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Jinyan Zang Contributor Jinyan Zang is a researcher at Data Privacy Lab and a Ph.D. candidate in Government at Harvard University . Latanya Sweeney Contributor Latanya Sweeney is a professor of government and technology in residence at Harvard University’s Department of Government, editor-in-chief of Technology Science and the founding director of the Technology Science Initiative

Heather Hartnett Contributor Heather Hartnett is general partner and CEO of Human Ventures, an early-stage venture fund and startup studio in New York City. The entrepreneurial and investor focus of the last decade has largely been centered on increased convenience and consumerism, and has encouraged companies to prioritize scaling, with little care for how it

Facebook will acquire Giphy, the web-based animated gif search engine and platform provider, Facebook confirmed today, in a deal worth around $400 million, according to a report by Axios. Facebook said it isn’t disclosing terms of the deal. Giphy has grown to be a central source for shareable, high-engagement content, and its animated response gifs are

Facebook acquires a popular GIF search engine, video game sales see major growth and Sorrentino reports promising results for a COVID-19 treatment. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 15, 2020. 1. Facebook to acquire Giphy in a deal reportedly worth $400 million Facebook will acquire Giphy, the web-based animated GIF search engine and platform provider.

LinkedIn adds new features to support virtual events, Elon Musk escalates his battle with Alameda County and Banjo’s CEO resigns after some disturbing revelations. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 12, 2020. 1. LinkedIn adds polls and live video-based events in a focus on more virtual engagement Microsoft -owned LinkedIn announced a couple of big

Zoom was never meant to be a social network, but the enterprise video chat app has become essential software for those looking to stay in touch with friends and family during the pandemic. Today, Facebook looks to steal back the service’s social video chat growth as it globally launches Messenger Rooms, its new group video

Facebook, and a group of telecom companies including China Mobile International, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, and Vodafone are collaborating to build the “most comprehensive” subsea cable to serve the African continent and Middle East region where nearly a billion people are still not connected to the internet. The project, called 2Africa, will see the companies lay

Facebook’s Avatars feature, which lets you customize a virtual lookalike of yourself for use as stickers in comments and Messenger chats, is today launching in the U.S. Essentially Facebook’s version of Snap’s Bitmoji, Avatars were first introduced last year and have been since made available in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and Canada. Based on early feedback,

Facebook strikes a deal to compensate content moderators with PTSD, Tesla might reopen its factory next week and Twitter says some employees can work from home indefinitely. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 13, 2020. 1. Facebook to pay $52M to content moderators suffering from PTSD Facebook employs thousands of content moderators to sift through

As part of its anti-bullying efforts, Instagram today announced a series of new features aimed at helping users better manage negative comments as well as highlight positive ones. It’s also adding new controls to manage who can tag or mention you on Instagram, which can be another source of online bullying. The first of the

Facebook has agreed in principle to pay $52 million to compensate current and former content moderators who developed mental health issues on the job. The Verge reported Tuesday that the settlement will cover more than 11,000 content moderators who developed depression, addictions and other mental health issues while they worked moderating content on the social

Facebook’s AI tools are the only thing standing between its users and the growing onslaught of hate and misinformation the platform is experiencing. The company’s researchers have cooked up a few new capabilities for the systems that keep the adversary at bay, identifying COVID-19-related misinformation and hateful speech disguised as memes. Detecting and removing misinformation

Instagram Lite, the two-year old version of the Instagram app aimed at emerging markets, has quietly disappeared. The previously highly-ranked app vanished from the Google Play charts on April 13 in the countries where it was active, including Kenya, Mexico, Peru and the Philippines. Existing Instagram Lite users have been directed to the main Instagram

Haje Jan Kamps is a founder, photographer and journalist who logged time as a TechCrunch writer years ago and who has since launched a platform for virtual conferences called Konf. In a recent catch-up with him about work and life during COVID-19, we wound up talking at some length about Facebook, which is seeing record

Twitter on Monday announced it will begin to add warning messages and labels to tweets spreading disputed or misleading information about COVID-19. The labels will direct users reading these tweets to a Twitter-curated page or to external resources that offer additional information and context about the claims being made in the tweet. The warnings, meanwhile,

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now spending

After months of testing, Facebook’s redesign is finally official. Announced last year at F8, the more minimalist approach to its desktop design has been rolled out in waves. In March, the company added an option to try out the new version. Users could switch back and leave feedback for why they had done so. This

Saar Gur is adept at identifying the next big consumer trends earlier than most: The San Francisco-based general partner at CRV has led investments into leading consumer internet companies like Niantic, DoorDash, Bird, Dropbox, Patreon, Kapwing and ClassPass. His own experience stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic spurred his interest in three new investment

Facebook has a new connectivity app called Discover to help those who can’t afford to get online access information on the web. The service, available through mobile web and Android app, allows users to visit any website in text format (no video, images, audio and other elements that eat up large amounts of data) and

A coronavirus conspiracy video featuring a well-known vaccine conspiracist is spreading like wildfire on social media this week, even as platforms talk tough about misinformation in the midst of the pandemic. In the professionally-produced video, a solemn interviewer named Mikki Willis interviews Judy Mikovits, a figure best known for her anti-vaccine activism in recent years.

Pinterest is introducing new features that make it easier for those planning recipes, virtual events and other quarantine activities. These include the ability to add a date or notes to a board as well as automated ways to better organize your pins on a given board, with the aid of machine learning technology. The company

Some of you may recall the South Korean app Zepeto that went viral among Gen Z users a year and a half ago. The app, which renders selfies into animated avatars and lets people adorn their computer-generated manifestations with virtual items, appears to have sustained its relevance. It has amassed 150 million registered users, the

In spite of their protected status under international laws, pangolins remain one of the most trafficked animals in the world — and at least some of that trade is taking place right out in the open on Facebook . A new report from tech watchdog group the Tech Transparency Project details how Facebook users are

Tinder will add a video dating feature in the second quarter of this year, parent company Match announced on Tuesday as part of its Q1 2020 earnings report. The company also detailed the coronavirus impact which slowed Tinder user growth in the quarter, as social distancing requirements and government lockdowns went into effect. Match didn’t

The Indian government has said that its contact tracing app Aarogya Setu “by design” fetches the location data of its 90 million users and allows them to view the concentration of people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in their vicinity. New Delhi issued the statement after France-based security researcher Baptiste Robert found what

Twitter announced today it’s introducing a new layout for replies that will use lines and indentations to make it easier to understand who you’re replying to and how the conversation is flowing. The company will also test putting engagement actions — including likes, Retweet and reply icons — behind an extra tap to make replies

Facebook is expanding its Community Help hub to better serve local communities amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The hub has already seen significant usage by those requesting food, supplies and information about local resources, as well as use by volunteers and groups willing to lend a hand. Now, Facebook is adding more features to the hub

Glance, which serves media content, news, and casual games on the lock screen of Android -powered smartphones, has amassed 100 million daily active users, it said today. The subsidiary of ad-firm InMobi Group reached the milestone in 21 months in what appears to be the shortest duration for any popular internet service to gain their

Tumblr is making a change to how it deals with hate speech on its blogging platform. The company announced today it will also remove the reblogs (repostings) from any blogs that were suspended for violating its policies around hate speech. Already, the company says it’s identified nearly 1,000 blogs that were banned for blatant violations

You can now debunk thousands of coronavirus-related hoaxes with a few texts on WhatsApp . Poynter Institute, a nonprofit organization that supports journalism, today launched a bot on the Facebook -owned service that will allow people across the globe to debunk over 4,000 hoaxes surrounding the pandemic such as whether the infection originated in a