news

§ “These [white nationalists] are a small group of people,” explains Goerzen, who now
works as a researcher at a New York-based project called Data and Society, which studies
modern cyberculture and media. “But these groups can deliver an outsized impact because
of their ability to push the right buttons to bait the media.” It is an important point to ponder,
particularly given the furore in Washington around racist imagery, and the degree to which
malevolent political forces (in Russia, for example) have been using social media to
discredit and delegitimise political debate. When reports emerged that President Donald
Trump had used the word “shithole” to describe countries such as Haiti or Nigeria,
mainstream observers were understandably appalled. But many alt-right message groups
were thrilled. “Shithole” is a tag that has circulated in these message groups for a long time,
giving birth to a range of memes. “Ha, CNN is actually saying shithole,” crowed one
commenter on 4chan. Another participant said, amid a stream of cartoons and messages on
the subject: “Who wants to colour in the world in five shades of brown?”
§ To be fair, there is no evidence that Trump has visited sites such as 4chan, and the word
“shithole” is a fairly common expletive in America. However, the images created on 4chan
and the more extreme 8chan have been seeping into social media and news publications
such as Breitbart. During the presidential campaign, Trump shared an image on Twitter of
Hillary Clinton against a backdrop of money, with the phrase “Most corrupt candidate ever!”
in a red six-pointed star. The image, with its anti-Semitic overtones, was discovered to have
been previously featured on 8chan, though Trump’s social-media director later said it had
been “lifted from an anti-Hillary Twitter user” and insisted that the star was a sheriff’s star.
§ The alt-right has swelled in power by presenting itself as a victim of elitist attacks, and the
memes are so potent precisely because they are designed to be subversive and to bait their
opponents into a reaction. Indeed, what is going on here is a classic example of the type of
“network” effect described by Niall Ferguson, the British historian, in his 2017 book “The
Square and the Tower”: people are congregating online to challenge hierarchies, using the
power of the (cyber) crowd against the elite. This fight is not just about ideas, but
communication styles too. Five centuries ago, Martin Luther upended the power of the
Roman Catholic Church by using vernacular speech to undercut priestly Latin. Today, altright
trolls are using memes to overturn mainstream ideas about political communication.
The urgent question is whether there is any way for people to counter alt-right memes. After
all, as Goerzen points out, one of the great oddities of our cyber age is that the leftwing of
American politics (never mind the mainstream) has hitherto been ineffective at using this
visual language.
5) The UK opened the door for Facebook and Google to start acting like banks
[Source: qz.com] (https://goo.gl/br1pak)
§ Now tech companies can get into banking, without having to become a bank. Starting
13th January, the UK’s nine biggest banks, which service most of the population, no longer
have a lock on the state’s financial transactions. New rules that are part of a UK directive
called Open Banking aim to make it easier to compare and switch UK banks. Financial
institutions will have to share their customer data with other companies if customers give
permission. That means third parties will also be able to make payments on behalf of
customers, or manage their finances for them. This opens the door for tech companies like
Facebook and Google. Both Facebook and Google have waded into payments in the UK
with products like Pay by Messenger, which launched in November, and Google Wallet,
where you can send payments via email. With the new rules, Facebook could think about
extending payments to WhatsApp as it has in other part of the world, and Google Pay could
someday be used as freely as it is in the US, where users pay for travel via apps such as
Airbnb, or buy goods in physical stores.
§ Previously, companies like Facebook and Google had to negotiate deals directly with
banks in the UK to get access to account or transaction data when given permissions, which
limited the opportunities for these kinds of products. Startups with less negotiating power
needed to ask for your username and password, then log into your bank’s website and
scrape it for information like your transaction history. The new rules force the UK’s big
banks—Allied Irish Bank, Bank of Ireland, Barclays, Danske, HSBC, Lloyds, Nationwide,
RBS, and Santander—to put APIs in place that standardize and secure the release of
customer data, so that it’s easier to share when customers allow it. “Next time you need to
send your friend a tenner, you’ll instant-message them the money, rather than opening up
your boring bank app, fiddling about finding their bank details, authenticating yourself again
and finally firing off the cash,” digital-financial consultant David Birch wrote in Wired UK this
month. “You’ll just type ‘+£10’ in your WhatsApp chat.” It would also mean that when you
buy something on a site like Amazon, the retailer wouldn’t have to contact a third party to
get in touch with Visa or Mastercard to take the payment from your account. It could cut out
the middle men and take that payment directly from your bank account.
§ And it paves the way for products that could allow you to see all of your banking
information in one place if you have accounts with multiple banks, or securely share all of
your finances with lenders when you apply for a loan. With the new directive, tech
companies and startups could become real rivals to historic financial institutions.
6) The problem with Annihilation’s messy release [Source: The Atlantic]
(https://goo.gl/Bx6cRk)
§ When Paramount released the Amy Adams–starring Arrival in November 2016, it was
one of the biggest hits of the year for the studio. It grossed $203 million worldwide, was
critically acclaimed, and netted eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best
Director for Denis Villeneuve. On paper, the upcoming sci-fi drama Annihilation looks like a
similar project for the studio. It’s from an acclaimed filmmaker (Alex Garland, who made Ex
Machina), has a big female star (Natalie Portman), and is aimed at the kind of grown-up