The race to a zero-emission world starts now | António Guterres
"If we don't act now on climate change, this coming century may be one of humanity's last," says António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations. As the world recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, Guterres urges us to use this moment to rebuild with ambitious climate action in mind -- and lays out a blueprint for getting companies, governments and countries to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. "We can only win the race to zero together," he says. "I urge you all to get on board."
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Cities pump out 70 percent of all global carbon emissions -- which means they also have the greatest opportunity to lower CO2 levels and energy consumption. Climate and data scientist Angel Hsu shares how cities around the world are leading the response to climate change by innovating new, low-carbon ways of living.
10 years to transform the future of humanity -- or destabilize the planet | Johan Rockström
"For the first time, we are forced to consider the real risk of destabilizing the entire planet," says climate impact scholar Johan Rockström. In a talk backed by vivid animations of the climate crisis, he shows how nine out of the 15 big biophysical systems that regulate the climate -- from the permafrost of Siberia to the great forests of the North to the Amazon rainforest -- are at risk of reaching tipping points, which could make Earth uninhabitable for humanity. Hear his plan for putting the planet back on the path of sustainability over the next 10 years -- and protecting the future of our children.
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Starting this weekend, everyone of voting age in the U.S. will begin seeing informational videos at the top of Instagram and Facebook, offering tips and state-specific guidance on how to vote through the mail. The videos will be offered in both English and Spanish.
The vote-by-mail videos will run on Facebook for four straight days in each state, starting between October 10 and October 18 depending on local registration deadlines. On Instagram, the videos will run in all 50 states on October 15 and October 16, followed by other notifications with vote-by-mail information over the next two days.
Image via Facebook
Image via Facebook
The videos let voters know when they can return a ballot in person, instruct them to sign carefully on additional envelopes that might be required and encourage returning ballots as soon as possible while being mindful of postmarking deadlines. Facebook will continue providing additional state-specific voting information in a voting information center dedicated to the 2020 election.
Even more than in past years, app makers have taken up the mantle of nudging their users to vote in the U.S. general election. From Snapchat to Credit Karma, it’s hard to open an app without being reminded to register — and that’s a good thing. Snapchat says it registered around 400,000 new voters through its own reminders and Facebook estimates that it helped 2.5 million people register to vote this year.
Voting rights advocates are concerned that 2020’s rapid scale-up of vote-by-mail might lead to many ballots being thrown out — a worry foreshadowed by the half a million ballots that were tossed out in state primaries. Some of those ballots failed to meet deadlines or were deemed invalid due to other mistakes voters made when filling them out.
In Florida, voters that were young, non-white or voting for the first time were twice as likely to have their ballots thrown out compared to white voters in the 2018 election, according to research by the ACLU.
Adding to concerns, state rules vary and they can be specific and confusing for voters new to voting through the mail. In Pennsylvania, the most likely state to decide the results of the 2020 election, new rules against “naked ballots” mean that any ballot not cast in an additional secrecy sleeve will be tossed out. In other states, secrecy sleeves have long been optional.
Whether the public reveal of that months-long domestic terrorism investigation factored into its decisions or not, Facebook has taken a notably more aggressive posture across a handful of recent policy decisions. This week, the company expanded its ban on QAnon, the elaborate web of outlandish pro-Trump conspiracies that have increasingly spilled over into real-world violence, after that content had been allowed to thrive on the platform for years.
Facebook also just broadened its rules prohibiting voter intimidation to ban calls for poll watching that use militaristic language, like the Trump campaign’s own effort to recruit an “Army for Trump” to hold its political enemies to account on election day. The company also announced that it would suspend political advertising after election night, a policy that will likely remain in place until the results of the election are clear.
While President Trump has gone to great lengths to cast doubt on the integrity of vote-by-mail, mailed ballots are a historically very safe practice. States like Oregon and Colorado already conduct their voting through the mail in normal years, and all 50 states have absentee voting in place for people who can’t cast a ballot in person, whether they’re out of town or overseas serving in the military.
Twitter announced Friday a major set of changes to the way its platform would work as the social network braces for the most contentious, uncertain and potentially high-stakes election in modern U.S. history.
In what will likely be the most noticeable change, Twitter will try a new tactic to discourage users from retweeting posts without adding their own commentary. Starting on October 20 in a “global” change, the platform will prompt anyone who goes to retweet something to share a quote tweet instead. The change will stay in place through the “end of election week,” when Twitter will decide if the change needs to stick around for longer.
Gif via Twitter
“Though this adds some extra friction for those who simply want to Retweet, we hope it will encourage everyone to not only consider why they are amplifying a Tweet, but also increase the likelihood that people add their own thoughts, reactions and perspectives to the conversation,” Twitter said of the change, which some users may see on Twitter for the web starting on Friday.
Twitter has in recent months been experimenting with changes that add friction to the platform. Last month, the company announced that it would roll out a test feature prompting users to click through a link before retweeting it to the platform at large. The change marks a major shift in thinking for social platforms, which grew aggressively by prioritizing engagement above all other measures.
The company also clarified its policy on election results, and now a candidate for office “may not claim an election win before it is authoritatively called.” Twitter will look to state election officials or projected results from at least two national news sources to make that determination.
Twitter stopped short of saying it will remove those posts, but said that it will add to any content claiming premature victory a misleading information label pointing users toward its hub for vetted election information. The company does plan to remove any tweets “meant to incite interference with the election process or with the implementation of election results,” including ones that incite violence.
Next week, Twitter will also implement new restrictions on misleading tweets it labels, showing users a pop-up prompt linking to credible information when they go to view the tweet. Twitter applies these labels to tweets that spread misinformation about COVID-19, elections and voting, and anything that contains manipulated media, like deepfakes or otherwise misleading edited videos.
The company will also take additional measures against misleading tweets that get a label when they’re from a U.S. political figure, candidate or campaign. To see a tweet with one of its labels, a user will have to tap through a warning. Labeled tweets will have likes, normal retweets and replies disabled.
These new measures will also apply to labeled tweets from anyone with more than 100,000 followers or tweets that are getting viral traction. “We expect this will further reduce the visibility of misleading information, and will encourage people to reconsider if they want to amplify these Tweets,” Twitter said in its announcement.
Image via Twitter
Twitter will also turn off recommendations in the timeline in an effort to “slow down” how fast tweets can reach people from accounts they don’t follow. The company calls the decision a “worthwhile sacrifice to encourage more thoughtful and explicit amplification.” The company will also only allow trending content that comes with additional context to show up in the “for you” recommendation tab in an effort to slow the spread of misinformation.
The company acknowledges that it plays a “critical role” in protecting the U.S. election, adding that it had staffed up dedicated teams to monitoring the platform and “respond rapidly” on election night and in the potentially uncertain period of time until authoritative election results are clear.
China now has a tool that lets users access YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, and other internet services that have otherwise long been banned in the country.
Called Tuber, the mobile browser recently debuted on China’s third-party Android stores, with an iOS launch in the pipeline. The landing page of the app features a scrolling feed of YouTube videos, with tabs at the bottom that allow users to visit other mainstream Western internet services.
While some celebrate the app as an unprecedented “opening up” of the Chinese internet, others quickly noticed the browser comes with a veil of censorship. YouTube queries for politically sensitive keywords such as “Tiananmen” and “Xi Jinping” returned no results on the app, according to tests done by TechCrunch.
Using the app also comes with liabilities. Registration requires a Chinese phone number, which is tied to a person’s real identity. The platform could suspend users’ accounts and share their data “with the relevant authorities” if they “actively watch or share” content that breaches the constitution, endangers national security and sovereignty, spreads rumors, disrupts social orders, or violates other local laws, according to the app’s terms of service.
Rather than blocking sites that are beyond the purview of Beijing and tracking individuals using VPNs to circumvent the Great Firewall, China now has an app that gives its people a glimpse into the Western internet — with the caveat that their digital footprint may be under close watch by the authorities.
Much about the app remains unclear, such as its origin and the motive behind it. The operator of the app’s official website (上海丰炫信息技术有限公司) is 70% owned by a subsidiary of Qihoo 360, a Chinese cybersecurity software giant. It remains to be seen whether the app will take off.
Mojiit, the Los Angeles-based company behind the popular avatar generation service Mojichat, has landed one of its highest-profile users with the launch of Odell Beckham Jr.’s live stream over the weekend.
Customized, branded emotes are one of the ways that companies are trying to make it easier for live-streamers to make money off of their shows. Companies like Mochjichat argue that it’s a more elegant solution for gamers to use, because it doesn’t take viewers away from the live stream, where they could potentially miss some of the action.
Typically, streamers rely on advertising revenue from pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll advertising, according to Mojichat co-founder Jeremy Greene. Alongside his wife, Janelle, Greene built Mojichat into one of the premier names in avatar development. As competitors crowded in, the company has been diversifying its products to allow for influencers to begin using their digital avatars as a monetization source.
“No streamer… wants to run a pre-roll,” said Greene. “The first thing about Mojichat that made us very successful from the very beginning, you have to hunt down someone to make your custom emotes for you.”
Earlier this year, the company partnered with DoorDash on a similar activation for a concert to raise money for the Boys and Girls Club as part of a broad celebrity effort to raise money to alleviate food insecurity for families affected by the COVID-19 outbreak.
“Any time someone sends a communication, that will trigger an alert that floats as a Mojichat animation on top of the screen,” Greene said of the earlier activation.
The way that Greene describes the service — and Janelle and his larger vision for the company — is to be the next generation of adserver for the live-streaming market.
“My plan is to become the avatar solution for all of Unity,” Greene told me earlier. “We will offer up our platform to every single gaming platform or mobile developer to plug and play… I would consider us… we’re like the Google Admob for live stream.”
Companies like Streamlabs are integrating Mojichat’s features into their streaming offerings. and the work with Dr. Disrespect and Odell Beckham Jr. show just how much demand there is for these types of offerings.
“The avatar space is going to be won in the gaming community,” Greene said.
Mojichat already has 12,000 streamers using the technology right now, and through a partnership inked earlier this year the company expects to push more ads through the service.
“Nobody wants to sit on a stream for 15 hours a day,” said Greene.
“It’s really wrong that streamers can’t make as much money as YouTubers… a streamer can spend all day on Twitch and they are forced to run these pre-rolls… [meanwhile] Jake Paul can upload a video to YouTube and make $300,000… That’s really why I built Mojichat… I wanted to make gamers’ lives easier… We are going to build custom software for gamers that makes their lives easier.”
