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

Bloomberg via Getty Images/Andrew Harrer

Most people gloss over what's in the small print of their contracts. But not reading the small print could lead to big problems, especially when it comes to money services like Venmo.

Venmo, the mobile payment service owned by PayPal, makes it easy for people to pay back their friends for a drink or coffee. But the company also makes it easy for it to freeze accounts and kick anyone off the platform if they violate anything in the company's 27-page user agreement.

For instance, you can't use Venmo if you're under 18 (sorry, kids). And several Venmo users told BuzzFeed News that the company suspended their accounts and held their funds after they wrote silly captions to friends or tried to sell something to a friend — like a used computer.

Those users were told by the company that they had violated the app's user agreement which prohibits dozens of activities, including having more than one account, paying for items bought on sites like Craigslist, and letting your Venmo account go into the red.

Then there are somewhat vaguer restrictions. “We may, at our discretion, impose limits on the amount of transactions you conduct through the Venmo Services,” the company's user agreement says. “These limits may change from time to time in Company’s sole discretion. You may not send money to your own account.”

A Venmo spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the app is “designed for payments between friends and people who trust each other.” The company doesn't offer buyer and seller protection, which companies like PayPal offer at an additional cost to users to cover their risk, the spokesperson added.

Venmo told BuzzFeed News that it doesn't disclose exact numbers on accounts that are frozen or put under review, but that they represent “a very small number of total payments.”

“We strongly caution Venmo users to avoid payments with people they don't know, especially if it involves the sale for goods and services (like event tickets and Craigslist items),” Josh Criscoe, Venmo's spokesperson, told BuzzFeed News. “These payments are potentially high risk, and can result in losing your money without getting what you paid for.”

Venmo has ramped up quickly and become the go-to payment mechanism for many people — young adults in particular. The company processed $17.6 billion of payments in 2016, an increase of 135 percent from 2015, according to its most recent annual report.

@nickabouzeid / Via Twitter: @nickabouzeid

But transactions enter a grey area when two friends are selling and buying something like in the case of Colin Sargent, a 29-year-old Venmo user in Los Angeles.

Sargent sold a friend an old computer for $450 in January, he told BuzzFeed News. Within hours of the Venmo transaction, Sargent received an email from the company alerting him that his account had been suspended “due to recent activity that appears to be a violation of our User Agreement,” according to an email reviewed by BuzzFeed News. The email didn't explain what terms he had violated, only that he would need to submit identification to verify he is the legal account holder.

“I could understand if it was like thousands of dollars,” Sargent said. “But I've never done anything suspicious. I've only transferred 20 bucks here and there.”

Venmo declined to comment on specific cases. But Sargent said a specialist explained his account had been frozen because the transaction was flagged as commercial, which is prohibited by the company. His account was unfrozen in April and he was able to move the money into his bank account.

“It left a bad taste in my mouth,” he said. “It was frustrating at the time. When someone asks me to Venmo them, I remember that nightmare.”

@Pammmm22 / Via Twitter: @Pammmm22

Pamela Gabriele, a 21-year old student in Montclair, New Jersey, told BuzzFeed News that she used to use Venmo with her friends like cash until she got kicked of the app — twice.

She said she likes to write out funny captions when paying back her friends or requesting money, like “This is for the other night” or “This is your tip.” Over the summer while she was in Italy, she received an email from Venmo notifying her that her account had been suspended.

A customer service representative told her that it seemed Gabriele had been violating Venmo's user policy on selling goods, which Gabriele denies. Venmo agreed to delete the disputed account in August, according to emails reviewed by BuzzFeed News.

Gabriele opened a new Venmo account in September and paid a friend $8 for a parking service with the caption “I’ll write you five stars on Yelp.” Venmo emailed her again saying her account had been frozen. Another customer service representative said she was banned for “selling goods,” Gabriele said.

Because the account had only been open briefly, she didn't have a chance to connect her debit card and lost the $8. She cancelled her Venmo account again.

“I’m just going to do PayPal,” she said. “It’s the last of my worries as a college student, but it’s annoying they don't clarify.”

@deejvaughn / Via Twitter: @deejvaughn

While it doesn't offer buyer and seller protection, the company will cover a user 100% in the event there is unauthorized activity on their account. For example, if someone steals their password to access an account and sends a payment.

The grey area surrounding how Venmo carries out its user agreement comes at a time when the company is dramatically changing. In September the company announced that retailers like Williams-Sonoma would begin accepting Venmo as payment on purchases. In June, the company announced beta testing of a debit card.

These moves may be indications that Venmo is looking to generate more revenue than can be done simply through peer-to-peer money transfers, Max Levchin, a cofounder of PayPal and current CEO of the digital lending startup Affirm, told BuzzFeed News.

“They're clearly going from consumer-to-consumer money transfer, which is traditionally basically impossible to monetize,” said Levchin, who added that PayPal moved into payment services as well because its peer-to-peer money transfer model was not lucrative. “In many ways, the motivation behind this and the experiments they have done and will do is: How do you monetize the user base?”

Venmo's debit card, which is still in beta testing, is issued by Visa which is an FDIC-insured bank. The card may allow the company to collect interchange fees from merchants when customers use the card to pay for goods and services, which would give Venmo a way to boost revenue. Many banks have become increasingly reliant on these fees, which are roughly 2% to 3% of the purchase value.

Those fees can mean big profits. Debit card interchange fees brought in roughly $17 billion in revenue for banks in 2015, according to the Federal Reserve's most recent survey of merchants.

In this sense, Levchin said, Venmo is “basically offering a bank account.”

@NarcisseNN / Twitter / Via Twitter: @NarcisseNN

As Venmo begins operating as a payment method in retail stores and tests out a debit card, the line between commercial activity and transactions between people who trust each other becomes blurry raising questions about how it may behave as a bigger financial services player.

Matt Schulz, a senior industry analyst with CreditCards.com, told BuzzFeed News that while people don't take the time to read the fine print — or even the boldface print — on terms of service and credit card agreements, it is important to know what you're signing up for.

“The truth is what you don't know can end up costing you money,” he said.

But even reading the fine print, Nancy Kim, a professor at California Western School of Law, told BuzzFeed News Venmo's user agreement is “pretty awful.”

“This is actually a pretty oppressive agreement, frankly,” said Kim.

The company tells users it may change the agreement without notice and can terminate service for any reason, which Kim said might not hold up in court as an enforceable contract.

“Basically, if you can change a contract at any time, it’s not really a contract, is it?” she said. “They can modify at any time without notice, and then terminate for any reason. So does that sound like a contract to you?”

While it's normal for banks to freeze debit cards out of concern for fraudulent activity, that is different from what Venmo does: reversing a transaction for unclear reasons. Fred Williams, a senior reporter with CreditCards.com, told BuzzFeed News that this practice could be “anti-consumer.”

“Reversing the transaction is what gets me,” said Williams, who covers debit and prepaid cards. “If it’s not against terms of service to have friendly transactions, like when you’re splitting rent with people like your housemates or if you’re buying a laptop from a friend, I guess it’s maybe a little grey area. Why would they reverse that unless there is a complaint? Sounds a little bizarre to me.”

Quelle: <a href="People Are Getting Kicked Off Venmo For Breaking Its Very Long User Agreement“>BuzzFeed

Apple Is Introducing Androgynous Emojis

There’s a new gender-neutral person, plus “I love you” in American Sign Language and — finally — a “Shhh” emoji.

New emojis — including gender-neutral people, animals, more food types, mystical creatures, clothing, and ~self-care~ imagery — are coming to your iPhone soon.

Every year, the Unicode Consortium, the organization that handles new emoji proposals, approves a new class of smileys and symbols that tech companies like Apple, Twitter, Samsung, and Facebook often bring to their platforms. Last November, the group accepted 56 new emojis — and some of those additions are finally slated to show up on your iPhone.

Apple gave BuzzFeed News an exclusive look at its latest set of iOS emojis, which includes an androgynous person, a male fairy, a takeout box, a “shh” smiley, “I love you” in American Sign Language, a bevy of mystical creatures, and an orange heart, which completes that emoji's full rainbow of colors.

These new emojis will be rolling out globally on Monday, October 9, as a part of the second public beta of iOS 11.1. Based on earlier releases of iOS, users should expect the emojis in the official version of iOS 11.1 at the end of October or early November. They join an earlier set announced in July, which includes the breastfeeding, woman with headscarf, and vomiting emojis. They're the latest crop of Apple's hyper-realistic emojis, which were introduced in iOS 10 last year. (Google also redesigned emojis for Android users, and unveiled the new icons in September.)

If you're interested in trying out Apple's latest software updates before their wide release, you can sign up for the company's beta program — but beware, you may encounter some bugs and you should definitely back up your device before you do.

Apple

Gender-neutral adult

Apple

Gender-neutral kid

Apple

Gender-neutral senior

Apple

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View Entire List ›

Quelle: <a href="Apple Is Introducing Androgynous Emojis“>BuzzFeed

Uber Says It Will Remove Code That Could Have Let It Surveil iPhone Users ASAP

Daniel Leal-olivas / AFP / Getty Images

After dealing with past controversies in which it followed passengers through a “God View” and tracked users who deleted its app from their phone, Uber now has another surveillance mishap on its hands, though the company says this one was unintentional.

Earlier this week, security researchers determined that Uber's ride-hailing iOS app had code which could have allowed the company to record a user's iPhone screen. Apple had given that code, called an “entitlement,” to Uber to improve the functionality between the app and the Apple Watch, according to an Uber spokesperson on Thursday.

“You should know this API isn't connected to anything in our current codebase, meaning it's non-functional and there's no existing feature using it,” said the spokesperson in an emailed statement. “We are working with Apple to remove it completely ASAP.”

A spokesperson for Apple declined to comment.

A source familiar with the situation said that Uber was having memory management issues with the early version of the Apple Watch, leading Apple to grant an exception to add the code in question. That exception was never rescinded, and its existence hypothetically allowed Uber, or a nefarious actor with access to Uber's network, to monitor an iPhone user's screen.

“It has remained in the Uber binary for the past 2 years so far – it is odd how they are only (hopefully) removing now that it has been mentioned publicly,” said Will Strafach, one of the researchers who discovered the code, in a message to BuzzFeed News.

As of Thursday at 4 p.m. in San Francisco, an update to Uber's app was not available in Apple's app store.

In 2014, an Uber executive in New York was investigated for tracking a BuzzFeed News reporter with a “God View” without her permission. That executive later left the company. And earlier this year, the New York Times reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook met with then-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick in 2015 to discuss how, in attempt to fight fraud, the ride-hailing company was tagging iPhones that had deleted the app, a violation of Apple's rules.

Quelle: <a href="Uber Says It Will Remove Code That Could Have Let It Surveil iPhone Users ASAP“>BuzzFeed

Here's How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled White Nationalism Into The Mainstream

In August, after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville ended in murder, Steve Bannon insisted that “there's no room in American society” for neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and the KKK.

But an explosive cache of documents obtained by BuzzFeed News proves that there was plenty of room for those voices on his website.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart courted the alt-right — the insurgent, racist right-wing movement that helped sweep Donald Trump to power. The former White House chief strategist famously remarked that he wanted Breitbart to be “the platform for the alt-right.”

Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California, Berkeley, on September 24.

Josh Edelson / AFP / Getty Images

The Breitbart employee closest to the alt-right was Milo Yiannopoulos, the site’s former tech editor known best for his outrageous public provocations, such as last year’s Dangerous Faggot speaking tour and September’s canceled Free Speech Week in Berkeley. For more than a year, Yiannopoulos led the site in a coy dance around the movement’s nastier edges, writing stories that minimized the role of neo-Nazis and white nationalists while giving its politer voices “a fair hearing.” In March, Breitbart editor Alex Marlow insisted “we’re not a hate site.” Breitbart’s media relations staff repeatedly threatened to sue outlets that described Yiannopoulos as racist. And after the violent white supremacist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, Breitbart published an article explaining that when Bannon said the site welcomed the alt-right, he was merely referring to “computer gamers and blue-collar voters who hated the GOP brand.”

These new emails and documents, however, clearly show that Breitbart does more than tolerate the most hate-filled, racist voices of the alt-right. It thrives on them, fueling and being fueled by some of the most toxic beliefs on the political spectrum — and clearing the way for them to enter the American mainstream.

It’s a relationship illustrated most starkly by a previously unreleased April 2016 video in which Yiannopoulos sings “America the Beautiful” in a Dallas karaoke bar as admirers, including the white nationalist Richard Spencer, raise their arms in Nazi salutes.

These documents chart the Breitbart alt-right universe. They reveal how the website — and, in particular, Yiannopoulos — links the Mercer family, the billionaires who fund Breitbart, to underpaid trolls who fill it with provocative content, and to extremists striving to create a white ethnostate.

They capture what Bannon calls his “killing machine” in action, as it dredges up the resentments of people around the world, sifts through these grievances for ideas and content, and propels them from the unsavory parts of the internet up to TrumpWorld, collecting advertisers’ checks all along the way.

And the cache of emails — some of the most newsworthy of which BuzzFeed News is now making public — expose the extent to which this machine depended on Yiannopoulos, who channeled voices both inside and outside the establishment into a clear narrative about the threat liberal discourse posed to America. The emails tell the story of Steve Bannon’s grand plan for Yiannopoulos, whom the Breitbart executive chairman transformed from a charismatic young editor into a conservative media star capable of magnetizing a new generation of reactionary anger. Often, the documents reveal, this anger came from a legion of secret sympathizers in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, academia, suburbia, and everywhere in between.

“I have said in the past that I find humor in breaking taboos and laughing at things that people tell me are forbidden to joke about,” Yiannopoulos wrote in a statement to BuzzFeed News. “But everyone who knows me also knows I'm not a racist. As someone of Jewish ancestry, I of course condemn racism in the strongest possible terms. I have stopped making jokes on these matters because I do not want any confusion on this subject. I disavow Richard Spencer and his entire sorry band of idiots. I have been and am a steadfast supporter of Jews and Israel. I disavow white nationalism and I disavow racism and I always have.”

He added that during his karaoke performance, his “severe myopia” made it impossible for him to see the Hitler salutes a few feet away.

Steve Bannon, the other Breitbart employees named in the story, and the Mercer family did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Like all the new media success stories, Breitbart’s alt-right platform depends on the participation of its audience. It combusts the often secret fury of those who reject liberal norms into news, and it doesn’t burn clean.

Now Bannon is back at the controls of the machine, which he has said he is “revving up.” The Mercers have funded Yiannopoulos's post-Breitbart venture. And these documents present the clearest look at what these people may have in store for America.

Protesters at a white supremacist rally at the University of Virginia on August 11.

Nurphoto / Getty Images

A year and a half ago, Milo Yiannopoulos set himself a difficult task: to define the alt-right. It was five months before Hillary Clinton named the alt-right in a campaign speech, 10 months before the alt-right’s great hope became president, and 17 months before Charlottesville clinched the alt-right as a stalking horse for violent white nationalism. The movement had just begun its explosive emergence into the country’s politics and culture.

At the time, Yiannopoulos, who would later describe himself as a “fellow traveler” of the alt-right, was the tech editor of Breitbart. In summer 2015, after spending a year gathering momentum through GamerGate — the opening salvo of the new culture wars — he convinced Breitbart upper management to give him his own section. And for four months, he helped Bannon wage what the Breitbart boss called in emails to staff “#war.” It was a war, fought story by story, against the perceived forces of liberal activism on every conceivable battleground in American life.

Yiannopoulos was a useful soldier whose very public identity as a gay man (one who has now married a black man) helped defend him, his anti-political correctness crusade, and his employer from charges of bigotry.

But now Yiannopoulos had a more complicated fight on his hands. The left — and worse, some on the right — had started to condemn the new conservative energy as reactionary and racist. Yiannopoulos had to take back “alt-right,” to redefine for Breitbart’s audience a poorly understood, leaderless movement, parts of which had already started to resist the term itself.

So he reached out to key constituents, who included a neo-Nazi and a white nationalist.

“Finally doing my big feature on the alt right,” Yiannopoulos wrote in a March 9, 2016, email to Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer, a hacker who is the system administrator of the neo-Nazi hub the Daily Stormer, and who would later ask his followers to disrupt the funeral of Charlottesville victim Heather Heyer. “Fancy braindumping some thoughts for me.”

“It’s time for me to do my big definitive guide to the alt right,” Yiannopoulos wrote four hours later to Curtis Yarvin, a software engineer who under the nom de plume Mencius Moldbug helped create the “neoreactionary” movement, which holds that Enlightenment democracy has failed and that a return to feudalism and authoritarian rule is in order. “Which is my whorish way of asking if you have anything you’d like to make sure I include.”

“Alt r feature, figured you’d have some thoughts,” Yiannopoulos wrote the same day to Devin Saucier, who helps edit the online white nationalist magazine American Renaissance under the pseudonym Henry Wolff, and who wrote a story in June 2017 called “Why I Am (Among Other Things) a White Nationalist.”

The three responded at length: Weev about the Daily Stormer and a podcast called The Daily Shoah, Yarvin in characteristically sweeping world-historical assertions (“It’s no secret that North America contains many distinct cultural/ethnic communities. This is not optimal, but with a competent king it’s not a huge problem either”), and Saucier with a list of thinkers, politicians, journalists, films (Dune, Mad Max, The Dark Knight), and musical genres (folk metal, martial industrial, ’80s synthpop) important to the movement. Yiannopoulos forwarded it all, along with the Wikipedia entries for “Alternative Right” and the esoteric far-right Italian philosopher Julius Evola — a major influence on 20th-century Italian fascists and Richard Spencer alike — to Allum Bokhari, his deputy and frequent ghostwriter, whom he had met during GamerGate. “Include a bit of everything,” he instructed Bokhari.

“Bannon, as you probably know, is sympathetic to much of it.”

“I think you’ll like what I’m cooking up,” Yiannopoulos wrote to Saucier, the American Renaissance editor.

“I look forward to it,” Saucier replied. “Bannon, as you probably know, is sympathetic to much of it.”

Five days later Bokhari returned a 3,000-word draft, a taxonomy of the movement titled “ALT-RIGHT BEHEMOTH.” It included a little bit of everything: the brains and their influences (Yarvin and Evola, etc.), the “natural conservatives” (people who think different ethnic groups should stay separate for scientific reasons), the “Meme team” (4chan and 8chan), and the actual hatemongers. Of the last group, Bokhari wrote: “There’s just not very many of them, no-one really likes them, and they’re unlikely to achieve anything significant in the alt-right.”

“Magnificent start,” Yiannopoulos responded.

Alamy; Getty Images (2); Gage Skidmore, Cardsplayer4life, Weev, BIM, Tracy White / Wikimedia; YouTube (2)

Over the next three days, Yiannopoulos passed the article back to Yarvin and the white nationalist Saucier, the latter of whom gave line-by-line annotations. He also sent it to Vox Day, a writer who was expelled from the board of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for calling a black writer an “ignorant savage,” and to Alex Marlow, the editor of Breitbart.

“Solid, fair, and fairly comprehensive,” Vox Day responded, with a few suggestions.

“Most of it is great but I don’t want to rush a major long form piece like this,” Marlow wrote back. “A few people will need to weigh in since it deals heavily with race.”

“Truthfully management is very edgy on this one (They love it but it’s racially charged)”

Also, there was another sensitive issue to be raised: credit. “Allum did most of the work on this and wants joint [byline] but I want the glory here,” Yiannopoulos wrote back to Marlow. “I am telling him you said it’s sensitive and want my byline alone on it.”

Minutes later, Yiannopoulos emailed Bokhari. “I was going to have Marlow collude with me … about the byline on the alt right thing because I want to take it solo. Will you hate me too much if I do that? … Truthfully management is very edgy on this one (They love it but it’s racially charged) and they would prefer it.”

“Will management definitely say no if it’s both of us?” Bokhari responded. “I think it actually lowers the risk if someone with a brown-sounding name shares the BL.”

Five days later, March 22nd, Marlow returned with comments. He suggested that the story should show in more detail how Yiannopoulos and most of the alt-right rejected the actual neo-Nazis in the movement. And he added that Taki's Magazine and VDare, two publications Yiannopoulos and Bokhari identified as part of the alt-right, “are both racist. … We should disclaimer that or strike that part of the history from the article.” (The published story added, in the passive voice, “All of these websites have been accused of racism.”) Again the story went back to Bokhari, who on the 24th sent Yiannopoulos still another draft, with the subject head “ALT RIGHT, MEIN FUHRER.”

On the 27th, now co-bylined, the story was ready for upper management: Bannon and Larry Solov, Breitbart’s press-shy CEO. It was also ready, on a separate email chain, for another read and round of comments from the white nationalist Saucier, the feudalist Yarvin, the neo-Nazi Weev, and Vox Day.

“I need to go thru this tomorrow in depth…although I do appreciate any piece that mentions evola,” Bannon wrote. On the 29th, in an email titled “steve wants you to read this,” Marlow sent Yiannopoulos a list of edits and notes Bannon had solicited from James Pinkerton, a former Reagan and George H.W. Bush staffer and a contributing editor of the American Conservative. The 59-year-old Pinkerton was put off by a cartoon of Pepe the Frog conducting the Trump Train.

“I love art,” he wrote inline. “I think [Breitbart News Network] needs a lot more of it, but I don’t get the above. Frogs? Kermit? Am I missing something here?”

Later that day, Breitbart published “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right.” It quickly became a touchstone, cited in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, CNN, and New York Magazine, among others. And its influence is still being felt. This past July, in a speech in Warsaw that was celebrated by the alt-right, President Trump echoed a line from the story — a story written by a “brown-sounding” amanuensis, all but line-edited by a white nationalist, laundered for racism by Breitbart’s editors, and supervised by the man who would in short order become the president’s chief strategist.

The machine had worked well.

It hadn’t always been so easy.

The previous November, Yiannopoulos emailed Bannon with a bone to pick. Breitbart London reported that a London college student behind a popular social justice hashtag had threatened the anti-Islam activist Pamela Geller.

“The story is horseshit and we should never have published it,” Yiannopoulos wrote. “Reckless and stupid. … Strongly recommend we pull. it’s insanely defamatory. I spoke to pamela geller and even she said it was rubbish. We’re outright lying about this girl and surely we’re better than that. We can and should win by telling the truth.”

Six minutes later, Bannon wrote back to his tech editor in a fury. “Your [sic] full of shit. When I need your advice on anything I will ask. … The tech site is a total clusterfuck—meaningless stories written by juveniles. You don’t have a clue how to build a company or what real content is. And you don’t have long to figure it out or your [sic] gone. … You are magenalia [sic].”

(Geller clarified to BuzzFeed News in a statement that she believed it was “rubbish” that the London university characterized the threats against her as “fake.”)

“Dude—we r in a global existentialist war where our enemy EXISTS in social media and u r jerking yourself off w/ marginalia!!!!”

Quelle: <a href="Here's How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled White Nationalism Into The Mainstream“>BuzzFeed

After Seven Years, Engineer Curtis Chambers Has Left Uber

Via linkedin.com

Curtis Chambers, head of engineering at Uber Freight, has left Uber after seven years. He was the company’s seventh employee.

Chambers, who describes himself as Uber’s “secret weapon” on LinkedIn, was director of engineering for Uber’s trucking operation when he left, but had previously led other projects at Uber, including UberEATS and a catch-all logistics operation formerly known as “Uber Everything.”

Here’s a video of Chambers from 2015:

youtube.com

Back in 2013, Chambers was named on a patent application as one of five inventors of Uber’s surge pricing, alongside then-CEO Travis Kalanick. Surge pricing was Uber’s demand-based pricing mechanism, which passengers widely hated but which helped drivers earn more money and kept Uber running in the early days despite things like major holidays, sporting events, and bad weather.

Uber confirmed that Chambers was no longer with the company, but declined to comment further. Chambers didn’t immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

In a farewell email that a source close to the company shared with BuzzFeed News, Chambers told Uber employees that he's leaving the company to spend more time with his family.

Chambers’ departure comes at a difficult time for Uber. The company will soon face Google in court over allegations that Uber stole self-driving car technology from Google when it acquired the startup of former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski. That startup was Otto Trucking; Uber Freight is currently run by Eric Berdinis, who worked at Otto and joined Uber as part of that acquisition.

It’s also been a dramatic week for Uber at the board level. Late last week, ousted CEO Kalanick named two new members to Uber’s board in a move that surprised even the company itself. Though it briefly looked as though Kalanick planned to go head to head with his replacement, former Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, the matter was settled during a board meeting on Tuesday, when the directors reached a compromise on how to restructure Uber’s governing body.

One of the new rules that Uber’s board unanimously confirmed brings an end to supervoting, a rule which gave early Uber employees and shareholders extra votes, and therefore more control over the company. Venture capitalist Shervin Pishevar, an early Uber investor, threatened to sue Uber’s board over the issue, calling the move a “naked violation and repudiation” of the shareholder rights of early Uber employees.

Before Uber, Chambers worked at Expensify, which was founded by David Barrett in 2008. Barrett previously worked at Red Swoosh, the startup Kalanick founded pre-Uber, which was acquired by Akamai in 2008. If Twitter is any indication, Kalanick and Chambers have known each other for almost 10 years.

Back in January, when Uber was facing pressure from consumers over its perceived effort to break a taxi driver strike staged in opposition to President Trump’s proposed travel ban on people from certain Muslim countries, Chambers defended Uber on Facebook, saying the company faced “constant pressure from all sides.”

BuzzFeed News has also confirmed that Michael York, the Uber engineer best known for circulating a petition in favor of Kalanick’s reinstatement following his forced resignation in June, has left the company. York declined to comment on the subject of Uber for this story.

Quelle: <a href="After Seven Years, Engineer Curtis Chambers Has Left Uber“>BuzzFeed

People Are Realizing That Instagram Poll Answers Aren't Anonymous And It's A Hot Mess

“I CAN NOW SEE ALL MY H8ERS.”

@kristanicolie / Twitter / Via Twitter: @kristanicolie

@psitsisabel / Twitter / Via Twitter: @psitsisabel

But some people didn’t realize a key function in the feature…

Instagram

@brigwilliams / Twitter / Via Twitter: @brigwilliams

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Quelle: <a href="People Are Realizing That Instagram Poll Answers Aren't Anonymous And It's A Hot Mess“>BuzzFeed

Here's How YouTube Is Spreading Conspiracy Theories About The Vegas Shooting

In the immediate aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting, Facebook and Google News faced harsh criticism for surfacing misinformation. But they weren't the only ones.

As early as the morning after the shooting, the third YouTube search result for “Las Vegas shooting” was for videos from “AMTV,” a conservative conspiracy theory channel.

The video hinted at the possibility that the shooter was acting on behalf of the government or another agency. It has since been removed, but AMTV's other shooting-related videos include “What if Las Vegas Shooter was a Gov't Agent & Not a Madman.”

Meanwhile, a search for information on the gunman, Stephen Paddock, yielded videos from conspiracy sites attempting to politicize the shooting.

The second result for Paddock was a video from a popular channel called “#SeekingTheTruth” that erroneously suggested Paddock was “an anti-Trump far-left activist.”

Twitter: @jwherrman / Via Twitter: @jwherrman

One possible explanation for the glut of conspiracy content in the aftermath of the shooting is that there was simply a lack of reliable information being uploaded — vetted news reports from trusted outlets often take longer. However, the problem persisted long after reliable reports were available: On Tuesday night — nearly 48 hours after the shooting began — YouTube was still surfacing conspiratorial content high in search results.

A YouTube spokesperson provided BuzzFeed News with a statement touting its dedicated news page, which users would have to navigate to, instead of simply searching for something like “Vegas shooting.”

“When it comes to news, we have thousands of news publishers that present a variety of viewpoints available on our news channel, www.youtube.com/news,” the statement said. “When a major news event happens, these sources are presented on the YouTube homepage under ‘Breaking News’ and featured in search results, with the label ‘Top News.’”

While none of the conspiracy videos appeared under the “Top News” label, YouTube's site design creates some confusion. First, it only includes two “Top News” links (users have to click to unfurl more) and the site displays the un-vetted news sources directly below. Thus, less reliable links can appear third in the results:

The fourth result returned a video attempting to “debunk the mainstream media’s coverage of the shooting and included a thumbnail asking, “WHAT IS THE MEDIA HIDING?”

The high placement of conspiracy videos in search results is significant at a time when users are searching for reliable information about breaking news events. But perhaps most importantly, thanks to YouTube's autoplay feature for recommended videos, when users watch one highly ranked conspiracy video, they're more likely to stumble down an algorithm-powered conspiracy video rabbit hole.

For example, BuzzFeed News clicked on that fourth search result (in an incognito window — which surfaces search results without taking into account past browsing history), a video by “Squatting Slav TV” with over 100,000 views.

From there, YouTube’s algorithm suggested a video titled “PROOF: MEDIA & LAW ENFORCEMENT ARE LYING” by SGTreport, which bills itself as “the corporate propaganda antidote.”

The channel's 'About' page says it “provides exclusive original content and interviews with some of the best known voices in the world of economics and precious metals.” The video suggests that “the mainstream media's narrative that alleged shooter Stephen Paddock was a 'lone gunman' is 100% patently false” (despite no proof from law enforcement).

From the “SGTreports” video, the next suggested video offers “the truth you’re not being told.”

Three videos in, YouTube continues to recommend Vegas conspiracy videos.

A look at the YouTube’s right-side recommendation bar shows videos that erroneously suggest there was a a second shooter, as well as videos from Alex Jones’ site, Infowars, which frequently peddles conspiratorial content.

For its part, YouTube stands behind the varied opinions and views on its platform. After BuzzFeed News inquired about them, a number of the videos in question were suspended, though others are still searchable and some have hundreds of thousands of views. And while many of the videos may comply with YouTube's community guidelines (they don't contain nudity, threats of violence, spam, or copyright infringement) they offer YouTube's more than one billion monthly active users easy access to a vast array of factually incorrect and extremist content. Just keep clicking.

Quelle: <a href="Here's How YouTube Is Spreading Conspiracy Theories About The Vegas Shooting“>BuzzFeed

Google's New Intelligent Earbuds Can Translate Foreign Languages

There's a new and formidable presence in the smart headphone market — Google.

On Wednesday morning the company revealed Google Pixel Buds, intelligent wire-linked earbuds that run Google Assistant. Google says they're optimized for audio (obviously), but the slickest feature by far is translation. Tethered to an Android phone, the buds can do real-time translation in 40 languages. An onstage demo at the company's October 4 event was simple but impressive — an English/Dutch conversation translated in real time.

Pixel Buds offer about five hours of listening time on a single charge, and they ship with a charging case that can ratchet that up to about 24 hours. Google's offering them in three colors — Kinda Blue, Just Black and Clearly White — for $159. Pre-orders start today, and the devices ship in November.

The smart headphone market is already well populated — Doppler Labs' Here One, Bragi’s Dash and Headphone, Samsung’s Gear IconX, and Bang & Olufsen's Beoplay E8, to name a few. But the largest player seems to be Apple's Airpods. Unveiled in September of 2016 and officially launched in December, the cigarette-shaped wireless buds have carved out a sizable portion of the wireless headphone market. Apple hasn’t provided actual sales numbers for them, but NPD reports that about 85% of all money spent on completely wireless headphones in the US is spent on AirPods.

It's impossible to predict how Google Pixel Buds will be received when they arrive at market, but their real-time translation feature is certainly a powerful differentiator if it works as smoothly as it appeared to onstage today.

Quelle: <a href="Google's New Intelligent Earbuds Can Translate Foreign Languages“>BuzzFeed

To Stay Relevant, Wireless Speaker Company Sonos Teams Up With Its Competitors. All Of Them.

The Sonos One, in black and white.

Sonos

Sonos, the wireless speaker company, was a pioneer in its category before tech giants like Amazon and Google came along with their own voice-controlled speakers for the home. The competition cut down Sonos sales, and the company struggled to remain relevant. But now, Sonos is making its catch-up strategy clear: if you can’t beat em, join em.

Today at an event in New York City, Sonos unveiled a slew of partnerships with its competitors. It announced that Alexa would be the first voice assistant available on its wireless speaker products (via a beta software update for users in the US, UK and Germany). It launched its first Alexa-enabled smart speaker, the Sonos One, for $199. It said it would support Apple’s Airplay 2 by 2018, letting Apple device owners control their Sonos speakers using the built-in voice assistant Siri. Also by 2018, Sonos said, it plans to integrate Google’s voice assistant. Sonos speakers now even support 80 music services, including Spotify, iHeartRadio and Tidal, plus smart home integrations like SmartThings.

“That’s our goal: to build a sound platform for the home,” CEO Patrick Spence said at the event. “A platform for the ‘sonic internet,’ that just works.”

For Sonos, the announcements have been a long time coming. The company first said that it was working on bringing voice control to its speakers in August, and the move came on the heels of Sonos reportedly laying off staff and refocusing its efforts on software improvements.

While Sonos initially built a healthy user base off the popularity of its networked wireless speakers that let people stream music throughout their home, the home speaker market has evolved, spurred by the popularity of Amazon’s Alexa-enabled Echo. Nowadays, the ability to ask simple queries of a voice-enabled speaker at home is the norm, and the threat was that Sonos would get left behind. In 2016, Google came out with its own device, the Google Home, and the company is expected to unveil a new version of the gadget at its Pixel 2 event in Mountain View, CA, today. A few weeks ago, Apple announced a $349 HomePod speaker, which is slated for release in December.

Now, Sonos seems to be saying, you don’t have to choose which platform or service to be locked into (or out of). You can enable them all.

Quelle: <a href="To Stay Relevant, Wireless Speaker Company Sonos Teams Up With Its Competitors. All Of Them.“>BuzzFeed

Google Unveils Its $399 Home Max And $49 Home Mini Smart Speakers

Google

Google Home is a smart speaker powered by Google Assistant, a virtual, voice-activated bot. It’s the company’s Amazon Echo competitor (Apple’s Siri-powered HomePod is also coming soon) — and today, Google unveiled the new circular Home Mini, which is about the size of teacup saucer.

The top of the Home Mini enclosure is made out of a custom linen-like fabric, and has four LED lights underneath that indicates the Mini is listening. It has “360-degree” sound and can connect to Chromecast speakers and Chromecast Audio, like the existing Google Home.

The Mini retails for $49 in the US (the same price as Amazon's Echo Dot), making it more affordable than the larger $129 Google Home. Pre-order starts today. The Mini ships Oct. 19, and will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, UK, and US in three colors: coral, chalk, and charcoal.

Google also announced the Google Home Max, a larger speaker that’s “20 times more powerful than Google Home,” according to Rishi Chandra, who heads Google Home. “Smart Sound,” which is powered by Google’s AI, tunes the speaker to optimize its sound balance for your particular room configuration. Over time, the speaker will learn to do things like raise the volume when your dishwasher is running.

It supports Spotify, Pandora, TuneIn, iHeart Radio, and Google Play Music, as well as external speakers connected by an auxiliary cable, Chromecast, or Bluetooth. Max also works with a multi-room set-up via Chromecast Audio. The speaker’s orientation can also be changed from horizontal to vertical.

Max will cost $399, and it'll be available in December in two colors: chalk and charcoal. The speaker will come with an ad-free subscription to YouTube Music for 12 months.

All three Home speakers include Voice Match, which identifies different individuals in the household, so it can serve personalized answers (like traffic, Spotify playlists from certain accounts, and calendars). Voice Match is now rolling out in all seven countries where Home is available.

Home is now more kid-friendly, too. It can understand the way kids talk better, and includes more kid-friendly games, like “Which fruit are you?”. New commands include: “Hey Google, let’s learn, or let’s play a game, or tell me a story.” Google is also partnering with Disney to create kid-first experiences.

Still, most of the three speakers' capabilities — like hands-free calling, which Google announced is now rolling out to the UK (it’s already available in the US) — are available in other smart speakers, like Amazon’s Echo.

Quelle: <a href="Google Unveils Its 9 Home Max And Home Mini Smart Speakers“>BuzzFeed