Bluedot Innovation gets $5.5 million in funding to track smartphone users more precisely

When it comes to the promises of persistent location hyper-awareness, the promises of mobile have largely fallen flat. While this has been a bummer for consumers looking for more contextual services from the apps they have installed, this also has been a pain for marketers keen to get their hands on more quality user data.

Bluedot Innovation wants to tackle this by building out tech that can zero-in on smartphone users’ locations in the background. Bluedot announced today they have raised $5.5 million in Series A funding led by a major toll road company, Transurban. The Melbourne startup has raised $13 million to date.

The startup’s tech focuses on dialing-in user location data to just a few meters so that companies utilizing the API can tell whether their marketing efforts are actually turning into consumers visiting physical locations. There are no shortage of players in this space; what makes Bluedot unique, the company insists, is their focus on R&D to develop more precise, low-power solutions that rely on networks and a variety of sensors in the phone to deliver data insightful enough that customers can distinguish what users are doing in tighter urban areas and how they’re getting around.

Bluedot had initially focused its efforts entirely on developing a service that could make mobile payments for toll roads, the idea being that rather than having to install something on your windshield, you could just download an app, allowing persistent location access so whenever you drove through a tollway that had been mapped within the app, you’d make a payment without any friction.

The startup’s ambitions have certainly expanded since then, particularly through a partnership with Salesforce, though given the fact that this round was led by a toll road company it suffices to say that this use case is still firmly within their sights. In November, the startup released the LinktGO app with Transurban, which allows Australian users to make toll road payments from their phone.

The startup says it’s using this latest fund raise to build out its U.S. office in San Francisco and its Melbourne HQ, where it plans to double its current staff of 30 employees.

 

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To win back consumers, big brands should invest in R&D and innovation

Ryan Caldbeck Contributor

Ryan Caldbeck is the founder and chief executive of the consumer and retail investment marketplace CircleUp.

More posts by this contributor

• What Silicon Valley tech VCs get wrong about consumer investing
• We are on the verge of a consumer M&A avalanche

The world of consumer goods is changing. Consumer tastes are becoming more and more fragmented and big incumbents continue to lose market share to upstart brands. It’s often difficult for these incumbents to figure out how to respond. CPG is full of smart people but many of the biggest brands have seen their sales stagnate or decline over the past several years.

Consumer companies can increase profit and deliver shareholder value by either growing in revenue or cutting costs, but the strategies these companies have taken to try to turn the tide just aren’t working. When they innovate, they only make incremental changes to products (like reducing the fat of a potato chip), instead of offering consumers new products that they actually want.

Or they spend billions on advertising to convince consumers that they should buy already existing products. If they can’t increase revenue, they’ll cut spending by stripping out valuable business teams or merging with other consumer companies to slash costs (à la Kraft-Heinz). These strategies do not position Big CPG for long term success, I’d like to suggest a few that might.

Before I dig in here, I want to say upfront that I don’t have all the answers (or even most of them). I’m the CEO of a startup with 65 employees — not a massive corporation with 30,000 employees. The insights I hope to share are gathered from over a decade working in consumer investing and helping consumer companies grow, but they’re ultimately insights from the outside looking in.

Replace “Kellogg’s” with the name of PepsiCo, Estee Lauder, Nestlé, Kraft-Heinz or countless other big brands and the observations should still resonate. This isn’t about just one company, it’s about the dynamics that exist for virtually all CPG incumbents.

What I would do differently

On day one as CEO of Kellogg’s, I would take a hard look in the mirror and I would ask myself which Kellogg’s brands are still relevant and can grow. I recently had a conversation with a former VP of a major CPG company and he said that Big CPG is guilty of thinking that everything can be relevant if they bring the right news to it. I agree. As CEO, I would acknowledge up front that we have certain brands and products that are cash cows now-but are slowly dying.

An uncomfortable but proactive step would be to sell the legacy cash cows that are dying and invest the cash windfall into innovation. This week I was in another discussion with a 20 year veteran from a Fortune 100 consumer company who said “I think in 10 years our company will no longer exist. It will be broken up.” Conversations about selling legacy brands will make a lot of consumer executives squirm, but they are conversations that need to happen. Cutting the dying cash cows is the hardest but probably most important step in righting the ship.

After deciding which of our legacy brands to divest, my next step would be to publicly announce that we will shift focus away from cutting costs and towards investing in a culture of innovation to actually grow the business. This will likely cause our stock price to go down in the short term, but in the medium to long term this will help our company tremendously.

Simply put, we can’t survive by cutting costs forever. We need to grow. Our culture of innovation will be built and promoted in a variety of ways. What follows isn’t a sequential list but rather initiatives that should be pursued in parallel:

1)  Research and Development. We will signal to Wall Street that we are going to focus on growth and innovation, not cost-cutting. We’re going to go through a rehaul of the R&D process and pipeline and we will dare to dream bigger. In 2017, Kellogg’s spent $148 million  (1.1% of net revenue) on R&D. This may at first sound like a lot, but for comparison, Google spent $16.6 billion (15% of net revenue) on R&D during the same time period. The dichotomy between tech and consumer spending on this front is highlighted in the chart below.

R&D Spending as a Percentage of Annual Net Revenue

Source: Company 10-Ks for 2017

It’s no wonder that one of these companies has been making Frosted Flakes the same way for over 60 years (with goofy TV commercials for most of that time) while the other started as a search engine and now builds phones, maps, and self-driving cars. Imagine how comical it would be for a tech company to sell the same product for 5 years, let alone 50. R&D is not just about coming up with a new flavor or lowering the fat content of an existing product.

As one big CPG veteran told me recently – “consumers don’t care about ‘whiter whites’” anymore”. It involves building an adaptive infrastructure that truly listens to what consumers want and then relays that information to development teams in a way that allows them to be agile and effective. We need to have an R&D team that is focused on the category and consumer, not the product. Instead of Pepsi thinking about a lower fat potato chip, they need to be rethinking the snack category as a whole.

Why is it insane to imagine AB InBev developing a beer that doesn’t cause hangovers, but it isn’t crazy to imagine Elon Musk sending people to Mars? Why is it laughable for Clorox to invest a billion dollars into developing a non-toxic, safe substitute for bleach, but it’s normal to imagine investing $15 billion into Uber- a company that is trying to replace all taxis in the world and rethink transportation? Those comments are meant to push public CPG CEOs, not to degrade SpaceX or Uber.

Good R&D also involves keeping your ear to the ground for great ideas that may already be out there. There could be a toothpaste in India that would revolutionize the way we think about toothpaste in America, but we’ll never know if we aren’t listening. For an example of what can happen without this R&D infrastructure, look no further than the pharmaceutical industry where Big Pharma companies are now having to pay to outsource innovation because they can’t foster it in house. CPG is becoming Big Pharma.

2)  Incubation. In addition to investing in and partnering with great consumer companies, we will provide space and expertise in house to help them grow. Kellogg’s recently partnered with Conagra Brands and the City of Chicago to invest in a $34 million food incubator that is expected to support around 75 companies, 80% of which will be in the snack category. This is definitely a step in the right direction, but I’d want us to go bigger and take the operation in house. I’d like to incubate 100+ companies per year from a wide variety of categories and become the Y Combinator for consumer. This will be a win-win. We get to help great consumer companies grow and these companies get to leverage our expertise and infrastructure.

3)  Venture capital. Too many CPG companies only invest in brands once those brands are 5+ years old and end up paying a huge sum as a result. I would change our mandate to invest in companies that will be interesting 10 years out – not just companies that we think are going to contribute immediately to our revenue or existing product strategy. We need to take the long view here and data plays a big role. Kellogg’s will not identify innovation just by sending a dozen people to Expo West. We need a non-commoditized data and technology solution that can help us identify breakout brands early by looking at their growth potential- not their Expo sales booth. Kellogg’s is actually ahead of most CPGs when it comes to venture in that they have a venture arm of $100 million. But this is still too small.

I would start by having our venture arm manage assets of $500 million (less than 4% of net revenue but still 50x the AuM of many CPG corporate venture arms) and tell them that they are going to invest in 200-300 companies, focusing on early stage companies with less than $10 million in revenue over the next 2-4 years. If that sounds insane, look at Google’s GV for some inspiration. They build a diverse portfolio to foster innovation from many and sometimes unexpected angles. If tech VCs can have a portfolio of hundreds of companies, so can we. A venture arm in consumer is nothing new. Many large CPG companies have launched venture arms, but most of these consumer VCs only plan to invest around $5-$10 million across 3 to 4 companies. Then the CEO loses his or her nerve, succumbs to the pressure of short-term cost cutting, and bails on the strategy. We will dare to take the long view.

Beyond just capital, I would create a structure that provides these companies resources and support to help them be successful. We will create a program to allow for externships between Kellogg’s (and possibly our partners) and the portfolio companies we invest into. Hardly a week goes by that I don’t receive an email from a brand manager, marketer, supply chain expert, or others at one of these public CPGs who are looking to move to a smaller company. This externship program will be an asset for the smaller brands while also acting as a retention tool and bringing innovation back to Kellogg’s.

4)  M&A. I’m not against M&A, but I am against M&A for the sole purpose of stripping cost as a strategy to deliver long-term shareholder value. My belief is that in 10 years the revenue from the core existing products of many consumer companies will be much smaller than it is today. These products won’t be replaced by 1 or 2 new products, they’ll be replaced by hundreds – or thousands. That is the fragmentation of the consumer or what we have called in the past the Personalization of the Consumer. Big CPG can either buy these products (at an earlier stage) or lose to them. I would want our company to ingest a lot of smaller brands rather than forking out hundreds of millions (or billions) of dollars once these brands are already big. We will need to also invest in the infrastructure necessary to work with many more brands and benefit from their growth. The brands will join the Kellogg’s family rather than threatening it.

5)  Partnerships and joint ventures. Every now and then you will hear about a joint venture or partnership in consumer but they are few and far between. Why? I think a lot of times big consumer companies fear that partnering with another company will mean splitting profits which can negatively impact bottom line. This is not a productive attitude.  You see examples of successful partnerships in almost every other industry- whether it’s Google teaming up with Walmart to offer Walmart products on Google Express, or Chrysler teaming up with Waymo to work on driverless cars, partnering with a variety of stakeholders can often help foster the best innovation. I also think there is a big opportunity to partner with other consumer companies to foster education in the sector itself. We could host conferences that bring together the best consumer entrepreneurs and the brightest ideas and we would all benefit as a result.

Why this matters

If my plan as CEO were effectively implemented, I think we would see three powerful effects.  Firstly, by making more small bets on more emerging brands and building a culture of innovation, Kellogg’s would become a dominant player in consumer goods. They will no longer fear being displaced. They will be the ones creating and harnessing the disruption. Secondly, this roadmap would ensure that the best products make it into the hands of consumers and that everyone has access to a wider variety of foods and healthier options.  Finally, by building this infrastructure, Kellogg’s would be able to assist entrepreneurs with their distribution, brand, supply chain, and team. As these companies grow and succeed, this will also result in increased value for shareholders. Consumer is an extremely inefficient market, but Kellogg’s can be the public company that helps change that.

Again, it’s easy for me to suggest strategies like this. It’s much harder to implement them when you’re on the inside looking out. I think a lot of Big CPG CEOs probably do have bold ideas that would help their companies in the long run, they are just unable to pursue them in an environment that obsesses on the short term –  a board that demands immediate cost cuts and a market that demands immediate stock value.

So these CEOs are hamstrung and left to rearrange chairs on the deck of the Titanic while the whole ship is sinking. They fear that if they do too much to try to save the ship they won’t last long. Gates, Musk, and Bezos are free to be visionary and push their companies to the cutting edge of innovation while Cahillane (CEO of Kellogg’s), Hees (Kraft-Heinz), and Quincey (Coke) have to work within the box they are put in. I truly hope that big consumer companies will begin to innovate, be creative, and listen to what consumers want- and that corporate boards and Wall Street will realize the long-term value of these things. If the industry doesn’t evolve, you never know, Google might just step in with the next big breakfast cereal.

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Slite raises $4.4M to create a smarter internal notes tool

Slack exposed the demand for a dead-simple internal communications tool, which has inspired a wave of startups trying to pick apart the rest of a company’s daily activities — including Slite, which hopes to take on internal notes with a fresh round of new capital.

Slite is more or less an attempt at a replacement for a Google Doc or something in Dropbox Paper that is sprawling and getting a little out of control. An employee might create a Slite note like an onboarding manual or an internal contact list, and the hope is to replace the outdated internal wiki and offer employees a hub where they can either go and start stringing together important information, or find it right away. The company today said it has raised $4.4 million in a new seed funding round led by Index Ventures after coming out of Y Combinator’s 2018 winter class. Ari Helgason is joining Slite’s board of directors as part of the deal.

“We now have to develop this product enough to show we can actually replace large amounts of things,” co-founder Christophe Pasquier said. “Today we have more than 300 active teams, and we have to show that we can make it scale. In the short term is just we’re replacing Google Docs because these tools ahven’t evolved and we’re bringing something super fresh. The longer-term vision of really bringing all the information that has value from a team and becoming this single source of truth for teams.”

Slite tracks permissions and changes to the notes in order to allow companies to do a better job of maintaining them, rather than sharing around links and having different people jump in and make changes. The part about sharing links is one in particular that stung for Pasquier, as even larger companies can have issues with employees asking in Slack what policies are — or even for links to parts of the internal wiki where that important information is buried.

Getting there certainly won’t be easy. Companies like Dropbox continuing to invest in these kinds of collaborative note-taking tools — that could easily evolve into internal hubs of information. And as Pasquier tries to liken the development arc to Slack, which showed employees wanted some more seamless tool for communication, that company is also working on making its search tools smarter, like helping employees find the right person to ask a question. It doesn’t look like an asynchronous notes tool just yet, but if all the information is somewhere in Slack already, a smart search tool may be the only thing necessary to find all that information.

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Glowforge opens public orders for its desktop 3D laser cutter

Hardware startup Glowforge, which makes a desktop laser cutter and engraver for home or office use, has finally opened up sales to the general public.

The maker-targeted device, which can ‘print’ (read: engrave/laser cut) a variety of materials including leather, wood, acrylic, glass, and even the metal surface of a Macbook, starts at $2,495 for the entry level machine, rising to a full $5,995 for the pro model — which is billed as faster, able to print larger items, and capable of running for longer periods.

With a starter price-tag of $2.5k Glowforge is clearly not for everyone. Though arguably it does offer more creative bang for your buck than, say, the equally expensive Skydio face-tracking selfie drone. But horses for courses, and all that.

The Seattle-based startup has also topped up with $10M more in VC funding, according GeekWire, from existing investors True Ventures and Foundry Group — who also backed its $22M Series B, in mid 2016, and an earlier $9M Series A.

Glowforge has raised just over $60M at this point, according to Crunchbase, including pulling in almost $30M in pre-sales via a crowdfunding campaign back in 2015. We first covered the hardware startup ahead of that, when it announced its Series A.

Safe to say, it’s been a long journey to turn the founders’ novel idea and prototype into a market-ready and robust laser cutter — and get that into all its backers’ hands.

It’s also clearly been a frustrating process at times. But Glowforge now at least appears confident it can fulfill orders in a timely fashion — it’s offering a May 3 shipping date to new buyers (within the US).

That said, it does not look like all original backers have had their device shipped though.

According to founder Dan Shapiro’s comments to GeekWire, there are some backers who still haven’t got their device — for a few different reasons. “There’s some folks who haven’t replied, asked us not to send it yet, or live in a country that’s awaiting regulatory approval,” he told it.

A quasi-optional air filter component for the Glowforge — which costs an additional $995 — also isn’t shipping until November. (A note on the website says the machine can be used without it, though in that case it warns the placement of the machine “needs a window or 4″ dryer hose”.)

 

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Apple is offering free battery replacement for some MacBook Pro units

Apple is offering free battery replacements for some 13-inch MacBook Pro (without Touch Bar) laptops that may have a faulty component.

The company announced recently that a limited number of these devices have a component that may fail, which would case the original built-in battery to expand. While Apple says this isn’t a safety issue, it wants to solve the problem as quickly as possible with free battery replacements.

The models that might be affected were manufactured between October 2016 and October 2017.

Think your MacBook Pro might be eligible?

Apple has set up a website for the replacement program where users can input their device’s serial number to check for eligibility. 

This isn’t the first time Apple has offered a battery replacement. In fact, Apple famously found itself in hot water last year when users learned that the company was slowing down older iPhones in an attempt to save power on older batteries. The company responded by offering $29 battery replacement in iPhones.

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Facebook face recognition error looks awkward ahead of GDPR

A Facebook face recognition notification slip-up hints at how risky the company’s approach to compliance with a tough new European data protection standard could turn out to be.

On Friday a Metro journalist in the UK reported receiving a notification about the company’s face recognition technology — which told him “the setting is on”.

The wording was curious as the technology has been switched off in Europe since 2012, after regulatory pressure, and — as part of changes related to its GDPR compliance strategy — Facebook has also said it will be asking European users to choose individually whether or not they want to switch it on. (And on Friday begun rolling out its new consent flow in the region, ahead of the regulation applying next month.)

The company has since confirmed to us that the message was sent to the user in error — saying the wording came from an earlier notification which it sent to users who already had its facial recognition tech enabled, starting in December. And that it had intended to send the person a similar notification — containing the opposite notification, i.e. that “the setting is off”.

“We’re asking everyone in the EU whether they want to enable face recognition, and only people who affirmatively give their consent will have these features enabled. We did not intend for anyone in the EU to see this type of message, and we can confirm that this error did not result in face recognition being enabled without the person’s consent,” a Facebook spokesperson told us.

Here are the two notifications in question — showing the setting on vs the setting off wordings:

This is interesting because Facebook has repeatedly refused to confirm it will be universally applying GDPR compliance measures across its entire global user-base.

Instead it has restricted its public commitments to saying the same “settings and controls” will be made available for users — which as we’ve previously pointed out avoids committing the company to a universal application of GDPR principles, such as privacy by design.

Given that Facebook’s facial recognition feature has been switched off in Europe since 2012 “the setting is on” message would presumably have only been sent to users in the US or Canada — where Facebook has been able to forge ahead with pushing people to accept the controversial, privacy-hostile technology, embedding it into features such as auto-tagging for photo uploads.

But it hardly bodes well for Facebook’s compliance with the EU’s strict new data protection standard if its systems are getting confused about whether or not a user is an EU person.

Facebook claims no data was processed without consent as a result of the wrong notification being sent — but under GDPR it could face investigations by data protection authorities seeking to verify whether or not an individual’s rights were violated. (Reminder: GDPR fines can scale as high as 4% of a company’s global annual turnover so privacy enforcement is at last getting teeth.)

Facebook’s appetite for continuing to push privacy hostile features on its user-base is clear. This strategic direction also comes from the very top of the company.

Earlier this month CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg urged US lawmakers not to impede US companies from be using people’s data for sensitive use-cases like facial recognition — attempting to gloss that tough sell by claiming pro-privacy rules would risk the US falling behind China.

Meanwhile, last week it also emerged that Zuckerberg’s company will switch the location where most international users’ data is processed from its international HQ, Facebook Ireland, to Facebook USA. From next month only EU users will have their data controller located in the EU — other international users, who would have at least technically fallen under GDPR’s reach otherwise, on account of their data being processed in the region, are being shifted out of the EU jurisdiction — via a unilateral T&Cs change.

This move seems intended to try to shrink some of Facebook’s legal liabilities by reducing the number of international users that would, at least technically, fall under the reach of the EU regulation — which both applies to anyone in the EU whose data is being processed and also extends EU fundamental rights extraterritorially, carrying the aforementioned major penalties for violations.

However Facebook’s decision to reduce how many of its users have their data processed in the EU also looks set to raise the stakes — if, as it appears, the company intends to exploit the lack of a comprehensive privacy framework in the US to apply different standards for North American users (and from next month also for non-EU international users, whose data will be processed there).

The problem is, if Facebook does not perform perfect segregation and management of these two separate pools of users it risks accidentally processing the personal data of Europeans in violation of the strict new EU standard, which applies from May 25.

That represents a huge chunk of extra work, and given how very hard GDPR compliance already is, I'm surprised that Facebook felt like taking it on.

— (((Yonatan Zunger))) (@yonatanzunger) April 19, 2018

Yet here it is, on the cusp of the new rules, sending the wrong notification and incorrectly telling an EU user that facial recognition is on.

Given how much risk it’s creating for itself by trying to run double standards for data protection you almost have to wonder whether Facebook is trying to engineer in some compliance wiggle room for itself — i.e. by positioning itself to be able to claim that such and such’s data was processed in error.

Another interesting question is whether the unilateral switching of ~1.5BN non-EU international users to Facebook USA as data controller could be interpreted as a data transfer to a third country — which would trigger other data protection requirements under EU law, and further layer on the legal complexity…

From legal point of view controllership is essential. Today #Facebook Ltd Ireland is controller, Facebook Inc US is processor. If controllership is moved to Facebook Inc this could be seen as data transfer to a third country

— Peter Schaar (@Peter_Schaar) April 22, 2018

What is clear is that legal challenges to Facebook’s self-serving interpretation of EU law are coming.

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Facebook hit with defamation lawsuit over fake ads

In an interesting twist, Facebook is being sued in the UK for defamation by consumer advice personality, Martin Lewis, who says his face and name have been repeatedly used on fake adverts distributed on the social media giant’s platform.

Lewis, who founded the popular MoneySavingExpert.com tips website, says Facebook has failed to stop the fake ads despite repeat complaints and action on his part, thereby — he contends — tarnishing his reputation and causing victims to be lured into costly scams.

“It is consistent, it is repeated. Other companies such as Outbrain who have run these adverts have taken them down. What is particularly pernicious about Facebook is that it says the onus is on me, so I have spent time and effort and stress repeatedly to have them taken down,” Lewis told The Guardian.

“It is facilitating scams on a constant basis in a morally repugnant way. If Mark Zuckerburg wants to be the champion of moral causes, then he needs to stop its company doing this.”

In a blog post Lewis also argues it should not be difficult for Facebook — “a leader in face and text recognition” — to prevent scammers from misappropriating his image.

“I don’t do adverts. I’ve told Facebook that. Any ad with my picture or name in is without my permission. I’ve asked it not to publish them, or at least to check their legitimacy with me before publishing. This shouldn’t be difficult,” he writes. “Yet it simply continues to repeatedly publish these adverts and then relies on me to report them, once the damage has been done.”

“Enough is enough. I’ve been fighting for over a year to stop Facebook letting scammers use my name and face to rip off vulnerable people – yet it continues. I feel sick each time I hear of another victim being conned because of trust they wrongly thought they were placing in me. One lady had over £100,000 taken from her,” he adds.

Some of the fake ads appear to be related to cryptocurrency scams — linking through to fake news articles promising “revolutionary Bitcoin home-based opportunity”.

So the scammers look to be using the same playbook as the Macedonian teens who, in 2016, concocted fake news stories about US politics to generate a mint in ad clicks — also relying on Facebook’s platform to distribute their fakes and scale the scam.

In January Facebook revised its ads policy to specifically ban cryptocurrency, binary options and initial coin offerings. But as Lewis’ samples show, the scammers are circumventing this prohibition with ease — using Lewis’ image to drive unwitting clicks to a secondary offsite layer of fake news articles that directly push people towards crypto scams.

It would appear that Facebook does nothing to verify the sites to which ads on its platform are directing its users, just as it does not appear to proactive police whether ad creative is legal — at least unless nudity is involved.

Here’s one sample fake ad that Lewis highlights:

And here’s the fake news article it links to — touting a “revolutionary” Bitcoin opportunity, in a news article style mocked up to look like the Daily Mirror newspaper…

The lawsuit is a personal action by Lewis who is seeking exemplary damages in the high court. He says he’s not looking to profit himself — saying he would donate any winnings to charities that aim to combat fraud. Rather he says he’s taking the action in the hopes the publicity will spotlight the problem and force Facebook to stamp out fake ads.

In a statement, Mark Lewis of the law firm Seddons, which Lewis has engaged for the action, said: “Facebook is not above the law – it cannot hide outside the UK and think that it is untouchable.  Exemplary damages are being sought. This means we will ask the court to ensure they are substantial enough that Facebook can’t simply see paying out damages as just the ‘cost of business’ and carry on regardless. It needs to be shown that the price of causing misery is very high.”

In a response statement to the suit, a Facebook spokesperson told us: “We do not allow adverts which are misleading or false on Facebook and have explained to Martin Lewis that he should report any adverts that infringe his rights and they will be removed. We are in direct contact with his team, offering to help and promptly investigating their requests, and only last week confirmed that several adverts and accounts that violated our Advertising Policies had been taken down.”

Facebook’s ad guidelines do indeed prohibit ads that contain “deceptive, false, or misleading content, including deceptive claims, offers, or business practices” — and, as noted above, they also specifically prohibit cryptocurrency-related ads.

But, as is increasingly evident where big tech platforms are concerned, meaningful enforcement of existing policies is what’s sorely lacking.

The social behemoth claims to have invested significant resources in its ad review program — which includes both automated and manual review of ads. Though it also relies on users reporting problem content, thereby shifting the burden of actively policing content its systems are algorithmically distributing and monetizing (at massive scale) onto individual users (who are, by the by, not being paid for all this content review labor… hmmm… ).

In Lewis’ case the burden is clearly also highly personal, given the fake ads are not just dodgy content but are directly misappropriating his image and name in an attempt to sell a scam.

“On a personal note, as well as the huge amount of time, stress and effort it takes to continually combat these scams, this whole episode has been extremely depressing – to see my reputation besmirched by such a big company, out of an unending greed to keep raking in its ad cash,” he also writes.

The sheer scale of Facebook’s platform — which now has more than 2BN active users globally — contrasts awkwardly with the far smaller number of people the company employs for content moderation tasks.

And unsurprisingly, given that huge discrepancy, Facebook has been facing increasing pressure over various types of problem content in recent years — from Kremlin propaganda to hate speech in Myanmar.

Last year it told US lawmakers it would be increasing the number of staff working on safety and security issues from 10,000 to 20,000 by the end of this year. Which is still a tiny drop in the ocean of content distributed daily on its platform. We’ve asked how many people work in Facebook’s ad review team specifically and will update this post with any response.

Given the sheer scale of content continuously generated by a 2BN+ user-base, combined with a platform structure that typically allows for instant uploads, a truly robust enforcement of Facebook’s own policies is going to require legislative intervention.

And, in the meanwhile, Facebook operating a policy that’s essentially unenforceable risks looking intentional — given how much profit the company continues to generate by being able to claim it’s just a platform, rather than be ruled like a publisher.

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You Can Now List an Item on eBay in Seconds

If you regularly sell stuff on eBay the shopping site’s updated mobile app could save you a lot of time and effort. This is thanks to the latest version of the eBay app having the ability to populate a listing for you without you having to lift a finger.

If you’re reading this you have probably listed at least one item on eBay. And if so, you’ll know how time-consuming the process of writing a description, taking photos, and setting a starting price can be. But eBay’s mobile app can now do all of that for you.

eBay Simplifies the Listing Process

With its latest update to the eBay app on Android and on iOS, the shopping site has endeavored to simplify the listing process as much as possible. This, according to eBay, “allows items to be listed on eBay within seconds.” And that isn’t an exaggeration.

Our latest app update just made listing an item on @eBay even simpler. In this #TechIRL video, senior product manager Megan Scurich explains how our listings flow now gives sellers photo, pricing & shipping recommendations in the blink of an eye: https://t.co/gF4g5up3Rw #eBayTech pic.twitter.com/sTc2v5inpw

— eBay Newsroom (@eBayNewsroom) April 20, 2018

All you need to do is scan the barcode of the item you’re looking to sell, select its condition, and then click “List your item”. And that’s it. Your item will be listed with a basic description, photos, and a suitable starting price. All within seconds.

If you no longer have the barcode to scan in, you can simply search for the item you’re looking to sell instead. Either way, eBay will choose a price likely to help it sell. And if you’re not happy with eBay’s judgement you can edit your listing before posting it.

Kelly Vincent, eBay’s VP of Consumer Selling Product & Engineering, said:

“This latest update continues to leverage eBay’s structured data […] to instantaneously populate product details, pricing and shipping information in the listing flow. This is one of many enhancements we’ll be making this year. We’ll continue to leverage structured data and new technology developments to help our sellers ‘get it sold.'”

Saving You Lots of Time and Effort

This automated option is primarily aimed at new sellers who aren’t well-versed in the ways of eBay. Still, it could also appeal to people who want to list lots of different items quickly and who haven’t got time to craft eBay listings from scratch.

For those of you who want to spend a little longer listing items for sale, we have previously listed critical tips to help you sell more on eBay. However, beware these eBay scams, and remember that the world of online shopping extends far beyond eBay.

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The Torrent Guide for Everyone

You aren’t necessarily a pirate if you use torrents.

This guide is available to download as a free PDF. Download The Torrent Guide for Everyone now. Feel free to copy and share this with your friends and family.

Using torrents is not illegal if you are not downloading or sharing pirated content that is copyrighted. In all the ruckus about the ban on torrent sites, we forget that there are many more legal uses for torrents than illegal ones.

Still not convinced?

• Go to BitTorrent Now to see how creatives used torrent files to distribute their work to you.
• Amazon S3 supports the BitTorrent protocol so that developers can save costs when they want to transfer large amounts of data.
• Sites like Academic Torrents and even the Internet Archive use the BitTorrent protocol to help you download educational and historical files.

Like cars or your butter knife torrents are simple to use. It’s your responsibility how you use them.

Although it’s fairly simple, many people experience difficulties at the start. Even those that would call themselves “advanced users” often don’t know even half of what’s possible.

This guide aims to guide you through the first steps and also present some cool tricks so that more experienced users get their fair share of worth as well.

BitTorrent: Just a Simple Way to Share Files

Most of us are more familiar with more conventional forms of file sharing, such as email and FTP. BitTorrent is just another file sharing method we can use.

BitTorrent introduces a major difference. Whereas email and FTP rely on one computer hosting the file and transmitting it to connected computers, BitTorrent files are spread out over many computers using a technology called peer-to-peer networking. We can use BitTorrent to share or download any type of files: EXE, MP3, AVI, JPG, DOCX, etc.

Let’s use the analogy of book sharing to illustrate how BitTorrent works.

There is a book you want to read but you only have one chapter with you. You look around and find a friend who has a few more chapters. It still isn’t a complete book, so both of you search for few more guys around the block who might have the remaining pages. There are a bunch of guys and though nobody has the complete book yet, you can share the chapters among each other till all of you get a copy of the complete book one by one.

On the internet, the “book” becomes the file you want to download. The file is broken up into little pieces or bits. Each of you has at least one piece so you start to download and share these “bits” until everyone has the entire file. Each piece that you (or someone else) downloads are available to all the others. At the same time, you are downloading some pieces while uploading others.

Thus, you can all share rather than placing the onus on one computer to host the file and distribute it.

Understanding Common BitTorrent Terms

These key terms will further explain how each part of the protocol works.

Torrent: At the beginning of all this is the torrent file itself. This is the file you search for when you want to download something. Usually, the torrent file name is descriptive enough. For instance, an Ubuntu release can have this file name: ubuntu-17.10-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent

Remember, the .torrent file is not the entire file. It is extremely small and it just contains the information that points to the actual file and the people who are sharing it. It is like a map which is used by the BitTorrent client to assemble all the pieces together.

BitTorrent client: A BitTorrent client is your downloader. It is the piece of software which takes the .torrent file, reads the information in it and starts the download. Torrent clients are available for all platforms including Android and iOS. On the iOS, you may have to jailbreak the phone.

Peer: A peer is any computer participating in the download and upload of a torrent file.

Seeder: A seed (or seeder) is anyone who has a complete copy of the file being shared across the torrent network.

Leecher: A leech (or a leecher) is the person who does not have the complete file yet but has joined the network to download it. A leecher becomes a seeder when he downloads the entire file and then shares it across the network.

Swarm: The swarm is the sum total of all the leechers and seeders (i.e. all the computers) participating in the torrent process.

Index: An index is, as the name implies, a searchable list of .torrent files, hosted on a website.

Share ratio: The ratio is the amount of data a user has uploaded divided by the amount of data they have downloaded for a particular torrent (UL÷DL). A share ratio greater than 1 has a positive effect on the user’s reputation because it means that the user has sent more data to other users than he has received. Conversely, a share ratio under 1 has a negative effect.

Tracker: The tracker is a server which has the information of who has what files and who needs which ones, thus acting as a bridge between seeders and leechers. Some trackers are private requiring a registration where most are public.

Before we get into the process and get our hands dirty, let’s pause and review the legality of torrents again. Even though the torrent protocol is technically legal, its abuse is at the core of the fight against digital piracy. Big Brother is watching your every move, so stay aware and stay clean.

BitTorrent Isn’t Illegal: Understanding Copyright Laws

“Season 7 of Game of Thrones exceeded 1 billion illegal downloads and streams across piracy channels by the 3rd September 2017.”
— MUSO.com

Peer-to-peer file sharing is completely legal, but using it to obtain copyrighted content is not. When you are dependent on downloads for your creative work or education, take the time to understand copyright laws.

In some countries it’s okay to download (use) material for personal use, but distribution makes it a punishable offense. With torrents, the water gets a bit muddied because the protocol makes everyone both downloader and distributor.

There have been numerous cases where torrent trackers which index the torrents available have been shut down for infringing some country’s laws. Organizations like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) have become proactive against many of them because it represents a source of piracy.

Remember, downloaders can be pinpointed by their IP addresses, so the cloak of anonymity is not there to hide behind.

The safest course of action is to follow the copyright laws as laid down. Browse to the copyright policy link of the respective tracker website; the better ones have it.

Getting Started With Torrents

A torrent client is a piece of software that is designed for peer to peer file sharing with the BitTorrent protocol. A good torrent client should be safe, reliable, and user-friendly. Here’s how easy it is to grab a solid torrent client, set it up, and download our first file.

Finding the Right Torrent Software

A simple Google Search will throw up some popular names. BitTorrent was the first torrent client and it is still going strong after 16 years of solid service. But you might want to look at the larger field and a few more options for your operating systems.

A good place to get acquainted with the whole shebang is Wikipedia’s Comparision of BitTorrent clients. Or you can check out our articles on the best torrent clients for Windows, best torrent clients for Mac, and best torrent clients for Linux. Chromebook users can try tools like JSTorrent and Bitford.

There are many free and lightweight software available. Some clients are ad-supported (including BitTorrent’s official client) and you have to pay to remove the ads.

Installing the Torrent Client

The download is small at 2.74MB for the Windows version of BitTorrent Free. If you are installing BitTorrent for the first time, just follow the screenshots. Installations of the other BitTorrent clients are also similar.

Optimizing Your Torrent Client for Speed

A torrent client is no different from any other software. You can take it out “straight from the box” and run it. Or you could change a thing here and there to give it a smoother run.

BitTorrent includes a Setup Guide that can help you test your bandwidth and configure the client for maximum performance. Go to Options > Setup Guide (or use Ctrl + G). BitTorrent recommends that you follow the steps in order.

The Setup Guide runs two tests:

It tests your bandwidth for upload speeds. BitTorrent will try to upload at your maximum speed, so you have to find out how much it is and cap it a specific limit to avoid choking your connection. Choose the closest location from the dropdown.

It tests and verifies your router settings. When BitTorrent runs for the first time, a port is automatically selected for you. A port is where your computer receives the communication signals from the outside network. This test checks if the port is open for traffic or there is some configuration issue.

Later in the guide, we will dig into the Preferences screen and optimize your BitTorrent for speed and performance.

Downloading Your First Torrent

Search engines are cagey about promoting torrent links on the search results page. This is another front in the battle against copyright infringement. Earlier in 2017, Google and other search engines worked on a voluntary anti-piracy code. Policing has got stricter with search engines and ISP’s honoring genuine takedown requests.

The discussion is not against torrents, but against piracy sites. Google and other internet continue to deindex them from their search results. SEO traffic to dubious sites are cut off and torrent sites, in general, do not find a place in the search results.

For instance, The Pirate Bay is banned in the U.K and India among other countries even though these torrent sites and meta-search engines also host legal content (e.g. LibreOffice and various Linux distros).

Which torrent sites should you go to? If you were miffed with The Pirate Bay closure, here are some reliable Pirate Bay alternatives.

Going to a trustworthy torrent site also lets us avoid the pitfalls of downloading a corrupted file or even worse, a malicious virus. A good torrent website filters out the undesirable and hosts clean .torrents. Here are a few more recommended ones:

SkyTorrents: A clean privacy focussed torrent site without ads.

Zooqle: A clean interface with nearly three million verified torrents and counting. You can sign-up to manage your torrent downloads on the site.

Torlock: A torrent download site with 100% verified torrents. Torlock pays its users $1 for every fake torrent they discover but I couldn’t verify this claim independently.

SeedPeer: A fast and clean site with a large catalog of three million verified torrents.

RarBG: The trustworthy site is popular in the torrent community and is another alternative for PirateBay buffs.

Demonoid: A well-known name that has survived the churn. The only downside is that Demonoid is a private torrent community and you need to register when slots are available.

How to Search for Torrents to Download

1. Hop over to any of the torrent sites and search for your desired torrent file. For instance, the screenshot below is from Sky Torrents. Enter your keyword.

Remember, a torrent file is nothing but a small 15-100KB file which points to the contents of the whole file and the people in the swarm. These .torrent files are uploaded by torrent sharers around the web.

2. Choose a healthy torrent link to download from. Usually, it will be one that has a high number of seeders and peers. Some torrent sites also display an icon that shows it has been verified as “clean” by the community. It is always a good idea to go through any comments contributed by the community below the link.

3. Click on the torrent link. The tiny “.torrent” file is downloaded to your desktop in a couple of seconds. You can also click the icon of a magnet that is a magnet link for the torrent. A magnet link is a server-less way of downloading the torrent information. Instead of a torrent file sitting on a server somewhere, you download it directly from a peer.

Most torrent websites carry both options. Many sites have moved to magnet links exclusively because you can then download the torrent even if the original tracker is down or closed.

4. Browse to your saved .torrent file and double-click it to open the file with your torrent client. You can also use the menu of the software to add the .torrent file for download. Or alternatively, drag and drop the .torrent file into your software window.

With a magnet link, the torrent client will automatically launch the torrent client. Now, your software begins the download by first connecting to the tracker server to find out who else is downloading the same file and which bits they have.

5. The tracker server identifies the users participating in the share and labels them as either seeders or leechers. Look for a torrent with a higher number of seeders. The ratio of seeders to leechers is the share ratio and a higher figure makes for a healthier (and faster) torrent.

6. The download begins, but if it starts slowly, don’t be alarmed. Gradually the speed picks up as the swarm increases.

The time to complete the download will depend on the file size, the speed of your connection and the quality of the swarm. After your download finishes, you may enjoy the file you just got. Now after all that hard work if you are thinking of deleting the leftover .torrent file and closing the client software just pause here. This single selfish act is known as a “hit and run” (HnR or H&R) in the torrent community and is a cardinal sin of the torrent world.

How to Be a Good Member of the Torrent Community

Hit-and-runners are called “leechers” by the torrent community. Strictly speaking, a leecher is one who does not have a complete copy of a particular file yet. A leecher turns into a seeder only when he starts sharing his completed copy with the rest of the swarm.

Unfortunately, the term has also come to symbolize those users who download without uploading (i.e. take but not give back to the swarm). To avoid this name calling, follow this cardinal rule:

“After your download finishes, leave your Torrent client software running for at least three hours, or until you have uploaded as much as you have downloaded (a 1:1 share ratio). Sometimes it may not be possible to follow this rule but it is important to get close to it.”

Tip: Do your downloading at night so that by the time you wake up you have downloaded your file and you would have uploaded your share too.

Torrent Safety Rules: Be Careful What You Download

At first, you might feel like a kid let loose in a chocolate shop, but beware as there are many fake torrents out there. Most of them are malicious. Here are five golden rules of internet security which have never failed me:

1. Make it a habit to scour around for any comments left by earlier downloaders regarding the quality of torrents.
2. Download torrents from a reputable website or join a private tracker. Private trackers moderate the quality vigorously but then they are equally rigorous with their rules.
3. Try to avoid downloading files which have been split and zipped into a mass of kilobyte sized files. Commonly they are fake torrents.
4. Always read the rules and the copyright policy of the website you are downloading from.
5. Don’t download pirated software or computer game files from unsafe public torrent sites.

The Best Software for Torrenting

You started with an idea about torrents, a torrent client and a net connection. With the help of some search engines, you got to your first .torrent file and downloaded with success your first file.

Now just like a good handyman, you need to find the best software for your OS to go from a torrent newbie to a torrent ninja.

Security Software: Your firewall and anti-virus software will be the first line of defense against bad torrents.

Archiving Utility: Many files are compressed before they get uploaded. You will need a fast extraction software to de-compress them. WinRAR and WinZip are common but I would recommend you take a look at 7-Zip an excellent free alternative along with PeaZip and Zipware.

Media Player: Torrents are often the best way to exchange public domain movies and audio files. Any good media file installed on your system can handle the variety if they have the right codecs installed. VLC Media Player is still the best open-source media player out there.

Also, check out this select list of the top media players for Windows and the best media players for Mac. VLC is common on both lists.

Codecs for Playback Support: When you can’t play back a video or audio file, then the error is often due to a missing codec. A codec is a piece of code that is behind the compression and decompression of data. Download the right codec and it will solve your problems. Codec download sources include:

• Codecs.com
• Codecguide.com
• Combined Community Codec Pack
• X Codec pack
• FourCC.org

How to Speed Up Your Torrent Downloads

What’s the point of the torrent protocol when the download speed resembles a turtle in a sack race? The download speed depends on a few factors and some of them are within your control. Let’s see how you can optimize your torrent client with a few nips and tucks to the settings.

The screenshots below come from BitTorrent on Windows 10. But torrent clients share common settings and it won’t be difficult for you to go under the hood.

1. Check Your Bandwidth

To optimize your torrent download speed, you have to know your maximum download and upload limits. You also have to find out if your ISP is throttling the use of torrents in any way. There are several ways you can check if you are getting the bandwidth you paid for. It is more important to measure the health of the internet now as Net Neutrality curbs get dismantled in some countries.

Note down your download and upload speeds. This will be important in a little while.

The Internet Health Test by Battle for the Net is a website you should bookmark to measure your bandwidth and report if you spot any issues. The speed test takes less than a minute to complete.

If you are in Europe, then check out Respect My Net which is a platform to report net neutrality violations in the EU. Alternative speed test tools like Speedtest are available too.

Your own computer may be snacking on your bandwidth. If you see a consistent drop and the fault isn’t with your ISP, then look at these reasons for a drop in your internet speed.

TCP Optimizer 4 is a tiny free program that can optimize your internet connection. The FAQ is available on the linked page.

2. Use the Right Torrent Client

Some clients are feature-packed while several are as simple as possible. You also might prefer a cross-platform torrent client that you can configure easily across all your machines. BitTorrent and uTorrent have existed for a long time but now they are loaded with ads, so I prefer using lightweight torrent clients.

For Windows: Take a look at Tixati or qBitTorrent, which are open-source software and have all the core features you want. I haven’t tried it yet, but there are some polished clients like FrostWire and BitLord which you can also look at.

For macOS: Transmission was the best torrent client for macOS but it was hit with a few security issues. But alternatives to Transmission are plentiful.

For Linux: Ubuntu comes pre-installed with Transmission. There are a number of good torrent clients available. qBitTorrent again finds the top place. Take a look at the other modern torrent clients for Linux.

Torrent Clients on the Cloud: Today, cloud torrenting is secure, anonymous, and fast. You can access your files from anywhere. Offcloud, Bitport.io, Put.io, and Seedr.cc provide well-rounded services.

3. Choose Healthy Torrents

A good torrent is one where the number of seeders is higher than the number of leechers. The more seeders, the healthier your torrent will be, so choose a torrent the seeder-leecher ratio is high. On many sites, you will find them marked with a green badge which usually signals that it is also verified by the community.

4. Allow Torrents Through the Firewall

Firewall software hate torrent connections and often block it. They can also block the download of the torrent client itself.

As a first step, add an exclusion to Windows Defender or any other security software you have installed.

Next, go to your torrent client and select the option that allows it to automatically add an exception to Windows Firewall:

Go to Options> Preferences> Connection > Add Windows Firewall exception. Click Apply and OK.

Never shut down your antivirus and firewall as they are your first line of defense against malicious downloads.

5. Change the Default Port

BitTorrent uses the default ports 6881 to 6999. As torrent connections spark a lot of traffic, ISPs try to throttle the bandwidth on these ports. Good torrent clients will let you change the ports so connections are unrestricted. Change it to another range or randomize it every time.

Just to go Options > Preferences > Connection. Under the Listening Port settings, enable the following:

• Enable UPnP Port Mapping
• Enable NAT-PMP Port Mapping
• Randomize Port Each Start

Apart from the ones needed for essential tasks like email and browsing, most ports are blocked by default by routers to prevent malicious connections. If the home computer is behind a router, the ports have to be opened through the feature called port range forwarding to enable torrent traffic.

Our brief tutorial on how to increase your torrent download speed with proper port management is written in a simple way.

6. Don’t Cap Your Max Upload or Download Speeds

Think of your bandwidth as a highway which is trying to handle rush hour traffic in both directions. If you do have a reason to limit your maximum download and upload rates then do so. For instance, when you are streaming or gaming online. But don’t set it too low as it will throttle your own download rate.

TorrentFreak recommends a simple calculation. But you can just set a lower percentage than your maximum and experiment.

• Maximum upload speed: 80 percent of your maximum upload speed
• Maximum download speed: 95 percent of your maximum download speed

You can see the setting when you go to Options > Preferences > Bandwidth > Global Upload Rate Limiting / Global Download Rate Limiting.

But to get the maximum speeds, it’s better to set both at “0” which is the unlimited or the maximum permissible rate allowed by your ISP. The BitTorrent protocol which works on the value of “fairness” identifies you to the swarm according to the quality of your bandwidth.

If your speed is too low, then you will be automatically grouped with similar peers on slow connections. In short, you get back what you put into the swarm. I don’t worry too much about upload speeds but instead work with a small batch (queue) of active torrents to improve the overall health.

Note: BitTorrent asks for Kbps under “Maximum upload and download rate” and not Mbps. Use a bandwidth conversion tool like ToolStudio or use the Google Search bar trick for the conversion.

7. Set the Number of Connections

The number of connections is the essential part of a BitTorrent optimization. These can be set from Options > Preferences > Bandwidth.

Global maximum number of connections gives the maximum number of connections that a BitTorrent client can make for any P2P exchange. Setting this too high does not mean higher speeds. Setting it too high would take up useless bandwidth and too low a figure would miss out on peers.

Maximum number of connected peers per torrent gives the maximum number of peers that a BitTorrent client can connect to for any P2P exchange.

Number of upload slots per torrent gives the maximum number of peers that your client will upload to for any P2P exchange. These upload slots go to peers who are missing part of the download that you have. Too low and it will affect your download speeds as well.

Use additional upload slots if upload speed <90%. Enable this checkbox for healthy uploads.

As most of us are (probably) operating with speeds above 1 Mbps the default settings are recommended for all users: a 200/50/4 configuration for around 8 active torrents (which can be configured from the Queueing section).

I don’t like to set a higher number for the maximum number of active torrents and active downloads because it also increases the read-write operations on the hard drive while I am working on other tasks.

Fiddle around with the settings. Torrent downloads are dependent on your bandwidth and the peer network. So, there is no size fits all. The worst that can happen is your torrent speed will slow down but you will gain an idea of what works for your bandwidth.

8. Prioritize Specific Torrents

This method is useful when you have several simultaneous downloads and you want to speed up one of them. It is also helpful to free a slot if you have a limit for the maximum number of active downloads.

Right-click on the torrent download you want to prioritize. Go to Bandwidth Allocation and choose your priority level (for e.g. High).

Do remember this won’t help if the torrent health is bad. It also won’t help if you set all your downloads to High priority.

9. Update Torrent Trackers

Try to update torrent trackers and see if it increases the number of peers and seeders. More peers help to boost speeds. Torrent trackers do this by publicly announcing the IP address of all peers sharing the file. Extra peers can come from other torrent trackers on the web. And, you can add them to your present tracker list.

Right-click on the active downloading torrent and click Update Tracker. You can also find other tracker lists on the web. Then, right-click on the downloading torrent. Go to Properties > General tab. Paste the tracker URLs at the end of the existing tracker list box.

10. Use the Scheduler to Manage Your Torrent Downloads

Let’s say you want to run the torrent at full speed when no one else in the family uses the internet. Most torrent clients also have a scheduler that helps you set a speed a limit, cancel the speed limits, seed only, or stop torrents at specific hours of the day.

1. Go to Options > Preferences > Scheduler.
2. Tick the checkbox for Enable Scheduler. A grid of green boxes turns from gray to green. The grid has one box per hour and covers Monday through Sunday, midnight to midnight.
   
3. The labels below the grid indicate the status you can apply to each hour by clicking on the grid boxes. For instance, light green boxes indicate limited download and upload rates. You can click on the boxes to cover the specific time slots and limit your connection during those range of hours.

11. Set a Good Share Ratio

Torrents rely on the community and healthy exchange of files. As a responsible member, you should give back as much as you take. A torrent client can help you do this automatically by setting a share ratio. Private torrent sites encourage a share ratio of 1:1 which means that you’ve downloaded exactly the same amount of data as you’ve uploaded.

You can automatically stop sharing at this specific ratio. You get to save bandwidth and time instead of constantly checking on your uploaded share.

1. Go to Options > Preferences > Queueing > Default Values.
2. Set the Minimum ratio to 100% (which is a 1:1 sharing ratio).
3. Alternatively, you can set a Minimum seeding time in minutes.
4. Set the action for When BitTorrent Reaches the Seeding Goal. A value of “0” automatically stop the seeding when the share ration is achieved.

12. Prevent ISPs From Throttling Your Traffic

ISPs often limit bandwidth to get over peak congestion at specific times of the day (usually, weekends and evening). A simple setting called Protocol Encryption in most of the torrent clients helps to override this bandwidth shaping. With protocol encryption, ISPs find it difficult if not impossible to detect that the traffic is coming from BitTorrent.

Go to Options > Preferences > BitTorrent > Protocol Encryption > Enabled.

Experiment with Enabled, Disabled, and Forced options because you could be getting better speeds with encryption disabled. Also, it can reduce the total number of available peers and even make some downloads impossible.

The BitTorrent protocol uses the RC4 encryption cipher which is very weak but enough to pass a deep packet inspection by ISPs. Also, the protocol encryption won’t hide your IP address. For that, you will have to use a VPN which uses the industry standard AES encryption to cover your tracks and routes your traffic through another remote server.

13. Use a VPN to Stay Safe

A virtual private network will encrypt all your traffic and not only those from torrents. The strong AES encryption cannot be decrypted by your ISP or other snoops easily. There is also no need to change any setting on your torrent client. You just need to install a VPN client and there are many cheap but secure VPN solutions available worldwide.

A seedbox is another alternative to bypass torrent connection blocks. These are dedicated virtual servers that are also encrypted. A seedbox manages your torrent downloads and then transfers the downloads to your computer via a normal download. We have mentioned a few seedboxes in an earlier section too.

How to Create and Share Your Own Torrents

There’s a community behind this file sharing protocol. And, it isn’t a one-way street. To be a true peer to peer member you should share your own torrents. It is easy with the help of the same torrent client you use to download any torrent.

Again, remember that it is not about bootlegging illegal content. It is just a useful way to share a large digital file with the public without storing it in a cloud folder.

1. Open BitTorrent (or any torrent client). Look for the menu button that says Create New Torrent (or go to File > Create New Torrent).
   
2. The Create New Torrent box opens up. For uploading a single file click on Add File and for uploading a bunch of files in a folder click on Add Directory. Browse to where you have kept the files (or folder) for upload. Include these as your source files.
   
3. Fill in the Trackers under Torrent Properties is an important step towards finishing your torrent upload. You just have to copy paste a list of trackers (more specifically called the announce URLs) and these are available on some reliable websites. For instance, TorrentFreak has a list of trackers you can use. GitHub has a regularly updated list of public trackers too. A Google Search will net you many more.
4. If you decide to list more than one, put a blank line between each URL by hitting Enter twice. Check the Start seeding box and click on Create. You can leave this unchecked if you don’t want to seed right now.
5. Select the Preserve file order option when you want to maintain the folder structure for the downloaders. Don’t select the Private torrent box (unless you’re using a private tracker).
6. Save the torrent file with a nice descriptive name. As soon as you save your torrent file, it gets added to your active list in BitTorrent, and the status should say Seeding or Finished if you start seeding right away.
7. Upload the .torrent file to a tracker website like Piratebay (though the site is legally frowned upon) or a legal torrent site like Legit Torrents or GameUpdates. All tracker websites have an Upload link or a button. Usually, they require a log-in for you to access their upload page. Please read the rules and the copyright policy before you upload your .torrent file.
   
8. Share the link with your family, friends, or the community.

You can also make your own private torrent and share it only with friends and family. But this involves a few more steps and right now is outside the scope of this basic beginner’s guide.

Conclusion: The Wonders of Peer-to-Peer Sharing

The peer to peer network grows without limits as every new player not only takes from the network but also gives something back.

Today, we see how the protocol has evolved into blockchain and decentralized apps. These technologies are not only giving us a wealth of digital content but fundamentally changing the world. As part of the swarm, it is up to us to follow the rules of the game.

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The Better Way to Share YouTube Videos: Use the New Chat System

Sharing a YouTube video is so last year. If you want to scream “Have you seen this?” to your friends, there’s a better way to do it now, and you can do it right from within the YouTube app: use YouTube’s own chat system for sharing and discussing videos in a perfectly social way.

The chat feature is specific to the YouTube app on Android and iOS. When you share and receive videos in the app, you can also chat about them one on one or in a group, reply with another video, and invite others to the conversation. Start by sharing a video.

1. Open YouTube (screenshots are from iOS). Go to the video you’d like to share. Tap the Share icon.
2. Select a contact or tap Add contacts. You can also share the video link by selecting an app.
3. After sharing the video, tap the Activity icon. Then, open the Shared tab to display a list of all your shared videos.
   
4. Open a shared video. You can start a chat by typing a response in the text field. Click the blue Send icon.
5. Additional options are under the overflow menu button (with three dots) or the “+” button next to the chat box. These include:
   

• View participants: See the members who are part of the shared video group.
• Add participants: You can add a new member to the chat anytime.
• Delete chat: If you created a chat, you must delete the chat to leave it. This will delete the chat for all participants.
• Mute notifications: Stop receiving notifications without leaving the chat.

You don’t have to head to WhatsApp or Facebook now. Your chats are private (as much can be expected from Google) and you can turn it into a group chat with as many as 30 participants. Of course, you can express yourself with emojis too.

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