Category: UNCATEGORIZED

Bentley Motors, the ultra luxury automaker under VW Group, will only produce plug-in hybrid and all-electric cars starting in 2026 with an aim to drop all combustion engines in the next decade.

The company said Thursday its entire lineup will be all-electric by 2030. That plan, known as Beyond 100, is already underway with the British manufacturer confirming that two plug-in hybrid models will come out next year. The company’s first all-electric vehicle will come to market in 2025.

The aim is turn a company known for its 12-cylinder combustion engine-powered grand touring machines into a leader in “sustainable luxury mobility,” according to the company. Bentley noted that it has already renovated its 80-year-old headquarters, which became the first UK factory certified carbon neutral by the Carbon Trust.

The Beyond 100 plan will touch every aspect of the company from the development of its electrified models and operations to its Tier 1 supply change and retailer network, according to Bentley Motors Chairman and CEO Adrian Hallmark.

Bentley’s shift is part of its parent company’s broader strategy to become a leading producer and seller of electric, connected cars. Volkswagen has set a target to sell about one million electric cars per year by 2025.

The plan over at Bentley expands on its previous commitments to offer a hybrid variant on every model line by 2023 as well improve its operations. All suppliers will have passed a sustainability audit, verifying their sustainability credentials at the end of the year, according to Bentley.

Bentley isn’t just shifting to electric cars. The company also aims to make itself “recession proof,” an ambitious goal that has started with a restructuring and a workforce reduction of about 800 positions, of which about 200 were filled by contractors. Bentley had been on a tear last year, but like so many other automakers was affected by government shutdowns prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Bentley said Thursday that its cost cutting measures and restructuring has put the business in a position to “achieve a positive financial performance for the full year 2020, in spite of the extenuating external circumstances.”

Vimeo has raised $150 million in new equity funding, announced in conjunction with the third quarter earnings of its parent company IAC.

In a letter to shareholders, IAC CEO Joey Levin said the company has “begun contemplating spinning Vimeo off to our shareholders.”

“Given Vimeo’s success, and investor adulation for the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) category generally, we expect Vimeo’s access to capital inside of IAC will be much more expensive than access to capital outside of IAC, and that capital will be helpful to enable Vimeo to achieve its highest ambitions,” Levin continued, adding, “We just tested Vimeo’s ability to access capital with a small private fundraise to bolster Vimeo’s balance sheet and to repay capital to IAC.”

Over the summer, Match Group (which owns a variety of dating services, including Tinder) completed its separation from IAC, with IAC’s ownership distributed to IAC shareholders.

Vimeo, meanwhile, has shifted its focus over the past couple years — instead of trying to compete with YouTube as a consumer video destination, it sells video tools to enterprises and other businesses. For example, it recently launched a free video messaging product called Vimeo Record.

The company says it has 1.5 million paying subscribers and more than 3,500 enterprise clients, including Amazon, Starbucks, Deloitte, Zendesk, Rite Aid and Siemens.

The new funding comes from Thrive Capital and GIC. According to the earnings report, in Q3, Vimeo grew revenue by 44% year-over-year, to $75.1 million. And it had its first quarter of positive EBITDA — $3.4 million.

“Our goal is to radically simplify how businesses create and share video, with tools that are far more intuitive and cost effective than they’ve been historically,” said Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud in a statement. “We’re energized to access additional capital to pursue this enormous opportunity with the full focus and scale of the Vimeo platform.”

Facebook has taken down a group that had amassed over 300,000 members and was sharing misinformation and organizing around false allegations of impropriety during the 2020 elections.

The group, called “Stop the Steal 2020” was organizing protests targeting the election officials currently counting ballots cast in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Phoenix, and Las Vegas.

“In line with the exceptional measures that we are taking during this period of heightened tension, we have removed the Group ‘Stop the Steal,’ which was creating real-world events,” said a Facebook spokesperson in a statement emailed to TechCrunch. “The group was organized around the delegitimization of the election process, and we saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the group.”

Facebook’s action was first noticed by Ryan Mac of Buzzfeed who reported the move in a tweet.

Protestors advocating for votes to be counted and for vote counting to cease are cropping up across the country as Republican party organizers and campaign officials try to derail the count of mail-in ballots and absentee votes cast in the 2020 race and Democratic supporters organize counter-protests.

While the organizers may be tapping supporters of President Trump across the country, their messaging is different depending on the state.

In Phoenix, protestors are calling for all votes to be counted, as Presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden hangs on to a slim lead in Arizona.

Meanwhile, the messaging is the opposite in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada where President Donald Trump is trying to preserve the slim margins that have him ahead or reverse the counts that had put him behind in the polls. In Detroit, for instance, Trump supporters held up signs that said “stop the steal” and “stop the cheat” according to news reports.

Conservative advocates across the Twittersphere have had their tweets amended by the company to indicate that they were sharing election misinformation.

Facebook has also added “labels” to election posts that break the rules, though they are designed to mostly point users to contextual, factual information rather than to offer explicit warnings about false claims.

In fact, as a direct response to Trump’s premature claims of victory, Facebook also rolled out an eye-catching set of messages across Facebook and Instagram reminding users that votes were still being counted.

Facebook has also instituted changes to its policies about groups that organize real-world events in the wake of 2016’s election disinformation campaign carried out by Russian agents and the recent shooting in Kenosha, Wis. in which two men were killed after a local self-declared militia group organized a response to pprotests against the killing of Kenosha resident, Jacob Blake.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

What a week from us here in the United States, where the election is still being tabulated and precisely zero people are stressed at all. But, no matter what, the wheels of Equity spin on and so Danny and Natasha and Alex and Chris got together once again to chat all things startups and venture capital.

• Up top there was breaking news aplenty, including a suit from the US government to try and block the huge Plaid-Visa deal. And, it was reported that Airbnb will drop its public S-1 filing early next week. That IPO is a go.
• Next we turned to the gaming world, riffing off of this piece digging into the venture mechanics of making and selling video games. Our hosting crew had a few differences of opinion, but were able to agree that Doom 3 was a masterpiece before moving on.
• Then it was time to talk Ant, and what the hell happened to its IPO. Luckily with Danny on deck we were in good hands. What a mess.
• Prop 22 was passed, which effectively allows Uber, Instacart, and Lyft to keep their gig workers labeled as independent contractors, instead of employees. As a result, Uber and Lyft stocks soared, while gig worker collectives said that the fight is still on.
• Natasha scooped a series of Election Day filings from venture capital firms. In the mix: Precursor Ventures Fund III, Hustle Fund II, and Insight Partner’s first Opportunity Fund.
• And finally, despite Election Day turning into an entire week, the public markets are rallying. Will we see a boom of IPOs?

And, as a special treat, we didn’t even mention Maricopa county for the entire episode. Take care all!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

What a week from us here in the United States, where the election is still being tabulated and precisely zero people are stressed at all. But, no matter what, the wheels of Equity spin on and so Danny and Natasha and Alex and Chris got together once again to chat all things startups and venture capital.

• Up top there was breaking news aplenty, including a suit from the US government to try and block the huge Plaid-Visa deal. And, it was reported that Airbnb will drop its public S-1 filing early next week. That IPO is a go.
• Next we turned to the gaming world, riffing off of this piece digging into the venture mechanics of making and selling video games. Our hosting crew had a few differences of opinion, but were able to agree that Doom 3 was a masterpiece before moving on.
• Then it was time to talk Ant, and what the hell happened to its IPO. Luckily with Danny on deck we were in good hands. What a mess.
• Prop 22 was passed, which effectively allows Uber, Instacart, and Lyft to keep their gig workers labeled as independent contractors, instead of employees. As a result, Uber and Lyft stocks soared, while gig worker collectives said that the fight is still on.
• Natasha scooped a series of Election Day filings from venture capital firms. In the mix: Precursor Ventures Fund III, Hustle Fund II, and Insight Partner’s first Opportunity Fund.
• And finally, despite Election Day turning into an entire week, the public markets are rallying. Will we see a boom of IPOs?

And, as a special treat, we didn’t even mention Maricopa county for the entire episode. Take care all!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

A series of tweets by one University of Miami student that were critical of a proctoring software company have been hidden by Twitter after the company filed a copyright takedown notice.

Erik Johnson, a student who works as a security researcher on the side, posted a lengthy tweet thread in early September about Proctorio, an Arizona-based software company that several U.S. schools — including his own — use to monitor students who are taking their exams remotely.

But six weeks later, Johnson received an email from Twitter saying three of those tweets had been removed from his account in response to a request by Proctorio filed under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Proctoring software isn’t new, but its usage has skyrocketed because of the pandemic. More students than ever are having to take exams and tests from home, and colleges and universities are relying on proctoring software to administer the tests. Students have to install their university’s choice of proctoring software, which gives the exam administrator deep access to the student’s computer, often including their webcams and microphones, to monitor their activity to spot potential cheating.

But students say that proctoring software is fraught with problems. Vice reported that students had complained that the proctoring software they had to use could not recognize darker skin tones, and others say the software requires high-speed internet, which many low-income houses don’t have.

Falling foul of any of these checks, whether known to the student or otherwise, could result in failing the test altogether.

Thousands of students at schools in Washington and Florida have already petitioned their schools to stop using proctoring software — including Proctorio — citing privacy and security risks.

Proctorio, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., says its proctoring software is privacy friendly. Students are required to install its Chrome extension before taking a test, which the company says students can remove once they’re done.

Unlike desktop software, most Chrome extensions can be easily downloaded and their source code viewed and examined. Johnson did this and tweeted his findings. Three of those tweets described under what circumstances Proctorio would “terminate” a student’s exam if it detected signs of potential cheating — such as if a student “switched networks” or if “abnormal clicking” and “eye movements” were detected. The tweets also included a link to snippets of code found in Proctorio’s Chrome extension, which Johnson posted to code-sharing site Pastebin.

Those three tweets are no longer accessible on Twitter after Proctorio filed its takedown notices. The code shared on Pastebin is also no longer accessible, nor is a copy of the page available from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which said the web address had been “excluded.”

A spokesperson for Twitter told TechCrunch: “Per our copyright policy, we respond to valid copyright complaints sent to us by a copyright owner or their authorized representatives.”

Johnson provided TechCrunch a copy of the takedown notice sent by Twitter, which identified Proctorio’s marketing director John Devoy as the person who requested the takedown on behalf of Proctorio’s chief executive Mike Olsen, who is listed as the copyright owner.

Olsen is no stranger to controversy. Earlier this year he drew ire after posting private support chat logs from a student, which he later deleted and set his Twitter account to private following the incident. Proctorio is also suing security researcher Ian Linkletter, a learning technology specialist at the University of British Columbia, after tweeting critically of the company’s software.

When reached by phone, Olsen claimed that Miami University had accepted the company’s terms and conditions on behalf of Johnson, and that Johnson allegedly violated those terms when he tweeted about the code.

Following the call, Proctorio emailed TechCrunch a statement through its crisis communications firm Edelman, claiming Johnson “violated Proctorio’s exclusive rights by copying and posting extracts from Proctorio’s software code on his Twitter account,” and in response, Proctorio filed the DMCA takedown request “to ask that the content be removed and Twitter removed it.”

“Mr. Johnson’s claim that he has the right to reproduce the code because he was able to download it is simply not true. Regardless of his ability to download the files, they remain protected under the Copyright Act. Also, had Mr. Johnson looked at the files he downloaded, he would have seen the multiple copyright notices in the header of each file that state expressly that the code is owned by Proctorio and that ‘unauthorized reproduction, display, modification, or distribution of this software, or any portion of it, may result in severe civil and criminal penalties, and will be prosecuted to the full extent permitted by law.’ His reproduction of that code violated Proctorio’s rights, which is why Proctorio asked Twitter to remove it,” said Edelman’s senior vice president Andy Lutzky, on behalf of Proctorio.

With help from the non-profit internet rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Johnson said he has now submitted a counter notice to appeal the takedown.

“This is really a textbook example of fair use,” said EFF staff attorney Cara Gagliano. “What Erik did — posting excerpts of Proctorio’s code that showed the software features he was criticizing — is no different from quoting a book in a book review. That it’s code instead of literature doesn’t make the use any less fair.”

“Using DMCA notices to take down critical fair uses like Erik’s is absolutely inappropriate and an abuse of the takedown process,” said Gagliano. “DMCA notices should be lodged only when a copyright owner has a good faith belief that the challenged material infringes their copyrighted work — which requires the copyright owner to consider fair use before hitting send.

“The application of fair use is clear cut here, and this notice never should have been sent,” she said.

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Got a tip? You can reach the author over Signal and WhatsApp at +1 646-755-8849 or by email: zack.whittaker@techcrunch.com

As social media platforms struggle to get U.S. election misinformation under control with varying degrees of success, TikTok has taken new actions to stop people from searching and browsing select hashtags associated with misinformation and conspiracies related to the U.S. election results.

The video app has redirected some hashtags — including #RiggedElection, #SharpieGate and others — where users have been publishing election misinformation. And it has taken down various videos making claims of “election fraud.”

However, based on our scans of the app and other election-related hashtags today, it’s clear that it’s still an uphill battle for TikTok in terms of getting a handle on violating content.

Because of TikTok’s size and scale, even smaller videos from unknown publishers can rack up thousands of views before they disappear.

Media Matters, for example, reported yesterday it was able to identify 11 examples of election misinformation spreading across TikTok, with more than 200,000 combined views. The videos shared conspiracies that ranged from unfounded “magic ballot” narratives to the completely untrue allegations that Arizona poll workers handed out markers to Trump voters so their votes wouldn’t count.

TikTok says all the videos Media Matters reported have since been removed except one where a user made a premature declaration of victory. That one was shadowbanned — meaning its discoverability on the platform was reduced. It also has a banner pointing to authoritative information about the election results.

These individual takedowns are a drop in the bucket compared to the number of videos that are still out there making claims of election fraud. And, so far, TikTok has only removed a small number of hashtags on this subject.

TikTok confirmed it has removed content and redirected searches for the hashtag #RiggedElection as of yesterday. Now, when you try to find videos flagged with this term in the app, you’ll get to a blank page with a notification that says the search term “may be associated with behavior or content that violates our guidelines.” The page also provides a link to TikTok’s Community Guidelines.

“Promoting a safe and positive experience is TikTok’s top priority,” the message reads.

This is the same playbook that TikTok recently used to address the spread of QAnon-related content on its platform. By redirecting searches and hashtags, it makes misinformation harder to find.

While TikTok declined to share an exhaustive list of hashtags it has taken action on during the elections, we found a few hashtags that returned either no results — like #RiggedElection and #SharpieGate — as well as those that returned only a small handful videos, or what TikTok considers “counter speech.”

The TikTok community will often create videos with counter speech or other content related to a misinformation-related hashtag. In these videos, they’ll provide factual information or will dispute the claims being made in another video. TikTok says this sort of counter speech doesn’t violate its policies. That’s why you may see videos listed under hashtags that would otherwise be associated with misinformation, as opposed to seeing the hashtag entirely silenced.

We also found some lesser-used hashtags like #RepealtheSteal and #VeritasArmy, which have been seen on Twitter, were not showing on TikTok at all. (However, upon reaching out to TikTok, the company chose to redirect these hashtags, too.)

A popular misinfo hashtag, #StoptheSteal, was also not available, but its variation, #StoptheStealing, had seven videos.

Many other hashtags were being used, too, as of the time of writing, including #VoterFraud (and its misspelling #VoterFruad), #DemsCheat, #CorruptElection, #ElectionCorruption, #StoptheStealing, #ElectionFraud (and misspelling #ElectionFruad), #CrookedJoeBiden, #CrookedDems, #Fraud (and its misspelling #Fruad), #Rigged, #Rigged2020, #MailinBallots, #CoupdEtat, #ElectionMeddling, #DemocratsAreDestroyingAmerica and #BallotHarvesting, to name a few.

While some hashtags had little content, many were filled with videos that weren’t just expressing their political views — they were making claims of election fraud. Combined, these hashtags have tens of millions of views, or even more.

For example, when we searched for the hashtag #VoterFraud (20.9 million views), we first encountered videos posted in the months leading up to Election Day that were responding to the Republican-driven claims of voter fraud associated with mail-in ballots.

But many videos under this hashtag have been published by Trump supporters this week, and are videos where the supporters are directly disputing the election results.

Among the videos we found were those reposting videos TikTok had already taken down. These included videos featuring Trump supporters’ protests against or for the counting of ballots in various states, calling them proof of election fraud.

In other videos, users opine about how Trump’s lawsuits will prove fraud took place and win him re-election. They sometimes use screenshots of website vote tallies as their “proof.”

We also saw videos using text labels overtop their video footage. The text was used to make their claims of election fraud, while the video itself may have them talking in more measured terms about their disappointment with the election results. (It’s unclear if this is a viable workaround to avoiding rule enforcement, however.)

TikTok says its list of blocked hashtags continually grows as new terms and phrases emerge and it’s able to determine how the terms are being used on its platform. It also said it block more election misinformation hashtags in the hours, days and weeks to come.

To be clear, TikTok’s decision to keep this sort of content online doesn’t make it much different from other social networks.

During election season, Facebook and Twitter have taken to labeling election misinformation from high-profile accounts (like Trump’s). Facebook even ran in-app notifications to inform users that votes are still being counted. But both platforms today still easily allow users to click through on a wide range of hashtags that promote this idea of election fraud or rigged results.

TikTok may not much be doing much better, overall, in addressing the sizable amount of content promoting election misinformation on its video network. But TikTok’s ban of top election misinformation hashtags works differently from hashtag bans on other social networks.

Once TikTok has made the decision to ban a term like “SharpieGate,” for example, the content won’t be surfaced whether you use the hashtag symbol (#) itself or not. Facebook, on the other hand, may ban the hashtag specifically, but not the term entirely. That means you can still find content about SharpieGate on its platform — even if it’s largely posts and videos from news organizations.

#SharpieGate was also among the hashtags Facebook began blocking today related to election misinformation. It also blocked #StoptheSteal and a related group.

ByteDance, the company behind the social media sensation TikTok, is in talks to raise another $2 billion before the initial public offering of a large chunk of its international businesses on the Hong Kong StockExchange, according to a Bloomberg report.

The new financing would give the Chinese tech powerhouse a valuation of $180 billion, according to people cited by Bloomberg.

Investors including ByteDance’s existing backers like Sequoia are in the running to finance the new investment, the Bloomberg report said.

Sequoia had emerged as one of the drivers behind a now-stalled deal touted by the Trump administration to have Oracle take some sort of control over the American operations of ByteDance’s most valuable international asset — TikTok.

Both Sequoia and Oracle have significant ties to President Trump through Republican mega-donors Doug Leone, a managing partner at Sequoia, and Safra Catz and Larry Ellison, Oracle’s top leadership and founder.

ByteDance’s has long planned a public offering for some of its largest Asian assets Douyin and Toutiao, which are huge drivers for the company’s revenues.

TechCrunch previously reported that ByteDance last year generated 120 billion yuan ($17.2 billion) in revenue, citing an investor with knowledge of the company’s finances. Around 67% of that revenue was derived from ads sold on its domestic apps Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese version, and popular news aggregator Toutiao. Live streaming targeted at users of Douyin and another app in the family made up about 17%. Nascent businesses including games, e-commerce and TikTok accounted for 20 billion yuan, or roughly another 17%.

The company projected its 2020 revenue at 200 billion yuan ($28.7 billion), with TikTok and other emerging businesses contributing 30 billion yuan, or 15%, according to the investor. Previous reports by Reuters and Bloomberg cited similar revenue figures.

ByteDance is already the most valuable privately held, venture-backed technology company in the world, but at least some of that value is tied up in the revenue-generating potential of the company’s TikTok assets. And it appears that any new investment (at the valuations being reported) would be an indication that investors are shrugging off previous concerns about how a TikTok spinoff might affect the company.

Much of what happens next will hinge on the presidential elections in the U.S. and various court battles that remain underway. A Biden administration could scuttle the planned deal between TikTok, Oracle and Walmart — and a timeline for a separate TikTok public offering within the U.S.

There’s also internal confusion among the TikTok deal’s participants over who will own what when the dust finally settles and a deal moves forward.

As we reported in September:

… our assumption, that Oracle is taking 12.5% in TikTok Global, and Walmart will take 7.5%. The deal terms would value TikTok at about $60 billion by some estimates.

That’s a simple story, but apparently not the full one, because now there is another wrinkle happening here.

In a new statement attributed to its executive vice president Ken Glueck, Oracle said that “Upon creation of TikTok Global, Oracle/Walmart will make their investment and the TikTok Global shares will be distributed to their owners, Americans will be the majority and ByteDance will have no ownership in TikTok Global.”

President Donald Trump has spoken out about the deal himself in places like CNBC, arguing that TikTok must be completely controlled by Americans.

The U.S. government’s trouble with TikTok stems from a few different sources. For one, users on the platform managed to troll a deeply vindictive president and turn one of his planned marquee campaign events into a farce. And more importantly to the nation, but apparently less so to the administration, the company’s ties to China could expose U.S. citizens’ data to the CCP and its users to the potential for manipulation through TikTok’s decisions on what to post or not post on the app.

Sequoia and ByteDance had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.

Facebook today began to block select hashtags which were being used to share misinformation related to the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Now, searches for the hashtags #SharpieGate is being blocked on the social network. Another election conspiracy hashtag #stopthesteal is also blocked on Facebook, with a note saying some of its content goes against the platform’s community standards. The #stopthesteal hashtag has been promoted by Donald Trump Jr. and other Trump campaign associates on Twitter.

Instead of taking users to search results for the hashtag in question, Facebook presents a page where it explains that posts with the hashtag are being “temporarily hidden.” This message also explains that “some content in those posts goes against our Community Standards,” and offers to direct users to its guidelines under a “Learn More” link.

Though TechCrunch found select election misinformation hashtags had been banned, there were still many others that would direct users to content that pushed conspiracies disputing the election results or outright calling them fraudulent.

For example, hashtags like #RiggedElection, #Rigged, #ElectionFraud, #ElectionMeddling and others still worked, and even directed users to content associated with QAnon conspiracies, at times — despite Facebook’s earlier ban on QAnon content, which extended to many associated hashtags.

Given that Facebook allowed QAnon content to spread for years, it’s notable that the company moved to block election misinformation hashtags in a matter of days. That indicates Facebook is capable of addressing viral misinformation somewhat quickly — it just has historically chosen not to do so.

As for the hashtags themselves, Sharpiegate had already been thoroughly debunked, both by news outlets and election officials. In a letter posted to Twitter, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors debunked the claims that the use of sharpies would invalidate ballots. Because the ballots are printed with offset columns, the use of sharpies is allowed and would not cause bleed-through or other issues.

The claim was first made Tuesday in a video posted to Facebook in which a woman claims poll workers were encouraging some voters to use sharpies in order to invalidate their ballots. That video is now flagged on Facebook with a “false information” label and requires users to click through to watch it.

In addition to its hashtag bans, Facebook today also removed a group, “Stop the Steal,” that had been organized to delegitimize the election process, the company told BuzzFeed reporter Ryan Mac.

President Trump is leaning heavily into a false narrative that suspicious polling place behavior and late-arriving ballots are part of a Democratic plot to thwart his reelection chances. In a speech from the White House early Wednesday morning, Trump declared premature victory, raising baseless concerns that mail-in ballots, which were expected to lean heavily Democratic, were somehow improper as they erased some of his early gains. “We were getting ready to win this election,” Trump said. “Frankly, we did win this election.”

On Twitter, many of Trump’s recent tweets promoting unfounded election conspiracies have been hidden from view and placed behind a misinformation warning. Those hidden tweets also have likes, retweets and comments restricted in order to limit their ability to spread in a viral way. On Facebook, the president’s posts alleging fraud at voting sites are not called out directly as misinformation. Instead, Facebook pairs them with informational labels reminding users that vote-by-mail ballots are trustworthy or noting that election officials follow “strict rules” around processing and counting ballots.

Facebook so far has not responded to a request for comment about its new hashtag bans, but they’re observable within the Facebook app on both the desktop and mobile app as of the time of writing.

A lot of the past decade in smart home gadgets has been figuring out just how smart we actually want our appliances to be. In a lot of cases when it comes to cooking, the old ways are best, and smart features tend to just complicate things. The new Revolution Cooking R180 High-Speed Smart Toaster ($299.95) strikes the right balance, delivering genuinely useful tech-enabled goodies, without any of the things you don’t need in a toaster – like an internet connection.

The basics

Revolution Cooking’s R180’s most immediately apparent feature is its large, prominent touchscreen display. The screen replaces your typical hardware controls, including buttons and switches, and gives you visual feedback about the toasting process when it’s underway. This is definitely part of the ‘smart’ of the R180’s Smart Toaster designation, but the company’s ‘InstaGlo’ heating technology might be better described as its primary differentiator.

In terms of basic specs, this is a two-slice toaster with slots that are wide enough to accommodate bagels and burger buns pretty easily. It has selectable modes for bagels, sliced bread, English muffins, waffles and toaster pastries (like pop-tarts). You can choose between three different heating modes, including ‘fresh,’ ‘frozen’ and ‘reheat’, and there are seven different darkness levels for browning.

There’s a standby clock display option for when the toaster isn’t in use, and the toaster can provide reminders occasionally to nudge you to remove and empty the crumb tray.

Design and performance

The industrial design of the Revolution R180 is good, without being wacky or overly futuristic. It’s basically a brushed stainless steel rectangle, with a sloped chrome front face and the large touchscreen display. The toaster unquestionably looks good sitting on a counter, however, and the slant of its front is a nice touch for ensuring prime visibility and touchscreen control access when you’re using it from a standing position. It’s also relatively compact, and won’t take up too much room if you’re concerned at all about counter real estate.

The display is big and bright, and uses capacitive touch so it’s very responsive in terms of input detection. The nice thing about the interface is that even though it’s digital, it keeps things simple – everything you need is on one screen, with a standard cog icon hiding settings that let you do neat but unnecessary things like setting the time and choosing between an analog or digital virtual clock face for the sleep screen.

Using the R180 Smart Toaster is easy – there’s no internet connection to set up or app to install, you just plug it in and it starts up, presenting you with the bread type/browning level/heating mode selection screen. Tap the image associated with what you want to toast, or scroll left and right to reach others, select from the three modes and tap the browning level that corresponds with what color you want the toasted item to mostly closely resemble (the image above updates to reflect this) and hit the ‘Start’ button and you’re off to the races.

And it really is a race: The Revolution toaster is faster than most. I was perhaps expecting even faster given the company’s marketing claims, but there’s no question that it’s speedier than your average toaster. The other big claim that Revolution makes is about toasting quality, as it promises not to dry out your bread, and provide better-tasting end products, even with tricky toasting situations like a combo dethaw and brown.

Here’s the thing: I wasn’t even really aware of these claims the first time I tried out the review unit they sent, and me and my partner both instantly noted about how anything toasted in the R180 seemed not nearly as dried out as in our existing Breville toaster. And yet, the toasted parts were crisp and golden at the same time. Surprising as it might sound, Revolution’s claims bear out – the Smart Toaster really does make better-tasting toast.

Bottom line

A $300 two-slice toaster definitely seems like an extravagance – and to be clear, it is – but premium non-smart toasters already stretch the limits of most home appliance budgets, and Revolution’s main claim to superiority is achieving a crunchy exterior while leaving the inside soft and not dried out, and it does this with aplomb. The touchscreen almost certainly adds to the cost, but it does provide a clear and easy-to-understand interface for setting desired toast goals, and it’s a pretty good-looking countertop clock when not in use. In short, Revolution’s Smart Toaster is just smart enough, and smart where it counts, for a smart appliance – but expensive enough that it’s worth taking a long, hard think about just how much you love toasted things.