Tech

Apple has lined up another partnership to boost its video-content offerings. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, Apple signed a deal with A24 studio, a New York-based production company responsible for movies, including the 2017 Oscar winner for Best Picture, Moonlight. Further ReadingSex, violence, drugs get the axe in Apple’s upcoming original content Details of forthcoming projects haven't been disclosed, but Apple reportedly signed a "multi-year partnership" to make "independent, feature-length films" with A24. Apple has numerous production partnerships and deals in the works already, but most are for serialized shows and other video content. For the past year, Apple has focused on gleaning talent for its original content offerings. It began with the Carpool Karaoke and Planet of the Apps series, both of which are exclusively available on Apple Music. After Apple pledged to spend $1 billion on original content this year alone, it began striking deals with … [Read more...] about Apple partners with Moonlight movie studio to make feature-length films

Facebook is once again tweaking how stories spread through the News Feed, this time going after posts that are “sensationalist and provocative.” The goal isn’t just to cut down on clickbait, but to cut down on misinformation and problematic posts that don’t quite warrant an outright ban on the site. In a blog post, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg writes that people naturally engage more with sensationalist content. Engagement with this content, he says, increases the closer it gets to being so problematic that it has to be banned. So instead of moving the line of what’s banned, Facebook is going to alter its distribution algorithms. Posts that Facebook’s AI detects as needlessly provocative will be distributed less and less, preventing them from seeing a spike in engagement. Zuckerberg believes this will discourage people from creating and posting this kind of content in the first place, ultimately leading to a better experience for users and less … [Read more...] about Facebook will reduce reach of ‘sensationalist and provocative’ content

Facebook’s latest transparency report shows a big jump in spam and violent content takedowns, some advances in proactively identifying hate speech, and the first numbers for bullying, harassment, and child sexual exploitation takedowns. The report was released as Facebook fends off numerous accusations of incompetent or underhanded behavior. In it, Facebook emphasizes its attempts to remove bad content before users ever see it, while fielding an ever-growing number of requests from governments. This marks the release of Facebook’s second “community standards” transparency report, alongside the more traditional reports about copyright takedown notices and government data requests. Facebook took down far more pieces of unacceptable content — across every category — in July to September of 2018 than it did in the last quarter of 2017. We don’t have points of comparison for bullying and harassment or child sexual exploitation and nudity, but it … [Read more...] about Facebook removed a lot of spam, violence, and fake accounts this year

Facebook has filed a patent that would make it easier to target whole families with ads by analyzing the photos they post. The application, filed on May 10th and published today, covers an algorithm that would identify elements of photographs — like faces or other details— and cross-reference them with other data to build a profile of an entire household. If Facebook chose to implement the system, it would supplement a family targeting program that launched last year. Facebook can already analyze lots of information to tell who’s in the same household. According to Marketing Land, it checks the relationships people list on their profiles, whether people list the same last names or locations, and shared life events or event check-ins, among other things. The system described in the new patent would involve an even more sophisticated level of data mining. The proposed model would cross-reference details from photographs with tags, descriptions, the poster’s IP … [Read more...] about A Facebook patent would use your family photos to target ads

Instagram is continuing to build out its shopping features today with the announcement of three new product updates. Users will soon be able to shop videos they see in their feed; save items to a specific “shopping collection” in their saved posts; and also shop business profiles more easily. The features all point to Instagram creating a more fully formed experience where users can do a large portion of their shopping through the platform, just in time for the holidays this year. The new shopping collection area in saved posts looks a lot like an online store, except with items you particularly like. (You can see it above.) The posts are all arranged in neat rows so you can scroll through whatever you saved in the event that you want to buy it now. You can do this through the usual bookmark tool. Only certain posts are considered shopping posts on Instagram. Not every brand has opted into a business page that’ll allow them to sell through their profile. Instagram … [Read more...] about Instagram will now let users shop items from video posts