Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg has said he does not think it is right for a company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy.
He was giving a speech in Washington DC following weeks of criticism over the firm’s decision not to ban political adverts that contain falsehoods.
He added he had considered barring all political ads on his platforms.
But he said he believed the move would favour incumbent politicians and whoever the media chose to cover.
The tariffs the Trump administration is about to impose on wine, liquor and cheese from Europe couldn’t come at a worse time for small retailers.
“It’s kind of scary in the sense that we’re getting to the holiday season,” says Joseph Kakos, owner of Kakos Fine Wine & Spirits in Birmingham, Michigan. “October, November and December are the time when you really make your money for the year.”
No one expects consumers to completely abandon Bordeaux and other wines from France, Scotch whisky or cheeses like Parmesan or Roquefort when the 25% tariffs take effect Friday. Still, Kakos says, shoppers may turn price conscious just as shelves are well-stocked for the holidays.
Permitting falsehood in political advertising would work if we had a model democracy, but we don’t. Not only are candidates dishonest, but voters aren’t educated, and the media isn’t objective. And now, hyperlinks turn lies into donations and donations into louder lies. The checks don’t balance. What we face is a self-reinforcing disinformation dystopia.
That’s why if Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube don’t want to be the arbiters of truth in campaign ads, they should stop selling them. If they can’t be distributed safely, they shouldn’t be distributed at all.
This week, Californians got two helpings of bad news, as Pacific Gas & Electric shut off the power for some residents to try and cut down on wildfires, even as a blaze broke out and displaced thousands in the San Fernando Valley. (The electricity kept flowing to Silicon Valley’s tech companies, though.) Meanwhile, it was snowing in Montana; go figure. Relatedly, there were multiple protests (and multiple arrests) around the world led by action group Extinction Rebellion, which is calling on the media to do more reporting on climate change. Elsewhere, people are upset that Ellen DeGeneres is hanging out with George W. Bush, associates of President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani were arrested and charged with campaign finance violations, and it looks like Brexit won’t be an utter disaster after all. With all of this going on, it’s surprising anyone had the energy to pretend to be upset over how much US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez paid for a haircut or enjoy Senator Elizabeth Warren’s snarky comeback to a question about same-sex marriage. You guys, so much happened last week. It’s time we unpacked it all.
Airbnb has said that it will have its initial public offering in 2020.
The company is one of the last of the big unicorn herd that grew up roughly a decade ago (a herd that includes Uber, Lyft, The We Company and Postmates) to declare its public market intentions.
Yesterday evening the company announced it had hit over $1 billion in revenue for the second quarter 2019. It’s the second time in the company’s history that it pulled in more than $1 billion, according to the statement.
A new report seems to confirm what you could probably already guess: that, like every other device you own, some TV streaming devices are collecting lots of data about what you do.
The report comes from Princeton University and the University of Chicago, and focuses on two platforms: Roku and Amazon Fire TV. To see what apps on these two services tracked, the people behind the study created what they call “smart crawlers.”
They essentially did the same thing humans would do — install apps (the top 1,000 on each device) and watch videos — while taking a look at the data that was collected any time an ad was shown. You can guess where this is going.
When Wendy Bedolla got into her Tesla Model 3 Thursday morning there was a message waiting for her.
“Stay Fully Charged,” the message on the car’s big computer screen said. “A utility company in your area announced they may turn off power in some areas of Northern California beginning October 9 as part of public safety power shutoffs, which may affect power to charging options.”
October’s full moon, called the Hunter’s Moon, will rise tonight (Oct. 13), reaching its peak fullness at 5:08 p.m. ET.
The Hunter’s Moon, which is the full moon following the Harvest Moon and the closest full moon to the fall equinox, is reportedly the best time for hunting deer and other animals, according to the Farmer’s Almanac. In northern locations, leaves have fallen, deer have fattened and harvesters have cleared the fields, making it easier to see the animals under the light of the big bulb in the sky, according to NASA.
But people of different cultures and regions gave their own names to full moons. The Algonquin tribes, for example, called October’s full moon the Travel Moon, the Dying Grass Moon and the Sanguine or Blood Moon; the latter three are thought to be named after the changing colors of the leaves and dying plants, according to NASA.
Unconventional hiring methods are becoming more popular with younger generations of workers who are eager to demonstrate their skills.
Social media can be difficult for companies to navigate well, so make sure you have a good reason for creative recruiting.
A good way to start is with a hybrid of traditional and creative hiring methods.
Ever landed a job interview via selfie? A decade ago, you likely would have been laughed out of the office; these days, it’s not so ludicrous. In June of 2017, McDonald’s launched its Snaplications program, which lets job seekers start their application by sending in a 10-second Snapchat video explaining why they’d be a great employee. The idea is to give applicants a chance to showcase their personalities, which McDonald’s feels is key to a customer-facing role.
Hulu has added offline video downloads to its on-demand video service, but there’s a catch: the feature is only available with Hulu’s $12-per-month ad-free service, not the more popular $6-per-month service with ads. If you’re eligible, downloads are available today on iOS and are coming soon to Android.
Dispatches From The Front 