People Are Searching “How To Vote” 233% More Than They Did In 2012

If online behavior is any indication, this year's presidential race has ignited the American electorate.

This according to Google, which notes that searches for “how to vote” between Oct. 1 and Nov. 1 were 233% higher than they were during the same time period for the 2012 election. Google, which plans to integrate election news into its search results when polls close on Tuesday, says Americans are also turning to the search giant to know where to vote; that phrase is being searched particularly in battleground states such as Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.

Google

Google

Elsewhere, there&039;s been a frenzy of election-related online video consumption.

On YouTube, people have so far spent over 20 million hours watching and replaying presidential debate live streams. And between mid-July and mid-October, they spent the equivalent of more than 545 years (almost 4.8 million hours) watching video of presidential contenders on Facebook. Between the beginning of the year and October 1st, 109 million people in the US generated 5.3 billion election-related likes, posts, comments and shares on the social network.

Quelle: <a href="People Are Searching “How To Vote” 233% More Than They Did In 2012“>BuzzFeed

Election Week Snapchat Ads Will Include Clinton Selfie Lens, Trump Geofilter

Priorities USA Action

With election day nearly upon us, the U.S. Presidential candidates are heading to Snapchat for a last, concerted social push. Over the next two days, the social platform will host some big political ads from the camps of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Hillary for America

The Clinton campaign&#039;s sponsored geofilter hits Snapchat on Monday offering supporters a simple “I&039;m with her” overlay. Debuting alongside it: what Snapchat says is the first presidential election-themed, sponsored selfie lens. Purchased by Priorities USA Action, a Democratic Party super PAC, the lens adds Hillary Clinton&039;s hair and jacket to users&039; selfies. When the transformation is complete, the “Hillaried” Snapchat user shimmies back and forth across the screen, in a nod to a key moment from the first presidential debate.

The Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for comment about its Snapchat ad or Priorities USA Action&039;s selfie lens.

On Tuesday, the social platform will also feature a national geofilter overlay from the Trump campaign, which landed the election day slot (sponsored national geofilters are sold on a first-come, first-served basis, and limited to one per day).

The Trump camp did not provide BuzzFeed News with its Snapchat geofilter or a description of it. The Trump campaign and a spokesperson for the GOP did not respond to requests for comment.

Snapchat sells sponsored lenses for upwards of $450,000 a day, and can command $700,000 around special events. Sponsored geofilters command a similar price.

Snapchat has captured a lot of election-related attention in the run up to Tuesday&039;s vote. According to the company, 52 million Snapchat users have watched more than 2 billion U.S. politics-related snaps during election season. Snapchat itself plans to tap into this interest on Monday and Tuesday with a “Heads Up” geofilter and election-themed lens, both intended to encourage voting.

According to a Snapchat-commissioned Nielsen study, Snapchat reaches 41% of people in the United States between ages 18 and 34 on any given day. So the company&039;s efforts to mobilize voters and the candidates&039; efforts to rally their supporters ahead of the election have a more-than-reasonable chance of reaching a key demographic in these last few days.

Quelle: <a href="Election Week Snapchat Ads Will Include Clinton Selfie Lens, Trump Geofilter“>BuzzFeed

Trump Trolls Find New Tactics To Spread False Voting Information On Twitter

As election day nears, pro-Trump trolls on Twitter continue to spread false voter information to in an effort to keep Hillary supporters from the polls on Tuesday.

The tweets, many of which are disguised as campaign ads, suggest that voters can “avoid the line” and “vote from home” via text (they can’t). Last week, in response a BuzzFeed News report on similar voter suppression scams, Twitter deleted a handful of Tweets spreading the false information. “Not sure how this slipped past us, but now it’s fixed,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told BuzzFeed News.

But despite Dorsey&#039;s public statement, trolls are still trying their best to dupe voters. On Sunday, BuzzFeed News found dozens of examples of “vote from home” tweets along with others falsely claiming voting deadlines have been extended until November 9 for Hillary voters and that voters must provide seven forms of identification to cast their ballot. The tweets vary in sophistication and message — some are brazen attempts at voter suppression designed to appear like legitimate notifications, others appear to be racially charged, satiric commentary on the idea of voter suppression itself presented alongside misinformation.

The tweets, which were still up on the social network Sunday afternoon, have all been reported to Twitter&039;s support team by independent users. One woman who has been reporting voter suppression tweets since yesterday told BuzzFeed News that she has not yet heard back from Twitter support.

As BuzzFeed News reported last week, the tweets do appear to be in violation of Twitter&039;s rules, which state in part that “Twitter accounts portraying another person in a confusing or deceptive manner may be permanently suspended.” The tweets could also be in violation of Twitter’s spam rules. Similarly, tweets claiming to be “paid for by Hillary For President” could be in violation of FEC law.

Kristen Clarke, the President and Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law roundly condemned the tweets and called on Twitter to be more vigilant with their takedowns. Clarke works with Election Protection, a non-partisan voter protection agency.

“I flagged a number of tweets this morning and have not received a response.”

“I flagged a number of tweets this morning and have not received a response. And many, if not all of those tweets are still up,” she told BuzzFeed News. “There&039;s urgency, here. Time is short, the right to vote is sacred and people can easily abuse to disrupt our elections. So Twitter and Facebook and all the social platforms have a real obligation not to overlook this,” she told BuzzFeed News.

In response to BuzzFeed&039;s request for comment as to why the tweets weren&039;t taken down, despite the user abuse reports, Twitter provided the following statement: “Our goal is to increase engagement in the election process and encourage voter turnout. We are tweeting now, and through Election Day, informing people how and where they can vote. We&039;ve launched several features recently to support this cause including our DM tool that shares specific voting locations, candidate information and other relevant info. to inform voters as they head to the polls.”

The company also tweeted this, from it&039;s Government account:

Still, there&039;s plenty of misinformation out there — here are some examples of voter suppression scam tweets to watch out for:

Quelle: <a href="Trump Trolls Find New Tactics To Spread False Voting Information On Twitter“>BuzzFeed

Less Than 12% Of The Companies Peter Thiel's VC Fund Invested In Have A Woman Founder

Peter Thiel has been in the news quite a bit recently: In October for a $1.25 million donation to Donald Trump (which he defended in a speech on Monday), and last week for statements he made in The Diversity Myth, a book he co-wrote in 1996, which argued that “politically correct ‘multiculturalism’” had a “debilitating effect” on higher education and that rape was a “belated regret.”

Thiel&#039;s views have made him an outlier in Silicon Valley, but the sector is still dominated by white male gatekeepers. For example, one recent study found that less than 16% of venture capital funding goes to companies with at least one female cofounder.

According to a BuzzFeed News analysis, Founders Fund, the venture capital firm that Thiel co-founded in 2005, invests in women at a rate slightly less than that industry average.

In response to questions about the gender diversity of its portfolio, Founders Fund, which has $3 billion under management, told BuzzFeed News: “We do not track founder demographics.” However, in our own rough estimates, BuzzFeed News found that less than 12 percent of Founders Fund’s investments are helmed by at least one woman. Put another way, over 11 years, the company has only invested in 27 companies with at least one female founder.

BuzzFeed News based this estimate on information from Pitchbook, a venture capital database, which lists 241 startups as Founders Fund investments. BuzzFeed News verified that 227 of those startups were Founders Fund investments (using either public reports or the companies themselves). Of those 227 verified companies, 27 startups had at least one female co-founder. Only 7 — Sofa Labs, Contagion Health, Style Seat, Brit + Co, uBeam, PandoDaily, and TaskRabbit — were founded exclusively by women.

Even this amount of investment is relatively new. Using the same methodology, Founders Fund appears to have backed only five companies with a female co-founder between 2005 and 2011.

Here are all 27 startups with one female co-founder that BuzzFeed News was able to identify.

1. Homee, an iOS app for furniture and home design
2. Hooked, fiction for the Snapchat generation
3. Ayar Labs, building optical chips for data centers
4. Medal, electronic medical records platform
5. Accion Systems, propulsion systems for satellites
6. Eating with the Chefs, high end dinners at home
7. Modumetal, nanolaminated metals for the oil and gas industry
8. PlanGrid, a mobile app for construction management
9. Declara, a personalized learning platform
10. SOLS Systems, 3d-printed shoe insoles
11. Transatomic Power, advanced reactors for low-cost nuclear power
12. Canva, online graphic design platform
13. If You Can, educational gaming company
14. LawPal, software for tracking legal work
15. Invino, private sales for wine enthusiasts
16. Neurotrack, technology to predict the onset of Alzheimer&039;s disease
17. PandoDaily, tech blog
18. Upstart, online lending marketplace
19. LightSail Energy, compressed energy storage
20. TaskRabbit, mobile marketplace for freelance labor
21. uBeam, wireless charging
22. Brit + Co, DIY media and ecommerce company
23. Style Seat, online booking for beauty appointments
24. Contagion Health, social action platform for health
25. Sofa Labs, develops social apps
26. Zivity, adult content social network
27. Big Think, YouTube for ideas

No entity collects standardized data on female entrepreneurship within the tech industry. Crunchbase, a startup database, reported last year that the number of female founders receiving venture capital has grown from 9.5% in 2009 to 17.9% in 2014. But those figures only reflect VC-approved startups. Women own 30% of all businesses in the United States, according to a 2015 study on women-owned businesses commissioned by American Express Open.

Thiel&039;s donation to Trump&039;s political campaign came shortly after a leaked tape of Trump bragging about sexual assault came to light. During the speech on Monday, Thiel called criticism of his support for Trump a form of intolerance that exposes “the lie behind the buzzword of &039;diversity.&039;”

The Diversity Myth was not the last time Thiel made controversial statements about women. In 2009, four years after he launched Founders Fund, he wrote an essay which argued that extending voting rights to women “rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”

Founders Fund added its first female investing partner, Cyan Banister, in March 2016.

Please contact nitasha.tiku@buzzfeed.com if you know of any companies that should be included or omitted from our list.

Quelle: <a href="Less Than 12% Of The Companies Peter Thiel&039;s VC Fund Invested In Have A Woman Founder“>BuzzFeed

Apple Is Dropping The Price On All Of Its USB-C Adapters

Maybe it&#8217;ll make people less mad about the New MacBook Pro?

Last month, Apple unveiled their first MacBook Pro redesign since 2012.

The all-new MacBook Pro is slimmer, lighter, and has a tiny new keyboard touchscreen.

Apple

That&#039;s right: no more SD card slot, USB port, Thunderbolt port, HDMI port, or MagSafe connector. (There is, however, still a headphone jack. )

For example, the USB-C to USB adapter is going from $19 to $9. The Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 Adapter is being cut from $49 to $29. The
SanDisk Extreme Pro SD UHS-II Card USB-C Reader is now $29 (down from $49).

In a statement to BuzzFeed News, the company said: “We recognize that many users, especially pros, rely on legacy connectors to get work done today and they face a transition. We want to help them move to the latest technology and peripherals, as well as accelerate the growth of this new ecosystem. Through the end of the year, we are reducing prices on all USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 peripherals we sell, as well as the prices on Apple&039;s USB-C adapters and cables.”

View Entire List ›

Quelle: <a href="Apple Is Dropping The Price On All Of Its USB-C Adapters“>BuzzFeed

Virtual Reality Isn’t Ready To Handle Abusive Trolls

Brad Barket / Getty Images

Last month, Jordan Belamire unwittingly — and unwillingly — found herself the first public victim of a new kind of abuse. While visiting her brother-in-law, she tried out the new head-mounted virtual reality system HTC Vive — specifically, a multiplayer archery game called QuiVR.

“I was hanging out next to BigBro442, waiting for our next attack,” Belamire, which is a pseudonym, wrote in a now widely shared blog post. “Suddenly, BigBro442’s disembodied helmet faced me dead-on. His floating hand approached my body, and he started to virtually rub my chest.”

Belamire&#039;s experience raised a dreadful prospect: That the connected spaces in the booming field of virtual reality will suffer the same plague of anonymous harassment and abuse that has come to define the social internet in 2016.

Or, worse. The story suggested that anonymous abuse, in the context of a medium defined by the suspension of disbelief, would take on new and frightening contours.

Wrote Belamire,

“It felt real, violating. This sounds ludicrous to anyone who hasn’t stood on that virtual reality ledge and looked down, but if you have, you might start to understand. The public virtual chasing and groping happened a full week ago and I’m still thinking about it.”

For virtual- and augmented-reality evangelists, who have long touted the potential therapeutic benefits of immersive media, the incident was a bracing reminder that new technology is never immune to old problems. And behind that fact looms a serious question: Who will be held accountable for traumatic experiences caused by abuse in virtual reality?

The short answer: Probably not the corporations that make the hardware or the software.

“VR providers will likely face no liability whatsoever, period,” said Michael Risch, a law professor at Villanova University who has published widely on legal issues surrounding the technology.

That&039;s because VR providers will be largely shielded by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which says that providers of internet computer services are not responsible for content that comes from users or other providers. It&039;s the same reason Twitter isn&039;t liable for the tsunami of hate speech and harassment on its platform.

“So long as the providers themselves are not doing the harassing, they don’t have to do a thing,” Risch told BuzzFeed News.

But, Risch said, they could be liable if they created the content themselves: Say, a virtual bot programmed to harass, or, in a slightly more far-flung hypothetical, a VR game that involved a rape or an assault. In this case, according to Risch, a traumatized person would be able to file an emotional distress suit against the company that wrote the code.

Still, such a plaintiff would have to convince a judge that a traumatic VR experience isn&039;t protected speech in the same way as a novel, a movie, or a traditional video game, which would depend on making a difficult argument about an ineffable technological difference.

“To the extent that there will be law imposed in virtual worlds, it will have to be imposed and enforced by the providers,” Risch said. In other words, bad and harmful behavior in VR will be governed in the same way it is on a monitor: Through codes of conduct and terms of service, and whatever other rights corporations reserve to maintain decency and order within their products.

But that&039;s one of the problems with the burgeoning VR industry: There are so many small developers and startups in various stages of funding and organization that the consistent enforcement of behavior standards seems impossible. QuiVr, for example, was in a pre-release alpha and was developed by two people.

“There was no mechanism in place to safeguard against the deplorables,” said Miles Perkins, the vice president for marketing communications at Jaunt, a VR startup that has raised more than $100 million from Disney and other investors.

Not that many of the major corporations in VR are eager to lead the way and talk about the steps they&039;ll take to combat abuse. Oculus — the Facebook-owned VR leader whose founder, Palmer Luckey, secretly funded an alt-right, pro-Trump non-profit — did not respond to requests for comment. Microsoft, Magic Touch, and WeVr, all major players in VR and AR, all also declined to talk to BuzzFeed News for the story.

HTC, which co-developed the Vive headset with the gaming services giant Valve, said in a statement, “Unfortunately, this behavior exists in the real world as well as various social platforms. We support content developers to create proper tools to prevent this type of behavior, and ensure people have a safe and trustable experience in VR.”

Perkins, the Jaunt vice president, pointed to the way Riot Games has curbed abuse in its popular League of Legends video game. That success depended on a heavily invested community with easy access to reporting tools and quick responses from Riot, as well as punishments (account suspensions and bans) that actually bothered abusers. Whether most VR experiences will be able to match those conditions is unclear.

“I think the responsibility lies in providing those mechanisms,” Perkins said. “If something bad happens, people should be locked out or held accountable for what they’re doing.”

For the time being, that may be the most VR providers can or will do, though it seems unlikely such steps would have prevented Jordan Belamire from being virtually groped. BuzzFeed News was unable to reach Belamire for comment; she recently deleted her Twitter account. Some have speculated she did so because of harassment.

Quelle: <a href="Virtual Reality Isn’t Ready To Handle Abusive Trolls“>BuzzFeed