Saturday, September 5, 2020

A look at the role of WeChat in China and abroad, its differences with TikTok, and how its features are inextricably woven with surveillance and censorship (Paul Mozur/New York Times)

Paul Mozur / New York Times:
A look at the role of WeChat in China and abroad, its differences with TikTok, and how its features are inextricably woven with surveillance and censorship  —  A vital connection for the Chinese diaspora, the app has also become a global conduit of Chinese state propaganda, surveillance and intimidation.



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Trump administration issues its fifth Space Policy Directive, aimed at enhancing cybersecurity, with officials saying threats "occur with concerning regularity" (Loren Grush/The Verge)

Loren Grush / The Verge:
Trump administration issues its fifth Space Policy Directive, aimed at enhancing cybersecurity, with officials saying threats “occur with concerning regularity”  —  Government officials are worried about increasing cyber threats  —  Today, the Trump administration released …



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Amazon bans foreign plant sales in the US, after mystery seeds sent to households this summer led US officials to raise alarm over ease of e-commerce seed sales (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal:
Amazon bans foreign plant sales in the US, after mystery seeds sent to households this summer led US officials to raise alarm over ease of e-commerce seed sales  —  Shift by the e-commerce giant comes as agricultural authorities investigate the delivery of thousands of packets of seeds



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Alibaba pays nearly $1B to increase its stake in the Chinese courier group YTO Express from 10.5% to 22.5% (Ryan McMorrow/Financial Times)

Ryan McMorrow / Financial Times:
Alibaba pays nearly $1B to increase its stake in the Chinese courier group YTO Express from 10.5% to 22.5%  —  Ecommerce giant pays nearly $1bn to boost holding in YTO as it tries to speed up delivery  —  Alibaba is stepping up efforts to tighten control over its logistics network …



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US government is considering adding Chinese chip manufacturer SMIC to the Entity List, which would block US companies from selling SMIC tech without a license (Jeanne Whalen/Washington Post)

Jeanne Whalen / Washington Post:
US government is considering adding Chinese chip manufacturer SMIC to the Entity List, which would block US companies from selling SMIC tech without a license  —  Pentagon says the Trump administration is weighing possible trade sanction on SMIC  —  The Trump administration …



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This Week in Apps: Apple delays mobile ad apocalypse, app review changes, TikTok deal gets complicated

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the TechCrunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all.

The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now spending three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps aren’t just a way to pass idle hours — they’re a big business. In 2019, mobile-first companies had a combined $544 billion valuation, 6.5x higher than those without a mobile focus.

In this series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis.

This week, a handful of top stories lead our coverage. TikTok deal talks this week got hung up over whether or not TikTok can export the app’s algorithms as part of any acquisition of its U.S. operations by an American firm. Apple also made headlines for delaying the rollout of a potentially disastrous iOS 14 change that’s been panicking the advertising community. It also announced that it will no longer ban apps from pushing out security updates and bug fixes, even when App Review has blocked their app updates over policy non-compliance.

Top Stories

Apple delays the mobile ad apocalypse

Image Credits: Apple

Apple this week announced it would delay a controversial change that would impact how ads are targeted to iOS and iPadOS mobile users. In a move aimed at protecting consumer privacy, Apple was poised to introduce a new, in-app prompt in iOS 14 that would ask users whether they would like to allow targeted ad tracking or not. Because most consumers generally don’t like the stalker-ish nature of digital ads, you know what they’d choose!

The change involves an identifier known as IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) that allows advertisers to track how well their ad performs, including which channels drove what quality of users. This lets advertisers make better, more informed choices on their digital ad spend. It’s a key part of app marketing today.

Overall, we’re talking about a massive industry being disrupted. According to eMarketer, the U.S. mobile advertising reached $87.3 billion in 2019. Globally, app install ad spend was $57.8 billion in 2019 and was poised to grow to $118 billion in 2022, per AppsFlyer data. And yet, Apple doesn’t really participate here. Instead, it only offers Search Ads in its App Store. But to promote apps, Apple relies on editorial — like curated collections in the App Store and stories about apps on the Today tab. These can help direct traffic to apps, as can outside press, but the most efficient way to acquire users is paid spend on app install ads.

The mobile ad industry built itself up around the IDFA, offering tools focused on making it easier to measure ad performance and optimize ad spend. Apple was ready to wipe that industry out of existence. And marketers, as you can imagine, were panicking. Even calling it an apocalypse.

As an alternative, Apple was offering SKAdNetwork, introduced in 2018. But it lacked a lot of the information marketers rely on, like attribution or information on impressions, creative, remarketing, in-app events, lookback windows, user lifetime value, ROI, retention or cohort analysis.

This photo illustration taken on March 22, 2018 shows apps for Facebook and other social networks on a smartphone in Chennai. (Photo credit: ARUN SANKAR/AFP via Getty Images)

Last week, Facebook spoke up about how serious the change would be to its own business, saying that, in testing, it found that without targeting and personalization, mobile app install campaigns brought in 50% less revenue for publishers. “The impact to Audience Network on iOS 14 may be much more,” the company noted, referencing the ad network that uses Facebook data to target ads on publishers’ websites and apps.

A few days later, Apple announced the change was being put on hold, saying:

We believe technology should protect users’ fundamental right to privacy, and that means giving users tools to understand which apps and websites may be sharing their data with other companies for advertising or advertising measurement purposes, as well as the tools to revoke permission for this tracking. When enabled, a system prompt will give users the ability to allow or reject that tracking on an app-by-app basis. We want to give developers the time they need to make the necessary changes, and as a result, the requirement to use this tracking permission will go into effect early next year.

It’s unclear if Apple plans to respond to any of the industry’s concerns during this delay, or if it’s just given mobile marketers more time to figure out how to proceed in a data-less future. But at the very least, it’s the latter. Apple only announced the change to IDFA at WWDC this year — not enough time for an entire industry to retool itself around SKAdNetwork or implement other workarounds. The bigger question has to do with Apple’s long-term goals? It’s rewriting the rules to give itself a seat at the table, after all.

Apple puts an end to App Store Jail…for bug fixes

app store icon 2

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Apple often put iOS users at risk when it blocked developers from publishing their apps to the App Store over policy violations. In some cases, developers have urgently needed to release security patches and other bug fixes that could cause major problems for their users.

As Apple has increasingly begun to crack down on App Store violations, including those that require apps to use Apple Pay for in-app purchases, more developers have been caught in desperate situations. Apple put Basecamp’s new email app on ice almost immediately after it launched, and even temporarily rejected the free WordPress app, because in some web views, users could make their way to a page where they could upgrade to a paid plan:

WordPress’ Matt Mullenweg took to Twitter looking for help as a last alternative, after realizing the company couldn’t even ship its bug fixes until the issue had been resolved. The move caught Apple’s attention, and the situation was addressed. Apple even apologized.

A change to App Review, now live, will give developers caught in similar situations a way to keep pushing out their most critical updates, but not other app improvements. Apple’s plans had been previously announced at WWDC, but the rollout is timely as Apple steps up its policing of the App Store. However, making these rejections less of a potential disaster for developers may also see fewer developers talking publicly about their rejections or running to the press. With the urgency of a critical bug fix to drive them, the everyday rejection may go unnoticed.

Developers in the past had been scared of punitive actions for talking to the press about their troubles. But in the new antitrust era, more have begun to speak up when they feel Apple is unfairly punishing their business. That’s been good for U.S. regulators, at least. Congress has been collecting testimonies from developers that could ultimately impact the government’s decision to regulate the App Store. One has to wonder why Apple thinks the fight is worth it. It’s battling in the courtroom with Epic Games and it’s risking regulation, when the whole problem could have gone away with a small cut to its commission structure. Guess “services” really is the future of Apple’s business if it’s willing to take this sort of risk.

TikTok deal gets more complicated

a TikTok logo is seen displayed on a smartphone

CHINA – 2020/08/05: In this photo illustration, a TikTok logo is seen displayed on a smartphone. (Photo Illustration by Sheldon Cooper/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Everyone is waiting for the next shoe to drop on the topic of TikTok’s fate. One of the world’s biggest mobile apps, TikTok is going to be banned in the U.S. if it fails to get a deal by the September 20 deadline. China has now thrown a wrench in deal negotiations, when it issued new restrictions over the export of AI technology. The order could possibly complicate a TikTok deal, as it could mean that TikTok needs to get Chinese government approval to transfer TikTok’s algorithms along with other IP to any potential U.S. acquirer.

That leaves buyers to either pursue a deal without the algorithms in order to meet the deadline, or try to negotiate some sort of transition period for the deal with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). The latter would take some of the pressure off by dialing back on the immediacy required by the Trump E.O. Buyers could also try to get China to approve the export (which isn’t a timely option, really) or maybe license the algorithm from TikTok parent ByteDance.

Anyone who downplays the success of the continued success of TikTok without its algorithm has clearly not spent enough time on the app. While it now has the reach, its addictiveness comes from its eerily accurate algorithm that learns exactly what you want to see by way of using more than just basic signals. It’s non-trivial to spin that up again from scratch, but not an insurmountable hurdle, either, given the right investment and talent. Still, that’s not what buyers were looking for. Walmart engineers rebuilding TikTok? Can you imagine?

Weekly News

  • Snapchat had a big August amid TikTok uncertainty. The continual uncertainty around TikTok’s future may have provided a big boost to Snapchat in August. The app saw approximately 28.5 million new installs last month — its single largest month for first-time downloads since May 2019, according to Sensor Tower, when it had then seen 41.2 million new installs. The only other month, besides May 2019, where Snapchat had seen more monthly downloads than it did in August was December 2016. Downloads were up 29% year-over-year in August 2020, compared with 9% growth in July. (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
  • India bans PUBG Mobile, and over 100 other Chinese apps.Geopolitical tensions between India and China again spilled over into the app economy this week, as India banned 118 more Chinese apps that it deemed “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order.” The country had banned 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok, in June. Newly banned apps include Baidu, WeChat Work, Tencent Weiyun, Rise of Kingdoms, APUS Launcher, a VPN for TikTok, Mobile Taobao, Youko, Sina News, Cam Card, PUBG Mobile and many others. (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)
  • Pakistan blocks five dating apps including Tinder and Grindr. Pakistan said on Tuesday it had blocked Tinder, Grindr and three other dating apps for not adhering to local laws around “immoral content.” (Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam/Reuters)
  • Fortnite leaves a $1.2 billion hole in the market. Fortnite has picked up slightly more than $1.2 billion in player spending since launching in March 2018, according to Sensor Tower estimates. On Google Play, it has generated $9.7 million following its release on the storefront in April 2020. In 2020, Fortnite generated $293 million in player spending, with close to $283 million spent on the App Store alone. (Craig Chapple/Sensor Tower)
  • Robinhood faces SEC probe for not disclosing deals with high-speed traders. Stock-trading app popular with millennials Robinhood is facing a civil fraud investigation over its failure to fully disclose its practice of selling clients’ orders to high-speed trading firms. (Dave Michaels; Alexander Osipovich/The Wall Street Journal).
  • Amazon’s big redesign on iOS to reach all US users by month-end. Amazon has given its iOS app a significant makeover featuring new colors, updated navigation, a floating quick access bar and other changes designed to make it easier to browse the app using one hand. The rollout will reach 100% of U.S. iOS users by the end of September 2020. The changes come at a time when more consumers are shopping online due to health concerns around the coronavirus outbreak. (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
  • Apple launches COVID-19 ‘Exposure Notification Express’ with iOS 13.7 — Android to follow later this month. Apple and Google are introducing new tools that make it easier for public health authorities to implement digital exposure notification, without the need for developing and maintaining their own individual apps. The iOS 13.7 update launched this week, with Android 6.0 arriving this month. (Darrell Etherington/TechCrunch)
  • Introducing Game IQ. App Annie introduced a new game analytics product, Game IQ, that uses data science to create and maintain a customizable taxonomy that automates game analysis at scale. Game IQ will deliver visual reports that include answers to questions like market size, class, genre, subgenre, tags and more. (App Annie)
  • Google launches Google Kids Space, a ‘kids mode’ feature for Android, initially on Lenovo tablets. The feature offers a dedicated kids mode on Android tablets which will aggregate apps, books and videos for kids to enjoy and learn from. Kids Space will launch first on the Lenovo Smart Tab M10 HD Gen 2, but Google aims to bring Kids Space to more devices in time. (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
  • Play Store, App Store revenue may be capped at 20% in Russia. A lawmaker in Russia submitted draft legislation that would cut the app store revenue of Apple and Google. If enacted, the law would limit commissions to 20% on both app stores, including paid downloads and in-app purchases. (Rei Padla/Android Community)
  • Apple-Epic row being closely watched by German antitrust chief. Germany’s Federal Cartel Office said the Apple-Epic lawsuit in the U.S. “has most certainly attracted our interest,” and is considering opening its own inquiry into Apple. “We are at the beginning, but we are looking at this very closely,” said Andreas Mundt, head of the Federal Cartel Office. (Douglas Busvine/Reuters)

Apple Developer Round-up

Funding and M&A (and IPOs)

  • Bambuser raises $45 million for its live video shopping platform. The company’s offering, which works on mobile similar to Instagram Live, has been used H&M, Motivi, Moda Operandi, Frame, LUISAVIAROMA and Showfields.
  • Toss Lab raises $13 million for its cross-platform collaboration platform, JANDI, the ‘Slack of Asia.’
  • San Francisco-based Skillz will IPO at a $3.5 billion valuation. The company offers a platform for making mobile games competitive, allowing users to play with friends or strangers for cash, prizes or points. It also enables esports tournaments.
  • Dating app Bumble reportedly talking to bankers about a 2021 IPO at a valuation of $6 to $8 billion.
  • Shopping app Wish submitted its draft registration to the SEC for an IPO. The company has raised $1.6 billion from investors to date, and was worth $11.2 billion as of last summer’s financing round.
  • Bangalore-based online learning startup Unacademy announced it has raised $150 million in a new financing round that valued the Facebook-backed firm at $1.45 billion (post-money).

Downloads

The Last Campfire

Apple in 2018 approached Hello Games, the studio behind the hit title No Man’s Sky, to ask about titles that would work on Apple Arcade. The Last Campfire is the result of those talks. The game offers an artistic story of a lost ember trapped in a puzzling place, searching for meaning and a way home. The game supports controllers in addition to native touch controls,



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How to Clear Discord Cache Files on Desktop and Mobile


Discord cache files build up with every image, video, and funny GIF you send and receive on the platform, filling up your disk space unnecessarily. You can follow the steps below to easily clear Discord cache files on your Windows 10, Mac, iPhone, iPad, or Android device.

Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



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Grab 'Into The Breach,' aka Giant Robot Chess, Free on the Epic Games Store


The Epic Games Store for the PC continues its weekly giveaway. Some weeks are better than others, and this one is very good indeed: You can grab Into The Breach for nothing, nil, nada. Into The Breach is an excellent turn-based strategy game, one that we selected as one of the best games of 2018 (that didn’t need a graphics card).

Read This Article on Review Geek ›



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In court filing, Epic says Fortnite has 116M iOS users, a third of the game's 350M users, and iOS DAUs declined by 60%+ since its removal from the App Store (Sean Hollister/The Verge)

Sean Hollister / The Verge:
In court filing, Epic says Fortnite has 116M iOS users, a third of the game's 350M users, and iOS DAUs declined by 60%+ since its removal from the App Store  —  Epic is formally asking for a preliminary injunction  —  Shortly before midnight on the Friday before Labor Day weekend …



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PandaDoc employees arrested in Belarus after founders protest against Lukashenko regime

Yesterday the four employees (pictured) of US-headquartered enterprise startup PandaDoc were arrested in Minsk by the Belarus police, in what appears to be an act of state-led retaliation, after the company’s founders joined protests against the 26 year-long regime of President Alexander Lukashenko. Lukashenko is widely believed by international observers to have rigged the country’s recent elections in his favor, preventing the election of opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

PandaDoc — which has raised $51.1M and is now headquartered in San Francisco after debuting at a TechCrunch Meetup in Berlin in 2013 — issued a statement saying their Minsk development office was raided by police and the ‘Financial Investigation Department’ yesterday morning.

PandaDoc has released a statement on a new web site, SavePandaDoc, outlining the incident, saying employees had been prevented from leaving the office, refused access to lawyers, and a director was taken away by Police.

One of the founders of the company, Mikita Mikado, who lives in the US, has also released a statement to this effect on his Instagram and Youtube.

Four of the arrested PandaDoc employees have been charged with embezzling 107,000 BYR ($41,000) from company and therefore avoiding tax. The employees have been detained for two months.

However, PandaDoc released a statement saying: “We declare that this accusation is completely untrue and has no basis whatsoever. All activities of the company were carried out in full compliance with the legislation, which is confirmed by repeated international audits and inspections.”

Now held in custody are (also pictured):

Yulia Shardiko, Chief Accountant
Dmitry Rabtsevich, Director
Victor Kuvshinov, Product Director
Vladislav Mikholap, HR

Although the company HQ is in San Francisco, it has a large office on the Belarusian High Technologies Park, which was set up by the government supposedly to support the tech industry.

PandaDoc said the police raid was likely linked to the fact that the founders of PandaDoc, in particular Mikado, have protested publicly against the brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters by Lukashenko, but have done so strictly in a personal capacity.

Mikado recently became a leading voice in the protest movement. He set up an initiative, ProtectBelarus.org, offering Belarusian police officers who had decided to disobey orders to beat and torture protesters financial aid and re-training in the tech industry.

Belarussian police officers are effectively ‘indentured employees’ because they are paid in large sums at the beginning of their contract, but this immediately becomes a debt to the state the moment they decide to break leave their contract.

In a statement, Mikado said that as of August 29th, the platform had received more than 6,000 messages and almost 600 requests for help. The platform is run by volunteers and has no relation to PandaDoc, the company.

Mikado said in a statement: “We are asking international tech community to support PandaDoc by sharing this message and reaction to it with a #SavePandaDoc tag.”

“There is no more law. The authorities do not even try to act according to the law, they simply fabricate cases for political orders that come from above. And if you thought that this would not affect you, then we can safely assure you of the opposite – it has already affected everyone,” the statement reads.

“We will not be silent anymore! The country is full of legal chaos. The actions of the authorities cannot be called anything except genocide and repression. The further it goes, the longer the road back. And soon there will be a cliff. We demand to immediately release our colleagues, close the criminal case, let the company work normally and bring benefits and income, including to the state.”

The company now says it will be forced to close the company in Belarus and “will begin to establish an alternative to the Park of High Technologies outside the Republic of Belarus.”

PandaDoc only recently raised $30 million in a Series B extension from One Peak, Microsoft Venture Fund M12 and EBRD Venture Fund.

After the Belarusian presidential election on August 9th (which was not recognized as free and fair by the EU, the UK and the US due to widely reported and documented vote-rigging in favor of Lukashenko) the police violently cracked down on peaceful protests, leading to six reported deaths and 450 UN-documented cases of police torture.



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August and Yale Smart Locks Will Soon Integrate with Philips Hue Lights


The best smart homes are ones where all the components work together and anticipate your needs. It’s no use having a smart light that stays on all day because it thinks you’re home when you’re not. Soon August and Yale locks will solve exactly that problem.

Read This Article on Review Geek ›



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How to Paste a Phone Number into the iPhone’s Phone App


If you use an iPhone and see a telephone number in a note or on a website, you can often tap it directly to place a call. But if that special link doesn’t show up, you can also “Copy” the phone number and “Paste” it directly into the Phone app. Here’s how.

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The 7 Best Software Keyboards for iOS


Just because your iPhone comes with a software keyboard doesn’t mean you have to like it…or keep it. There are better iPhone keyboard apps out there with robust features like custom themes and emoji, as well as some that can help you type faster or more accurately, so why not make the jump?

Read This Article on Review Geek ›



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Seven Ways to Open the Windows Task Manager


Bringing up  Task Manager is not much of a task itself, but it’s always fun knowing different ways of doing things. And some of them might even come in handy if you can’t open Task Manager the way you’re used to.

Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



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Why I Loved Microsoft Bob, Microsoft’s Strangest Creation


This year marks the 25th anniversary of Windows 95, and people have a lot to say about it. My favorite part of Windows 95 was an infamous program called Microsoft Bob. It was a massive failure, but I loved it anyway.

Read This Article on How-To Geek ›



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Researchers: Telmate, a messaging service used by US inmates and their families, exposed a database of messages and personal info of millions of inmates online (Paul Bischoff/Comparitech)

Paul Bischoff / Comparitech:
Researchers: Telmate, a messaging service used by US inmates and their families, exposed a database of messages and personal info of millions of inmates online  —  Global Tel Link-owned Telmate, which makes an app for prisoners to send messages and make calls to their friends and family …



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What’s missing from corporate statements on racial injustice? The real cause of racism.

On August 31, Airbnb launched Project Lighthouse, an initiative meant to “uncover, measure, and overcome discrimination” on the home-sharing platform. According to the company, Project Lighthouse will identify discrimination by measuring whether a renter’s perceived race correlates with differences in the rate or quality of that person’s bookings, cancellations, or reviews. This project comes amid an outpouring of solidarity statements and policy changes from the tech industry in response to uprisings after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on May 25.

While these nods toward racial justice may be well-intentioned, they highlight a problem that casts doubt on whether the industry’s efforts to date can truly combat bias: the tendency to position race, not racism, as the cause of discrimination.

This way of thinking about inequality is emblematic of “racecraft,” a term coined by sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields to describe “the mental terrain and pervasive beliefs” about race and racism in America. Though Fields and Fields outline many aspects of the concept, their basic proposition is that the very idea of race arises out of racist practices rather than biological realities. Racecraft, they write, is a “conjuror’s trick of transforming racism into race, leaving black persons in view while removing white persons from the stage.”

A good example can be seen in Airbnb’s introduction to Project Lighthouse, which states that the company was “deeply troubled by stories of travelers who were turned away by Airbnb hosts during the booking process because of the color of their skin.” Were those guests really turned away because of their skin color, or because their prospective hosts were racist?

The same maneuver can be seen in a statement from Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri, in which he says the platform’s efforts to ensure that Black voices are heard “won’t stop with the disparities people may experience solely on the basis of race.”

Racecraft, as conceptualized by Fields and Fields, is what allows Airbnb and Instagram to transform an aggressive act—racism—into a mere category: race. This sleight of hand positions race as the problem, allowing companies to absolve themselves of responsibility for racism. It also perpetuates the alluring myth that abolishing racial categories will lead to the post-racial society some hoped would follow the election of Barack Obama to the US presidency in 2008.

The truth companies need to grapple with, however, is that racist actions—not racial categories—are what cause discrimination.

I found linguistic evidence of racecraft throughout 63 public-facing documents that I collected and analyzed from Airbnb, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, all issued between May 26 and June 24 of this year. In a moment marked by racial injustice, these companies were reluctant to even use the word “race,” regularly opting to use “diversity” instead.

These statements (including those from TikTok and Facebook) also explicitly address Black people far more frequently than white people by using phrases such as “We stand with the Black community.” In 63 statements, Black people and communities were referenced 241 times while white people were referenced only four times.

By so rarely naming whiteness, these statements normalize the ideas that white people are raceless and that only those oppressed by the racial structure need have any interest in dismantling it. This language also suggests that dismantling racism doesn’t require confronting those privileged by racism.

This critique might seem nitpicky, but the language people use to talk about racism shapes how they understand what’s happening and which solutions sound appropriate. As others have pointed out, for example, the term “officer-involved shooting” is a passive phrasing that deemphasizes police officers’ use of deadly force, obscuring their role in state violence. In the same way, the language in these tech company statements obscures the central role that whiteness and racism play in the injustices Black people endure.

Such obfuscation spills over into the solutions that companies propose. Project Lighthouse, for example, is built to examine the (Black) people who experience racism on Airbnb rather than the (white) people who are responsible for perpetuating it. This again positions race, not racism, as the problem to be overcome. By focusing on race as a category, Airbnb has inscribed the mental tricks of racecraft into its project.

Tech companies and social-media platforms need to understand that fighting racism cannot start and end with statements of solidarity and technical fixes.

Real change begins with increasing the number of people from underrepresented groups in executive positions, which both Airbnb and Facebook pledged to do in their statements. But tech companies cannot think about Black employees as just a convenient resource in times of racial upheaval. In crafting their public statements, many of these companies relied on Black employee groups for assistance. All of Twitter’s statements, for example, were written by employee resource groups—but, as the Washington Post has reported, this work was often unpaid, fell outside employees’ normal duties, and had potential negative ramifications for them.

Bland statements about diversity and inclusion fail to address the long-standing anti-Black injustice that persists in American society. The tech industry must talk about racism in ways that implicate systems of power and call attention to the systemic inequality and racial injustice that Black people face. Only then can the industry produce solutions that reduce harm.

With ongoing unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after yet another case of racialized police violence, we’re sure to see more corporate statements regarding racial justice. Without more awareness of racecraft and its harms, they’re bound to repeat the same mistakes.

Amber M. Hamilton is a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Minnesota and an affiliate of the Microsoft Research Social Media Collective. Her work focuses on the intersection of race and technology.



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Friday, September 4, 2020

Q&A with Box CEO Aaron Levie on the Trump administration, Box's stock rising during the pandemic, decoding his own tweets, competing with tech giants, and more (Alex Kantrowitz/OneZero )

Alex Kantrowitz / OneZero :
Q&A with Box CEO Aaron Levie on the Trump administration, Box's stock rising during the pandemic, decoding his own tweets, competing with tech giants, and more  —  ‘This economy is definitely not sustainable’ … the pandemic flattens much of the U.S. economy, many technology firms are doing just fine.



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As Oracle tries to buy TikTok, a look at how the company started embracing and building ties with Donald Trump and his administration after the 2016 election (David McCabe/New York Times)

David McCabe / New York Times:
As Oracle tries to buy TikTok, a look at how the company started embracing and building ties with Donald Trump and his administration after the 2016 election  —  The tech giant stands out in Silicon Valley for its close ties to the administration, which must bless any deal for the social media app.



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ThruWave, which uses millimeter wave-based computer vision tech to create 3D images of items inside packages going through retail warehouses, raises $6.4M seed (Taylor Soper/GeekWire)

Taylor Soper / GeekWire:
ThruWave, which uses millimeter wave-based computer vision tech to create 3D images of items inside packages going through retail warehouses, raises $6.4M seed  —  Seattle startup ThruWave just raised a $6.4 million round for its futuristic technology that uses millimeter waves to see through packaging.



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In an attempt to open during the pandemic, many US universities are forcing students to download location-tracking apps, sometimes as a condition of enrollment (Zeynep Tufekci/The Atlantic)

Zeynep Tufekci / The Atlantic:
In an attempt to open during the pandemic, many US universities are forcing students to download location-tracking apps, sometimes as a condition of enrollment  —  Trying to do so is all but useless.  —  In Michigan, a small liberal-arts college is requiring students to install an app called Aura …



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Uber and others have added $70M more to their California ballot campaign to keep gig workers as independent contractors, bringing total campaign funds to $181M (Carolyn Said/San Francisco Chronicle)

Carolyn Said / San Francisco Chronicle:
Uber and others have added $70M more to their California ballot campaign to keep gig workers as independent contractors, bringing total campaign funds to $181M  —  Gig companies have poured another $70 million into their ballot campaign to keep drivers and couriers as independent contractors …



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