We dismantle Facebook’s memo defending its “Research”

Facebook published an internal memo today trying to minimize the morale damage of TechCrunch’s investigation that revealed it’d been paying people to suck in all their phone data. Attained by Business Insider’s Rob Price, the memo from Facebook’s VP of production engineering and security Pedro Canahuati gives us more detail about exactly what data Facebook was trying to collect from teens and adults in the US and India. But it also tries to claim the program wasn’t secret, wasn’t spying, and that Facebook doesn’t see it as a violation of Apple’s policy against using its Enterprise Certificate system to distribute apps to non-employees — despite Apple punishing it for the violation.

For reference, Facebook was recruiting users age 13-35 to install a Research app, VPN, and give it root network access so it could analyze all their traffic. It’s pretty sketchy to be buying people’s privacy, and despite being shut down on iOS, it’s still running on Android.

Here we lay out the memo with section by section responses to Facebook’s claims challenging TechCrunch’s reporting. Our responses are in bold and we’ve added images.

Memo from Facebook VP Pedro Canahuati

APPLE ENTERPRISE CERTS REINSTATED

Early this morning, we received agreement from Apple to issue a new enterprise certificate; this has allowed us to produce new builds of our public and enterprise apps for use by employees and contractors. Because we have a few dozen apps to rebuild, we’re initially focusing on the most critical ones, prioritized by usage and importance: Facebook, Messenger, Workplace, Work Chat, Instagram, and Mobile Home.

New builds of these apps will soon be available and we’ll email all iOS users for detailed instructions on how to reinstall. We’ll also post to iOS FYI with full details.

Meanwhile, we’re expecting a follow-up article from the New York Times later today, so I wanted to share a bit more information and background on the situation.

What happened?

On Tuesday TechCrunch reported on our Facebook Research program. This is a market research program that helps us understand consumer behavior and trends to build better mobile products.

TechCrunch implied we hid the fact that this is by Facebook – we don’t. Participants have to download an app called Facebook Research App to be involved in the stud. They also characterized this as “spying,” which we don’t agree with. People participated in this program with full knowledge that Facebook was sponsoring this research, and were paid for it. They could opt-out at any time. As we built this program, we specifically wanted to make sure we were as transparent as possible about what we were doing, what information we were gathering, and what it was for — see the screenshots below.

We used an app that we built ourselves, which wasn’t distributed via the App Store, to do this work. Instead it was side-loaded via our enterprise certificate. Apple has indicated that this broke their Terms of Service so disabled our enterprise certificates which allow us to install our own apps on devices outside of the official app store for internal dogfooding.

Author’s response: To start, “build better products” is a vague way of saying determining what’s popular and buying or building it. Facebook has used competitive analysis gathered by its similar Onavo Protect app and Facebook Research app for years to figure out what apps were gaining momentum and either bring them in or box them out. Onavo’s data is how Facebook knew WhatsApp was sending twice as many messages as Messenger, and it should invest $19 billion to acquire it.

Facebook claims it didn’t hide the program, but it was never formally announced like every other Facebook product. There were no Facebook Help pages, blog posts, or support info from the company. It used intermediaries Applause (which owns uTest) and CentreCode (which owns Betabound) to run the program under names like Project Atlas and Project Kodiak. Users only found out Facebook was involved once they started the sign-up process and signed a non-disclosure agreement prohibiting them from discussing it publicly.

TechCrunch has reviewed communications indicating Facebook would threaten legal action if a user spoke publicly about being part of the Research program. While the program had run since 2016, it had never been reported on. We believe that these facts combined justify characterizing the program as “secret”

The Facebook Research program was called Project Atlas until you signed up

How does this program work?

We partner with a couple of market research companies (Applause and CentreCode) to source and onboard candidates based in India and USA for this research project. Once people are onboarded through a generic registration page, they are informed that this research will be for Facebook and can decline to participate or opt out at any point. We rely on a 3rd party vendor for a number of reasons, including their ability to target a Diverse and representative pool of participants. They use a generic initial Registration Page to avoid bias in the people who choose to participate.

After generic onboarding people are asked to download an app called the ‘Facebook Research App,’ which takes them through a consent flow that requires people to check boxes to confirm they understand what information will be collected. As mentioned above, we worked hard to make this as explicit and clear as possible.

This is part of a broader set of research programs we conduct. Asking users to allow us to collect data on their device usage is a highly efficient way of getting industry data from closed ecosystems, such as iOS and Android. We believe this is a valid method of market research.

Author’s response: Facebook claims it wasn’t “spying”, yet it never fully laid out the specific kinds of information it would collect. In some cases, descriptions of the app’s data collection power were included in merely a footnote. The program did not specify specific data types gathered, only saying it would scoop up “which apps are on your phone, how and when you use them” and “information about your internet browsing activity”

The parental consent form from Facebook and Applause lists none of the specific types of data collected or the extent of Facebook’s access. Under “Risks/Benefits”, the form states “There are no known risks associated with this project however you acknowledge that the inherent nature of the project involves the tracking of personal information via your child’s use of Apps. You will be compensated by Applause for your child’s participation.” It gives parents no information about what data their kids are giving up.

Facebook claims it uses third-parties to target a diverse pool of participants. Yet Facebook conducts other user feedback and research programs on its own without the need for intermediaries that obscure its identity, and only ran the program in two countries. It claims to use a generic signup page to avoid biasing who will choose to participate, yet the cash incentive and technical process of installing the root certificate also bias who will participate, and the intermediaries conveniently prevent Facebook from being publicly associated with the program at first glance. Meanwhile, other clients of the Betabound testing platform like Amazon, Norton, and SanDisk reveal their names immediately before users sign up.

Facebook’s ads recruiting teens for the program didn’t disclose its involvement

Did we intentionally hide our identity as Facebook?

No — The Facebook brand is very prominent throughout the download and installation process, before any data is collected. Also, the app name of the device appears as “Facebook Research” — see attached screenshots. We use third parties to source participants in the research study, to avoid bias in the people who choose to participate. But as soon as they register, they become aware this is research for Facebook

Author’s response: Facebook here admits that users did not know Facebook was involved before they registered.

What data do we collect? Do we read people’s private messages?

No, we don’t read private messages. We collect data to understand how people use apps, but this market research was not designed to look at what they share or see. We’re interested in information such as watch time, video duration, and message length, not that actual content of videos, messages, stories or photos. The app specifically ignores information shared via financial or health apps.

Author’s response: We never reported that Facebook was reading people’s private messages, but that it had the ability to collect them. Facebook here admits that the program was “not designed to look at what they share or see”, but stops far short of saying that data wasn’t collected. Fascinatingly, Facebook reveals it was that it was closely monitoring how much time people spent on different media types.

Facebook Research abused the Enterprise Certificate system meant for employee-only apps

Did we break Apple’s terms of service?

Apple’s view is that we violated their terms by sideloading this app, and they decide the rules for their platform, We’ve worked with Apple to address any issues; as a result, our internal apps are back up and running. Our relationship with Apple is really important — many of us use Apple products at work every day, and we rely on iOS for many of our employee apps, so we wouldn’t put that relationship at any risk intentionally. Mark and others will be available to talk about this further at Q&A later today.

Author’s response: TechCrunch reported that Apple’s policy plainly states that the Enterprise Certificate program requires companies to “Distribute Provisioning Profiles only to Your Employees and only in conjunction with Your Internal Use Applications for the purpose of developing and testing” and that “You may not use, distribute or otherwise make Your Internal Use Applications available to Your Customers”. Apple took a firm stance in its statement that Facebook did violate the program’s policies, stating “Facebook has been using their membership to distribute a data-collecting app to consumers, which is a clear breach of their agreement with Apple.”

Given Facebook distributed the Research apps to teenagers that never signed tax forms or formal employment agreements, they were obviously not employees or contractors, and most likely use some Facebook-owned service that qualifies them as customers. Also, I’m pretty sure you can’t pay employees in gift cards.

from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2S2wIEU

Apple reactivates Facebook’s employee apps after punishment for Research spying

After TechCrunch caught Facebook violating Apple’s employee-only app distribution policy to pay people for all their phone data, Apple invalidated the social network’s Enterprise Certificate as punishment. That deactivated not only this Facebook Research app VPN, but also all of Facebook’s internal iOS apps for workplace collaboration, beta testing and even getting the company lunch or bus schedule. That threw Facebook’s offices into chaos yesterday morning. Now after nearly two work days, Apple has ended Facebook’s time-out and restored its Enterprise Certification. That means employees can once again access all their office tools, pre-launch test versions of Facebook and Instagram… and the lunch menu.

A Facebook spokesperson issued this statement to TechCrunch: “We have had our Enterprise Certification, which enables our internal employee applications, restored. We are in the process of getting our internal apps up and running. To be clear, this didn’t have an impact on our consumer-facing services.”

Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on him

Meanwhile, TechCrunch’s follow-up report found that Google was also violating the Enterprise Certificate program with its own “market research” VPN app called Screenwise Meter that paid people to snoop on their phone activity. After we informed Google and Apple yesterday, Google quickly apologized and took down the app. But apparently in service of consistency, this morning Apple invalidated Google’s Enterprise Certificate too, breaking its employee-only iOS apps.

Google’s internal apps are still broken. Unlike Facebook that has tons of employees on iOS, Google at least employs plenty of users of its own Android platform, so the disruption may have caused fewer problems in Mountain View than Menlo park. “We’re working with Apple to fix a temporary disruption to some of our corporate iOS apps, which we expect will be resolved soon,” said a Google spokesperson. A spokesperson for Apple said: “We are working together with Google to help them reinstate their enterprise certificates very quickly.”

TechCrunch’s investigation found that the Facebook Research app not only installed an Enterprise Certificate on users’ phones and a VPN that could collect their data, but also demanded root network access that allows Facebook to man-in-the-middle their traffic and even deencrypt secure transmissions. It paid users age 13 to 35 $10 to $20 per month to run the app so it could collect competitive intelligence on who to buy or copy. The Facebook Research app contained numerous code references to Onavo Protect, the app Apple banned and pushed Facebook to remove last August, yet Facebook kept on operating the Research data collection program.

When we first contacted Facebook, it claimed the Research app and its Enterprise Certificate distribution that sidestepped Apple’s oversight was in line with Apple’s policy. Seven hours later, Facebook announced it would shut down the Research app on iOS (though it’s still running on Android, which has fewer rules). Facebook also claimed that “there was nothing ‘secret’ about this,” challenging the characterization of our reporting. However, TechCrunch has since reviewed communications proving that the Facebook Research program threatened legal action if its users spoke publicly about the app. That sounds pretty “secret” to us.

Then we learned yesterday morning that Facebook hadn’t voluntarily pulled the app, as Apple had actually already invalidated Facebook’s Enterprise Certificate, thereby breaking the Research app and the social network’s employee tools. Apple provided this brutal statement, which it in turn applied to Google today:

We designed our Enterprise Developer Program solely for the internal distribution of apps within an organization. Facebook has been using their membership to distribute a data-collecting app to consumers, which is a clear breach of their agreement with Apple. Any developer using their enterprise certificates to distribute apps to consumers will have their certificates revoked, which is what we did in this case to protect our users and their data.

Apple is being likened to a vigilante privacy regulator overseeing Facebook and Google by The Verge’s Casey Newton and The New York Times’ Kevin Roose, perhaps with too much power, given they’re all competitors. But in this case, both Facebook and Google blatantly violated Apple’s policies to collect the maximum amount of data about iOS users, including teenagers. That means Apple was fully within its right to shut down their market research apps. Breaking their employee apps too could be seen as just collateral damage since they all use the same Enterprise Certification, or as additional punishment for violating the rules. This only becomes a real problem if Apple steps beyond the boundaries of its policies. But now, all eyes are on how it enforces its rules, whether to benefit its users or beat up on its rivals.

from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2DMjaoh

Apple has blocked Google from running internal iOS apps after certificate misuse

Apple has blocked Google from distributing its internal-only iOS apps on its corporate network after a TechCrunch investigation found the search giant abusing the certificates.

“We’re working with Apple to fix a temporary disruption to some of our corporate iOS apps, which we expect will be resolved soon,” said a Google spokesperson. A spokesperson for Apple said: “We are working together with Google to help them reinstate their enterprise certificates very quickly.”

TechCrunch reported Wednesday that Google was using an Apple-issued certificate that allows the company to create and build internal apps for its staff for one of its consumer-facing apps, called Screenwise Meter, in violation of Apple’s rules. The app was designed to collect an extensive amount of data from a person’s iPhone for research, but using the special certificate allowed the company to allow users to bypass Apple’s App Store. Google later apologized, and said that the app “should not have operated under Apple’s developer enterprise program — this was a mistake.”

It followed in the footsteps of Facebook, which we first reported earlier this week that it was also abusing its internal-only certificates for a research app — which the company used to pay teenagers to vacuum up their phone’s web activity.

It’s not immediately clear how damaging this will be for Google. Not only does it mean its Screenwise Meter app won’t work for iPhones, but any other app that the search giant relies on the certificate for.

According to The Verge, many internal Google apps have also stopped working. That includes early and pre-release versions of its consumer-facing apps, like Google Maps, Hangouts, Gmail and other employee-only apps, such as its transportation apps, are no longer functioning.

Facebook faced a similar rebuke after Apple stepped in. We reported that after Apple’s ban was handed down, many of Facebook’s pre-launch, test-only versions of Facebook and Instagram stopped working, as well as other employee-only apps for coordinating office collaboration, travel, and seeing the company’s daily lunch schedule. Neither block affects apps that consumers download from Apple’s App Store.

Facebook has over 35,000 employees. Google has more than 94,000 employees.

It’s not known when — or if — Apple will issue Google or Facebook with new internal-only certificates, but they will almost certainly have newer, stricter rules attached.

Google will stop peddling a data collector through Apple’s back door

from iPhone – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2Wwo6VE

Apple has banned Google from running internal iOS apps after certificate misuse

Apple has blocked Google from distributing its internal-only iOS apps on its corporate network after a TechCrunch investigation found the search giant abusing the certificates.

“We’re working with Apple to fix a temporary disruption to some of our corporate iOS apps, which we expect will be resolved soon,” said a Google spokesperson.

Apple did not immediately comment on the ban.

TechCrunch reported Wednesday that Google was using an Apple-issued certificate that allows the company to create and build internal apps for its staff for one of its consumer-facing apps, called Screenwise Meter, in violation of Apple’s rules. The app was designed to collect an extensive amount of data from a person’s iPhone for research, but using the special certificate allowed the company to allow users to bypass Apple’s App Store. Google later apologized, and said that the app “should not have operated under Apple’s developer enterprise program — this was a mistake.”

It followed in the footsteps of Facebook, which we first reported earlier this week that it was also abusing its internal-only certificates for a research app — which the company used to pay teenagers to vacuum up their phone’s web activity.

It’s not immediately clear how damaging this will be for Google. Not only does it mean its Screenwise Meter app won’t work for iPhones, but any other app that the search giant relies on the certificate for.

According to The Verge, many internal Google apps have also stopped working. That includes early and pre-release versions of its consumer-facing apps, like Google Maps, Hangouts, Gmail and other employee-only apps, such as its transportation apps, are no longer functioning.

Facebook faced a similar rebuke after Apple stepped in. We reported that after Apple’s ban was handed down, many of Facebook’s pre-launch, test-only versions of Facebook and Instagram stopped working, as well as other employee-only apps for coordinating office collaboration, travel, and seeing the company’s daily lunch schedule. Neither ban affects apps that consumers download from Apple’s App Store.

Facebook has over 35,000 employees. Google has more than 94,000 employees.

It’s not known when — or if — Apple will issue Google or Facebook with new internal-only certificates, but they will almost certainly have newer, stricter rules attached.

Google will stop peddling a data collector through Apple’s back door

from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2Wwo6VE

Digital influencers and the dollars that follow them

Sunny Dhillon Contributor

Sunny Dhillon is a partner at Signia Venture Partners.

More posts by this contributor

• Security tokens will be coming soon to an exchange near you
• Amazon’s next conquest will be apparel

Animated characters are as old as human storytelling itself, dating back thousands of years to cave drawings that depict animals in motion. It was really in the last century, however—a period bookended by the first animated short film in 1908 and Pixar’s success with computer animation with Toy Story from 1995 onwards—that animation leapt forward. Fundamentally, this period of great innovation sought to make it easier to create an animated story for an audience to passively consume in a curated medium, such as a feature-length film.

Our current century could be set for even greater advances in the art and science of bringing characters to life. Digital influencers—virtual or animated humans that live natively on social media—will be central to that undertaking. Digital influencers don’t merely represent the penetration of cartoon characters into yet another medium, much as they sprang from newspaper strips to TV and the multiplex. Rather, digital humans on social media represent the first instance in which fictional entities act in the same plane of communication as you and I—regular people—do. Imagine if stories about Mickey Mouse were told over a telephone or in personalized letters to fans. That’s the kind of jump we’re talking about.

Social media is a new storytelling medium, much as film was a century ago. As with film then, we have yet to transmit virtual characters to this new medium in a sticky way.

Which isn’t to say that there aren’t digital characters living their lives on social channels right now. The pioneers have arrived: Lil’ Miquela, Astro, Bermuda, and Shudu are prominent examples. But they have are still only notable for their novelty, not yet their ubiquity. They represent the output of old animation techniques applied to a new medium. This Techcrunch article did a great job describing the current digital influencer landscape.

More investors are betting on virtual influencers like Lil Miquela

So why haven’t animated characters taken off on social media platforms?  It’s largely an issue of scale—it’s expensive and time-consuming to create animated characters and to depict their adventures.  One 2017 estimate stated that a 60-90 second animation took about 6 weeks.  An episode of animated TV takes between 1–3 months to produce, typically with large teams in South Korea doing much of the animation legwork. That pace simply doesn’t work in a medium that calls for new original content multiple times a day.

Yet the technical piece of the puzzle is falling into place, which is primarily what I want to talk about today. Traditionally, virtual characters were created by a team of experts—not scalable—in the following way:

• Create a 3D model
• Texture the model and add additional materials
• Rig the 3D model skeleton
• Animate the 3D model
• Introduce character into desired scene

 

Today, there are generally three different types of virtual avatar:  realistic high-resolution CGI avatars, stylized CGI avatars, and manipulated video avatars. Each has its strengths and pitfalls, and the fast-approaching world of scaled digital influencers will likely incorporate aspects of all three.

The digital influencers mentioned above are all high-resolution CGI avatars. It’s unsurprising that this tech has breathed life into the most prominent digital influencers so far—this type of avatar offers the most creative latitude and photorealism. You can create an original character and have her carry out varied activities.

The process for their creation borrows most from the old-school CGI pipeline described above, though accelerated through the use of tools like Daz3D for animation, Moka Studio for rigging, and Rokoko for motion capture. It’s old wine in new bottles. Naturally, it shares the same bottlenecks as the old-school CGI pipeline: creating characters in this way consumes a lot of time and expertise.

Though researchers like Ari Shapiro at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies are currently working on ways to automate the creation of high-resolution CGI avatars, that bottleneck remains for obstacle for digital influencers entering the mainstream.

Stylized CGI avatars, on the other hand, have entered the mainstream. If you have an iPhone or use Snapchat, chances are you have one. Apple, Samsung, Pinscreen, Loom.ai, Embody Digital, Genies, and Expressive.ai are just some of the companies playing in this space. These avatars, while likely to spread ubiquitously a la Bitmoji before them, are limited in scope.

While they extend the ability to create an animated character to anyone who uses an associated app, that creation and personalization is circumscribed: the avatar’s range is limited for the purposes of what we’re discussing in this article. It’s not so much a technology for creating new digital humans as it is a tool for injecting a visual shorthand for someone into the digital world. You’ll use it to embellish your Snapchat game, but storytellers will be unlikely to use these avatars to create a spiritual successor to Mickey Mouse and Buzz Lightyear (though they will be a big advertising / brand partnership opportunity nonetheless).

Video manipulation—you probably know it as deepfakes—is another piece of tech that is speeding virtual or fictional characters into the mainstream. As the name implies, however, it’s more about warping reality to create something new. Anyone who has seen Nicolas Cage’s striking features dropped onto Amy Adams’ body in a Superman film will understand what I’m talking about.

Open source packages like this one allow almost anyone to create a deepfake (with some technical knowhow—your grandma probably hasn’t replaced her time-honored Bingo sessions with some casual deepfaking). It’s principally used by hobbyists, though recently we’ve seen startups like Synthesia crop up with business use cases. You can use deepfake tech for mimicry, but we haven’t yet seen it used for creating original characters. It shares some of the democratizing aspects of stylized CGI avatars, and there are likely many creative applications for the tech that simply haven’t been realized yet.

While none of these technology stacks on their own currently enable digital humans at scale, when combined they may make up the wardrobe that takes us into Narnia. Video manipulation, for example, could be used to scale realistic high-res characters like Lil’ Miquela through accelerating the creation of new stories and tableaux for her to inhabit. Nearly all of the most famous animated characters have been stylized, and I wouldn’t bet against social media’s Snow White being stylized too. What is clear is that the technology to create digital influencers at scale is nearing a tipping point. When we hit that tipping point, these creations will transform entertainment and storytelling.

from iPhone – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2HKGyq7

Digital Influencers and the dollars that follow them

Sunny Dhillon Contributor

Sunny Dhillon is a partner at Signia Venture Partners.

More posts by this contributor

• Security tokens will be coming soon to an exchange near you
• The rise of experiential commerce

Animated characters are as old as human storytelling itself, dating back thousands of years to cave drawings that depict animals in motion. It was really in the last century, however—a period bookended by the first animated short film in 1908 and Pixar’s success with computer animation with Toy Story from 1995 onwards—that animation leapt forward. Fundamentally, this period of great innovation sought to make it easier to create an animated story for an audience to passively consume in a curated medium, such as a feature-length film.

Our current century could be set for even greater advances in the art and science of bringing characters to life. Digital influencers—virtual or animated humans that live natively on social media—will be central to that undertaking. Digital influencers don’t merely represent the penetration of cartoon characters into yet another medium, much as they sprang from newspaper strips to TV and the multiplex. Rather, digital humans on social media represent the first instance in which fictional entities act in the same plane of communication as you and I—regular people—do. Imagine if stories about Mickey Mouse were told over a telephone or in personalized letters to fans. That’s the kind of jump we’re talking about.

Social media is a new storytelling medium, much as film was a century ago. As with film then, we have yet to transmit virtual characters to this new medium in a sticky way.

Which isn’t to say that there aren’t digital characters living their lives on social channels right now. The pioneers have arrived: Lil’ Miquela, Astro, Bermuda, and Shudu are prominent examples. But they have are still only notable for their novelty, not yet their ubiquity. They represent the output of old animation techniques applied to a new medium. This Techcrunch article did a great job describing the current digital influencer landscape.

More investors are betting on virtual influencers like Lil Miquela

So why haven’t animated characters taken off on social media platforms?  It’s largely an issue of scale—it’s expensive and time-consuming to create animated characters and to depict their adventures.  One 2017 estimate stated that a 60-90 second animation took about 6 weeks.  An episode of animated TV takes between 1–3 months to produce, typically with large teams in South Korea doing much of the animation legwork. That pace simply doesn’t work in a medium that calls for new original content multiple times a day.

Yet the technical piece of the puzzle is falling into place, which is primarily what I want to talk about today. Traditionally, virtual characters were created by a team of experts—not scalable—in the following way:

• Create a 3D model
• Texture the model and add additional materials
• Rig the 3D model skeleton
• Animate the 3D model
• Introduce character into desired scene

 

Today, there are generally three different types of virtual avatar:  realistic high-resolution CGI avatars, stylized CGI avatars, and manipulated video avatars. Each has its strengths and pitfalls, and the fast-approaching world of scaled digital influencers will likely incorporate aspects of all three.

The digital influencers mentioned above are all high-resolution CGI avatars. It’s unsurprising that this tech has breathed life into the most prominent digital influencers so far—this type of avatar offers the most creative latitude and photorealism. You can create an original character and have her carry out varied activities.

The process for their creation borrows most from the old-school CGI pipeline described above, though accelerated through the use of tools like Daz3D for animation, Moka Studio for rigging, and Rokoko for motion capture. It’s old wine in new bottles. Naturally, it shares the same bottlenecks as the old-school CGI pipeline: creating characters in this way consumes a lot of time and expertise.

Though researchers like Ari Shapiro at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies are currently working on ways to automate the creation of high-resolution CGI avatars, that bottleneck remains for obstacle for digital influencers entering the mainstream.

Stylized CGI avatars, on the other hand, have entered the mainstream. If you have an iPhone or use Snapchat, chances are you have one. Apple, Samsung, Pinscreen, Loom.ai, Embody Digital, Genies, and Expressive.ai are just some of the companies playing in this space. These avatars, while likely to spread ubiquitously a la Bitmoji before them, are limited in scope.

While they extend the ability to create an animated character to anyone who uses an associated app, that creation and personalization is circumscribed: the avatar’s range is limited for the purposes of what we’re discussing in this article. It’s not so much a technology for creating new digital humans as it is a tool for injecting a visual shorthand for someone into the digital world. You’ll use it to embellish your Snapchat game, but storytellers will be unlikely to use these avatars to create a spiritual successor to Mickey Mouse and Buzz Lightyear (though they will be a big advertising / brand partnership opportunity nonetheless).

Video manipulation—you probably know it as deepfakes—is another piece of tech that is speeding virtual or fictional characters into the mainstream. As the name implies, however, it’s more about warping reality to create something new. Anyone who has seen Nicolas Cage’s striking features dropped onto Amy Adams’ body in a Superman film will understand what I’m talking about.

Open source packages like this one allow almost anyone to create a deepfake (with some technical knowhow—your grandma probably hasn’t replaced her time-honored Bingo sessions with some casual deepfaking). It’s principally used by hobbyists, though recently we’ve seen startups like Synthesia crop up with business use cases. You can use deepfake tech for mimicry, but we haven’t yet seen it used for creating original characters. It shares some of the democratizing aspects of stylized CGI avatars, and there are likely many creative applications for the tech that simply haven’t been realized yet.

While none of these technology stacks on their own currently enable digital humans at scale, when combined they may make up the wardrobe that takes us into Narnia. Video manipulation, for example, could be used to scale realistic high-res characters like Lil’ Miquela through accelerating the creation of new stories and tableaux for her to inhabit. Nearly all of the most famous animated characters have been stylized, and I wouldn’t bet against social media’s Snow White being stylized too. What is clear is that the technology to create digital influencers at scale is nearing a tipping point. When we hit that tipping point, these creations will transform entertainment and storytelling.

from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2HKGyq7

Poor smartphones sales drag LG to first quarterly loss in 2 years

We’ve written extensively about LG’s struggling mobile business, which has suffered at the hands of aggressive Chinese Android makers, and now that unit has dragged its parent company into posting its first quarterly loss for two years.

The Korean electronics giant is generally in good health — it posted a $2.4 billion profit for 2018 — but its smartphone business’s failings saw it post a loss in Q4 2018, its first quarterly negative since Q4 2016.

Overall, the company posted a KRW 75.7 billion ($67.1 million) operating loss as revenue slid seven percent year-on-year to KRW 15.77 trillion ($13.99 billion). LG said the change was “primarily due to lower sales of mobile products.”

We’ve known for some time that LG’s mobile business is struggling — the division got another new head last November — but things went from bad to worse in Q4. LG Mobile saw revenue fall by 42 percent to reach KRW 1.71 trillion, $1.51 billion. The operating loss for the period grew to KRW 322.3 billion, or $289.8 million, from KRW 216.3 billion, $194 million, one year previous.

Over the full year, LG Mobile posted a $700 million loss (KRW 790.1 billion) but the company claimed things are improving thanks to “better material cost controls and overhead efficiencies based on the company’s platform modularization strategy.”

LG used CES to showcase a range of home entertainment products — that division is doing far better than mobile, with a record annual profit of $1.35 billion in 2018 — so we’ll have to wait until Mobile World Congress in February to see exactly what LG has in mind. Already, though, we have a suggestion and it isn’t exactly set-the-world-on-fire stuff.

“LG’s mobile division will push 5G products and smartphones featuring different form factors while focusing on key markets where the LG brand remains strong,” the company said in a statement.

It will certainly take something very special to turn things around. It seems more likely that LG Mobile head Brian Kwon — who also heads up that hugely-profitable home entertainment business — will focus on cutting costs and squeezing out the few sweet spots left. Continued losses, particularly against success from other units, might eventually see LG shutter its mobile business.

Still, things could be worse for LG, it could be HTC.

from Android – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2SknHWY
via IFTTT

Nintendo’s Mario Kart mobile game won’t launch until the summer

It’s been a long year for Nintendo fans waiting on Mario Kart to come to mobile and, unfortunately, more patience is required after the game’s launch was moved back to this summer.

Nintendo announced plans to bring the much-loved franchise to smartphones one year ago. It was originally slated to launch by the end of March 2019, but the Japanese games giant said today it is pushing that date back to summer 2019.

The key passage sits within Nintendo’s latest earnings report, released today, which explains that additional time is needed “to improve [the] quality of the application and expand the content offerings after launch.”

The checkered flag has been raised and the finish line is near. A new mobile application is now in development: Mario Kart Tour! #MarioKartTour Releasing in the fiscal year ending in March 2019. pic.twitter.com/8GIyR7ZM4z

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) February 1, 2018

It’s frustrating but, as The Verge points out, you can refer to a famous Nintendo phrase if you are seeking comfort.

Shigeru Miyamoto, who created the Mario and Zelda franchises, once remarked that “a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.”

There’s plenty riding on the title — excuse the pun. Super Mario Run, the company’s first major game for the iPhone, showed its most popular IP has the potential to be a success on mobile, even though Mario required a $9.99 payment to go beyond the limited demo version. Mario Kart is the most successful Switch title to date, so it figures that it can be a huge smash on mobile if delivered in the right way.

from iPhone – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2DKPmZ3

Apple’s FaceTime bug will be investigated by New York’s Attorney General

Earlier this week, a bug was found in FaceTime that could let others listen in to your Apple device’s microphone (or, in specific cases, view video from the camera) without you accepting the FaceTime call.

Apple disabled the Group FaceTime feature that enabled this bug server-side, thus preventing its future misuse while they worked on a proper patch. Apple says that patch should land later this week, but it sounds like that won’t be the end of it for the company.

New York Attorney General Letitia James and Governor Andrew Cuomo have just announced their intent to investigate the matter — how it happened, and what they call Apple’s “slow response”.

While Apple responded with its temporary fix once the bug started going viral, reports suggest that at least two users — a 14-year-old from Arizona and his mother — had been trying to no avail to warn Apple of this matter for over a week prior.

While bugs happen, this is a particularly egregious and mystifying one. It’s like the perfect storm of bugs — there’s the bug that turns on the microphone early, then a second stage of the bug that for some logic-defying reason turns on the camera if the call recipient hits the power button to try to decline the call. Then it slipped through QA. Then, finally, it gets noticed by someone with good intentions who tries many ways to bring it to Apple’s attention, unsuccessfully. It slowly spreads from person to person, then goes viral on Twitter. This is the kind of bug that people will be reading about in their software engineering textbooks for years.

We’ve reached out to Apple for comment on the investigation but none was given at the time of publishing.

from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2CUCJJg

Apple bans Facebook’s Research app that paid users for data

In the wake of TechCrunch’s investigation yesterday, Apple blocked Facebook’s Research VPN app before the social network could voluntarily shut it down. The Research app asked users for root network access to all data passing through their phone in exchange for $20 per month. Apple tells TechCrunch that yesterday evening it pulled the certificate that allows Facebook to distribute the Research app through Apple’s Enterprise Certificate system.

TechCrunch had reported that Facebook was breaking Apple’s policy that the Enterprise system is only for distributing internal corporate apps to employees, not paid external testers. That was actually before Facebook released a statement last night saying that it had shut down the iOS version of the Research program without mentioning that it was forced by Apple to do so.

Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them

TechCrunch’s investigation discovered that Facebook has been quietly operated the Research program on iOS and Android since 2016, recently under the name Project Atlas. It recruited 13 to 35 year olds, 5 percent of which were teenagers, with ads on Instagram and Snapchat and paid them a monthly fee plus referral bonuses to install Facebook’s Research app, the included VPN app that routes traffic to Facebook, and to ‘Trust’ the company with root network access to their phone. That lets Facebook pull in a user’s web browsing activity, what apps are on their phone and how they use them, and even decrypt their encrypted traffic. Facebook went so far as to ask users to screenshot and submit their Amazon order history. Facebook uses all this data to track competitors, assess trends, and plan its product roadmap.

Facebook was forced to remove its similar Onavo Protect app in August last year after Apple changed its policies to prohibit the VPN app’s data collection practices. But Facebook never shut down the Research app with the same functionality it was running in parallel. In fact, TechCrunch commissioned security expert Will Strafach to dig into the Facebook Research app, and we found that it featured tons of similar code and references to Onavo Protect. That means Facebook was purposefully disobeying the spirit of Apple’s 2018 privacy policy change while also abusing the Enterprise Certificate program.

Facebook’s legitimate internal-use only apps like pre-launch versions of Facebook and Instagram as well as its employee logistics apps are still functioning, a source says. That would indicate that Apple didn’t go so far as to completely shut down Facebook’s access to the Enterprise developer program.

This morning, Apple informed us it had banned Facebook’s Research app yesterday before the social network seemingly pulled it voluntarily. Apple provided us with this strongly worded statement condemning the social network’s behavior:

“We designed our Enterprise Developer Program solely for the internal distribution of apps within an organization. Facebook has been using their membership to distribute a data-collecting app to consumers, which is a clear breach of their agreement with Apple. Any developer using their enterprise certificates to distribute apps to consumers will have their certificates revoked, which is what we did in this case to protect our users and their data.”

That comes in direct contradiction to Facebook’s initial response to our investigation. Facebook claimed it was in alignment with Apple’s Enterprise Certificate policy and that the program was no different than a focus group.

Seven hours later, a Facebook spokesperson said it was pulling its Research program from iOS without mentioning that Apple forced it to do so, and issued this statement disputing the characterization of our story:

“Key facts about this market research program are being ignored. Despite early reports, there was nothing ‘secret’ about this; it was literally called the Facebook Research App. It wasn’t ‘spying’ as all of the people who signed up to participate went through a clear on-boarding process asking for their permission and were paid to participate. Finally, less than 5 percent of the people who chose to participate in this market research program were teens. All of them with signed parental consent forms.”

We refute those accusations by Facebook. As we wrote yesterday night, Facebook did not publicly promote the Research VPN itself and used intermediaries that often didn’t disclose Facebook’s involvement until users had begun the signup process. While users were given clear instructions and warnings, the program never stresses nor mentions the full extent of the data Facebook can collect through the VPN. A small fraction of the users paid may have been teens, but we stand by the newsworthiness of its choice not to exclude minors from this data collection initiative.

The situation will surely worsen the relationship between Facebook and Apple after years of mounting animosity between the tech giants. Apple’s Tim Cook has repeatedly criticized Facebook’s data collection practices, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has countered that it offers products for free for everyone rather than making products few can afford like Apple. Flared tensions could see Facebook receive less promotion in the App Store, fewer integrations into iOS, and more jabs from Cook. Meanwhile, the world sees Facebook as having been caught red-handed threatening user privacy and breaking Apple policy.

Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them

from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2RrKgVl

American Airlines taps Apple Music for in-flight entertainment

American Airlines and Apple Music have closed a deal that would give passengers access to the full library of Apple Music songs on AA flights.

Apple Music’s more than 50 million songs will be available on any domestic American Airlines flight equipped with Viasat satellite wifi at no extra cost to customers, marking the first commercial airline to offer exclusive access to Apple Music via in-flight wifi.

Here’s what VP of Apple Music Oliver Schusser had to say:

For most travelers, having music to listen to on the plane is just as important as anything they pack in their suitcases. With the addition of Apple Music on American flights, we are excited that customers can now enjoy their music in even more places. Subscribers can stream all their favorite songs and artists in the air, and continue to listen to their personal library offline, giving them everything they need to truly sit back, relax and enjoy their flight.

American Airlines has been investing in Viasat wifi, which has the bandwidth to allow for streaming video and music, as well as electrical outlets at every seat. This comes at a time when airlines are debating between seat-back entertainment and personal device entertainment.

American Airlines has also been rejuvenating its inflight entertainment library as a whole, adding new shows and movies as well as free live TV. In fact, American Airlines passengers flying on Super Bowl Sunday will be able to watch the big game in the air on select flights.

Here’s what American Airlines VP of Global Marketing Janelle Anderson had to say:

Our guests want to make the most of their time when flying us. That’s why we’re investing in faster Wi-Fi, a variety of entertainment options, and why we’re so excited to introduce Apple Music to more of our customers. Providing customers with more ways to stay connected throughout each flight is one way to show we value their business and the time they spend with us.

Meanwhile, Apple has yet another channel to market Apple Music in a competitive music streaming landscape. Just yesterday, Apple announced that Apple Music has hit 50 million global paid subscribers. The most recent number we have from industry leader Spotify is 87 million paying users as of November 2018.

from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2GaPhzq

Apple’s global active install base of iPhones surpassed 900 million this quarter

It’s not surprising that Apple has a massive active install base of iPhones across the globe, but we now finally have an exact number to put behind it. During its Q1 earnings call, CFO Luca Maestri shared the install base for the first time.

“Our global active install base of iPhone continues to grow and has reached an all-time-high at the end of December,” Maestri said. “We are disclosing that number now for the first time, it has surpassed 900 million devices.”

Apple has previously detailed the total active install base of its products. They updated the number today to 1.4 billion devices worldwide at the end of December 2018, up from 1.3 billion at the end of January 2018. It’s interesting that Apple has decided to break out iPhone device numbers even as it shies away from releasing unit sales in its earning calls from this point moving forward.

Maestri detailed that Apple would continue to offer updated on the iPhone install base and total install base on a “periodic basis.”

Apple seems to be seeking out bright spots wherever they can find them, the Q1 2019 earning didn’t deliver great news for the company despite beating already-reduced market expectations. iPhone revenues were down 15 percent.

Apple posts Q1 revenue decline with iPhone sales down 15 percent

from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2Wpx6fj

Apple partners with Aetna to launch health app leveraging Apple Watch data

In its clearest move yet to woo the healthcare industry, Apple has collaborated with the health insurance provider Aetna to launch a new app, called Attain, that uses Apple Watch data to provide a window into users’ health.

The launch stems from a 2016 collaboration between the insurer and Apple that saw 90 percent of participants in a study reported a health benefit from using their Apple Watch.

Both Apple and Google (through its parent company, Alphabet) have been making headway into personalized health using wearables. Earlier this month, Alphabet’s Verily business unit had its wearable device approved by the FDA for tracking heart health. Apple had received its approval from the FDA in September 2018 when it launched a new version of the Apple Watch.

Alphabet’s Verily scores FDA clearance for its ECG monitor

“We believe that people should be able to play a more active role in managing their well-being. Every day, we receive emails and letters from people all over the world who have found great benefit by incorporating Apple Watch into their lives and daily routines,” said Jeff Williams, Apple’s COO. “As we learn over time, the goal is to make more customized recommendations that will help members accomplish their goals and live healthier lives.”

Healthcare has been on Apple’s radar since at least 2016, when Tim Cook targeted it as an area the company was looking to pursue in an interview with Fast Company:

“We’ve gotten into the health arena and we started looking at wellness, that took us to pulling a string to thinking about research, pulling that string a little further took us to some patient-care stuff, and that pulled a string that’s taking us into some other stuff,” [Cook said at the time]. “When you look at most of the solutions, whether it’s devices, or things coming up out of Big Pharma, first and foremost, they are done to get the reimbursement [from an insurance provider]. Not thinking about what helps the patient. So if you don’t care about reimbursement, which we have the privilege of doing, that may even make the smartphone market look small.”

The new Attain app consists of four pillars divided into achieving activity goals; sustaining everyday health, personalized health notifications; and rewards for achievements.

The app determines personalized activity goals based on age, sex and weight, and includes a more varied array of potential activities than just steps taken — using the Apple Watch to measure swimming and yoga as potential activities.

Aetna’s app will also offer challenges where participants earn points for taking actions like getting more sleep, engaging in meditation activities and monitoring and improving their diet.

Attain will also recommend health actions based on the healthcare reports culled from the health records that Aetna’s patient population shares through the app. Created alongside physicians, the app uses doctor-recommended clinical guidelines and will incorporate prompts for healthy actions, like getting flu shots and vaccinations, refilling medication prescriptions when they’re scheduled to run out; suggesting visits to primary care physicians if checkups have lagged and prompting about lower-cost options for lab tests.

Finally, users can earn rewards — like points off the cost of their Apple Watch or gift cards to national stores. The app is available to Aetna members who have an iPhone 5s or later and an Apple Watch Series 1 or later.

“From fitness enthusiasts, to casual gym-goers, to parents who get all their exercise by keeping up with their kids – we designed Attain for everyone,” said Alan Lotvin, M.D., executive vice president of Transformation for CVS Health, in a statement. “We understand that you don’t need to be a personal trainer or work out several hours a day to be healthier. We’re designing Attain to be personalized and clinically relevant to where each individual is in their health journey. This is an ambitious challenge, and we will adapt and improve over time to create the best experience for our members.”

After users have signed up with the Attain app they can share data and health history with Apple, giving both companies access to data that can be used later for potential clinical trials or to make predictions abut population health… while the companies are pitching it as a way to get more personalized suggestions from the app.

According to a statement from the company, all the health data is encrypted on the device, in transit and on Apple and Aetna’s servers where it is stored in a HIPAA-compliant way.

The companies also say that the data won’t be used for underwriting, premium or coverage decisions.

In the future you could see Apple and Aetna collaborating to make Apple Watches an employee benefit — like computers — to track employee health and lower healthcare costs. It’d be a win-win for both.

But as Apple pushes deeper into collecting health records and data, the company is setting a high bar for its security protocols at a time when the company is still cleaning up the mess from a bug that left FaceTime users exposed.

 

from Apple – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2GaQJlh

Apple is rethinking international iPhone pricing as revenues slip

When Apple lowered guidance on earnings earlier this month, it cited markets like China as a major factor in its disappointing numbers. Sure enough, when earnings hit today, things didn’t look great, as iPhone revenues dipped 15 percent year over year for the quarter.

In an interview with Reuters earlier today, Tim Cook noted that the company is reassessing how it sells handsets outside of the U.S. Apple has traditionally relied on the U.S. dollar to set the price, which has led to steeper costs internationally.

“When you look at foreign currencies and then particularly those markets that weakened over the last year those (iPhone price) increases were obviously more,” the CEO said. “And so as we’ve gotten into January and assessed the macroeconomic condition in some of those markets we’ve decided to go back to more commensurate with what our local prices were a year ago in hopes of helping the sales in those areas.”

There are, of course, a lot of factors at play here. For one thing, global smartphone numbers have been on the decline for the first time since analysts began recording such figures. Handsets have gotten pretty good across the board and afforded fewer killer reasons to upgrade every two or so years.

Economic factors are also at play in a major way. That certainly goes for China, where the country’s slowed growth has led to fewer large purchases. A looming trade war between the U.S.  and China has had an impact as well, with tariffs and other factors, as companies like Huawei have managed to buck the trend in their home country.

from iPhone – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2BdoyyZ