Facebook has been called upon to provide good faith researchers with an API to enable them to study how political ads are spreading and being amplified on its platform. A coalition of European academics, technologists and human and digital rights groups, led by Mozilla, has signed an open letter to the company demanding far greater […]
View More Facebook urged to offer an API for political ad transparency researchCategory: transparency
Apple will no longer report iPhone sales. Here’s why.
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F876063%2Faab76299-2ae9-45ea-b489-507973bc2143.jpg)
Apple is becoming less transparent.
Apple announced on Thursday during its most recent earnings call that it will no longer report sales numbers for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, or any of its hardware products during its quarterly reports.
The Cupertino-based tech giant once touted its sales figures for its array of tremendously popular, as well as extremely profitable, products — especially the iPhone. However, starting with the next quarter (Q1 2019), Apple will no longer share how many units are sold.
The reason: Apple is looking to take more control of its own narrative.
More about Apple, Iphone, Sales, Transparency, and Tech
View More Apple will no longer report iPhone sales. Here’s why.YouTube promises creators more transparency and expanded features
YouTube wants its creators to know that the company hears them loud and clear.
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki published her latest letter to creators on Monday, discussing the company’s priorities for the rest of the year. While the bulk of the letter co…
Facebook’s plan to make ads more transparent already has a big hole in it
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F806645%2Fd034cf2d-edf4-4d11-9702-672194bfd408.jpg)
Facebook’s new push to be more transparent have already hit a snag. The company recently introduced a new tool that lets users easily see any ads a particular Facebook Page is running, but advertisers have already found a way around it.
The social media giant is in the midst of dealing with a number of crises over privacy, security, and bad faith use of the tools on its platform. To deal with one of the bigger looming problems — bad actors potentially using the social network’s ad network to covertly influence elections just as the Russia-linked Internet Research Agency did in 2016 — Facebook came up with a solution that emphasized transparency. Read more…
More about Facebook, Politics, Ads, Social Media, and Transparency
View More Facebook’s plan to make ads more transparent already has a big hole in itNow you can see all of Apple’s hidden tweets
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F802058%2F673657f7-625e-4b14-af7f-62028724aeff.jpg)
Apple has reinvented what it means to be a Twitter lurker.
The company’s Twitter profile makes it look like the tech giant does absolutely nothing on the platform: Apple has never tweeted, not one single time, and it follows zero accounts.
But thanks to Twitter’s new ad transparency tool, we can now see that Apple is actually prolific around the globe — in promoted tweets advertising its products.
On Friday, the fan blog 9to5Mac took advantage of Twitter’s ads transparency tool to find just what messages Apple wants to get out there. Primarily, Apple really wants the people of Twitter to get #BehindTheMac. You can see all of Apple’s promoted tweets here. Read more…
More about Twitter, Apple, Advertising, Ads, and Transparency
View More Now you can see all of Apple’s hidden tweetsUber ends policy of forced arbitration for individual sexual assault claims
In a major policy change, Uber has announced it’s ending mandatary arbitration for individual claims of sexual assault or sexual harassment by Uber drivers, riders or employees. It is also ending the requirement that victims sign a confidentiality provision preventing them from speaking about the sexual assault or sexual harassment they suffered — saying survivors will […]
View More Uber ends policy of forced arbitration for individual sexual assault claimsYouTube releases its first report about how it handles flagged videos and policy violations
YouTube has released its first quarterly Community Guidelines Enforcement Report and launched a Reporting Dashboard that lets users see the status of videos they’ve flagged for review. The inaugural report, which covers the last quarter of 2017, follows up on a promise YouTube made in December to give users more transparency into how it handles […]
View More YouTube releases its first report about how it handles flagged videos and policy violationsHow to unmask AI
Millions of people engage with artificial intelligence (AI) in some form every day — most of them unwittingly. It’s at our fingertips through applications people from all over the world use regularly. That’s why it’s more important than ever to launch, and sustain, a global effort to improve the transparency of AI in order to shed light on the technology. Read More
Covert influence is the new money laundering
As more media companies realize Russia bought advertising space or promoted news stories — fake and otherwise — on their platforms, covert influence has become the new money laundering. Both activities hide below the surface of legitimate enterprises, cast a shadow of disrepute on those very enterprises and can be neutralized through transparency and accountability. Read More