Year: 2020

Google is today announcing a series of policy changes aimed at eliminating untrustworthy apps from its Android app marketplace, the Google Play store. The changes are meant to give users more control over how their data is used, tighten subscription policies, and help prevent deceptive apps and media — including those involving deepfakes — from becoming available on the Google Play Store.

Background Location

The first of these new policies is focused on the location tracking permissions requested by some apps.

Overuse of location tracking has been an area Google has struggled to rein in. In Android 10, users were able to restrict apps’ access to location while the app was in use, similar to what’s been available on iOS. With the debut of Android 11, Google decided to give users even more control with the new ability to grant a temporary “one-time” permission to sensitive data, like location.

In February, Google said it would also soon require developers to get user permission before accessing background location data, after noting that many apps were asking for unnecessary user data. The company found that a number of these apps would have been able to provide the same experience to users if they only accessed location while the app was in use — there was no advantage to running the app run in the background.

Of course, there’s an advantage for developers who are collecting location data. This sort of data can be sold to third-party through trackers that supply advertisers with detailed information about the app’s users, earning the developer additional income.

The new change to Google Play policies now requires that developers get approval to access background location in their app.

But Google is giving developers time to comply. It says no action will be taken for new apps until August 2020 or on existing apps until November 2020.

“Fleeceware”

A second policy is focused on subscription-based apps. Subscriptions have become a booming business industry-wide. They’re often a better way for apps to generate revenue as opposed to other monetization methods — like paid downloads, ads, or in-app purchases.

However, many subscription apps are duping users into paying by not making it easy or obvious how to dismiss a subscription offer in order to use the free parts of an app, or not being clear about subscription terms or the length of free trials, among other things.

The new Google Play policy says developers will need to be explicit about their subscription terms, trials and offers, by telling users the following:

• Whether a subscription is required to use all or parts of the app. (And if not required, allow users to dismiss the offer easily.)
• The cost of the subscription
• The frequency of the billing cycle
• Duration of free trials and offers
• The pricing of introductory offers
• What is included with a free trial or introductory offer
• When a free trial converts to a paid subscription
• How users can cancel if they do not want to convert to a paid subscription

That means the “fine print” has to be included on the offer’s page, and developers shouldn’t use sneaky tricks like lighter font to hide the important bits, either.

For example:

This change aim to address the rampant problem with “fleeceware” across the Google Play store. Multiple studies have shown subscription apps have gotten out of control. In fact, one study from January stated that over 600 million Android users had installed “fleeceware” apps from the Play Store. To be fair, the problem is not limited to Android. The iOS App Store was recently found to have an issue, too, with more than 3.5 million users having installed “fleeceware.” 

Developers have until June 16, 2020 to come into compliance with this policy, Google says.

Deepfakes

The final update has to do with the Play Store’s “Deceptive Behavior” policy.

This wasn’t detailed in Google’s official announcements about the new policies, but Google tells us it’s also rolling out updated rules around deceptive content and apps.

Before, Google’s policy was used to restrict apps that tried to deceive users — like apps claiming a functionally impossible task, those that lied in their listing about their content or features, or those that mimicked the Android OS, among others.

The updated policy is meant to better ensure all apps are clear about their behavior once their downloaded. In particular, it’s meant to prevent any manipulated content (aka “deepfakes”) from being available on the Play Store.

Google tells us this policy change won’t impact apps that allow users to make deepfakes that are “for fun” — like those that allow users to swap their face onto GIFs, for example. These will fall under an exception to the rule, which allows deepfakes which are “obvious satire or parody.”

However, it will take aim at apps that manipulate and alter media in a way that isn’t conventionally obvious or acceptable.

For example:

• Apps adding a public figure to a demonstration during a politically sensitive event.
• Apps using public figures or media from a sensitive event to advertise media altering capability within an app’s store listing.
• Apps that alter media clips to mimic a news broadcast.

In particular, the policy will focus on apps that promote misleading imagery that could cause harm related to politics, social issues, or sensitive events. The apps must also disclose or watermark the altered media, too, if it isn’t clear the media has been altered.

Similar bans on manipulated media have been enacted across social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and WeChat. Apple’s App Store Developer Guidelines don’t specifically reference “deepfakes” by name, however, though it bans apps with false or defamatory information, outside of satire and humor.

Google says the apps currently available on Google Play have 30 days to comply with this change.

In Google’s announcement, the company said it understood these were difficult times for people, which is why it’s taken steps to minimize the short-term impact of these changes. In other words, it doesn’t sound like the policy changes will soon result in any mass banning or big Play Store clean-out — rather, they’re meant to set the stage for better policing of the store in the future.

 

One of the avenues currently being pursued in terms of developing an effective treatment for COVID-19 is through the use of convalescent plasma. Basically, that means using the liquid component of blood from people who have had, and already recovered fully from COVID-19 to produce treatments that hopefully translate the antibodies they developed over the course of fighting off the virus to others. The FDA has created a dedicated new website seeking recovered COVID-19 donations, and explaining its potential uses.

Use of convalescent plasma is hardly a new concept: It’s been in use since the late 1890s, in fact, and was employed during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, albeit with “mixed results.” Modern methods could help improve the efficacy and potential of recovered plasma as a treatment method, and there are a number of drugs in development that use plasma (both animal and human) as the basic active ingredient of their approach.

The new FDA website around COVID-19 plasma donation defines what it is, and why it’s under investigation as a possible treatment. It also outlines what conditions need to be met in order for an individual to be qualified to donate (no symptoms for at least 28 days prior to donation, or at least 14 days when combined with a confirmed negative lab test for active COVID-19 viral presence), and it directs you to donate via an American Red Cross or local blood center nearby.

Why is so much COVID-19 patient plasma needed, if it’s not yet even proven to be effective in treatment of the virus? Mainly because there are a lot of efforts underway to determine whether it actually can help with efforts to combat the virus, including clinical trials for a number of different treatments, as well as single-patient treatment authorizations through what are known as emergency investigational new drug (eIND) one-off usage approvals from the FDA.

As with every potential treatment and vaccine in development to address COVID-19 at this stage, recovered plasma remains unproven, and it’s unlikely ongoing efforts to study its effectiveness will bear definitive proof one way or another in the near term. Still, there’s a growing need for plasma supplies to help further that work, hence the FDA’s decision to spur more donations with dedicated informational resources like this one.

The startup world is going through yet another evolution. A few years ago, VCs were focused on growth over profitability. Now, making money is just as important, if not more, than sheer growth. And we’re in the midst of a global pandemic, which has brought the economy to a crawl and forced entrepreneurs to rethink both their short and long-term priorities.

Startups want to hear from the voices they trust for guidance on how to navigate this difficult situation. That’s why we’re excited to introduce Extra Crunch Live, a virtual speaker series complete with live Q&A exclusive for Extra Crunch members. Sign up for Extra Crunch to get access to this webinar series.

If you are already an Extra Crunch subscriber, click here to grab the details to add to your calendar.

Upcoming Extra Crunch Live Events

Extra Crunch Live with Aileen Lee & Ted Wang of Cowboy Ventures

Monday, April 20 at 10:30am PT / 1:30pm ET

We’ll be chatting with Aileen Lee (former KPCB partner, founder and managing director at Cowboy.vc and coiner of the term “Unicorn”) and Ted Wang (Cowboy.vc partner, former partner at Fenwick & West, and former outside counsel to Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Square, and more) about how they’re advising their portfolio companies, if there are new and innovative ways for early-stage startups to secure capital beyond the traditional VC route, and whether startups should hunker down or lean in during these uncertain times.

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Extra Crunch Live with Fraeda & Mitch Kapor of Kapor Capital

Tuesday, April 28 at 10:00am PT / 1:00pm ET

There was a time when some said the COVID-19 pandemic was a great equalizer, but data is beginning to show its disproportionate impact on black people in America. Combine that with the ongoing racial inequities in the tech industry and the wave of layoffs hitting startups, it’s more important now than ever to ensure tech companies approach this new normal through an equitable lens. Hear from Kapor Capital Partners Freada Kapor Klein and Mitch Kapor, in conversation with TechCrunch’s Megan Rose Dickey, about how to make tough but equitable decisions.

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Extra Crunch Live with entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Mark Cuban

Thursday, April 30 at 8:00am PT / 11:00am ET

Join Mark Cuban and TechCrunch to talk about startups in the age of COVID-19 and learn how Mark is advising his investments to weather the storm. As a longtime investor in and out of the Valley, Cuban is uniquely placed to provide valuable advice for founders and investors alike.

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Extra Crunch Live with Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital

Wednesday, May 6 at 11:00am PT / 2:00pm ET

Roelof Botha is managing director at one of Silicon Valley’s most prestigious VC firms, Sequoia Capital. He has invested in companies like Instagram, Square, Tumblr, Evernote, Unity, Eventbrite, Youtube, and many more. Hear from this seasoned VC on how he’s advising his portfolio companies during the coronavirus pandemic, the opportunities he sees for entrepreneurs in the coming years, and what trends are piquing his interest right now.

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Extra Crunch Live with Hunter Walk of Homebrew

Thursday, May 7 at 10:00am PT / 1:00pm ET

Hunter Walk, founder and partner at Homebrew, has experience across a number of sectors. He was a founding member of the product and marketing team at Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life. He also spent a year at Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Now, he’s an investor, with portfolio companies including Wealthfront, Shyp, Nautilus Labs, and Arthur AI. Hear from Walk on what comes next in tech.

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Extra Crunch Live with Kirsten Green of Forerunner Ventures

Tuesday, May 12 at 11:00am PT / 2:00pm ET

Kirsten Green is one of the most respected VCs in the country, with investments in Bonobos, BirchBox, Dollar Shave Club, Glossier, Outdoor Voices, Rockets of Awesome, Hims, and Modern Fertility. There is, perhaps, no more sought after D2C investor in the world. Hear from Green on how D2C is changing amidst the coronavirus pandemic and what opportunities lie ahead for consumer brands.

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The beauty of podcasting is that anyone can do it. It’s a rare medium that’s nearly as easy to make as it is to consume. And as such, no two people do it exactly the same way. There are a wealth of hardware and software solutions open to potential podcasters, so setups run the gamut from NPR studios to USB Skype rigs (the latter of which has become a kind of default during the current pandemic).

We’ve asked some of our favorite podcast hosts and producers to highlight their workflows — the equipment and software they use to get the job done. The list so far includes:

RiYL remote podcasting edition
Family Ghosts’ Sam Dingman
I’m Listening’s Anita Flores
Broken Record’s Justin Richmond
Criminal/This Is Love’s Lauren Spohrer
Jeffrey Cranor of Welcome to Night Vale
Jesse Thorn of Bullseye
Ben Lindbergh of Effectively Wild
My own podcast, RiYL

Sarah Enni joins us this week to discuss her shift to remote interviews. Like many podcasters (myself included), the COVID-19 crisis has forced her to temporarily reexamine a longstanding in-person approach to something more acceptably socially distant. Enni is a YA author, who’s best known in the podcasting world for her show, First Draft. This month, she’s launching a spin-off miniseries titled, Track Changes: Everything You Don’t Know You Don’t Know About Publishing.

I was a legal reporter and aspiring novelist in Washington, D.C. in 2014, whose aspirations to be like Nina Totenberg led to starting a podcast: First Draft with Sarah Enni. During my time as a journalist, I’d shoved plenty of pocket-sized recorders in the faces of senators and their lawyers, so I went searching for a microphone-and-recorder in one that had better sound quality but was still portable. I landed on the Zoom H2n Handy Recorder, which I used, while set on a tripod, for the first two years of interviews with published authors. It had great audio for the price point and I loved that the Zoom was compact, which allowed me to get out into the field to conduct my interviews face-to-face. First Draft features long-form interviews with novelists and other storytellers, and the in-person connection is crucial to the honest and conversational tone of the show.

I backed everything up on an external hard drive, and edited in GarageBand while wearing Sony MDR-7506 headphones, then uploaded and published through LibSyn.

About three years ago, I decided to up my podcasting game. I hired a producer — Hayley Hershman, who works as an on-demand producer at MarketPlace with American Public Media — who helped me source new equipment. I upgraded to the Zoom H6n Handy Recorder and paired that with Shure BETA 87A Supercardioid Condenser microphones. And I bought a Timbuk2 dopp kit, which I repurposed to serve as a portable studio. I carry that in the GoRuck GR1 backpack (every other backpack tortured my shoulders and killed my back) along with my laptop and notebook. Never, ever show up to an interview without prepared questions, preferably hand-written. It matters to the guest. A lot.

I gather interviews on the Zoom H6n (code name: Beemo) and upload the audio files to AirTable, which my team uses to streamline workflow. Of all the equipment I have ever sourced in my five years of podcasting, nothing has been more of a game changer than AirTable. Once I have audio files, including VO, and editing notes uploaded to AirTable, I alert my producer, who edits the show in Hindenburg. When the final episode is prepared, she uploads it to LibSyn as a draft so I can publish it there and on our SquareSpace website. I then upload the audio to Temi, which uses AI to create a rough first draft of an episode transcript.

Up until COVID-19, I conducted every single interview (245 of them) in person. But not even a pandemic could lead me to record audio off Zoom or Skype. While booking a guest, I coach them on how to record the conversation on their end using their USB mics or the voice memo app on their phone. Then my producer syncs the tracks for a polished finished product, where hopefully listeners can engage in the blissful fantasy that the guest and I recorded the episode together, in a studio, somewhere in Hawaii.

I’m in the midst of producing a new mini-series about the book publishing industry in the U.S., called Track Changes, and the equipment and workflow are essentially the same. I conducted almost all of the interviews in-person (pre-coronavirus), I used AirTable to communicate and share assets with my producer, and all the hardware remained the same. But now we’re having many more phone calls and sharing many more Google Docs trying to script and edit. After five years of podcasting, shifting into narrative non-fiction storytelling is an incredible challenge, and one I’m grateful to have occupying my time and mind right now.

In today’s grim economic climate, companies are looking for ways to automate wherever they can. Bridgecrew, an early-stage startup that makes automated cloud security tooling aimed at engineers, announced a $14 million Series A today.

Battery Ventures led the round with participation from NFX, the company’s $4 million seed investor. Sorensen Ventures, DNX Ventures, Tectonic Ventures, and Homeward Ventures also participated. A number of individual investors also helped out. The company has raised a total of $18 million.

Bridgecrew CEO and co-founder Idan Tendle says that it is becoming easier to provision cloud resources, but that security tends to be more challenging. “We founded Bridgecrew because we saw that there was a huge bottleneck in security engineering, in DevSecOps, and how engineers were running cloud infrastructure security,” Tendle told TechCrunch.

They found that a lot issues involved misconfigurations, and while there were security solutions out there to help, they were expensive, and they weren’t geared towards the engineers who were typically being charged with fixing the security issues, he said.

The company decided to solve that problem by coming up with a solution geared specifically for the way engineers think and operate. “We do that by codifying the problem, by codifying what the engineers are doing. We took all the tasks that they needed to do to protect around remediation of their cloud environment and we built a playbook,” he explained.

The playbooks are bits of infrastructure as code that can resolve many common problems quickly. When they encounter a new problem, they build a playbook and then that becomes part of the product. He says that 90% of the issues are fairly generic like following AWS best practices or ensuring SOC-2 compliance, but the engineers are free to tweak the code if they need to.

Tendle says he is hiring and sees his product helping companies looking to reduce costs through automation. “We are planning to grow fast. The need is huge and the COVID-19 implications mean that more and more companies will be moving to cloud and trying to reduce costs, and we help them do that by reducing the barriers and bottlenecks for cloud security.”

The company was founded 14 months ago and has 100 playbooks available. It’s keeping the crew lean for now with 16 employees, but it has plans to double that by the end of the year.

The economy may be contracting as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but promising startups are still continuing to raise money to shore up their finances for whatever may lie ahead.

In the latest development, Stripe, a well-known payments unicorn, today announced that it had raised another $600 million in new capital, money that it plans to use to continue investing in product development, further global expansion, and strategic initiatives.

The company has become an active investor in a number of startups, some which are strategic partners for the company as it moves into new areas to complement its core online payments business.

It also added in its announcement that it currently has $2 billion on its balance sheet, a key number that underscores the message that the company is taking this investment not to survive but to further thrive, and that it may well choose to do so by remaining a private company, since it does not appear to have any need to go to the public markets to raise funds.

Making it easier to integrate payments into an online service has long been one of the reasons why Stripe has been on a growth tear: it arrived at a time when other solutions were still too fragmented and complicated, and its impact on the wider e-commerce market has seen a number of its competitors and other new entrants offer equally simplified products.

But its ease of use has taken on a new significance in recent times, with a huge surge of business coming online from consumers and businesses who can no longer transact in person because of the current pandemic, leading to a new plethora of use cases for Stripe and other payments companies.

“People who never dreamt of using the internet to see the doctor or buy groceries are now doing so out of necessity. And businesses that deferred moving online or had no reason to operate online have made the leap practically overnight,” said John Collison, President and Co-founder of Stripe, in a statement (his brother Patrick, the co-founder and CEO, is pictured above). “We believe now is not the time to pull back, but to invest even more heavily in Stripe’s platform.”

The figure is also important because Stripe has never been very transparent about how many customers it has or any of its financials: this is one hint of how it is doing for the public to see.

This latest funding — its largest to date by a large margin — is coming from a number of its existing investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, GV, and Sequoia. It is an extension to the company’s Series G round, which was first confirmed in September 2019 with $250 million raised. The company’s valuation is holding steady with this new investment, and it now stands at $36 billion post-money (it confirmed a $35 billion pre-money valuation seven months ago).

The payments giant has raised around $1.6 billion with this new investment, according to known investment totals.

Stripe was recently in the news when one its investors, Sequoia, put $21 million into a payments company called Finix. It’s still not entirely clear what happened, but Sequoia walked away from the Finix deal, effectively turning its check into a grant.

In the meantime, Stripe — which started life by providing an easy to use API-based payments service for startups like itself to use in their online or app-based payment services — has continued to ramp up the size of its customers alongside overall growth of its customer base. Its users today include Zoom, Caviar, Coupa, Just Eat, Keap, Lightspeed, Mattel, NBC, and Paid.

The Libra Association, the consortium created by Facebook to oversee all things Libra, has updated its white paper to make some changes. The association is abandoning its original plan to create a global stablecoin directly tied to a basket of fiat currencies and securities.

The Libra Association now plans to release several stablecoins — each of them will be backed by a fiat currency, such as USD, EUR, GBP or SGD. There will be a multi-currency Libra “coin”, but it won’t be a cryptocurrency per se — it’ll be a digital composite of those single-currency stablecoins. When you send one Libra, you’ll actually send a fraction of USD-backed, EUR-backed, GBP-backed (etc.) stablecoins.

The update confirms a previous report from The Information and represents a concession to regulators. The Libra cryptocurrency was supposed to be a brand new currency that could be easily exchanged using cryptocurrency wallets.

But many central banks feared that Libra would become a quasi-sovereign currency in some countries. For instance, in some countries with high inflation rate, such as Venezuela, Argentina, Turkey or South Africa, many people would have been willing to abandon local currency in favor of Libra. It would have been controlled by private companies that don’t necessarily care about monetary policies.

“While our vision has always been for the Libra network to complement fiat currencies, not compete with them, a key concern that was shared was the potential for the multi-currency Libra Coin (≋LBR) to interfere with monetary sovereignty and monetary policy if the network reaches significant scale and a large volume of domestic payments are made in ≋LBR,” the association writes in its update. “We are therefore augmenting the Libra network by including single-currency stablecoins in addition to ≋LBR, initially starting with some of the currencies in the proposed ≋LBR basket (e.g., LibraUSD or ≋USD, LibraEUR or ≋EUR, LibraGBP or ≋GBP, LibraSGD or ≋SGD).”

The Libra Association is using some interesting words in this quote. For instance, I wouldn’t say that it is “augmenting the Libra network” when it is reducing its ambitions.

Like USDC, every time the Libra Association mints a LibraUSD, they buy and store the equivalent in cash and cash equivalents in a bank account.

Additionally, the Libra Association will limit unregulated entities. You won’t be able to add Libra support to your app without going through a registration or licensing process in a Financial Action Task Force (FATF) member jurisdiction. Eventually, the Libra Association could allow unregulated entities with balance and transaction limits.

Finally, the Libra Association is abandoning plans to turn the Libra blockchain into a permissionless blockchain. Only members of the Libra Association will be able to run nodes. In other words, unlike popular blockchains, such as the bitcoin blockchain or the Ethereum blockchain, you won’t be able to run a node in your backyard.

At this point, it’s hard to call it a blockchain.

NASA and Planet have deemed their pilot partnership a success, and the result is that NASA will extend its contract with Planet to provide the company’s satellite imagery of Earth to all research programs funded by the agency. NASA had signed an initial contract last April with Planet, to provide Planet imagery to a team of 35 researchers working on tracking what are known as ‘Essential Climate Variables’ or ECVs.

The ECV trial showed that Planet’s imagery was useful in tracking and providing insight into a number of different Earth-based environmental events, including landslides in the Himalayan mountain range. During the study, one of the key ingredients in helping researchers detect early warning signs was the Planet satellite constellation’s high revisit rate, which means the frequency with which it photographs a specific area over time.

Planet’s data covers the entire Earth at least once per day, and includes even areas of the planet not typically included in Earth observation passes by other satellites and providers, like the Arctic. Its frequency, along with its coverage and degree of detail, all combine to make it a valuable resources to anyone conducting Earth science work, which means it’s very good news that it’s now available to hundred more scientists working on dozens more projects.

US carrier Verizon* has splashed out to buy veteran b2b videoconferencing platform, BlueJeans Network — shelling out less than $500 million on the acquisition, according to the Wall Street Journal which first reported the news.

A Verizon spokeswoman confirmed to TechCrunch that the price-tag is sub-$500M but did not provide a more exact figure. Videoconferencing platform BlueJeans has raised ~$175M since being founded around a decade ago, per Crunchbase, with US investor NEA leading a Series E round back in 2015.

In a press release announcing the deal, Verizon said it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the enterprise-grade videoconferencing and event platform in order to expand its “immersive unified communications portfolio”.

“Customers will benefit from a BlueJeans enterprise-grade video experience on Verizon’s high-performance global networks. In addition, the platform will be deeply integrated into Verizon’s 5G product roadmap, providing secure and real-time engagement solutions for high growth areas such as telemedicine, distance learning and field service work,” it wrote.

“As the way we work continues to change, it is absolutely critical for businesses and public sector customers to have access to a comprehensive suite of offerings that are enterprise ready, secure, frictionless and that integrate with existing tools,” added Tami Erwin, CEO of Verizon Business, in a supporting statement. “Collaboration and communications have become top of the agenda for businesses of all sizes and in all sectors in recent months. We are excited to combine the power of BlueJeans’ video platform with Verizon Business’ connectivity networks, platforms and solutions to meet our customers’ needs.”

The acquisition comes at a time when videoconferencing is seeing a massive uptick in usage as white collar workers around the world log on to meetings from home during the coronavirus pandemic.

Although it’s BlueJeans’ rival, Zoom, that’s been the most high profile name linked to the viral videoconferencing boom in recent weeks. The latter recently revealed that daily meeting participants on its platform jumped from a modest 10M in December to 200M in March.

However such booming growth and consumer usage has brought increased scrutiny for Zoom — leading to a spate of warnings (and even some bans), related to security and privacy concerns. And earlier this month the company said it would freeze product dev to focus on the laundry list of issues that have surfaced as users have piled in and kicked its tires, taking a little of the shine off of surging growth. 

On the sheer usage front BlueJeans is certainly small fish in comparison to Zoom — having remained b2b focused. A BlueJeans spokeswoman told us it has more than $100M ARR and over 15,000 customers at this point. (Some notable users include Facebook and Disney.)

But it’s paying users that are likely of most interest to Verizon, hence talk of telemedicine, distance learning and field service work — areas ripe for coronavirus-accelerated digitization.

Carriers generally, meanwhile, haven’t been able to translate increased usage during the pandemic into a revenue growth story — as a result of a combination of fixed costs, debt and market disruption that’s been hitting their shares during the coronavirus crisis, per Reuters.

“The combination of BlueJeans’ world class enterprise video collaboration platform and trusted brand with Verizon Business’ next generation edge computing innovation will deliver highly differentiated and compelling solutions to our joint customers,” said Quentin Gallivan, BlueJeans CEO, in a statement. “We are very excited about joining the Verizon team and we truly believe the future of business communications starts today!”

Verizon said today that said BlueJeans founders and “key management” will join the company as part of the acquisition, with BlueJeans employees set to become Verizon employees immediately following the close of the deal — which is expected in the second quarter, pending customary closing conditions.

BlueJeans co-founder Krish Ramakrishnan has a history of exits, selling a couple of his previous startups to networking giant Cisco — where he has also worked, in between spinning out his own companies.

*Disclosure: Verizon is also TechCrunch’s parent company

TikTok is introducing a new set of parental controls to its platform to users worldwide, including in the U.S. The features, collectively referred to as “Family Pairing,” will allow parents to set controls on Screen Time Management, Restricted Mode, and Direct Messages for their teen users. It will also now disable direct messaging for users under the age of 16 in all markets. A similar set of features was launched in the U.K. in February, designed with European laws and regulations in mind.

In that market, the features were called “Family Safety Mode.”

Today, is the official introduction to “Family Pairing,” but TikTok says the worldwide rollout will take place over the “coming weeks.”

To use the new controls, parents of a teenage user age 13 and up will be able to link their account to their child’s, which requires the parent to set up their own TikTok account. This will allow the parent to set controls on how long their child is able to use the TikTok app, turn on or off who the teen can direct message with, and they can opt to turn on TikTok’s “restricted” mode for the child’s account, in order to limit inappropriate content.

The latter is not a well-explained feature. But for an app of TikTok’s scale, it’s likely based in large part on users flagging inappropriate videos they come across. Parents should be aware, then, that this is not equivalent to setting parental controls on a video streaming app, like Netflix, or restricting what a child can download from the App Store on their phone. In other words, some inappropriate content or more adult material could slip through.

Both Screen Time Management and Restricted Mode are existing controls that TikTok users can set for themselves via the app’s Digital Wellbeing section. But with Family Pairing, the parent will be able to set these controls for their child, instead of relying on the teen to do it for themselves.

TikTok also already offered a number of controls on Direct Messaging before today, which allow users to restrict messages to only approved followers, restrict the audience, or disable direct messages altogether. TikTok also blocks images and videos in messages to cut down on other issues, as well.

But with Family Pairing, parents can choose to what extent teens can message privately on the platform, if at all.

And in a move that will likely enrage teens, TikTok has now decided to automatically disable Direct Messages for any registered accounts under the age of 16. (Prepare to see a lot more activity and private conversations taking place in the TikTok comments section!) This change goes live on April 30.

The changes give parents far more control over their child’s use of TikTok compared with any other social media app on the market today, outside of those designed exclusively with families and children in mind. However, the parental controls are only a subset of the controls users can opt to set for themselves. For example, users can choose to make their accounts private, turn off comments, and control who can duet with them, among other things.

But the options may relieve some parents’ stress about how addictive the TikTok app has become. Teen users are spending significant amounts of time on the short video app — so much that TikTok itself even launched its own in-app PSA that encourages users to “take a break” from their phone.

TikTok offers other resources for parents, as well, including educational safety videos and parental guides. 

It’s an interesting decision on TikTok’s part to launch screen time-limiting features and other restrictions amid a global pandemic, when teens are stuck at home with nothing much to do but watch videos, chat and play games. But with families at home together, there may be no better time than now to have a conversation about how much social media is too much.

“More than ever, families are turning to internet platforms like TikTok to stay entertained, informed, and connected. That was, of course, happening before COVID-19, but it has only accelerated since the outbreak began and social distancing brought families closer together,” writes TikTok Director of Trust & Safety, Jeff Collins, in an announcement. “The embrace of platforms like ours is providing families with joint tools to express their creativity, share their stories, and show support for their communities. At the same time, they are often learning to navigate the digital landscape together and focused on ensuring a safe experience,” he said.