Year: 2019

Security is in everything, it’s everywhere, and it’s everyone’s responsibility. What part are you playing?

At TechCrunch Disrupt SF on October 2-4, we’re proud to have some of the smartest security executives and highest-ranking officials ready to talk shop on stage. Security will be front and center of Disrupt SF with our panels and experts to discuss a range of topics. You can’t afford to miss out.

If you haven’t booked your ticket to Disrupt SF in two weeks, here are three reasons why you should.

On stage we’ll talk to Homeland Security assistant director Jeanette Manfra to understand some of the greatest threats that face the United States today. As one of Homeland Security’s most senior cybersecurity officials, Manfra will discuss election hacking, how to defend against nation state attackers, and what companies can do to be prepared.

We will also have former NSA director Mike Rogers and Team8 founder Nadav Zafrir on stage to dive into the murky world of intelligence. Rogers, a career-long cybersecurity official and former head of the National Security Agency, will discuss his time at NSA and how the landscape of cybersecurity threats has changed, and what he brings to the private sector as a senior advisor to Team8, a cybersecurity think tank and company creation platform. Zafrir, a former Israeli intelligence chief who now heads the think tank, will join Rogers to talk about their most recent venture — security startups.

And, talking of which, how do you build a secure startup without slowing growth? Companies are hungry to launch and grow, but scale often comes with a tradeoff — security, or lack of. We have three leading experts who will join us on the Extra Crunch stage to discuss how to build a secure startup without compromising on scale.

Heather Adkins, Google’s director of security and privacy, will join IOActive chief executive Jennifer Sunshine Steffens and Duo’s Dug Song to talk security. How do you keep your customer data safe? How do you defend against unknown threats? How do you stay ahead of the bad guys?

Whether you’re a security professional, a founder or investor, or a startup decision maker, there’s something for everyone.

Disrupt SF runs October 2 to October 4 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Need tickets? Head on over here to pick some up.

It’s been another hard week at MIT. Our campus has been divided by revelations of inappropriate fundraising, coverups, and the harboring of far too many tech geniuses who seemingly put their own interests and careers over the safety of women, among other marginalized groups.

As a chaplain to students and faculty at the Institute, but also as an opinion writer on the ethics of technology who is supposed to be on sabbatical from the chaplaincy to focus on the writing, I’ve been torn all week as to what to say. If you don’t know what a chaplain is, and you would hardly be alone in any ignorance there, it is a position that emphasizes confidentiality and trust. I know there are a lot of people on MIT’s campus who are scared, sad, and hurting for various reasons, and I wouldn’t want any of them to feel less able to speak with someone like me because I’ve chosen to speak out publicly.

At other times, in the midst of other campus controversies, I’ve personally opted to remain relatively silent, leaning into the part of my job that is, officially, one of quiet service to a university as a whole. I’ve been critical of a lot of big institutions over the years, including much of religion, but also a lot of organized atheism.

But as a chaplain at big educational institutions, I’ve rarely felt comfortable being too critical of those institutions, the universities, which at least in my judgement have more power and influence (not to mention more money, though they don’t really pay it to me) than even the oldest and grandest of churches and temples.

Maybe I was wrong in some of those cases; at other times, maybe I was able to do some good by keeping quiet. I reflect on this out loud not because anyone reading it should particularly care about my situation or my inner conflict. You most likely shouldn’t.

I share my own ambivalence, however, because I know countless executives, administrators, and other kinds of leaders have been through similar thought processes. It’s not my place to speak. If I do speak, maybe they’ll fire me, and then I can’t do anyone any good. Even if they don’t fire me, I’m supposed to be ‘objective;’ if I enter the fray, I’ll lose the trust and confidence of half the community.

But then I think about the students and faculty who need support the most. What they need are educators, peers, and administrators who are willing to join them in taking some risk to do what is right.

I was proud, last week, to share the first half of an exclusive interview with an MIT student named Arwa Mboya who brilliantly and bravely spoke out, helping bring about the resignation of one of the world’s most influential tech ethicists, former MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito. As I said on Twitter, for my money Mboya has been the biggest of the many heroes in this Media Lab scandal.

For her efforts, Mboya was awarded a “Bold Prize,” and celebrating students for their bravery seems unequivocally good. Leaving them alone with their courage, however, by remaining silent in the name of “objectivity,” would be a moral failing.

I’m not sure it’s my place to use this space to call on MIT President Rafael Reif to resign for his own role in allowing Jeffrey Epstein’s donations to the Institute — a role Reif acknowledged this week at an MIT faculty meeting in which he said, “I understand that I have let you down and damaged your trust in me, and that our actions have injured both the Institute’s reputation and the fabric of our community.”

Maybe there are ways forward where MIT is able to heal with Reif still at the helm, though personally I have a hard time envisioning them. But at the very least, we must support students.

And by that I mean, people like me need to publicly and visibly support tech students who feel an ethical obligation to call for the resignation of their own university’s leader over his publicly acknowledged role in not only tolerating but greenwashing human trafficking and serial pedophilia. Just like the drafters and 60+ signers of this powerful letter from women on MIT’s faculty have done.

Will Reif resign? Will more information come out that makes his resignation seem even more inevitable? Or will the “independent review” he has put in place exonerate him in some way? Time will tell.

Meanwhile, as MIT sought to distance itself from Jeffrey Epstein and the broader social questions his case raises, this hard week did bring at least one piece of good news: the resignation of Richard Stallman. A MacArthur “Genius” Fellow and major figure in the history of computing, Stallman has long been a stain on the reputation of institutions with which he has affiliated, for troublingly sexist comments and stances.

Richard Stallman of MIT, an Epstein defender, believes that pedophilia is fine if the child is willing. Hold on to that tidbit for a second. https://t.co/RiGvhJW9hR

— Angus Johnston (@studentactivism) September 14, 2019

The Overton Window on someone like Stallman has now shifted, however, once again thanks to outspoken students, most often young women of color. Like Selam Gano, a recent MIT graduate in robotics engineering, who “arguably set Stallman’s departure in motion,” by speaking out last week on Medium. Gano’s post, entitled “Remove Richard Stallman and Everyone Else Horrible in Tech,” followed an email Stallman had sent to a Listserv affiliated with MIT’s renowned CSAIL research laboratory.

I forgot to share. Here’s the latest. ⁦@selamjie⁩ a grateful MIT thanks you for your bravery. https://t.co/SLiBFuGVcN

— Amanuella (አማኑኤላ) (@AmanuellaM) September 18, 2019

“There is no single person that is so deserving of praise their comments deprecating others should be allowed to slide,” Gano wrote. “Particularly when those comments are excuses about rape, assault, and child sex trafficking.

Child.

Sex.

Trafficking.”

Gano’s drawn-out emphasis on the nature of the crime in question is entirely appropriate. After all, “human trafficking is the single largest illegal industry in the world,” as the framers of this additional recent petition for resignations of prominent MIT officials made clear. Human trafficking, they wrote, far eclipses even the international drug trade, and continues to inflict incomprehensible suffering on women, children, and families around the world.

In calling for leaders to leave, Gano, like Mboya before her, is not harming MIT or damaging its reputation. To the contrary. Both women have expressed, publicly and privately, a great and ongoing love for the school and what it represents.

In fact, it’s not coincidental that both of these whistleblowers have even described MIT as the best place in the world for them educationally, the site of some of their happiest memories and proudest moments. It’s that kind of true pride that leads morally upstanding people to say, “enough.” Because they want and need to continue to be proud. And because they understand that true pride is the opposite of a coverup. It is the opposite of clinging to power.

As Selam Gano wrote in her Medium post, “I know, now, that if prominent technology institutions won’t start firing their problematic men left right and center, we will do nothing. Ever.” Gano, Mboya, and other students and educators I admire are unwilling to allow an extraordinary institution like MIT to do nothing, or to do so little of consequence that it would essentially be nothing.

These people are, to the extent that a large research university is like a nation-state, true patriots. It might be scary to join them and walk alongside them publicly. Taking a stand might threaten our privilege and expose us to risk. That’s what being brave is all about.

Your move, President Reif and MIT.

---

“Okay, this girl was asked to change her religion at gunpoint and she didn’t do it,” MIT Media Lab student Arwa Mboya told me at the end of Part One of my interview with her, about a young woman she’d read about in a book called Beneath The Tamarind Tree. The book, by former CNN anchor Isha Sesay, is a skillful account of the 276 girls abducted from Chibok in Nigeria, which launched the “Bring Back Our Girls” campaign.

Mboya’s outspokenness in the face of the Jeffrey (no fucking relation, thank you!) Epstein scandal, inspired in part by her reading of Sesay, was among the bravest demonstrations I’ve seen by a student in 15 years as a university chaplain.

Previously, Mboya and I discussed her decision process for taking a leap which earned her a “Bold Prize” of, to this date, over $13,000 of crowd-funded money. But even more importantly, we discussed the life experiences which inspired Mboya’s courage in the first place — namely her love and radical hopefulness for the youth of her native Africa, and her passion to inspire those young people with the best tech has to offer.

In this second and final portion of my conversation with Mboya, we pick up where Part One left off, discussing human trafficking in Africa and in the United States, and how the two phenomena are more closely related than many might imagine. We then get into reading (or not) the comments on her now-famous op-ed calling on Joi Ito to resign; her reaction to receiving the crowd-funded “Bold Prize;” her feelings toward Joi Ito today; and how radical imagination can breakthrough systematic oppression, in Africa and beyond.

“She believed that much,” Arwa said to me about the young woman from Chibok, “that even at gunpoint, even with a risk of rape, with a risk of death, with the risk of all the other nasty things, she stood up for what she believed in.”

It’s not hard to see how that kind of perspective and wisdom might have enabled Mboya to do something exceptional.

---

Arwa Mboya: The activist who started the Bring Back Our Girls Campaign hounded the government down – and the Nigerian government is scary. I was like, “Okay, these people can do that. I have power to just speak out. Am I really what I think I am? Am I as strong, as brave as I [think I] am?”

In November 2020, America will go to the polls to vote in perhaps the most consequential election in a generation. The winner will lead the country amid great social, economic and ecological unrest. The 2020 election will be a referendum on both the current White House and the direction of the country at large.

Nearly 20 years into the young century, technology has become a pervasive element in all of our lives, and will continue to only grow more important. Whoever takes the oath of office in January 2021 will have to answer some difficult questions, ranging from an impending climate disaster to concerns about job loss at the hands of robotics and automation.

Many of these questions are overlooked in day to day coverage of candidates and during debates. To better address the issues, TechCrunch staff has compiled a 10-part questionnaire across a wide range of tech-centric topics. The questions have been sent to national candidates, regardless of party. We will be publishing the answers as we receive them. Candidates are not required to answer all 10 in order for us to publish, but we will be noting which answers have been left blank.

Previously: John Delaney

This time out, we’re speaking to Tom Steyer. The California-based billionaire hedge fund manager spent time at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs before founding and heading up Farallon Capital Management. The investment firm managed $21 billion in investments with Steyer at the helm. In recent years, he has become an outspoken opponent of climate change, giving a speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. In 2017, he rose to national political prominence starring in a self-funded $10 million TV ad campaign calling for the Donald Trump’s impeachment.

1. Which initiatives will you prioritize to limit humankind’s impact on climate and avoid potential climate catastrophe?

Climate change is a crisis as big and urgent as any other that this country and our planet has faced. It demands our immediate attention on all levels of government and society. Our country needs a strong president who will make this a top priority. On my first day in office, I will declare the climate crisis a national emergency and use the emergency powers of the presidency to implement a plan to build a safer, more sustainable world, with or without Congress. This is truly a global crisis, and it is long past time for the United States to take the lead in solving it. I have been on the ground working with local groups to take on polluters and save the planet. One campaign I successfully led was the No on Prop 23: a coalition that defeated a ballot initiative sponsored by out of state oil interests that would have rolled back California’s nation-leading climate laws.

2. What is your plan to increase black and Latinx startup founders’ access to funding?

Finance and banking were built around a pretty basic idea — some people have money, while others need it to buy homes, build a business and improve their lives. Moving that money around efficiently was the key to success. The free flow of capital fuels the private sector. But not everyone has equal access to that capital, particularly for the innovative new products that could redefine society. In particular, we know that women, black and Latinx founders have been held back by racists and misogynists and do not have the same access to funding that their white, male counterparts enjoy.

So here’s what I have done: my wife and I created Beneficial State Bank as an alternative to the big financial institutions that have treated customers, communities and the planet so badly and that have left so many Americans out of shared prosperity. The profits from the bank don’t go to line our pockets, but are reinvested into the community and used to promote the public good. We now have 17 local branches throughout California, Oregon and Washington, which have been used to build affordable homes for low-income families; create clean, renewable energy; provide spaces for art; educate our youth; help nonprofit organizations and support minority businesses and businesses owned by workers. As president, I will apply this approach to government programs supporting entrepreneurship to ensure that the best ideas have the chance to succeed, no matter the sex, race or creed of the founder. I will also restore the integrity of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to ensure that financial institutions and others are putting the interests of consumers and borrowers first.

3. Why do you think low-income students are underrepresented in STEM fields and how do you think the government can help fix that problem?

Science, technology, engineering and math — and I would add the arts, STEAM — are the fields at the core of our innovation economy. Yet so far, low-income students have been left out. We have to tackle this from cradle to career, but there are a few simple things we can do to get started. Our campaign has proposed The 5 Rights, and one of these is the right to education. This includes a strong math foundation, a fundamental need for kids wanting to progress in STEM/STEAM fields. It also includes resourcing schools in all ZIP codes to offer hands-on learning, like place-based environmental education, and to teach new life skills like coding. For kids who are already starting out behind, we are going to have to devote the necessary resources to get them up to speed. Once they graduate, we also want the door to college to be open for any student who dreams of building a better future for themselves. That’s why I have been working to reduce student debt, ensure that kids are properly nourished at school and have other social services available to them, making it possible for students from all family backgrounds to afford quality higher education.

4. Do you plan on backing and rolling out paper-only ballots or paper-verified election machines? With many stakeholders in the private sector and the government, how do you aim to coordinate and achieve that?

One person, one vote is the principle underpinning our system of government. As we have seen, the very machines where we cast our votes are under attack, and states need help to secure the integrity of our elections. My administration will work closely with all 50 states to implement paper ballots and risk-based auditing to secure our election systems from fraud and malicious attack.

5. What, if any, federal regulation should be enacted for autonomous vehicles?

My hometown is where these cars are first hitting the roads and from that experience, we know that autonomous vehicles are well on their way, but aren’t quite ready for mainstream. As this new technology develops, we will need to update our federal regulations to ensure the safety of the American people.

6. How do you plan to achieve and maintain U.S. superiority in space, both in government programs and private industry?

Space has captured our imaginations as the next frontier, a place of striving, exploration and excellence, and is also the sphere where the infrastructure of our future is being built in the satellites that now connect people around the planet almost seamlessly. Space, like any domain in which we compete with adversaries and collaborate with allies, demands our attention and a commitment to research and development so we stay a step ahead. Our security interests are always a top priority — but the best way to ensure our safety is to make sure the American people are writing the rules for the defense industry, not lobbyists and corporate interests. I’d ensure that the U.S. Air Force is equipped to handle the risks while making sure every branch and entity involved in space has a centralized hub for communication and action. And we should continue to look at American-led international cooperation — including public and private sector collaboration — in space as a perfect example of soft power, which we should work to maintain and expand. Finally, we should ensure that America’s space program, NASA, is properly resourced.

7. Increased capital in startups founded by American entrepreneurs is a net positive, but should the U.S. allow its businesses to be part-owned by foreign governments, particularly the government of Saudi Arabia?

As president, I will commit to protecting and fostering American interests, both at home and abroad. And that is why I will support investments in our businesses from sources outside of the U.S. as long as the ownership does not risk our national security and those countries — and companies from those countries — obey and respect our laws from intellectual property to labor and environmental standards. We can only advance our interests if our values are respected.

8. Will U.S.-China technology decoupling harm or benefit U.S. innovation and why?

Like it or not, we are going to have to engage with China both economically and politically. It’s impossible for us to completely divorce these relationships. The real challenge facing our country is how we promote and protect American economic and national security interests. I believe we should stand up strongly to protect the interests of American intellectual property and punish those that don’t obey the laws. We are also going to have to protect American consumers and workers, ensure our cybersecurity and work with China to address pressing global issues like the climate crisis and regional security. The devil is in the details of how we compete with China, and when we engage with them as a strategic partner.

9. How large a threat does automation represent to American jobs? Do you have a plan to help train low-skilled workers and otherwise offset job loss?

From the impacts of Climate Change to the threat of automation, working people have gotten the short end of the stick for the past 40 years. As an investor, I know that if we invest in our people and the technologies needed to save our planet, we can give workers the skills they need for the new economy. These investments need to be done now, not when a million truck drivers lose their jobs. My Justice Centered Climate Plan includes investments in Civilian Climate Corps, which will create one million jobs over 10 years.

10. What steps will you take to restore net neutrality and assure internet users that their traffic and data are safe from manipulation by broadband providers?

The Trump administration’s decision to rescind federal net neutrality rules put the internet into the hands of powerful corporations without protecting consumers. Internet service providers should not be able to charge websites to reach their subscribers. I would reinstate the net neutrality rules written during the Obama administration. In California, I was proud to help pass SB 822, the net neutrality bill that was signed into law — it not only restored the Obama-era standards but went steps further to advance the ball in this policy area.

Amazon today is introducing a new perk for Prime members: free mobile game content. The company, which already offers Twitch Prime benefits through its subsidiary, will now give its Prime members various in-game items for PUBG Mobile, the popular battle royale title from Tencent.

The items launching today include an exclusive Infiltrator Mask, Infiltrator Jacket, Infiltrator Pants, and Infiltrator Shoes to complete a Prime-exclusive set, plus the brand-new Blood Oath – Karabiner 98K and Black Magma Parachute.

These exclusive game items aren’t just a one-off as part of a special deal between the retailer and Tencent, however.

Amazon says it will roll out new mobile gaming content on an ongoing basis, going forward, as part of the Prime membership program.

Upcoming partners will include the likes of EA, Moonton, Netmarble, Wargaming Mobile, and others, Amazon tells us.

“Now, no matter what platform you play on—whether console, PC, or mobile—there are Prime game benefits for you,” said Ethan Evans, VP, Twitch Prime, in a statement. “We’re starting with exclusive content for PUBG Mobile, one of the biggest mobile games in the world, and in the coming months, we’ll roll out benefits for some of the most popular mobile games across many favorite genres.”

Amazon’s Twitch already offers a Prime benefit called Twitch Prime which offers a range of perks, like bonuses like channel subscriptions, access to select games and in-game loot, exclusive emoticons, Prime chat badges and more. And as of yesterday, it now includes the option to share select Twitch Prime loot with other non-Prime members on Twitch. However, its focus is more on PC and console gaming, not mobile.

This isn’t the first time Amazon has pitched gaming perks to its Prime members. Several years ago, it ran a program called “Underground Actually Free” which offered customers free versions of Android apps that would typically cost money. That program, however, was more about luring Prime members to Amazon’s Fire tablets. It shut down in 2017.

Today’s mobile gaming perks instead seem to be just a better way for Amazon to leverage the relationships Twitch already has with PC and console game makers who have cross-platform titles that extend to mobile.

To claim the new perks, Prime members can visit www.amazon.com/pubgm.

Facebook has suspended “tens of thousands” of apps connected to its platform which it suspects may be collecting large amounts of user profile data.

That’s a sharp rise from the 400 apps flagged a year ago by the company’s investigation in the wake of Cambridge Analytica, a scandal that saw tens of millions of Facebook profiles scraped to help swing undecided voters in favor of the Trump campaign during the U.S. presidential election in 2016.

Facebook did not provide a more specific number in its blog post but said the apps were built by 400 developers.

Many of the apps had been banned for a number of reasons, like siphoning off Facebook user profile data or making data public without protecting their identities, or other violations of the company’s policies.

Despite the bans, the social media giant said it has “not confirmed” other instances of misusing user data beyond those it has already notified the public about. Among those previously disclose include South Korean analytics firm Rankwave, accused of abusing the developer platform and refusing an audit; and myPersonality, a personality quiz that collected data on more than four million users.

The action comes in the wake of the since-defunct Cambridge Analytica and other serious privacy and security breaches. Federal authorities and lawmakers have launched investigations and issued fines from everything from its Libra cryptocurrency project to how the company handles users’ privacy.

Facebook said its investigation will continue.

Fujifilm is teasing its forthcoming X-Pro3, the successor to its popular digital rangefinder mirrorless camera, ahead of its official full introduction on October 23. During its X Summit event going on today, the company showed off the X-Pro3 in detailed images (via Fujirumors), revealing for the first time its innovative new rear display design.

The X-Pro3 has an LCD on the back, as do most modern digital interchangeable lens cameras, but it’s definitely unique: The screen is hidden in normal use, facing inward towards the camera back while the outward side of the rear door instead offers the photographer a small OLED “mini screen” that contains only basic info about shooting settings.

The rear display will show details like shutter speed, f-stop, ISO and film simulation and file size settings, and if you want to actually see a preview of the virtual viewfinder image, you’ll need to flip down the screen to reveal the color LCD. The downward flipping display is therefore ideal for doing things like shooting from a low angle, with the photographer looking down to check framing – just like you could do on classic film cameras with waist-level viewfinders.

[gallery ids="1884507,1884508,1884509,1884510"]

The X-Pro3 still offers an electronic viewfinder, but that’s also more akin to film photography vs. digital, since photographers using the camera will be much more likely to either use the viewfinder or shoot waist-level with the flip down screen – while also being able to check their various settings at a glance by quickly pulling the camera way from their eye and looking at the back.

Fujifilm’s lineup of APS-C digital interchangeable lens cameras have already won many fans thanks to their film simulations, which mimic types of film the company offered previously. The X-Pro3 will focus even more on replicating a film-inspired experience backed by modern digital photographic technology, and will also include a new film simulation called “Classic Negative” as well.

Other details about the camera include titanium construction, which is going to make it a super durable but lightweight camera, and three different color options to choose from.

No pricing or availability info is out yet, but we’ll find that out along with full details on October 23.

Streaming services have made music ubiquitous, driving more exploration by consumers who don’t have to pay for each song or album individually. Musicians are correspondingly able to find their own niche of fans scattered around the world.

(This is the third installment of our EC-1 series on Kobalt Music Group and changes in the music industry. Read Part I and Part II.)

As Spotify gained rapid adoption in his native Sweden in 2006, class="crunchbase-link" href="https://crunchbase.com/organization/kobalt-music-group" target="_blank" data-type="organization" data-entity="kobalt-music-group">Kobalt’s founder & CEO Willard Ahdritz predicted music streaming and the rise of social media would increasingly undercut the gatekeeping power of the major label groups and realign the market to center more on a vast landscape of niche musicians than a handful of traditional superstars.

Both of these predictions have proven directionally true. The question is to what extent and how are industry players actually realigning as a result?

What musicians need in addition to the administrative collection of their royalties (explained in Part II) is a menu of creative services they can tap for support. Kobalt’s AWAL and Kobalt Music Publishing divisions provide such services to recording artists and songwriters, respectively, and do so on purely a services basis (getting paid a commission but not taking ownership of copyrights like traditional labels and publishers do).

Niche middle class vs. Global superstars

The whole music industry is growing substantially due to streaming music’s mainstream penetration in wealthier countries and increased penetration in emerging markets.

As the overall pie is growing, the non-superstar segment of the market is indeed growing faster than the superstar segment, taking over a larger portion of industry royalties.

According to data from BuzzAngle, the top 500 songs in the US in 2018 accounted for 10% of on-demand audio streams — a dramatic decline in market share compared to 2017 when the top 500 songs accounted for 14% of streams. Stepping back, the top 50,000 songs made up 73.2% of all US streams in 2017 but that declined to 70.5% in 2018.

Personalization technology can lead to better experiences as it allows apps to customize their content for each individual user. But it can also chip away at user privacy. A company called Canopy wants to change that. It has developed a personalization engine that works without requiring users to log in or even provide an email. Instead, it uses a combination of on-device machine learning and differential privacy to offer a personalized experience to an app’s users. Now it’s demonstrating how this works with the launch of the news reader app, Tonic.

The new app is designed to be completely private, while also learning what you like over time, in order to offer a customized experience. But unlike other personalization engines, all the raw interaction and behavioral data stays on your own device. That means the company itself never see it, nor does any content provider or partner it works with, it says.

As Canopy explains:

What we instead send over an encrypted connection to our server is a differentially private version of your personal interaction and behavior model. The local model of you that goes to Canopy never has a direct connection to the things you’ve interacted with, but instead represents an aggregate set of preferences of people like you. It’s a crucial difference for our approach: even in the worst case of the encryption failing, or our servers being hacked, no one could ever do anything with the private models because they do not represent any individual.

Another big differentiator is that Tonic puts you in control over your own personalization settings. This is not typical. If you’ve ever used an app powered by personalization technology, there’s probably been a point where you were recommended a song, video, or a news article, for example, that seemed to be entirely wrong and not representative of something you’d actually like. But you may have been at a loss as to why it was recommended, because most apps don’t detail this sort of information.

Tonic, on the other hand, lets you view, change and even reset your personalization settings whenever you want.

While Tonic is mainly meant to demonstrate of its engine in action — Canopy’s larger goal is to license the technology — the app itself has several other features that make it worth a look.

The company employs a human editorial team to help select the app’s news content, to ensure that it’s not offering a bunch of noise, like clickbait or “hate-reads.” It also avoids breaking news and “hot takes,” it says, as it’s not designed to be an app you use to track the latest news with urgency.

Instead, Tonic pulls from a diversity of sources with its core focus on bringing you a curated, personalized selection of daily reads to inform and inspire. And in the spirit of digital well-being, it’s a finite list of articles — not an endless news feed.

“We made Tonic because we were tired of having to give up our digital selves to get great recommendations, and because we wanted to build an alternative to endless feeds optimized for maximum engagement, breaking news, and outrage,” the company explains in its announcement of the app’s launch.

The technology’s arrival comes at a time when big tech is being investigated for carelessness with user data, and there’s increased attention on user privacy in general. Apple, for example, has made its respect for user privacy a key selling point for its hardware and software.

The New York-based startup was founded by Brian Whitman, formerly the founder of The Echo Nest and a former principal scientist at Spotify. The team also includes several ex-Spotify, Instagram, Google and New York Times execs. It’s seed-funded by Matrix Partners, and other investors from Spotify, WeWork, Splice, MIT Media Lab, Keybase, and more to the tune of $4.5 million dollars.