to the new iPhone 8), and, if you already use Gmail, Drive, Docs, Chrome, and other Google apps regularly, the switch is relatively painless.

Nicole Nguyen / BuzzFeed News

Quelle: <a href="If You Own An Android Phone, It Should Really Be A Pixel 2“>BuzzFeed

Facebook Has Bought TBH, An App For Teens That's Gone Viral Overnight

tbh

Facebook has bought tbh, an app that lets people give each other compliments by participating in anonymous quizzes. The teen-focused app, which is currently only available in a handful of states in the US, has been the number one free app in the iOS App Store for more than three weeks now.

Facebook did not disclose the amount that it paid for the app. In a blog post announcing the acquisition, the creators of tbh said that it had been downloaded more than 5 million times in the last few weeks. A billion messages have already been sent through the app.

Tbh, which stands for, To Be Honest, will continue operating as a standalone app under Facebook, a Facebook spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal.

“TBH and Facebook share a common goal — of building community and enabling people to share in ways that bring us closer together,” Vanessa Chan, a Facebook spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We’re impressed by the way TBH is doing this by using polling and messaging, and with Facebook’s resources TBH can continue to expand and build positive experiences.”

LINK: What Is The TBH App?

Quelle: <a href="Facebook Has Bought TBH, An App For Teens That's Gone Viral Overnight“>BuzzFeed

Google Maps Stopped Showing Distance As Calories And Cupcakes Because People Haaaated It

Google Maps has a new feature for walking directions. Now, it shows you how many calories you would burn if you walked:

The calorie count shows up on the map if the driving directions you've requested cover a short distance. If you already have walking selected, the calories are shown in the step-by-step directions, but not the map.

Basically, it wants to try to encourage you to walk instead of driving by showing you how many calories you'd burn.

And then… it tells you how many “mini cupcakes” the calories you’d burn would add up to.

A walk from my apartment in Brooklyn to Times Square would earn me *almost* 4 mini cupcakes.

If you tap the “…” option next to the tip about how many calories a walk would burn, here’s what it says:

People are not happy.

While Google might think this feature encourages healthy habits, for some, it feels, well, judgey. And it could be very a negative (or even triggering) experience for people who have an eating disorder. As many as 30 million people in the US are estimated to have an eating disorder.

And although this new Maps feature might sound similar to how some restaurants are required to show calorie counts on menus, this is more aggressive. It doesn't just show you the calorie count of the potential walk, it shows you what it amounts to in junk food – and in cupcakes, a type of food that is particularly associated with women.

Not everyone in the BuzzFeed Tech News team has this feature on their phone yet – it's likely that this is in testing with a limited number of people right now.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Quelle: <a href="Google Maps Stopped Showing Distance As Calories And Cupcakes Because People Haaaated It“>BuzzFeed

Google Photos Can Recognize Your Pets Now

Machine learning has, for too long, ignored your dog, head cocked plaintively to the side, wondering why his face has not been recognized and categorized (“CHAMP!”) alongside others in your smartphone such as “Mom,” or “Mike,” or any number of other humans whose faces are algorithmically detected and grouped together in your smartphone app.

Is he not a good boy? Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy?

That's right! Champ's a good boy! Good boy!

In a pun-laden blog post, Google announced on Monday that its Photos application can now recognize your pets, and will sort them into their own groupings.

Google

According to Google's announcement: “you’ll be able to see photos of the cats and dogs now grouped alongside people, and you can label them by name, search to quickly find photos of them, or even better, photos of you and them.”

While the app should be able to sort out your beagle from your Bernese, it seems like it may need help telling the difference between two dogs or cats of the same breed. A Google spokesperson confirmed to BuzzFeed News that “this is just the start, and that if you have a number of pets that are the same breed (such as a few yellow Labs), you might need to help the app by removing photos of a misgrouped pet, so the app can tell Lassie from Fido.”

Quelle: <a href="Google Photos Can Recognize Your Pets Now“>BuzzFeed