Current Events in June 2018

YouTube announced at VidCon yesterday that it was working on new, innovative ways to generate revenue -- for both the company and content creators -- outside of traditional advertising. Now, YouTube is rolling out channel memberships, merchandise, a new marketing partnership with FameBit, and the launch of “Premieres.”

“YouTube is a vibrant community where everyone has a voice,” said Neal Mohan, YouTube’s chief product officer.

“Every day, creators use their voices to entertain, spur action, and bring about positive change. That’s why over the last year we’ve doubled down on building the products and tools that the creator community needs. Not only to thrive on YouTube, but to continue to develop the video platform of the future.”

Channel memberships

With this new feature, users pay $4.99 per month to get unique badges, new emojis, members-only posts in the Community tab, and access to custom perks offered by the creator. This includes amenities like extra videos, shoutouts, or exclusive livestreams. The feature will be available to channels with over 100,000 subscribers.

YouTube says it will monitor the perks creators offer to their members to ensure they meet guidelines, as well as to ensure creators can follow through with what’s being promised. However, the company won’t limit creators to what they want to offer their members.

“This tool set is fairly powerful, so we want to make sure that they don’t put products out there that they can’t really commit to,” said Rohit Dhawan, YouTube’s director of product management. “It’s kind of like a blank canvas...it’s us giving the creators the tools to customize their membership offering and provide whatever perks they feel are going to be valuable to the fans.”

Switching to Channel Memberships has proven to be beneficial to both creators and YouTube. Comedy creator Mike Falzone has seen his YouTube revenue triple since January when he started using memberships. Spanish gaming channel elrubiusOMG now has six times as many members. Swedish instrumental band Wintergatan is now making over 50 percent of revenue from Channel Memberships.

Overall, creators earning five figures a year is up 35 percent, and those earning six figures is up 40 percent, according to YouTube.

Merchandise

In addition to Channel Memberships, creators will also be able to sell to fans directly.

Creators with more than 10,000 subscribers will be able to sell t-shirts, hats, phone cases, or any of over 20 different merchandise items that are related to their channel.

The new program is affiliated with Teespring, which will retain a cut of the merchandise (which varies per item). Teespring will get a flat price per item, but the creator has free reign to mark up the items as much or as little as they’d like, and then keep the difference.

During testing, Teespring reported an 82 percent success rate for YouTubers using the merchandise service, and this led to an average of 25 percent more units being sold per user.

Additionally, creators who have been connected with brand sponsorships via FameBit will be able to use the merchandise tool to link fans to whatever products they’re selling.

Premieres

Lastly, YouTube will be rolling out Premieres -- a new way to leverage the popularity of Live Videos without having to go live.

By using Premieres, creators can make a landing page on their channels to promote videos prior to their release. The page will have a chat feature, as live videos do, so creators can take advantage of Channel Membership perks even if they aren’t producing live content. The Premiere video will be added to a creator’s channel once it’s wrapped.

“We’re going to use our search and discovery platform to promote these,” said Kurt Wilms, group product manager. “Upcoming premieres can appear on the [YouTube] homepage and in recommended videos. They’re going to appear across all the dedicated discovery portions of our site, which is awesome.”

A U.S. District Court judge in New York has agreed with Republicans, ruling that the way the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is structured is unconstitutional.

The ruling by Judge Loretta Preska is a victory for acting CFPB director Mick Mulvaney, who has done his best since taking the job to limit the consumer agency's power.

In an appearance before Congress earlier this year, Mulvaney urged lawmakers to take direct control of the agency, arguing that in its present form it is not accountable.

Preska's ruling may be limited in its effect, since it only pertains to a single case in which the judge is blocking the consumer agency from participating in a lawsuit with the New York Attorney General's Office, which sued a company for running an alleged scam, targeting 9/11 first responders.

An appeals court has spoken

The argument about the CFPB's constitutionality has already had its day in court, with a federal appeals court in Washington upholding its constitutionality.

In her opinion, Judge Preska disagreed with the higher court, saying the fact that the agency was set up as a completely independent agency, with a single director who cannot be fired by the president except for cause, places it outside the boundary of the U.S. Constitution.

The CFPB was established by a Democratic Congress and president in the wake of the financial crisis. Its mission was the financial welfare of consumers, and to shield it from political pressure, lawmakers gave it total independence, placing it under the jurisdiction of the Federal Reserve, not Congress.

Republicans, from the beginning, argued that was unconstitutional. Mulvaney, who served in Congress before joining the Trump administration, twice voted to abolish the agency.

Consumer advocates' angst

Consumer advocates who applauded CFPB actions during the Obama administration have lashed out at the agency's leadership under the Trump administration. They have accused Mulvaney of unilaterally changing the agency's mission, as established by the Dodd Frank Financial Reform Act.

The Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) said the impact of the judge's ruling is unclear, but it notes that the decision runs counter to the holding of the full D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed the agency’s constitutionality.

"The 2008 financial crisis proved the need for the CFPB, a successful independent consumer watchdog," said Will Corbert, an attorney for CRL. "Under the radical logic of this court’s ruling, our consumer watchdog would be eliminated and the door would be reopened for financial predators, such as those who steal from 9/11 heroes."

CLR said the New York judge's decision is a "clear and completely inappropriate example of legislating from the bench."

Facebook announced on Thursday that it is expanding its third-party fact-checking program to an additional 14 countries to combat the spread of false news on its site.

In the wake of the 2016 election, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that false news and misuse of the social network are among the site’s biggest problems. He vowed to make changes to the site to help stem the spread of misinformation.

Over the last two years, the company has implemented several strategies to fight false news, including removing fake accounts, hiring “news publisher specialists” to advise on content that appears on the platform, and relying on artificial intelligence to help fact-check more than a billion posts each day.

Now, Facebook says it is expanding its news fact-checking program to new countries, with “plans to scale to more countries by the end of the year.”

Reducing false news stories

Facebook’s third-party fact-checking program, which debuted last spring, relies on organizations like the Associated Press and Snopes to inform the site’s moderators of content that is misleading. Content that is not verified as accurate appears smaller, making it harder to read and easier to miss.

“We reduce the visual prominence of feed stories that are fact-checked false,” a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch earlier this year.

In a blog post announcing the expansion of its fact-checking program, Facebook proclaimed that “the effort will never be finished and we have a lot more to do,” but said that its fact-checking policies can reduce the spread of inaccurate news stories by "an average of 80%."

Fact-checking photos and videos

When Facebook first announced the program, it was only available in France. It is now expanding to an additional 14 countries. Facebook also announced that it will start fact-checking photos and videos in addition to text.

“This includes those that are manipulated (e.g. a video that is edited to show something that did not really happen) or taken out of context (e.g. a photo from a previous tragedy associated with a different, present-day conflict),” Facebook said in a statement.

The company also announced that it’s partnering with Schema, an open-source framework used for fact-checking. Facebook says the partnership “will make it easier for fact-checkers to share ratings with Facebook and help us respond faster, especially in times of crisis.”

AT&T has unveiled a new video service called WatchTV, a skinny bundle of channels that will be available “on virtually any smartphone, as well as on certain streaming devices.”

AT&T said Thursday that its new service will feature 31 TV channels, including recently acquired CNN, TNT, and TBS, as well as channels from AMC Networks, Discovery Communications, and Viacom.

Coming "soon" after launch, AT&T says it will add BET, Comedy Central, MTV2, Nicktoons, Teen Nick and VH1 to its live channel lineup. In addition to live channels, there will be 15,000 movies and TV shows available for on-demand viewing.

For non-AT&T customers, the package will be available as a standalone service for as little as $15 per month. It will be offered free to AT&T customers with AT&T’s “Unlimited & More" or “Unlimited & More Premium" plans. The new unlimited data plans and WatchTV launch next week.

Competing with streaming services

The debut of the new service comes as a growing number of consumers are choosing to drop traditional pay-TV and instead get their entertainment through video-on-demand streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu.

The new offering also comes a week after the telecommunications giant closed its deal to acquire Time Warner and renamed the entity WarnerMedia. During testimony related to obtaining regulatory approval for its acquisition of Time Warner, CEO Randall Stephenson noted that traditional cable lost 3 million subscribers on a base of 90 million in 2017.

AT&T’s new service for cord-cutters will compete with Netflix, Sling TV, CBS All Access, and other streamers, as well as with big cable providers like Comcast and Charter Communications.

”We were the first wireless provider to bring entertainment and unlimited data together, and, once again, we’re redefining what that means,” said David Christopher, president of AT&T Mobility and Entertainment, on Thursday.

“This is no longer about including one channel or service with your wireless plan, but an incredible lineup of content that delivers more of what you care about," Christopher said.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) plans to hold a series of public hearings into the ways large technology companies, such as Google and Facebook, have changed daily life and altered the competitive landscape.

The FTC said the hearings will be scheduled for later this year and early 2019. The results could determine whether the agency takes or recommends legal action regarding major players.

The hearings announcement comes in the wake of growing privacy concerns surrounding Facebook and consolidation of media and technology companies. In April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was grilled by Congress after the company revealed Facebook user data had been used in an unauthorized way to target political ads.

Staying ahead of trends

FTC Chairman Joe Simons says part of the agency's role is to stay ahead of developing trends to determine how they affect consumers.

“The FTC has always been committed to self-examination and critical thinking, to ensure that our enforcement and policy efforts keep pace with changes in the economy,” Simons said. “When the FTC periodically engages in serious reflection and evaluation, we are better able to promote competition and innovation, protect consumers, and shape the law, so that free markets continue to thrive.”

The hearings will be webcast and accessible online, with regulators seeking comments from consumers and experts in hopes of gaining perspective from a broad and diverse range of viewpoints.

The FTC will also use the hearings to help determine whether legal action is needed, both in the short- and long-term. Before the hearings start, the agency said it will seek public comment on a wide range of related topics.

Wide ranging topics

For example, the FTC said it hopes to gain insight into the state of antitrust and consumer protection law and enforcement, and how consumers are affected by communication, information, and media technology networks.

Other hearing objectives include:

• The intersection between privacy, big data, and competition

• What the FTC can legally do to deter unfair and deceptive conduct in privacy and data security matters

• How corporate acquisitions and mergers are affecting competition

• How consumers are affected by the use of algorithmic decision tools, artificial intelligence, and predictive analytics   

The FTC says the hearings will begin in September and are expected to continue through January 2019; they will consist of 15 to 20 public sessions.

Gaia Ethnobotanical is recalling all kratom (mitragyna speciosa) powder products manufactured, processed, packed, and/or held, from March 18 – 30, 2018.

The products may be contaminated with Salmonella.

The following products, with Lot No.: 0102031800 and Batch No.: 031800, are being recalled:

The products were distributed via the internet to Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland. Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia and Wyoming.

What to do

The company is notifying its customers by e-mail and/or telephone to return the recalled products or immediately discard them.

Consumers with questions may contact the company 24/7 at (702) 996-8523 or by email at fdarecall@gaiaethnobotanical.com or call 24/7 at 702-996-8523.

Agri Star Meat and Poultry of Postville, Iowa, is recalling approximately 3,592 pounds of ready-to-eat beef pastrami.

Processing deviations may have led to underprocessing of products and resulted in inadequate curing.

There have been no confirmed reports of adverse reactions due to consumption of these products.

The following items, produced April 3 – 4, 2018, are being recalled:

• 21.6-lb. average case weight of fully cooked pastrami that are vacuum-packed using clear plastic and labeled “Aaron’s BEST Beef French Roast Pastrami WATER & CARRAGEENAN PRODUCT.” Both the product and the shipping box display a sticker indicating “BEST BEFORE 09/10/18.”
• 23.1-lb. average case weight of fully cooked pastrami that are vacuum-packed using clear plastic and labeled “SHOR HABOR GLATT KOSHER Beef French Roast Pastrami WATER & CARRAGEENAN PRODUCT.” Both the product and the shipping box display a sticker indicating “BEST BEFORE 09/11/2018.”

The recalled products, bearing establishment number “EST. 4653A” inside the USDA mark of inspection, were shipped to distributors in California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Washington.

What to do

Customers who purchased the recalled products should not consume them, but discard them or return them to the place of purchase.

Consumers with questions about the recall may contact Lisa Beatty at (563) 864-7811 or Yaakov Labowitz at (514) 648-8171 ext. 260.

NOW Health Group of Bloomingdale, Ill., is recalling NOW Real Food Zesty Sprouting Mix.

The product may be contaminated with Salmonella.

No illnesses have been reported to date.

Approximately 10,000 units of the following product, sold online and in retail stores nationwide since December 2017, are being recalled:

What to do

Customers who purchased the recalled product should stop using it immediately and return it to place of purchase for a full refund. A receipt is not required for refund.

Consumers with questions may contact NOW’s customer service department at (888) NOW-FOODS (888-669-3663) Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. (CT).

General Motors is recalling 3,233 model year 2013 Chevrolet Volts.

An update to the Vehicle Interface Control Module (VICM) may have disabled the cell balancing function causing a low-voltage condition.

If the voltage drops, the vehicle may lose propulsion, increasing the risk of crash.

What to do

GM will notify owners, and dealers will reprogram the VICM, free of charge.

The manufacturer has not yet provided a notification schedule.

Owners may contact Chevrolet customer service at 1-800-222-1020. GM's number for this recall is 18215.

Texas Natural Meats of Lott, Texas, is recalling approximately 489 pounds of frozen raw, ground beef.

The product may be contaminated with Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) O103.

The following item, produced on August 8, 2017 and shipped to a retailer who sold the product at a farmer’s market in Roger, Texas, is being recalled:

• 1.00-lb. bags of “Green Field Farms Rogers Texas Ground Beef.” The recalled product comes in bags displaying the “PRODUCTION DATE 08.08.2017, the “EXPIRATION DATE 08.08.2020”

The package is labeled “COOK USE ONLY,” with the instruction “DO NOT refreeze after defrosting” and bears establishment number “EST. 34449” inside the USDA mark of inspection.

What to do

Customers who purchased the recalled should not consume it, but discard it or return it to the place of purchase.

Consumers with questions regarding the recall may contact C.W. Whorton at (254) 584-0115.

This morning, Amazon accidentally revealed the date of Prime Day 2018. According to a Prime Day Banner that TechRadar discovered on the Amazon U.K. website, consumers can expect the largest Prime Day to take place mid-day July 16th through July 17th.

It goes beyond last year’s 30-hour Prime Day, which started the night before at 9 p.m. The reveal of this date also breaks Amazon’s recent pattern of having Prime Day on the second Tuesday in July.

Amazon started Prime Day in 2015, and the event offers consumers the biggest selection of discounted items -- going above and beyond what’s offered on Black Friday.

What consumers can expect

While the dates listed above were for Prime Day in the United Kingdom, the experts at TechRadar believe the times will only be slightly different here in the United States.

Based on last year’s Prime Day -- which ran from 9 p.m. Eastern and ended at midnight Pacific time, Prime Day 2018 is expected to start midday on July 16th and end on July 17th at midnight, closing out 39 straight hours of sales in the United States.

Consumers can expect discounts on Prime membership in the days leading up to Prime Day. The discounts offered are only offered to Prime customers, and so Amazon typically promotes the Prime membership as much as possible prior to Prime Day -- at a lower price.

Customers can also expect deals on Prime Day on Amazon’s most popular products -- the Echo, Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick, Kindles, and tablets. While Amazon does discount these items throughout the year, Prime Day is when consumers see these products at their lowest prices of the year. TechRadar also thinks Amazon will reduce prices of other services like Audible.

Amazon Marketplace sellers are also expected to be active participants in this year’s Prime Day. Though they’ve been involved in the sales event since its inception in 2015, Marketplace retailers could offer consumers some of the biggest deals and discounts of the sale.

Marketplace retailers are also featured in nearly every category on Amazon’s website, so users can expect great discounts on everything from beer and wine to TVs, gaming consoles, laptops, baby products, and fashion.

Consumers who consider making large purchases online to avoid state sales tax may soon not have that option. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that all states can require online retailers to collect sales tax.

In a 5-4 ruling, the justices replaced a previous ruling, issued more than 20 years ago, that said states could only require an online retailer to collect sales tax if the company had a physical presence within the boundaries of the state.

In the new ruling, the court declared that having some online merchants collect taxes and others not creates an uneven playing field and allows too many merchants to avoid collecting the tax. The ruling means that consumers will soon pay sales taxes on all online purchases.

Congress had been considering legislation

If the court had not issued its ruling, it's possible Congress would have taken up a bill to require it. Earlier this year, President Trump signaled his support for such legislation – the Marketplace Fairness Act.

Testifying at a Congressional hearing, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the president “feels strongly” that consumers should pay the same sales tax on online purchases that brick and mortar retailers collect.

Amazon recently started collecting sales tax in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, although it does not always charge tax on purchases from third-party vendors. Under the court's ruling, states are free to require it to do so.

Major retailers like Walmart, Macy's, and Amazon have been collecting sales tax on online purchases for years, since they have stores and warehouses across the country.

Small retailers oppose collecting the tax

Opposition has come mostly from small, independent retailers who complain that having to set up a system to charge sales tax in all 50 states is a hardship that could drive many of them out of business.

However, the National Retail Federation (NRF) has long supported a uniform collection of sales tax by all retailers. The organization says states are losing out on much needed tax revenue.

“This is a critically important issue for retailers – both large and small – across the country,” Mathew Shay, CEO of the NRF, said last year. “Both brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce leaders understand that the Marketplace Fairness Act is common-sense legislation dedicated to protecting states’ rights, strengthening our communities and preserving our free market system.”

The next step will be for state legislatures to pass laws requiring online retailers to collect the tax when products are sold to consumers in their states.

Canada has become the second nation in the world to legalize cannabis at the federal level with a new law that backers say will allow for more government regulation.

“It’s been too easy for our kids to get marijuana - and for criminals to reap the profits,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on social media.

In Canada, much like in the United States, people of color are more likely to be arrested for marijuana-related offenses despite smoking marijuana at the same amount that whites do. But Canada's new law may be a disappointment for criminal justice advocates, as it does not decriminalize weed or pardon past marijuana convictions.

The Campaign for Cannabis Amnesty, a Canada-based advocacy group, last month launched a petition asking the government to consider pardoning people convicted of marijuana possession offenses.

While such a measure isn’t included in the new legalization bill, Canada’s public safety minister has previously announced plans to consider similar decriminalization proposals after July 1.

Harsh penalties still exist

Meanwhile, under the new law as it stands, adults can possess no more than one ounce of cannabis in public. Canadian consumers must be at least 18 to purchase legal weed. Edibles are not yet available, but when they are, the products will have to be labeled with strict health warnings.

Failing to comply with the regulations still comes with stiff penalties -- selling weed to a minor is punishable by up to 14 years in prison under the new law.

Uruguay was the first nation to legalize and regulate marijuana at the federal level last year. However, the industry hasn’t taken off as strongly as locals hoped due in large part to stringent anti-drug laws that govern banks in the United States.

Large banks reportedly refused to work with Uruguay-based cannabis companies out of fear of breaking United States financial laws. It’s a similar problem plaguing legal cannabis businesses in the U.S., resulting in scenarios that include California weed businesses paying their taxes in cash.

However, Canada’s weed industry may avoid such headaches. In January, Canada’s Bank of Montreal announced that it would help finance a legal cannabis operation.

Canadian cannabis companies surged in the stock market on Wednesday shortly after the legislation was passed.

Facebook announced on Thursday that it’s giving group administrators the option to charge a monthly subscription fee to users looking for exclusive, members-only content. Subscriptions will run from $4.99 up to to $29.99 a month.

The social network will test the subscription idea with a handful of its larger groups. Those range from those focused on getting parents of high schoolers in tune with the college application process to a meal-oriented group that posts meal plans and shopping lists.

"We hear from group admins that they’re looking for ways to help them earn money to deepen engagement with their members and continue to support their communities," said Facebook’s Director or Groups, Alex Deve.

"Subscription groups align with the experience that we made available to support video creators earlier this year, and is part of our overall approach to helping creators and leaders to financially support the work they do to engage their fans and communities," according to Deve.

The development of Facebook groups has been a major agenda item for the company. Just last year, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg went on record saying rather than continuing to rely on the platform’s mission to "make the world more open and connected," Facebook would set its sights on giving "people the power to build community and bring the world closer together," with Facebook Groups -- and their billion users -- playing a major role.

A commitment to content

Administrators of these exclusive groups have their work cut out for them if they want their members to feel good about ponying up a monthly fee.

A case-in-point is Sarah Mueller, whose Declutter My Home group was created to inspire others to declutter their homes. Before she knew it, there were 42,599 people in her group taking part in moving her notion forward.

Now, with her new subscription-based group called Organize My Home, Mueller is committed to galvanizing members to work together on projects, organizing group challenges, holding live Q&A sessions, and offering videos and tutorials to make the group’s $14.95 monthly fee worth its while.

Free groups aren’t going anywhere

Until the subscription program takes off or proves itself a flop, Facebook’s free groups will still be around.

"As we learn from this pilot and understand how group members feel about subscription groups, we’ll continue to improve this experience to help admins offer more to their members and continue to invest in their communities," Facebook’s Deve concluded in the company’s blog post.

Instagram, a Facebook-owned social media platform, announced Wednesday that it will be rolling out a brand new long-form, vertical video feature. 

Called IGTV, the videos will currently live within the Instagram app until it gets its own standalone app in the coming days.

Though all Instagram users will be able to post to IGTV, the more followers you have, the longer the video you can make. Instagrammers with over 10,000 followers can post videos up to one hour long, which is why the company is targeting celebrities like Kim Kardashian West and Selena Gomez to publish content on IGTV.

Users with under 10,000 followers can post videos up to 10 minutes long. Previously, all users -- regardless of follower count -- were given 60 second Instagram videos.

As it stands right now, all IGTV videos will be pre-recorded, though a live feature is something the company could develop down the road.

The future of IGTV

Instagram has big plans for IGTV, many of which are contingent on how the feature fares with the younger generation. Though the platform currently plans to have two standalone apps, that could very well change should teens adopt it as their go-to social media platform.

Additionally, users of IGTV can expect the hub to be ad-free -- for now.

“Ads will not be part of IGTV at launch, but we’ll be exploring and test ways to help creators monetize after launch,” an Instagram spokesperson stated.

Early comparisons to YouTube

Right out of the gate, IGTV is being compared to the Google-owned video platform YouTube.

Prior to the IGTV launch, many Instagram users were linking to long-form YouTube videos in their Instagram stories. This new feature might eliminate the need for that practice.

“Now, Instagram can keep that in-house, and drive greater engagement and time spent,” said media and technology analyst Rich Greenfield. “I think this is a natural evolution from pictures to video, to stories and now to long-form video to capture as much human attention as possible.”

A new survey conducted by the Gallup and Knight Foundations finds that Americans believe that 39 percent of the news they see on television, read in newspapers, or hear on the radio is misinformation.

When taking in news through social media, U.S. adults estimate that nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of what they read is either made up or unable to be verified as accurate.

The survey of 1,440 randomly recruited Americans found that some demographics were more likely than others to believe that the news they consume is “fake.”

Demographic differences

Republicans were found to be more likely than Democrats to perceive news from legacy media outlets as misinformation.

Half (51 percent) of Republicans and 54 percent of self-described conservatives were likely to perceive misinformation when it comes to legacy media, compared with just 23 percent of Democrats and 24 percent of liberals.

People with a high school education or less believed that roughly 40 percent of traditional media stories are intentionally wrong on some level.

“The extent to which Americans perceive misinformation in the news environment and their belief in the effectiveness of methods to counteract it are influenced to a large degree by their political leanings and their opinions of the news media more broadly,” the Knight Foundation said in a summary of the findings.

Combating misinformation

Seventy percent or more of respondents said that methods to counteract the spread of misinformation, including giving greater prominence to stories from reputable news sources, could be at least “somewhat effective.”

“These results underscore how a lack of trust in the news media intertwines with perceptions of misinformation,” the Knight Foundation said.

“Although Americans continue to see the media as playing a critical role in informing citizens in our democracy, the ability of the institution to effectively fulfill that responsibility is hampered when citizens are not confident that the information they receive is accurate.”

Earlier this year, Facebook announced that it would be taking steps toward combating the spread of inaccurate news on its site by shrinking the visual prominence of news stories found to be inaccurate by Facebook’s third-party fact checkers.

Twitter said earlier this year that it would notify nearly 678,000 users that may have inadvertently interacted with accounts believed to have been linked to a Russian propaganda service called the Internet Research Agency (IRA).

WhatsApp will be discontinuing support for Nokia S40, Android Gingerbread, and iOS 7, the Facebook-owned messaging app announced in a blog post.

Consumers with these operating systems will be unable to create new accounts, but they can continue to use the app until support ends.

“We’ll no longer actively develop for [old] operating systems, [so] some features might stop functioning at any time. If you currently use an older operating system, we recommend upgrading to a newer version,” the blog post states.

Here are the operating systems WhatsApp has already stopped working with:

• Android versions older than 2.3.3

• Windows Phone 8.0 and older

• iPhone 3GS/iOS 6

• Nokia Symbian S60

• BlackBerry OS and BlackBerry 10

WhatsApp will cease support for Nokia users on December 31 of this year and February 1, 2020 for users of older Android and iOS versions. WhatsApp warned that some of the app’s features may stop working in the meantime as they are no longer "actively developing" for the operating systems.

Consumers with older operating systems are encouraged to upgrade to newer versions, such as iOS 8+, Android OS 4.0+, or Windows Phone 8.1+.

“Once you have one of these devices, simply install WhatsApp and verify your phone number on the new device. Keep in mind that WhatsApp can only be activated with one phone number on one device at a time,” WhatsApp said.

WhatsApp noted that upgrading to a phone running newer software will leave behind previous conversations since there’s currently no way to transfer chat history between devices. Chat history can, however, be attached in an email. Those interested in this option can learn more about it here.

A Democratic state lawmaker from California “eviscerated” the text of a bill that would have equipped consumers in the Golden State with the nation’s toughest set of state-level net neutrality protections, according to Sen. Scott Wiener.

Late Tuesday night, Michael Santiago -- an assemblyman from Los Angeles and chair of the Communications and Conveyance committee -- amended bill SB 822 to allow for loopholes that supposedly benefit the telecommunications industry.

Members of California’s Communications and Conveyance Committee forced a vote on the amendments before the hearing on Wednesday officially began. The amendments passed 8 - 2.

"It is, with the amendments, a fake net neutrality bill," said Sen. Scott Wiener from San Francisco, who authored the original bill.

The move comes two weeks after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to eliminate net neutrality rules. The amendments represent a significant blow to Democratic lawmakers who had hoped that California’s strong net neutrality protections would serve as the “gold standard” to replace the rules that the FCC rolled back.

Loopholes that undermine consumer choice

Santiago’s edits would allow ISPs to charge any website a fee for consumers to be able to access it. The amendments also allow for privileged content, meaning some content would eat up cellular data while others wouldn’t.

Privileged content would likely be created by the network’s parent company. This would mean, for example, that Comcast could make it free for consumers to go to NBC’s website while making them use their data to get news from another site.

The amendments would also allow ISPs to throttle entire classes of applications. For example, providers could throttle all online gaming or all online voice calls.

Financial ties to AT&T

AT&T is Assemblyman Santiago’s fifth-largest campaign donor, according to advocacy group Fight for the Future. However, Santiago maintains that his changes to the bill were not influenced by his financial ties to the telecommunications industry.

“This is the legislative process at work,” Santiago said in a statement. “Any suggestions of actions taken today somehow being otherwise motivated are irresponsible at best and insulting beyond that.”

Despite his claims, Santiago’s amendments have sparked allegations of corruption from critics.

“CA - All it took was $29K to buy #NetNeutrality protections away from you,” tweeted Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.

“The weakening of California’s #NetNeutrality bill shows what the forces we are facing are capable of. Every state deserves gold standard rules. That’s why the House of Reps should pass my CRA resolution immediately to reinstate net neutrality nationally,” said Senator Ed Markey (D - Mass.).

Tesla is suing a former employee it claims hacked company systems and revealed confidential information to outside sources. But the ex-employee, Martin Tripp, says he was simply a whistleblower who was alarmed at how CEO Elon Musk was running the company.

Tesla has been beset by problems in recent months, and on Monday Musk sent an email to employees that appeared to pin some of the blame on an unnamed employee that the executive accused of sabotage. On Wednesday, Tesla filed suit against Tripp without saying whether he was the unnamed employee mentioned in the email.

The suit accuses Tripp of writing software to hack into the company's system, transferring reams of data to “outside entities.” Among the information taken from the company, the suit alleges there were "dozens of confidential photographs and a video of Tesla's manufacturing systems."

The suit further claims that the ex-employee wrote computer code that would send Tesla data to people outside the company, in violation of Tesla policy. Tripp is also accused of making false statements about Tesla to the media – in particular, statements about the condition of batteries in some Tesla Model 3s.

Tripp denies

In an interview with the Washington Post, Tripp denied that he tampered with Tesla computer systems but confirmed that he gave information to a reporter for Business Insider because he was seeing “some really scary things” going on at Tesla.

Tripp said he told reporters that he saw “dangerously punctured batteries” being installed in Model 3s. Tesla has denied that charge.

The Business Insider article using Tripp as a source cast the company in an unflattering light, claiming it was using “an insane amount” of raw materials to make the Model 3, and still couldn't get it right.

The article claimed internal company documents it received showed that as much as 40 percent of the raw materials going into batteries and driving units had to be discarded or reworked before going to the company's assembly plant.

At the time, Tesla told the publication that a higher-than-normal scrap rate is to be expected in early stages of the production process. Tesla has struggled to meet production goals for the Model 3, a car it introduced in 2017, requiring customers to place a $1,000 deposit with their order.

Revenge?

Tesla's suit against Tripp claims a revenge motivation. It said the former employee became a problem early in his tenure with the company.

“Within a few months of Tripp joining Tesla, his managers identified Tripp as having problems with job performance and at times being disruptive and combative with his colleagues,” the suit alleges.

As a result, Tesla says Tripp was reassigned to a new role last month, after which he expressed anger at the company's action.