Year: 2019

Meet Terra, the latest product line from iRobot destined to be forever known as the “Roomba for lawns.” There are worse names, of course. After all, with the Roomba line, iRobot was able do what countless startups have tried and failed before and after — introduce a truly mainstream home robot. If the Massachusetts-based hardware company is able to do the same for yard work, it will be a truly impressive feat indeed.

Like most of what iRobot does, however, work on the lawn-mowing robot has been slow and deliberate. In a closed-door meeting with the company at CES this year, CEO Colin Angle lifted the veil off of the robot. It was a kind of grand unveiling for a party of one. But first he explained why, precisely, it had taken iRobot so long to get into the space.

After all, the Terra is far from the first product to attempt to do for lawns what the Roomba has done for floors. Honda has already entered the space, along with lesser-known names like Robomow and Worx. But iRobot has one key thing none of the competition has — 17 years of experience building and evolving the Roomba line.

Even so, Angle tells me that Terra (Codenamed: Wichita) was nearly a decade in the making, with a team of between 35 and 50 members of its R&D staff devoted solely to the new product. There are many moving parts — both figuratively and literally — required to get a product like this just right. And certainly moving outdoors on uneven surfaces with a new objective requires more than simply iterating on the Roomba team’s work. The slanted legs on trampolines have apparently proven particularly difficult for roboticists to get their brains around.

In fact, the company has been covertly testing the mower outdoors, in a fenced-off section of the company’s Bedford, Mass. parking lot that was once a battleground for its military robotics (spun off in 2016 as Endeavor Robotics). I know I’d visited the company’s HQ a few times in those intervening years and wasn’t any the wiser.

The Terra’s operations should prove familiar to anyone who has spent time with recent versions of the Roomba. The mower lives primarily on a charging dock. The first time you send it out, the mower cases the joint using iRobot’s Imprint smart mapping technology — a larger-scale version of what you’ll find on the Roomba. The vision system is more equipped for obstacles and uneven lighting situations that arise in the outdoor setting.

The top of the robot opens to reveal a small remote control so the driver can cruise it around manually the first time to help show Terra where to go. The remote can also be used later, for those who’d prefer to take it for a joy ride.

Similar to the Roomba, the system utilizes a beacon system (it ships with two). Here they’re relatively unobtrusive poles that stake into the ground, helping create virtual boundaries for yards that don’t have fences or other natural borders. The system also utilizes the same Home app as Roomba, so users can remotely monitor its progress and the like.

Terra doesn’t have a bag on board, instead relying on a mulching system like you get on most industrial mowers. The robot takes on a lawn in a much more orderly fashion than Roomba, going back and forth to stripe the lawn. The battery should be more than enough for most residential lawns, but if it runs out of juice, Terra will return to its base to charge back up and pick up where it left off.

The system is weatherproof — though if you live in a particularly cold area, if might be best to bring it in when the snow piles up. There’s also a security system on board that assures Terra can’t be used if moved from its given lawn.

Lots of details like pricing are still forthcoming. Interestingly, the robot will launch first in Germany, later this year, with a beta program launching in the U.S., so the company can continue to tweak the system.

Pandora announced today that shareholders have approved its $3.5 billion acquisition by SiriusXM. After the transaction closes, several key Pandora executives will leave, including CEO Roger Lynch, general counsel Steve Bene, CFO Naveen Chopra, and chief human resources officer Kristen Robinson. SiriusXM CEO Jim Meyer will lead the combined company.

Pandora and SiriusXM announced the proposed acquisition last September, with SiriusXM offering to pay $3.5 billion in stock, or $10.14 per share, for Pandora.

Sirius and Pandora services will continue as before the acquisition. The deal is meant to “capitalize on cross-promotion opportunities,” as the companies put it, so this means customers can expect to see new offerings like subscription packages with both SiriusXM radios and Pandora streaming music included or Pandora’s content made available through SiriusXM’s car radio distribution channels.

SiriusXM says it has about 36 million subscribers in North America and 23 million annual trial listeners, while Pandora has 70 million monthly active users—but only 6.8 million of them were subscribers as of Q3 2018, compared to 87 million and 50 million subscribers for Spotify and Apple Music, respectively.

Pinterest, the 11-year-old, San Francisco-based site known for the photos its users post about everything from wedding to beauty trends, has hired Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase as lead underwriters for an IPO that it’s planning to stage later this year.

Reuters first reported the news. TechCrunch sources have since confirmed the development. A Pinterest spokesperson declined to “comment on rumors and speculation” when asked this afternoon for more information.

Pinterest has raised roughly $1.5 billion over the years and was valued at $12 billion by its private investors during its last fundraising round in 2017. Notably, its backers include Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, among many other investment firms, both early and later-stage, like Valiant Capital Partners, Wellington Management, Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners.

The company’s revenue last year was $700 million, more than double what the company generated in revenue in 2017.

It has 250 million monthly active users, compared with the 200 million monthly active users who were on the platform as of mid 2017.

Whether Pinterest has ever been profitable, we couldn’t learn this afternoon. But the company employs 1,600 people across 13 cities globally, including Chicago, London, Paris, São Paulo, Berlin, and Tokyo, and half its users now live outside the U.S., with the international market its fastest-growing segment.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, more than 80 percent of people access the service via its mobile app.

Assessing how Pinterest’s shares might be received by public market shareholders has become a favorite parlor game for Silicon Valley denizens. In a recent report, the outlet The Information posited that Pinterest’s offering could suffer because it’s a social media company that’s frequently lumped together with companies like Facebook and Twitter that have repeatedly raised concerns about users’ privacy and have faced a nearly year-long backlash as a result.

Yet Pinterest is far afield from what most users think of as social media and more akin to a visual search and discovery platform, with people looking for ideas and inspiration rather than to reach other people. So thinks venture capitalist Venky Ganesan of Menlo Ventures, who noted on a recent  TechCrunch podcast that “there are no Russian trolls” on Pinterest. More, he’d said, “I haven’t seen Pinterest sell [users’] data. They’re using data to [figure out] advertising on Pinterest; they aren’t brokering [that information] to others.”

Another potential concern for Pinterest is its reliance advertising, which is often the easiest expense for companies to slash when an economy begins to cool, as may be happening here in the U.S. Ads make up 100 percent of the company’s revenue. Here, too, however, Pinterest could prove more durable than some of its competitors. While brand-image driven advertising often gets cut when budgets tighten, direct response advertising often does even better in down markets, as companies seek out clearer returns on their investment, and much of Pinterest’s revenue is driven by direct response advertising. Users see, they click, and they buy. As Ganesan offered during that same podcast visit, “I’ve got three daughters at home, and they spend a lot of time on Pinterest, and they buy stuff.” (Ganesan isn’t an investor in the company; neither is the broader Menlo Ventures team.)

Pinterest could reportedly seek to raise up to $1.5 billion in an offering, according to past media reports. Whether it targets more or less, we’re likely to learn soon, but an IPO has been expected for some time, in part because the company is now getting up there in years as startups go, in part because of its continued growth, and in part because of some new hires that seemed to suggest the company has been gearing up to become publicly traded.

In November, for example, Pinterest brought aboard its first-ever chief marketing officer in Andréa Mallard, who joined the company from Athleta, Gap’s activewear brand, and who now oversees its global marketing and creative teams.

Roughly a year ago, Pinterest also recruited its first COO, hiring  Francoise Brougher, who was previously a  business lead at Square and a VP of SMB global sales and operations at Google before that.

In fact, unlike many of today’s buzziest companies, Pinterest seems to have retained almost all of the executives who work at the company with one notable exception, In late 2017, it parted ways with its then president, Tim Kendall, who’d been with Pinterest for more than five years at the time and who left to start his own health wellness company.

Desperate for data on its competitors, Facebook has been secretly paying people to install a “Facebook Research” VPN that lets the company suck in all of a user’s phone and web activity, similar to Facebook’s Onavo Protect app that Apple banned in June and that was removed in August. Facebook sidesteps the App Store and rewards teenagers and adults to download the Research app and give it root access in what may be a violation of Apple policy so the social network can decrypt and analyze their phone activity, a TechCrunch investigation confirms. Facebook admitted to TechCrunch it was running the Research program to gather data on usage habits.

Since 2016, Facebook has been paying users ages 13 to 35 up to $20 per month plus referral fees to sell their privacy by installing the iOS or Android “Facebook Research” app. Facebook even asked users to screenshot their Amazon order history page. The program is administered through beta testing services Applause, BetaBound and uTest to cloak Facebook’s involvement, and is referred to in some documentation as “Project Atlas” — a fitting name for Facebook’s effort to map new trends and rivals around the globe.

We asked Guardian Mobile Firewall’s security expert Will Strafach to dig into the Facebook Research app, and he told us that “If Facebook makes full use of the level of access they are given by asking users to install the Certificate, they will have the ability to continuously collect the following types of data: private messages in social media apps, chats from in instant messaging apps – including photos/videos sent to others, emails, web searches, web browsing activity, and even ongoing location information by tapping into the feeds of any location tracking apps you may have installed.” It’s unclear exactly what data Facebook is concerned with, but it gets nearly limitless access to a user’s device once they install the app.

The strategy shows how far Facebook is willing to go and how much it’s willing to pay to protect its dominance — even at the risk of breaking the rules of Apple’s iOS platform on which it depends. Apple could seek to block Facebook from continuing to distribute its Research app, or even revoke it permission to offer employee-only apps, and the situation could further chill relations between the tech giants. Apple’s Tim Cook has repeatedly criticized Facebook’s data collection practices. Facebook disobeying iOS policies to slurp up more information could become a new talking point. TechCrunch has spoken to Apple and it’s aware of the issue, but the company did not provide a statement before press time.

“The fairly technical sounding ‘install our Root Certificate’ step is appalling,” Strafach tells us. “This hands Facebook continuous access to the most sensitive data about you, and most users are going to be unable to reasonably consent to this regardless of any agreement they sign, because there is no good way to articulate just how much power is handed to Facebook when you do this.”

Facebook’s surveillance app

Facebook first got into the data-sniffing business when it acquired Onavo for around $120 million in 2014. The VPN app helped users track and minimize their mobile data plan usage, but also gave Facebook deep analytics about what other apps they were using. Internal documents acquired by Charlie Warzel and Ryan Mac of BuzzFeed News reveal that Facebook was able to leverage Onavo to learn that WhatsApp was sending more than twice as many messages per day as Facebook Messenger. Onavo allowed Facebook to spot WhatsApp’s meteoric rise and justify paying $19 billion to buy the chat startup in 2014. WhatsApp has since tripled its user base, demonstrating the power of Onavo’s foresight.

Over the years since, Onavo clued Facebook in to what apps to copy, features to build and flops to avoid. By 2018, Facebook was promoting the Onavo app in a Protect bookmark of the main Facebook app in hopes of scoring more users to snoop on. Facebook also launched the Onavo Bolt app that let you lock apps behind a passcode or fingerprint while it surveils you, but Facebook shut down the app the day it was discovered following privacy criticism. Onavo’s main app remains available on Google Play and has been installed more than 10 million times.

The backlash heated up after security expert Strafach detailed in March how Onavo Protect was reporting to Facebook when a user’s screen was on or off, and its Wi-Fi and cellular data usage in bytes even when the VPN was turned off. In June, Apple updated its developer policies to ban collecting data about usage of other apps or data that’s not necessary for an app to function. Apple proceeded to inform Facebook in August that Onavo Protect violated those data collection policies and that the social network needed to remove it from the App Store, which it did, Deepa Seetharaman of the WSJ reported.

But that didn’t stop Facebook’s data collection.

Project Atlas

TechCrunch recently received a tip that despite Onavo Protect being banished by Apple, Facebook was paying users to sideload a similar VPN app under the Facebook Research moniker from outside of the App Store. We investigated, and learned Facebook was working with three app beta testing services to distribute the Facebook Research app: BetaBound, uTest and Applause. Facebook began distributing the Research VPN app in 2016. It has been referred to as Project Atlas since at least mid-2018, around when backlash to Onavo Protect magnified and Apple instituted its new rules that prohibited Onavo. Facebook didn’t want to stop collecting data on people’s phone usage and so the Research program continued, in disregard for Apple banning Onavo Protect.

Ads (shown below) for the program run by uTest on Instagram and Snapchat sought teens 13-17 years old for a “paid social media research study.” The sign-up page for the Facebook Research program administered by Applause doesn’t mention Facebook, but seeks users “Age: 13-35 (parental consent required for ages 13-17).” If minors try to sign-up, they’re asked to get their parents’ permission with a form that reveal’s Facebook’s involvement and says “There are no known risks associated with the project, however you acknowledge that the inherent nature of the project involves the tracking of personal information via your child’s use of apps. You will be compensated by Applause for your child’s participation.” For kids short on cash, the payments could coerce them to sell their privacy to Facebook.

The Applause site explains what data could be collected by the Facebook Research app (emphasis mine):

“By installing the software, you’re giving our client permission to collect data from your phone that will help them understand how you browse the internet, and how you use the features in the apps you’ve installed . . . This means you’re letting our client collect information such as which apps are on your phone, how and when you use them, data about your activities and content within those apps, as well as how other people interact with you or your content within those apps. You are also letting our client collect information about your internet browsing activity (including the websites you visit and data that is exchanged between your device and those websites) and your use of other online services. There are some instances when our client will collect this information even where the app uses encryption, or from within secure browser sessions.”

Meanwhile, the BetaBound sign-up page with a URL ending in “Atlas” explains that “For $20 per month (via e-gift cards), you will install an app on your phone and let it run in the background.” It also offers $20 per friend you refer. That site also doesn’t initially mention Facebook, but the instruction manual for installing Facebook Research reveals the company’s involvement.

Facebook seems to have purposefully avoided TestFlight, Apple’s official beta testing system, which requires apps to be reviewed by Apple and is limited to 10,000 participants. Instead, the instruction manual reveals that users download the app from r.facebook-program.com and are told to install an Enterprise Developer Certificate and VPN and “Trust” Facebook with root access to their phone plus much of the data it transmits. Apple requires that developers agree to only use this certificate system for distributing internal corporate apps to their own employees. Randomly recruiting testers and paying them a monthly fee appears to violate the spirit of that rule.

Once installed, users just had to keep the VPN running and sending data to Facebook to get paid. The Applause-administered program requested that users screenshot their Amazon orders page. This data could potentially help Facebook tie browsing habits and usage of other apps with purchase preferences and behavior. That information could be harnessed to pinpoint ad targeting and understand which types of users buy what.

TechCrunch commissioned Strafach to analyze the Facebook Research app and find out where it was sending data. He confirmed that data is routed to “vpn-sjc1.v.facebook-program.com” that is associated with Onavo’s IP address, and that the facebook-program.com domain is registered to Facebook, according to MarkMonitor. The app can update itself without interacting with the App Store, and is linked to the email address PeopleJourney@fb.com. He also discovered that the Enterprise Certificate indicates Facebook renewed it on June 27th, 2018 — weeks after Apple announced its new rules that prohibited the similar Onavo Protect app.

“It is tricky to know what data Facebook is actually saving (without access to their servers). The only information that is knowable here is what access Facebook is capable of based on the code in the app. And it paints a very worrisome picture,” Strafach explains. “They might respond and claim to only actually retain/save very specific limited data, and that could be true, it really boils down to how much you trust Facebook’s word on it. The most charitable narrative of this situation would be that Facebook did not think too hard about the level of access they were granting to themselves . . . which is a startling level of carelessness in itself if that is the case.”

“Flagrant defiance of Apple’s rules”

In response to TechCrunch’s inquiry, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed it’s running the program to learn how people use their phones and other services. The spokesperson told us “Like many companies, we invite people to participate in research that helps us identify things we can be doing better. Since this research is aimed at helping Facebook understand how people use their mobile devices, we’ve provided extensive information about the type of data we collect and how they can participate. We don’t share this information with others and people can stop participating at any time.”

Facebook’s spokesperson claimed that the Facebook Research app was in line with Apple’s Enterprise Certificate program, but didn’t explain how in the face of evidence to the contrary. They said Facebook first launched its Research app program in 2016. They tried to liken the program to a focus group and said Nielsen and comScore run similar programs, yet neither of those ask people to install a VPN or provide root access. The spokesperson confirmed the Facebook Research program does recruit teens but also other age groups from around the world. They claimed that Onavo and Facebook Research are separate programs, but admitted the same team supports both as an explanation for why their code was so similar.

However, Facebook claim that it doesn’t violate Apple’s Enterprise Certificate policy is directly contradicted by the terms of that policy. Those include that developers “Distribute Provisioning Profiles only to Your Employees and only in conjunction with Your Internal Use Applications for the purpose of developing and testing”. The policy also states that “You may not use, distribute or otherwise make Your Internal Use Applications available to Your Customers” unless under direct supervision of employees or on company premises. Given Facebook’s customers are using the Enterprise Certificate-powered app without supervision, it appears Facebook is in violation.

Facebook disobeying Apple so directly could hurt their relationship. “The code in this iOS app strongly indicates that it is simply a poorly re-branded build of the banned Onavo app, now using an Enterprise Certificate owned by Facebook in direct violation of Apple’s rules, allowing Facebook to distribute this app without Apple review to as many users as they want,” Strafach tells us. ONV prefixes and mentions of graph.onavo.com, “onavoApp://” and “onavoProtect://” custom URL schemes litter the app. “This is an egregious violation on many fronts, and I hope that Apple will act expeditiously in revoking the signing certificate to render the app inoperable.”

Facebook is particularly interested in what teens do on their phones as the demographic has increasingly abandoned the social network in favor of Snapchat, YouTube and Facebook’s acquisition Instagram. Insights into how popular with teens is Chinese video music app TikTok and meme sharing led Facebook to launch a clone called Lasso and begin developing a meme-browsing feature called LOL, TechCrunch first reported. But Facebook’s desire for data about teens riles critics at a time when the company has been battered in the press. Analysts on tomorrow’s Facebook earnings call should inquire about what other ways the company has to collect competitive intelligence.

Last year when Tim Cook was asked what he’d do in Mark Zuckerberg’s position in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, he said “I wouldn’t be in this situation . . . The truth is we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer, if our customer was our product. We’ve elected not to do that.” Zuckerberg told Ezra Klein that he felt Cook’s comment was “extremely glib.”

Now it’s clear that even after Apple’s warnings and the removal of Onavo Protect, Facebook is still aggressively collecting data on its competitors via Apple’s iOS platform. “I have never seen such open and flagrant defiance of Apple’s rules by an App Store developer,” Strafach concluded. If Apple shuts the Research program down, Facebook will either have to invent new ways to surveil our behavior amidst a climate of privacy scrutiny, or be left in the dark.

Additional reporting by Zack Whittaker.

Knotch announced yesterday that it has raised $25 million in Series B funding.

The round was led by New Enterprise Associates, with NEA’s Hilarie Koplow-McAdams joining the Knotch board of directors. Rob Norman, the former chief digital officer of ad giant GroupM is also joining the board.

“Brands have a desire to understand the effectiveness of their digital content across all channels, a gap that hadn’t been filled before Knotch,” Koplow-McAdams said in a statement. “Our conviction around the Knotch platform and team is driven by their impressive traction and comprehensive product offerings. We’re thrilled to partner with Knotch as they continue their growth trajectory, providing transformative marketing intelligence at scale.”

When we first wrote about Knotch back in 2012, it was a consumer product where people could share their opinions using a color scale. It might seem like a stretch go from that to a marketing and data company, but in fact Knotch still collects data using its color-based feedback system — now, it’s using that system to ask consumers about their response to sponsored content.

In addition, Knotch offers a competitive intelligence product, as well as Blueprint, which helps marketers find the best publishers for their sponsored content.

“As [brands are building] their own content hubs and recognizing content as a really key piece of their marketing stack, as they’re turning to this space, there’s not a lot of great options for them to turn to and say, ‘Here’s a way to know in advance which creative themes and topics and formats [are going to resonate].’ Here’s how we optimize this content, here’s a way to benchmark what you’re doing,” founder and CEO Anda Gansca told me.

And it sounds like Gansca’s vision goes beyond sponsored content.

“In this convoluted landscape, you need a partner that is going to be your Switzerland of data, who’s aligned with you, collecting transparent digital performance data across paid and own channels,” she said.

Knotch has now raised a total of $34 million. Customers include JP Morgan Chase, AT&T, Ally Bank, Ford, Calvin Klein and Salesforce.

Argo AI, the self-driving car startup that burst onto the scene in 2017 with $1 billion in backing from Ford, has obtained a permit to test its autonomous vehicles in California.

The permit, issued by the California Department of Motor Vehicles, is for one vehicle and two drivers.

Unlike other self-driving car companies, California isn’t the first, or even third, market where Argo AI is testing its tech.

The company, founded by former Google self-driving project veteran Bryan Salesky and Uber Advanced Technologies Group’s former engineering lead Peter Rander, has been busy in its short life, including acquiring LiDAR company Princeton Lightwave.

Argo AI does much of its testing in Pittsburgh, where it’s based. The company is also testing its autonomous vehicle technology in Miami, Detroit and soon Washington, D.C. as part of its relationship with Ford. Argo AI has had vehicles on DC’s streets for months now, mapping roads in the first step toward testing in autonomous mode. Ford said last year that the self-driving vehicles would begin testing on public roads in the first quarter of 2019.

Argo AI is an independent company, although Ford is a major backer and has seats on its board. Ford is also Argo AI’s only customer — at least for the moment. Argo AI is developing the virtual driver system and high-definition maps designed for Ford’s self-driving vehicles. Ford has said it plans to launch a self-driving taxi and delivery service in 2021.

It’s not clear if Argo AI’s plans to test in California are part of its relationship with Ford, are related to a new customer or are part of its testing program. TechCrunch will update the story when it learns more.

It’s not surprising that Apple has a massive active install base of iPhones across the globe, but we now finally have an exact number to put behind it. During its Q1 earnings call, CFO Luca Maestri shared the install base for the first time.

“Our global active install base of iPhone continues to grow and has reached an all-time-high at the end of December,” Maestri said. “We are disclosing that number now for the first time, it has surpassed 900 million devices.”

Apple has previously detailed the total active install base of its products. They updated the number today to 1.4 billion devices worldwide at the end of December 2018, up from 1.3 billion at the end of January 2018. It’s interesting that Apple has decided to break out iPhone device numbers even as it shies away from releasing unit sales in its earning calls from this point moving forward.

Maestri detailed that Apple would continue to offer updated on the iPhone install base and total install base on a “periodic basis.”

Apple seems to be seeking out bright spots wherever they can find them, the Q1 2019 earning didn’t deliver great news for the company despite beating already-reduced market expectations. iPhone revenues were down 15 percent.

A first batch of monthly progress reports from tech giants and advertising companies on what they’re doing to help fight online disinformation have been published by the European Commission.

Platforms including Facebook, Google and Twitter signed up to a voluntary EU code of practice on the issue last year.

The first reports cover measures taken by platforms up to December 31, 2018.

The implementation reports are intended to detail progress towards the goal of putting the squeeze on disinformation — such as by proactively identifying and removing fake accounts — but the European Commission has today called for tech firms to intensify their efforts, warning that more needs to be done in the run up to the 2019 European Parliament elections, which take place in May.

The Commission announced a multi-pronged action plan on disinformation two months ago, urging greater co-ordination on the issue between EU Member States and pushing for efforts to raise awareness and encourage critical thinking among the region’s people.

But it also heaped pressure on tech companies, especially, warning it wanted to see rapid action and progress.

A month on and it sounds less than impressed with tech giants’ ‘progress’ on the issue.

Mozilla also signed up to the voluntary Code of Practice, and all the signatories committed to take broad-brush action to try to combat disinformation.

Although, as we reported at the time, the code suffered from a failure to nail down terms and requirements — suggesting not only that measuring progress would be tricky but that progress itself might prove an elusive and slippery animal.

The first response certainly looks to be a mixed bag. Which is perhaps expected given the overarching difficulty of attacking a complex and multi-faceted problem like disinformation quickly.

Though there’s also little doubt that opaque platforms used to getting their own way with data and content are going to be dragged kicking and screaming towards greater transparency. Hence it suits their purpose to be able to produce multi-page chronicles of ‘steps taken’, which allows them to project an aura of action — while continuing to indulge in their preferred foot-drag.

The Guardian reports especially critical comments made by the Commission vis-a-vis Facebook’s response, for example — with Julian King saying at today’s press conference that the company still hasn’t given independent researchers access to its data.

“We need to do something about that,” he added.

Here’s the Commission’s brief rundown of what’s been done by tech firms but with emphasis firmly placed on what’s yet to be done:

• Facebook has taken or is taking measures towards the implementation of all of the commitments but now needs to provide greater clarity on how the social network will deploy its consumer empowerment tools and boost cooperation with fact-checkers and the research community across the whole EU.
• Google has taken steps to implement all its commitments, in particular those designed to improve the scrutiny of ad placements, transparency of political advertisement and providing users with information, tools and support to empower them in their online experience. However some tools are only available in a small number of Member States. The Commission also calls on the online search engine to support research actions on a wider scale.
• Twitter has prioritised actions against malicious actors, closing fake or suspicious accounts and automated systems/bots. Still, more information is needed on how this will restrict persistent purveyors of disinformation from promoting their tweets.
• Mozilla is about to launch an upgraded version of its browser to block cross-site tracking by default but the online browser should be more concrete on how this will limit the information revealed about users’ browsing activities, which could potentially be used for disinformation campaigns.

Commenting in a statement, Mariya Gabriel, commissioner for digital economy and society, said: “Today’s reports rightly focus on urgent actions, such as taking down fake accounts. It is a good start. Now I expect the signatories to intensify their monitoring and reporting and increase their cooperation with fact-checkers and research community. We need to ensure our citizens’ access to quality and objective information allowing them to make informed choices.”

Strip out the diplomatic fillip and the message boils down to: Must do better, fast.

All of which explains why Facebook got out ahead of the Commission’s publication of the reports by putting its fresh-in-post European politician turned head of global comms, Nick Clegg, on a podium in Brussels yesterday — in an attempt to control the PR message about what it’s doing (or rather not doing, as the EC sees it) to boot fake activity into touch.

Clegg (re)announced more controls around the placement of political ads, and said Facebook would set up new human-staffed operations centers — in Dublin and Singapore — to monitor how localised political news is distributed on its network.

Although the centers won’t launch until March. So, again, not something Facebook has done.

The staged press event with Clegg making his maiden public speech for his new employer may have backfired a bit because he managed to be incredibly boring. Although making a hot button political issue as tedious as possible is probably a key Facebook strategy.

Anything to drain public outrage to make the real policymakers go away.

(The Commission’s brandished stick remains that if it doesn’t see enough voluntary progress from platforms, via the Code, is to say it could move towards regulating to tackle disinformation.)

Advertising groups are also signed up to the voluntary code. And the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), European Association of Communication Agencies and Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe have also submitted reports today.

In its report, the WFA writes that the issue of disinformation has been incorporated into its Global Media Charter, which it says identifies “key issues within the digital advertising ecosystem”, as its members see it. It adds that the charter makes the following two obligation statements:

We [advertisers] understand that advertising can fuel and sustain sites which misuse and infringe upon Intellectual Property (IP) laws. Equally advertising revenue may be used to sustain sites responsible for ‘fake news’ content or ‘disinformation’. Advertisers commit to avoiding (and support their partners in the avoidance of) the funding of actors seeking to influence division or seeking to inflict reputational harm on business or society and politics at large through content that appears false and/or misleading.

While the Code of Practice doesn’t contain a great deal of quantifiable substance, some have read its tea-leaves as a sign that signatories are committing to bot detection and identification — by promising to “establish clear marking systems and rules for bots to ensure their activities cannot be confused with human interactions”.

But while Twitter has previously suggested it’s working on a system for badging bots on its platform (i.e. to help distinguish them from human users) nothing of the kind has yet seen the light of day as an actual Twitter feature. (The company is busy experimenting with other kinds of stuff.) So it looks like it also needs to provide more info on that front.

We reached out to the tech companies for comment on the Commission’s response to their implementation reports.

Google emailed us the following statement, attributed to Lie Junius, its director of public policy: 

Supporting elections in Europe and around the world is hugely important to us. We’ll continue to work in partnership with the EU through its Code of Practice on Disinformation, including by publishing regular reports about our work to prevent abuse, as well as with governments, law enforcement, others in our industry and the NGO community to strengthen protections around elections, protect users, and help combat disinformation.

A Twitter spokesperson also told us:

Disinformation is a societal problem and therefore requires a societal response. We continue to work closely with the European Commission to play our part in tackling it. We’ve formed a global partnership with UNESCO on media literacy, updated our fake accounts policy, and invested in better tools to proactively detect malicious activity. We’ve also provided users with more granular choices when reporting platform manipulation, including flagging a potentially fake account.

At the time of writing Facebook had not responded to a request for comment.

When Apple lowered guidance on earnings earlier this month, it cited markets like China as a major factor in its disappointing numbers. Sure enough, when earnings hit today, things didn’t look great, as iPhone revenues dipped 15 percent year over year for the quarter.

In an interview with Reuters earlier today, Tim Cook noted that the company is reassessing how it sells handsets outside of the U.S. Apple has traditionally relied on the U.S. dollar to set the price, which has led to steeper costs internationally.

“When you look at foreign currencies and then particularly those markets that weakened over the last year those (iPhone price) increases were obviously more,” the CEO said. “And so as we’ve gotten into January and assessed the macroeconomic condition in some of those markets we’ve decided to go back to more commensurate with what our local prices were a year ago in hopes of helping the sales in those areas.”

There are, of course, a lot of factors at play here. For one thing, global smartphone numbers have been on the decline for the first time since analysts began recording such figures. Handsets have gotten pretty good across the board and afforded fewer killer reasons to upgrade every two or so years.

Economic factors are also at play in a major way. That certainly goes for China, where the country’s slowed growth has led to fewer large purchases. A looming trade war between the U.S.  and China has had an impact as well, with tariffs and other factors, as companies like Huawei have managed to buck the trend in their home country.