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One of the hallmarks of Facebook's approach to product development is its ruthlessness, which often manifests itself as a kind of shamelessness. If good taste never dictates that Facebook stays out of a product, history shows that it is likely to be directly. There is, for example, every time the company copied Snapchat. Or, there was the development of the video phone portal, still listening, which had been delayed as a result of a privacy scandal and which had still managed to be launched during another.
Today, as federal agencies were investigating whether the tight integration of the company into its product family was anti-competitive, Facebook launched a new service in the US to bring them closer together. She called Facebook Dating, and I wrote to The edge:
Almost a year after starting to test in Colombia, Facebook Dating is now available in the United States. The product, available to users aged 18 and over, will appear in the form of a new tab in the Facebook mobile application. People who opt for Dating can create a separate profile from their main Facebook profile in one click and meet potential romantic partners among their friends – or, if that makes you feel uncomfortable, completely outside your network. Existing friends.
Facebook says it will suggest matches based on the preferences you express when you create your profile, as well as your interest centers and Facebook activity. The application, which borrows many design elements from the Hinge dating application, allows you to send a "like" and a message matching any profile encountered on the service.
The most remarkable thing about Facebook Dating from a regulatory point of view is probably the way it takes advantage of at least five pillars of society. (This does not always work because the New York Times reported today in a new scams survey on Facebook.) It uses the graph and profile of your Facebook friend to find you matches and to verify the authenticity of your account. It allows you to find romantic partners among people belonging to the same Facebook groups or participating in the same Facebook events as you. It encourages you to coordinate your plans on Messenger.
Finally, with the launch in the United States, Facebook Dating has added a close integration to Instagram. You can add a module of your recent Instagram photos to your dating profile and eventually you can also post Instagram stories.
Since we learned in January that Facebook was planning to unify its messaging products under one banner, it was clear that the company was in a race against the clock. Its mission is to dissolve all possible boundaries between WhatsApp, Instagram and the flagship application, so that if regulators try to force them to split them into separate companies, they may complain that it's simply impossible. If Facebook succeeds, there will be no real "Instagram" or "WhatsApp" – there will simply be Facebook, available in a handful of different flavors.
In any case, regulation was not the main theme of Facebook's dating coverage today. As we could expect, the theme was privacy. The company has set up a separate blog designed to address Dating's concerns about privacy, but not everyone is happy. (Brian Menegus in Gizmodo: "Oh my God, oh no, please do not do that.")
And some questions about Dating have remained unanswered. This is Brian Feldman in New York:
Facebook was categorical about the fact that a dating profile was separate from a user's main profile: friends are not posted as potential matches and you can block people preemptively. The fact that someone uses Facebook Dating is kept in silo; your Facebook life and your life on Facebook are supposedly separate. But under the surface, it seems that every part of the service is integrated with other properties of Facebook, which gives Facebook more personal data to potentially target users with ads. New tactic, same old goal.
At the time of this article's publication, Facebook had not answered a few simple "yes or no" questions. It is unclear whether Facebook will use the data collected through the dating service for ad targeting. It is also unclear whether messages exchanged between Dating users are encrypted end-to-end (although Facebook has publicly declared its intention to implement encryption on all of its email services). But even if Facebook does not collect any personal information through its dating service, the object is designed to get people to use other elements of Facebook that collect information.
Overall, I assume that the privacy concerns regarding Facebook Dating are better founded than the competition concerns. Dating apps are one of the most competitive spaces in the technology industry, and many new, popular networks are appearing each year. (In the end, they are almost all purchased by Match Group, which has among others Match.com, Tinder and OKCupid.)
But then – social networks seemed pretty competitive when Facebook also bought Instagram and WhatsApp. Facebook Dating is now available in 20 countries and can boost its own growth by promoting itself in one of the world's most popular apps, while also getting more involved with Instagram. (Dating apps like Tinder and Hinge also allow you to embed Instagram – but will that always be the case, and will Instagram stories also be available to them?)
And for the moment, it is devoid of advertising and does not require any integrated purchase to use any of its features. It's a luxury that small products just can not afford.
As a product, Facebook Dating seems to me well designed and probably very useful. (He has already produced marriages in some of the countries in which he operates, said product manager Nathan Sharp.) But that's another area of competition, another area where Facebook's many strengths could to supplant its competitors over time. If I was conducting an antitrust investigation against the company, it is a product I would like to look at very closely.
The report
Today, the news that could affect the public perception of technology.
⬆️ Trend: Facebook and Microsoft They associate with a group of academics to better detect deepfakes. (Unfortunately, the group of academics does not seem to include a woman.)
⬅️➡️ Lateral trend: Apple is making changes to the next version of iOS to prevent third-party developers from collecting certain user data. But application developers such as Signal believe that the move could break the encryption of their applications.
⬇️ Trend down: Google he is made to promote the denial of climate change in his Discover tab.
⬇️ Downward trend: "A survey of ProPublica recorded more than 60 accidents since June 2015 involving Amazon delivery contractors that resulted in serious injuries, including 10 deaths. This is Amazon's second major survey of delivery security in one week.
Governing
⭐More than half of US adults believe that law enforcement should use facial recognition responsibly. This new study seems to be giving the green light to law enforcement officials who, working with technology platforms like Ring, owned by Amazon, have already begun to build a strong surveillance network. (Aaron Smith / Pew Research Center)
A recent survey found that US law enforcement agencies used the State Department's motor vehicle records to identify Americans without their consent, including those who did not have a record. judicial. And countries like China have made facial recognition technology a cornerstone of their strategies to control the behaviors and activities of their audiences.
Despite these well-known examples of fiction and reality, a new Pew Research Center survey reveals that the majority of Americans (56%) trust law enforcement agencies to They use these technologies responsibly. A similar proportion of the public (59%) said that it was acceptable for law enforcement to use facial recognition tools to assess security threats in public spaces.
The owner of 8chan appeared before the Congress today to answer questions about the prevalence of hatred on the site and its popularity with white supremacists who commit acts of terrorism. (Makena Kelly / The edge)
8chan, which has been disconnected, could return as early as next week. (Makena Kelly / The edge)
What could be wrong with the 2020 elections in terms of technology platforms and our democracy? Alex Stamos has a scary fictional fictional speculation on the subject in lawfare.
Industry
⭐ YouTubers says this week's settlement with the Federal Trade Commission could cut their business by half. Julia Alexander reports for The edge:
Creators realize how difficult it could be. Forrest, a YouTuber game with over 750,000 subscribers who goes through "KreekCraft," said The Verge that the changes scare him. When reading Wojcicki's blog post, he felt even worse when he was trying to understand, like other YouTube creators, if his content would be affected by the new system. Would Let's Play series, tutorials or even gameplay compilations be considered for kids? What is the difference between family-friendly and child-friendly content? No one in the community knows the answers, but everyone expects a tough battle on YouTube with the new system. A spokesman for YouTube pointed to The Verge on Wojcicki's blog when he was invited to comment.
"It's a bit like eliminating video game content," Forrest told The Verge. "The three most popular games on YouTube right now are Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox, which are generally non-violent and child-centered games, especially Roblox. Now, we can not create videos on more mature games because they will be demonetized, but if we make videos on games that are child-friendly, they will be synonymous. What are we doing? "
Meanwhile, there are doubts that Youtube AI systems will be able to correctly identify channels that target children. (Gerrit De Vynck and Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg)
Somewhere else, Youtube try to woo fashion brands to make videos. (Katherine Rosman / New York Times)
The SIM card exchange, the technique that allows hackers to take control of Twitter The phone number of the CEO, Jack Dorsey, is on the rise. (Nathaniel Popper / New York Times)
"I've been looking at the criminal underground for a long time and the SIM card exchanges bother me more than anything I've seen," said Allison Nixon, director of research at Flashpoint security firm. "It does not require any skill, and there is literally nothing the average person can do to stop it."
Instagram Influencers find that they are getting less commitment and slower growth of followers in countries where the same number has been removed. (Paige Laskin / Internal business)
Facebook Reduced the distribution of Reductress, a popular feminist satire site, for posting clickbait. In reality, its links are the satires clickbait, but good luck teaching it to a machine! (Adi Robertson / The edge)
Goodreads, the Amazonsocial network, is underdeveloped and decaying, says this piece. (Angela Lashbrook / OneZero)
Way seems to work on a feature allowing people to save items from anywhere on the Web in Medium for any reason. (Jane Manchun Wong)
A Fortnite streamer seemed to say a racial insult at a live show for the third time, but it seems that Tic will not impose a "three strikes" policy against him.
And finally …
Memes spill the white claw in the throat!
Jonah Engel Bromwich tells us what can be the same of summer: a spiked seltzer that defines the category and who calls himself White Claw:
The white claw is omnipresent, for example, in the memes of "starter pack", images showing a collection of objects typical of a particular demographic group, such as high school student who drinks, commuter moving to Chicago or "one who resents his own humanity and no longer feels anything real".
The white claw is often paired with Juul in the cultural imagination, possibly from a popular tweet called the seltzer "Juul Water".
Great. Make it a double.
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