The indictment of 13 Russians for interfering with the Presidential election has intensified the pressure put on Facebook, which uncovered about three-thousand Russian-linked ads on its platforms before and after November 2016. Cheddar Senior Reporter, Alex Heath, breaks down the the latest developments.
Facebook's Vice President for ads, Rob Goldman, tweeted about Russia's disinformation effort. President Trump then cited him. Facebook did not intend for Goldman’s tweets to be quoted by Trump. They thought the tweets would only be seen by a contextually-aware audience of techies and media types who follow Goldman.
Heath believes that the tweeting from Goldman and other execs is part of a carefully orchestrated PR campaign by Facebook to make itself appear more transparent and relate-able through engaged spokespeople on Twitter.
The company, which makes a FitBit-style fertility sensor, announced it will use the fresh capital to fill gaps in the market. "Women's health and women's health research has been underfunded for the last decade," says co-founder Lea von Bidder.
Hugging Face is an A.I.-powered chatbot designed to have "meaningful" conversations with users, says the CEO and co-founder Clément Delangue, who likened a relationship with a bot to the ties one might share with a pet.
ABC is canceling its hit show 'Roseanne' after the sitcom's star Roseanne Barr made racist comments on Twitter. The company released a statement saying, "Roseanne's Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show." Disney CEO Bob Iger chimed in to voice his support for ABC's decision. Barr has apologized for her comments about former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett.
Facebook is reportedly getting ready to launch its WhatsApp Pay service in India. The company could introduce the payment service across the country as soon as next week, according to Bloomberg. WhatsApp Pay was launched in February of this year and has received rave reviews. Around 200 million people already use WhatsApp's messaging service in India.
Budweiser is introducing a new beer to its Reserve Collection. Proceeds from the new Budweiser Freedom Reserve Red Lager will go towards helping veterans. Ricardo Marques, VP of marketing at Budweiser, joins Cheddar to explain why this is an important mission for the company.
A new data privacy battle is brewing in Europe. The EU is considering stricter data privacy rules called the ePrivacy Regulation, just days after the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect.
Crowd Cow enables consumers to bid on parts of cows from independent farms and will only process orders once the entire cow is sold. "What we're doing is providing a very different experience from the entire meat industry," says co-founder and CEO Joe Heitzeberg.
A former Snap software engineer wrote an email last November criticizing the company for not being welcoming to women and people of color. Snap told Cheddar it’s making efforts to address what the engineer, Shannon Lubetich, called a “toxic” and “sexist” culture.
An Austrian privacy activist filed lawsuits against the tech giants as soon as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect at midnight, accusing the companies of failing to comply. "This is a very hard reality check for companies, not just abroad, but in the U.S.," says Andrew Rossow, internet attorney and Forbes contributor.
The iconic yellow cabs will be fitted with a tablet-based digital operating system that will help drivers with navigation and charge riders a fixed price. This will help taxis compete with other ride-hailing apps, like Uber and Lyft, says Amos Tamam, CEO of Curb, the company powering the new initiative.
Amazon is trying to ease customer concerns over privacy after one of its Echo devices recorded a couple's private conversation and sent the audio file to a contact in their phone book. The only way to win back trust is to be "totally clear" about its privacy policies, says Andrew Freedman, a senior editor at Tom's Guide.
The gaming streaming platform launched a new monetization system that will pay content creators if their work yields high levels of viewer engagement. Its internal currency, called Caffeine Gold, can be exchanged for real-world cash.
