Technology

Facebook has removed almost 200 accounts connected to white supremacist groups that were trying to rally supporters to attend protests over police violence against black people, the Associated Press reported. The accounts in question were linked to two hate groups Facebook had already banned, the Proud Boys and the American Guard. Demonstrations continued over the weekend across the US, spurred by the May 25th death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Authorities have charged fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin with second-degree murder in Floyd’s death, after a video showed Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck as other officers looked on. The other officers, who were also fired, have been charged with aiding and abetting murder. Facebook had been monitoring the accounts and started to ...

Apple has just been granted a patent for software that would generate “synthetic group selfies,” which as Protocol points out, could be a way to take group selfies for social media even if you’re trying to stay socially distant from your friends. According to the patent application (first discovered by Patently Apple), an Apple device user (it’s not clear whether the feature would be available on iPads, iPhones, or both) could invite others to take part in a group selfie, and the software would arrange them together in a single image. The selfie could include still photos, stored video images, or live streaming images. Users could keep the original selfie as well as the group version, and the original user and recipients of the group image could modify the selfie, for instance, putting the...

Yelp is launching a new tool to allow businesses on the platform to identify themselves as black-owned, CEO Jeremy Stoppelman announced in a blog post Thursday. Customers will be able to search the Yelp app for black-owned businesses they want to support. Over the last week, Yelp says it saw a huge increase in the searches on the app for black-owned companies across various industries. The company also said that it is donating $500,000 to the Equal Justice Initiative and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Yelp will also double its match of donations from employees who contribute money to select organizations that are either black-led or black-serving, including Black Futures Lab and Know Your Rights Camp through June. Yelp will also provide additional paid mental health days and organize ongoin...

In the days since the death of George Floyd, technology’s biggest companies and their leaders have made public statements expressing solidarity with Black communities. The communications — which, really, are press releases — condemn racism and call for unity. Some at least name George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. Some have said “Black Lives Matter” outright. More meaningfully, many companies have committed donations to causes fighting racial injustice in the millions of dollars. So some of the wealthiest businesses in the world are showing up in a moment when the national attention has turned to racial injustice. But surely, they must have shown up before? It hasn’t even been six years since the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown spurred the protests in Ferguson, Missouri...

The English Premier league is set to restart in the coming weeks, and Sky Sports is working with EA Sports’ FIFA division to create simulated chants and crowd noises designed for specific teams. The goal is to replicate “the vibrant atmosphere of Premier League clashes,” according to a press release. While some sports leagues are beginning to pick up seasons suddenly paused by the global coronavirus pandemic, safety precautions means teams play in empty stadiums. Sky Sports viewers can choose to watch the channel either with the added sound effect or without. Watching live sports without the constant background cheering is a bizarre experience. Anecdotally, I watched a recent soccer game out of the German Bundesliga league that was played in an empty stadium, and found myself distracted by...

Facebook is limiting the spread of pages and groups linked with the word “boogaloo,” an internet slang term used in some far-right extremist circles to refer to the idea of an impending second American Civil War, as first reported by Reuters. The boogaloo term has since evolved into a disjointed anti-government movement with various and at times conflicting views. Facebook says it will no longer recommend boogaloo pages and groups to users and is demoting them in search results, Facebook tells The Verge. The change was made on June 2nd. On May 1st, Facebook updated its Violence and Incitement policy to ban boogaloo and similar terms when used with images or statements depicting armed violence. On Thursday, the FBI arrested three men in Nevada who self-identified with the boogaloo movement ...

While showing up at a protest can demonstrate your opinion to the world, you may not want your face — or the faces of other protesters — to be included, especially when there is the possibility that authorities will collect and use that information (as they have for tracking movements during COVID-19 social distancing). As a result, many consider it vital to obscure the faces of people in any photos you may post on social media and other online sources. (For additional information, here’s a toolkit produced by the Authority Collective, offering information and advice on this subject.) What follows are some strategies for removing facial features from your photos. Of course, you can open up your images on a desktop or laptop using Photoshop or Preview to blur or scrub, but we’re going to as...

On May 25th, the police killed George Floyd, and in every state, protests against police brutality and anti-black racism have been ongoing ever since. For reasons that risk trivializing a serious moment in history, the brands have also decided to speak up, too, issuing statements of solidarity across social media platforms. This, for better or worse, is to be expected: we live in the age of the Brand Statement, and brands acknowledging people as more than just potential sales is better than pretending nothing is happening in the world. Video game companies, however, are uniquely bad at this. Most statements made by the makers and publishers of games are boilerplate: companies like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo decry racism, affirm the need for inclusion and equality, and often directly add...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a lengthy statement on his personal page on Friday saying he supports the Black Lives Matter movement and will begin engaging in a series of reviews of company policy. Specifically, Zuckerberg says he and company leadership will review its controversial stance around “threats of state use of force,” following President Donald Trump’s statement about shooting protesters that sparked outrage and various levels of response from both Facebook and Twitter. The post largely repeated points Zuckerberg made in an all-hands meeting earlier this week, the details of which were reported in The Verge. “We’re going to review our policies allowing discussion and threats of state use of force to see if there are any amendments we should adopt. There are two specific ...

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos issued a public pledge of support to the Black Lives Matter movement on Friday. The chief executive did so in reply to a customer email criticizing his company’s response to the death of George Floyd and ongoing protests around the country against racism and systemic police brutality. Bezos posted his reply publicly on Instagram. Right now, Amazon.com has a prominent “Black Lives Matter” banner at the top of the page that links to a blog post describing actions the company is taking to support black communities and racial justice. The customer took issue with the banner, saying “it is quite disturbing to get on the AMAZON website and see ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER.’” The customer later said that “ALL LIVES MATTER,” a common right-wing refrain used to criticize the Black Live...

Mythical buses full of bloodthirsty antifa protestors are causing panic in rural counties throughout the country — even though there’s no evidence they exist. The Associated Press has catalogued at least five separate rural counties where locals have warned of imminent attacks, although none of the rumors have been substantiated. Notably, the rumors are often tailored to a specific local region, a “hyperlocal” approach sometime used to boost the spread of misinformation on social media platforms. NBC News first reported on the recent surge of antifa-related misinformation, some of which was promoted by white nationalist groups posing as antifa accounts. But even after the rumors were debunked, they continue to spread on Facebook, often inspiring real-life confrontations and instances of vi...

Lenovo has announced a new 11-inch Chromebook 3, which is now available on the company’s website for $229. The device joins a sizable lineup of budget Chrome OS products from Lenovo, including its $279 Chromebook Duet and its $359 Flex 5. The new model supersedes the existing 14-inch Chromebook 3, which was in turn a refresh of its Chromebook S340. That model sold for $249, but it’s not currently available on Lenovo’s store. You can unfold the Chromebook 3 at a 180-degree angle. Lenovo The 11’s screen is smaller, but a few of its specs are actually upgrades from those of the 14. The display is a bit brighter (rated for 250 nits, as opposed to the 14’s 220), and storage has been bumped from 32GB to 64GB. The extra storage should be a benefit for folks who want to download a lot of Android a...