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ethics of using virtual reality in real life 

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ethics of using virtual reality in real life 

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It's morning, and the first thing that comes up in my Instagram feed is a picture of seven smashed and bloody faces. The photo is a gleeful post from Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). The caption reads: "Tony Ferguson's last seven opponents."My Instagram feed is full of pictures of violence, interspersed with advertisements for butt-enhancing leggings. They are "inspo" pictures, because I'm interested in martial arts. To me, a pulpy face is a sign of peak fitness. That's the personal context I bring to it.

It's a 2D taster of what I'm later going to see in virtual reality form: Jordan Wolfson's Real Violence, one of two violent VR installations at Tasmania's midwinter arts festival, Dark Mofo. This is a two-minute street scene in which the artist himself is rendered virtual and repeatedly stomps on and takes a baseball bat to the head of a defenceless man. People sat in passing cars don't even turn their heads to look. Only you, in your headset, and you're not stepping in to help either.

Perhaps there is more than one way to view the experience. I wonder, for example, if using VR to watch violence might be comparable to choosing to read details of violence in the news. It's a very human response to imagine the worst. We gauge how much we personally could endure and what death might feel like when it comes.

But then, Wolfson has titled his work unambiguously. As he put it to Art News, "You might say to me, how is this real violence if it's fake? The real violence isn't depicted by the person suffering. The real violence is actually depicted by the person implementing the violence. And that's me."

He seems to be implying that by watching Real Violence we are endorsing a graphically violent act. The man Wolfson beat to near-death does not exist, but by putting on the headset we are complicit in deriving a thrill from it.

Back in 2005, Senator Hillary Clinton waged a war on violent video games, holding a press conference to propose a bill called the Family Entertainment Protection Act, which would criminalise selling violent games to children.

To follow Clinton's logic that violent games breed violent actions, experiencing a game in VR mode should, in theory, be far more extreme (although, as reviewers of consumer games point out, technology isn't really up to speed yet so at this point the standard mode is more realistic).

Philosophy professor Thomas Metzinger, of Johannes Gutenberg University, warned New Scientist that fully immersive experiences have a bigger and more lasting impact on behaviour and psychology, including depersonalisation. And a 2014 study from Portugal found that unpleasant stimuli activated the right amygdala - associated with negative emotion - more strongly when presented in 3D than in 2D.

If I'm honest, when watching Real Violence I was hoping to see the victim's eyeballs shoot out, but they did not. My reasoning was: in for a penny, in for a pound. More genuinely disturbing to me was Paul McCarthy's CSSC Coach Stage Stage Coach VR experiment: Mary and Eve, a sexual psychodrama with an American western vibe.

Before donning the headset, participants are asked if they're OK with scenes of child sex abuse. Mary is a young woman, and Eve a young girl. The pair start to duplicate until the viewer is surrounded by them. At first, Eve is the target of Mary's malevolence, the kind of harassment that men might target a lone woman with.

"What's your name?" "Where are you from?" "Are you stupid?" "Fuck you, Eve."

Then the pair turn on the viewer and begin to crowd in. "She asked you a simple fucking question! Answer the fucking question!"

Turning away from one looming figure reveals another face, close up behind. There is violence of a sort - Mary simulates the rape of Eve through their clothing - but more unnerving is the implied violence. In Wolfson's Real Violence you are the observer. Here, the sense of threat is absorbed by you.

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A still from Paul McCarthy's CSSC Coach Stage Stage Coach VR Experiment: Mary and Eve. Photograph: MONA

Inflatable penises, latex pigs and a Justin Bieber shrine: Dark Mofo's wildest rides

Both artists have previously explored these very different perspectives of violence, and oddly, both used puppets. One of Wolfson's works, Colored Sculpture, was an animatronic boy viciously yanked by its chains around spaces like the Tate Modern. Wolfson told the Guardian, an echo of what he told Art News about Real Violence, "This is real abuse, not a simulation."

In McCarthy's Pinocchio Pipenose Household Dilemma, the artist dresses as Pinocchio and slams around the set angrily, before committing violence against another Pinocchio. The viewer watches on video through an interface in their own Pinocchio mask.

Context is everything. VR-induced discomfort has proven to be a useful therapeutic tool, not only in terms of exposure therapy - such as OCD sufferers who experience escalating anxiety based on their fears around dirt and disorder, in a safe environment - but also in promoting empathy. One 2018 study, for example, put domestic violence offenders in the virtual shoes of victims. Results revealed that offenders have a significantly lower ability to recognise fear in female faces compared to the general population, but after they were embodied in a female victim, this was reduced.

Perhaps watching violence can also be a useful outlet, even when masquerading as entertainment. I ask Melbourne hardcore wrestler KrackerJak about this. His death-matches utilise props such as staple guns, box-cutters, barbed wire and baseball bats. The outcome is predetermined, but the audience is there to get its jollies from nasty-looking violence. He says it's a way for him to let off steam, too.

"I used to think it was cathartic," he says. "Now I'm not so sure. I've read some stuff where they say that engaging in that behaviour just reinforces the neural pathways that in turn reinforce your capacity to get angry or violent. Now I think it's playing around in an area of my mind that is easier to get to the more I do it. But it feels so fucking good."
* This article was amended on 23 July to remove a still from Jordan Wolfson's Real Violence Topics

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'Real' violence: coming to grips with the ethics of virtual reality brutality

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It's morning, and the first thing that comes up in my Instagram feed is a picture of seven smashed and bloody faces. The photo is a gleeful post from Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). The caption reads: "Tony Ferguson's last seven opponents."My Instagram feed is full of pictures of violence, interspersed with advertisements for butt-enhancing leggings.

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Data-Driven Marketing (Progressive & Macy’s)

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Data-Driven Marketing (Progressive & Macy’s)

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Jingfang 855954

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Progressive (one of the largest providers of car insurance in the U.S.) and Macy's (a major U.S. retailer) are both multi-billion dollar companies that stay ahead of the curve. Today, we will review real-life case studies that show how these companies use data-driven marketing insights to make business decisions and drive growth.

Most of what is covered can be found within research published by MIT Technology Review, in conjunction with Google Analytics 360, entitled, "How Analytics and Machine Learning Help Organizations Reap Competitive Advantage." The full case study can be accessed here.

How Progressive Uses Data to Make Decisions

When Progressive launched its mobile app, it was only used to get quotes for its various insurance products. However, when they looked into the data and studied how their users interacted with the app, they found out that a vast majority were interested in buying insurance directly from the app. Therefore, a "buy" feature was added, which accounted for $2 billion in written premiums within a year .

"The team recognized its mobile users wanted to do more than simply get information," said Pawan Divakarla, Data and Business Analytics Leader at Progressive. "We said, 'It looks like, from the data, people are attempting to buy and so we should put buy-related software up there. It was a really big 'aha' moment."

Furthermore, in 2008, Progressive launched its Snapshot®, Pay As You Drive® program. This is referred to as usage-based insurance technology. Snapshot uses mileage, time of day and what it calls "hard-braking" data (measuring driver behavior) to determine driver discounts. This has enabled Progressive to personalize insurance rates based on actual driving patterns rather than historical factors. Essentially, the safest drivers gets the best car insurance rates! Genius!

Once the mobile app is downloaded or the plug-in device inserted, driving data begins to be collected in real time.

To date, Progressive has collected more than "We have a reverence for data and when you think of it that way, you treat it with respect." 10 billion miles of driving data with Snapshot. According to their website, this has resulted more than $700 million in discounts for their customers.

For Progressive, "data-driven marketing" isn't just a buzzword, it is a core part of their business.

"Data is really the bread and butter for us. It's all we do," Pawan acknowledges.

By using data to drive decisions, Progressive is able to introduce a new quality product that better serves their users. For example, Snapshot has advanced functionalities that can identify an issue with a customer's alternator before it becomes a problem! This is a great value add!

Rather than being reactive, Progressive is moving towards being predictive (a la Predictive Analytics). This is only possible through the collection, analysis and implementation of data.

How Macy's Make Data-Driven Decisions

Another example of data-driven marketing is how Macy's uses data to formulate ad-hoc queries.

By definition, ad-hoc simply means something done for a particular purpose. In business, ad-hoc analysis is a solution designed for a specific (future) problem.

How this ﻿﻿﻿helps ﻿﻿﻿Macy's ﻿make ﻿data-driven ﻿decisions

Through machine learning, algorithms can learn from current and past data to help identify future problems before they arise. This helps executives and managers make faster decisions when the time calls for it.

Therefore, "ad-hoc queries" is simply a fancy way of referring to future questions, problems or issues that may arise and enables business leaders to innovate and create solutions for the future.

"Machine learning is figuring out all the information you're not asking," said Sagnik Nandy, Google's VP of Engineering. "Once you have that information, you can generate insights even before a question is asked. That can be a huge competitive advantage."

Companies like Macy's and Progressive are increasingly moving towards a predictive model to help them forecast the future and stay ahead of the competition.

While most businesses are reacting to new challenges, companies like Macy's and Progressive are already creating solutions for those (and future) problems. This puts them in a great position to introduce products to the market before their competition.

Is a Data-Driven Marketing Strategy Right for Every Business?

The short answer is yes! In a recent McKinsey Global Survey, high performing companies say data analytics has had a greater impact on revenue in the past three years. However, the companies that lag behind do so due to lack of executive support and organizational structure that supports analytics.

Smart organizations are using data analytics and sophisticated data-driven tools to focus on the future, rather than on the past. They gain insights from the data they collect on their customers. But perhaps, more importantly, they use that data to create marketing strategies that drive business growth.

Ready to get in ﻿﻿front ﻿﻿of your customers?

Contact Stirista to learn how our data and digital advertising solutions can help fuel your data-driven initiatives.

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Data-Driven Marketing Case Studies (Progressive & Macy's) - Stirista

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Progressive (one of the largest providers of car insurance in the U.S.) and Macy's (a major U.S. retailer) are both multi-billion dollar companies that stay ahead of the curve. Today, we will review real-life case studies that show how these companies use data-driven marketing insights to make business decisions and drive growth.

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Chinese Face Changing App Zao Is Raising Privacy Concerns

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Chinese Face Changing App Zao Is Raising Privacy Concerns

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After the fiasco of FaceApp, another AI-powered app that swaps face has gone viral. As expected, it has also introduced privacy concerns within a record time. The iOS app Zao was able to top China's edition of the App Store in record time after its launch on August 30.

What made the iOS app Zao become such a hit in such a short time? It is the ability of the app to incorporate your face into scenes from movies and TV shows. However, it was soon reported by Bloomberg that an early version of the user agreement of Zao gave the developer Changsha Shenduronghe Network Technology which is a subsidiary of dating and live streaming company Momo, 'free, irrevocable, permanent, transferable and relicense-able' rights to all the content made by the user. Simply put, this means that any pictures or videos that feature your face will become the property of the creator of app Zao.

The company was quick to backtrack on its policy though, and updated the terms. The new terms state that the imagery will only be used for app improvement or for purposes that users would have agreed to in advance. The company also vowed to delete material from its servers if the user deletes it via the app. The Zap team will 'fix the [privacy] issues that we didn't take into consideration,' as per a post that was made by the creators on Weibo.

In case you haven't heard, #ZAO is a Chinese app which completely blew up since Friday. Best application of 'Deepfake'-style AI facial replacement I've ever seen.

Here's an example of me as DiCaprio (generated in under 8 secs from that one photo in the thumbnail) ? pic.twitter.com/1RpnJJ3wgT
- Allan Xia (@AllanXia) September 1, 2019

The correction came a bit too late for some of the people though. Users have already condemned Zao's ratings on the App Store over infamous privacy issues. The China E-Commerce Research Center also asked the government for investigating the allegation that the software violated 'certain laws and standards.' It is not clear though if officials will be taking actions, especially after the policy change by Zao. What this does do is serve as a reminder for making sure that you check the privacy policies before using apps that involve your likeness along with a plethora of other sensitive information.

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Chinese Face Changing App Zao Is Raising Privacy Concerns

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After the fiasco of FaceApp, another AI-powered app that swaps face has gone viral. As expected, it has also introduced privacy concerns within a record time. The iOS app Zao was able to top China's edition of the App Store in record time after its launch on August 30.

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how facial recognition can affects the lives of people in positive and negative manner 

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how facial recognition can affects the lives of people in positive and negative manner 

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When you post a photo on Facebook, and the platform automatically tags the people in the image, you might not give much thought to the technology behind the convenience. However, when you discover that facial recognition technology could track you without your permission while you walk down a street in London, it might make you question the invasion of your privacy. Just like with any other new technology, facial recognition brings positives and negatives with it. Since it's here to stay and expanding, it's good to be aware of the pros and cons of facial recognition.

Facial Recognition Technology: Here Are The Important Pros And Cons
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What is facial recognition, and how does it work?
Facial recognition is a biometric technology that uses distinguishable facial features to identify a person. Allied Market Research expects the facial recognition market to grow to $9.6 billion by 2022. Today, it's used in a variety of ways from allowing you to unlock your phone, go through security at the airport, purchase products at stores and in the case of entertainer and musician Taylor Swift it was used to identify if her known stalkers came through the gate at her Rose Bowl concert in May 2018.

Today, we are inundated with data of all kinds, but the plethora of photo and video data available provides the dataset required to make facial recognition technology work. Facial recognition systems analyze the visual data and millions of images and videos created by high-quality Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras installed in our cities for security, smartphones, social media, and other online activity. Machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities in the software map distinguishable facial features mathematically, look for patterns in the visual data, and compare new images and videos to other data stored in facial recognition databases to determine identity.
Pros of facial recognition
One of the major advantages of facial recognition technology is safety and security. Law enforcement agencies use the technology to uncover criminals or to find missing children or seniors. In New York, police were able to apprehend an accused rapist using facial recognition technology within 24 hours of an incident where he threatened a woman with rape at knifepoint. In cities where police don't have time to help fight petty crime, business owners are installing facial-recognition systems to watch people and identify subjects of interest when they come in their stores.

Airports are increasingly adding facial recognition technology to security checkpoints; the U.S. Department of Homeland Security predicts that it will be used on 97 percent of travelers by 2023. When people know they are being watched, they are less likely to commit crimes so the possibility of facial recognition technology being used could deter crime.

Since there is no contact required for facial recognition like there is with fingerprinting or other security measures, facial recognition offers a quick, automatic, and seamless verification experience. There is nothing such as a key or I.D. that can be lost or stolen.

Facial recognition can add conveniences. In addition to helping you tag photos in Facebook or your cloud storage via Apple and Google, you will start to be able to check-out at stores without pulling out money or credit cards-your face will be scanned. At the A.I. Bar, facial recognition technology is used to add patrons who approach the bar to a running queue to get served their drinks more efficiently.

Although possible, it's hard to fool facial recognition technology so it can also help prevent fraud.
Cons of facial recognition
The biggest drawback for facial recognition technology in most people's opinions is the threat to an individual's privacy. In fact, several cities have considered or will ban real-time facial recognition surveillance use by law enforcement, including San Francisco, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and more. These municipalities determined the risks of using the technology outweighed the benefits. Police can still use footage from personally owned devices such as Nest cameras to find criminals; it's just not allowing the government entities to use live facial recognition software.

While London's King's Cross is using facial recognition, London is also at the forefront of democratic societies in its testing of the technology. In test events, the city hopes to determine the accuracy of the systems while grappling with how to deal with individuals who cover up to hide their identity from cameras and other issues. Additionally, democratic societies must define the legal basis to live facial-recognition of the general population, and when blanket use of the technology is justified.

The technology isn't as effective at identifying people of color and women as it is white males. One reason for this is the data set the algorithms are trained on is not as robust for people of color and women. Until this is rectified, there are concerns about the ramifications for misidentifying people with the technology.

In addition, there are issues that need to be resolved that can throw off the technology when a person changes appearance or the camera angle isn't quite right (although they are working on being able to identify a person by only their earlobe). It's dramatically improving; according to independent tests by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) facial recognition systems got 20 times better at finding a match in a database over a period that covered 2014 to 2018.

Another potential downside is the storage of sensitive personal data and the challenges that come with it. Just last week, we have had the news that a database containing facial scans used by banks, police forces, and defense firms where breached.

In order to benefit from the positive aspects of facial recognition, our society is going to have to work through some significant challenges to our privacy and civil liberties. Will individuals accept the invasion of their privacy as a proper cost to being more secure and for the conveniences facial recognition provides?

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Facial Recognition Technology: Here Are The Important Pros And Cons

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When you post a photo on Facebook, and the platform automatically tags the people in the image, you might not give much thought to the technology behind the convenience. However, when you discover that facial recognition technology could track you without your permission while you walk down a street in London, it might make you question the invasion of your privacy.

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Huawei may expand in Smart Home technology, in a big way

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Huawei may expand in Smart Home technology, in a big way

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Tiffany
HuaWei tend to cooperate with other brands to bring a cross-devices experience to enhance the new home technology experience.

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Huawei's Yu Chengdong made it clear that the chinese giant plans on entering the smart home segment in a big way.

At the "Ecology conference", Yu Chengdong said: "Huawei is only an enabler of the industry, not a predator of the industry."

Huawei's "True Ecology Quality" Eco Conference, Huawei's consumer business CEO Yu Chengdong announced that "Huawei IoT ecological strategy will be fully upgraded to a full-scenario smart strategy. Huawei will revolve around HiAI, two the strategy of a large open platform and three layers of structured products creates a colourful smart home ecosystem for the industry."

The upgrading of the home appliance industry faces the dual challenge of standards and experience. On the one hand, there is no uniform standard in the process of upgrading traditional household appliances to smart home appliances, and the enterprise self-built platform is an island. On the other hand, traditional home appliance companies and smart portals are not smart enough, there is a lack of communication between categories, and there is a lack of scene interaction. In this context, the home appliance industry needs a platform or a new ecology to break these barriers.

After years of accumulation, Huawei will continue to use HiAI as a strategic investment direction to provide a core driving force for all smart businesses. On the other hand, the HUAWEI HiLink platform will be upgraded to enrich the number of "1+8+N" three-tier structured products, select high-quality partners and products, and give consumers a variety of choices.
Core Driver: HiAI Technology Empowerment
In the next 10 years, the most exciting change in the consumer sector is the interaction of all things and natural interactions. The hardware and software ecosystem moves from vertical to aggregate, and AI redefines the consumer end-user experience. The whole scene of intelligent life ecology that Huawei wants to build is an open ecology. Facing the whole ecology, Huawei HiAI intelligent terminal computing platform will provide technology open at the core, end and cloud levels, and empower global partners. With HiAI technology, it brings more computing power, richer scene-based APIs and supports more terminals, making applications more intelligent and powerful.

First, Huawei has accumulated deep AI capabilities in both cloud and terminal services. As early as 2017, Huawei's consumer terminal business was the first to introduce the Kirin 970 chip with built-in NPU. It has been upgraded to the Kirin 980 chip and applied to the latest Mate and P series phones. Last year, Huawei Cloud launched the industry's fastest Ascend chip - 256T computing, full HD video SoC AI chip.

The core side capability is open, mainly reflected in multi-framework, multi-operator support, and powerful computing power and rapid integration deployment capabilities. It can effectively break the bottleneck of end-side power consumption and computing power, and promote end-scale AI scale application. In Huawei's full-scenario smart strategy, the end-side HiAI engine can easily integrate multiple AI capabilities with smart devices/APPs, making the terminal device/APP more intelligent and powerful. For example, let Huawei smart speakers interact more intelligently with people, and accomplish more tasks better. HiAI Service is open to partners in the cloud: HMS provides account, payment, push and other basic services; HAG integrated third-party atomization services.
Open connection platform: HiLink platform
If HiAI is the core driving force and the seed of Huawei's enabling ecological partners, then the HiLink platform is the soil. Ecological prosperity is not a day's work. Huawei's consumer BG launched the HiLink smart home strategy as early as 2015. To date, HiLink has covered 100+ lifestyle categories and is compatible with industry-wide connectivity protocols such as WiFi, Zigbee, and Bluetooth.

HiLink is a fully-connected architecture standard that covers the cloud, the end, the edge, and the core, and realizes the interconnection of all things. It can end-to-end the entire ecological empowerment, solve the interconnection problem between smart devices of different brands and enable the access platform. Communicate with "Mandarin" between devices of different manufacturers, to bring a new home experience to users through the intelligent linkage of scenes.

Huawei has deeply understood how to make cross-brand eco-products work together to bring more convenience and comfort to consumers. This is a challenge for the Internet of Things in the consumer field, and it is a challenge that no partner can accomplish independently. The real ecology needs Huawei and its partners to build together. Therefore, on the HUAWEI HiLink platform, Huawei continues to empower, while industry partners focus on providing hardware and services to complement each other's advantages, thus continuously upgrading the smart experience of IoT products.

Huawei built three eco-cooperation modes around HiLink smart home eco-strategy. Huawei's smart products focus on deep cooperation and empowerment and are committed to building the highest IoT experience standard. Works with HUAWEI HiLink products focus on extensive volume cooperation, committed to openness and support. Partner product smart experience; cloud docking account interoperability is committed to activating the stock user to ensure the basic experience.

To enhance the consumer intelligence experience and a more comprehensive empowerment partner, Ark Labs has become an important part of HiLink's smart home ecosystem strategy. As the world's largest consumer, software, hardware and service integration innovation carrier, Ark Labs has realized the implementation of offline end-to-end solutions. Relying on the Ark Lab, Huawei's IoT solution not only enables the empowerment of single product experience, empowers cross-device experience, and empowers the store experience, but also enables the real estate home improvement to become the only industry capable of providing many professional capabilities for the ecological partners.
2019 true ecology, HUAWEI HiLink comprehensive upgrade
2019 is the first year of the smart home industry and a year of a comprehensive upgrade of the HUAWEI HiLink smart home ecosystem strategy. To bring the HUAWEI HiLink smart life experience to everyone and every family, Huawei has upgraded from four aspects: brand, technology, products and channels.

In terms of brand, HUAWEI HiLink has been upgraded from a smart home ecosystem to a full-site IoT ecosystem. Huawei is merging all-round resources inside and outside to promote the early arrival of intelligent transformation, including more than one billion RMB infrastructure and technical standards research and development, marketing investment, ecological incentives, etc., and cooperate with thousands of partners to achieve full-site IoT products into Wanjia store. At the same time, Huawei's 1+8 portal user experience is continuously entrusted to IoT products through HiLink platform, making Huawei's full scene IoT ecosystem the benchmark of China's best IoT experience, and eventually becoming the leader of all-connected smart life.

Technical aspects: Based on Huawei's strong technical strength, Huawei's smart homes also ushered in important upgrades at the technical level. This year, Huawei's self-developed Linghao series chips will be fully deployed in the HUAWEI HiLink ecosystem. The CPU, Lingqi Wi-Fi and Lingxiao Power Cat chips have been fully applied to our connected products, such as Huawei Routing Q2 Pro and WS5200. Version, and all subsequent routing products. Next, Huawei will also launch the Lingyi IoT Wi-Fi chip series, which will be fully open to all Huawei Smart Home Eco-Partners. The household appliances equipped with the Lingyi IoT Wi-Fi chip and the router of Huawei Linghao chip will be more stable, better in experience, farther in coverage, lower in power consumption, and can support long-term work of various home appliances with batteries.

Enriching Huawei's intelligent selection of ecological products, creating more ecological explosives; deepening the work with partners, from single products to full range, all categories. After deeply understanding the pain points and challenges of partners and industry intelligent upgrades

Huawei will open more empowerment capabilities, including product technology, marketing, channels, users, platforms, and delivery quality. Among them, Huawei will continue to uphold the positioning of eco-innovation demonstrations and continue to create more ecological explosives with professional partners. The Works with HUAWEI HiLink method will integrate, expand and deepen into the whole category and full range from single models. Products that cover more squares and offer more price positions for consumers to choose from.

From Huawei to partner channels, create more single product explosions; from post-installation to pre-load delivery, to achieve program integration.

At the "Ecology Conference", Huawei announced a strong alliance with Suning and the House of Reality. Huawei and Suning will conduct strategic cooperation in the field of smart home from the aspects of ecology, products and channels. At the same time, the two parties will enhance the user experience as the purpose, deep cooperation in the Internet of Things, smart home industry standards, jointly promote the formation of industry alliances, and jointly advocate the establishment of national-level smart home industry standards and norms; Huawei and the actual home to build HUAWEI HiLink's whole house smart home hardcover solution, jointly introduces home appliance product partners, indoor design integration partners, and life comprehensive service partners to jointly establish the program and service standards and specifications that lead the home industry and build a joint laboratory.

The signing of this strategy means that Huawei's channel upgrade is gradually being implemented, which is an important step in the overall HUAWEI HiLink smart home ecosystem strategy.

Through the upgrading of brands, technologies, products and channels, Yu Chengdong said that in the next three years, smart IoT will move from dream to reality, and one-third of China's smart home appliances will support HUAWEI HiLink, becoming the main force and the best IoT ecosystem in China. Standard.

Defining the three elements of the IoT Ecology for the first time: entrances, connections and ecology

At the HUAWEI HiLink Ecology Conference, the general manager of Huawei's consumer smart home field, Sui Wei, first proposed the three elements of the IoT ecosystem: portal, connectivity and ecology. At the same time, relevant data was released, and the number of portal connections of Huawei's entire ecosystem platform reached 260 million. Connected to 40 million households and access HUAWEI HiLink eco partners up to 200

This eco-conference is a feast for Huawei and its partners. Huawei's AI speaker update skills and features are the key entry products. Huawei's routing, which is the core of the home connectivity product, fully supports IPv6, and focuses on Huawei's routing Q2 Pro, leading the world. Huawei 5G CPE Pro for 5G, and 4 Huawei-selected eco-products for quality life, including iateey smart hot water bar, remote master air conditioner companion, Lake smart cycle fan, Siemens split air detector. In addition, Sparks also brought a new product, the HUAWEI HiLink Bluetooth module, which costs less than $1.

China's three elements in the IOT Ecology: the entrance, connection, and ecological aspects are well deployed, and are committed to providing consumers with smarter natural interaction portals, more suitable for high-speed and stable connection products of Chinese families, and richer ecological scene choices.
5 heavy cooperation, achieving ecological win-win
At the Ecology Conference, Huawei held a roundtable meeting with ecological partners such as Siemens Energy Management Group, Bosi Home Appliances, A.O. Smith, Panasonic Cleaning Division, and Oaks Group. At the meeting, Huawei's consumer business IOT product line president Zhi Hao said, "True intelligence = good entry equipment, control brand, good quality home appliances, by establishing a stable connection between the two, bringing consumers intelligent Service experience. And "true intelligence" is not something that can be achieved by a single product. It should be a systematic solution to build a true ecology together."

It is worth mentioning that the five major cooperative brands announced this time are leading enterprises in various vertical fields. They will cooperate with Huawei in the portal, AI and connection technologies to fully connect the HUAWEI HiLink platform. This cooperation is not only the joining of products, but the cooperation of the whole series; Huawei entered the whole house solution this year, including water system, air system, cleaning system, energy system, etc. These manufacturers are very professional in these systems. Work with HUAWEI HiLink to create the ultimate smart home-wide smart home solution that delivers a true smart living experience to consumers.

In the future, we welcome more professional partners in the field to settle in Ark, and work with Huawei to create a more complete smart home whole house solution.

Huawei only works as an industrial enabler.

Smart home is the key to the era of smart Internet. Huawei insists on openness and innovation and continues to polish the user experience. To this end, Huawei will provide a full range of open technologies, brands and channel capabilities to help the development of the smart home industry, and strive to create the first ecological home of China's smart home within three years, thus achieving the goal of 3 billion US dollars in three years. This is what Huawei has to do. If you insist on doing it, you must polish your experience to first-class and finally to first-class.

It is worth noting that Huawei is a trustworthy partner. Huawei's entry into the smart home market is not to build its own home appliances, but to build a new and open platform to work together with traditional home appliance manufacturers to rapidly transform and build a smart home quality life. The space left by Huawei for its partners is vast. Huawei is empowering its technology and sales channels to enhance its brand value and product sales.

For consumers, HUAWEI HiLink brings together many outstanding brands to provide richer and more diverse smart home products. This open approach greatly promotes consumers' autonomy in product selection and enhances the intelligent experience.

As in the "Ecology conference", Yu Chengdong said: "Huawei is only an enabler of the industry, not a predator of the industry." Behind this sentence is Huawei's commitment to the ecological partners to jointly promote the smart home ecology, and also highlights Huawei.

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Huawei may expand in Smart Home technology, in a big way

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Huawei's Yu Chengdong made it clear that the chinese giant plans on entering the smart home segment in a big way. At the "Ecology conference", Yu Chengdong said: "Huawei is only an enabler of the industry, not a predator of the industry."

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China's new 'super camera' can instantly pinpoint specific targets among tens of thousands of people

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China's new 'super camera' can instantly pinpoint specific targets among tens of thousands of people

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Posted September 26, 2019 17:33:19

Scientists have unveiled a 500 megapixel cloud camera system in China that they say is capable of capturing the facial details of each individual in a crowd of tens of thousands of people, raising fears facial recognition monitoring could soon reach a new level.

The camera, which was revealed at China's International Industry Fair last week, was designed by Fudan University and Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The camera's resolution is five times more detailed than the human eye, and it is also equipped with artificial intelligence (AI), facial recognition, real-time monitoring and cloud computing technology, designers say.

All this means it can detect and identify human faces or other objects and instantly find specific targets even in a crowded stadium, Xiaoyang Zeng, one of the scientists who worked on the new technology, explained to reporters at the exhibition display.

He said this device - dubbed the "super camera" by local media - can capture both still images and record video.

Australian freelance technology journalist Alex Kidman said the camera was technically feasible but there were potential difficulties.

"The challenge for a camera of this scope, especially in a cloud-led AI environment is the quantity of data that's needed to shuffle around for identification; as you raise the detail level of each image as the Fudan University scientists have done, you seriously raise the size of the files - especially for video - a substantial amount," Kidman said.

"The serious technical challenge - leaving privacy concerns aside for a second - is in uploading that data and parsing it in a sensible timeframe for the kinds of applications they're talking about, especially wirelessly."

The capacity of such a camera has also raised concerns about privacy in a country already criticised for heavily monitoring its citizens.

"The Party-state has massive databases of people's images and the capability to connect them to their identity, so it isn't inconceivable that technology like this is possible if not now then in the future," Samantha Hoffman, an analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told the ABC.

Local media reported that the camera has received a mixed response from Chinese experts with some lauding the invention for its military and national security applications, while others voiced privacy concerns.

China's social credit system

For the past few years, China has been developing a Social Credit System intended to be rolled out nationwide which assesses citizens and businesses by economic and social reputation.

Social credit is like a scorecard for each of China's 1.4 billion citizens and millions of businesses.

Just this month, China announced plans to push ahead with a corporate ranking system that will affect 33 million companies.

The system for citizens is designed to value and engineer better individual behaviour by awarding the trustworthy and punishing the disobedient.

Top "citizen scores" can earn VIP treatment at hotels and airports, cheap loans and a fast track to the best universities and jobs.

Those with lower scores can be banned from travel, or barred from getting credit or government jobs.

The system is enforced by surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition, body scanning and geo-tracking to cast a constant gaze over citizens.

The new 500 megapixel camera could make that process much more efficient.

At the expo, Mr Zeng explained that while other cameras were capable of filming thousands of people at once in a wide frame, each face is represented by only a few pixels, which means "you couldn't clearly see your targeted person at all".

With 500 megapixels, or 500 million pixels, each face is easily identifiable, and the AI technology can scan and identify a target within seconds.

Ms Hoffman said data generated from surveillance video can be "fed into a pool of data that, combined with AI processing, can generate tools for social control, including tools linked to the Social Credit System".

"I think it is important to note that third-party data like surveillance video - [or any information] in addition to data like government records, legal records or economic records - does not feed into something that generates a score automatically moving up and down in real time," Ms Hoffman said.

"Of course, there are separate but linked public security bureau databases that images like this are more likely to directly feed into."

The China News Service reported that Mr Zeng had called for laws and regulations to standardise the application of the camera.

The developers of the camera did not respond to the ABC's requests for comment.

Topics: community-and-society, computers-and-technology, science-and-technology, information-and-communication, information-technology, government-and-politics, china, asia

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China's new 500 megapixel 'super camera' can identify thousands of people simultaneously

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Posted September 26, 2019 17:33:19 Scientists have unveiled a 500 megapixel cloud camera system in China that they say is capable of capturing the facial details of each individual in a crowd of tens of thousands of people, raising fears facial recognition monitoring could soon reach a new level.

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Using AI in many area is the  future, so is advertisement

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Using AI in many area is the  future, so is advertisement

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Javen

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Our AI in Advertising content is sponsored by AiAdvertising, an AI advertising platform that takes the guesswork out of running ad campaigns. Learn more >>>

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how advertising works in astonishing ways.

That was just the beginning...

This is producing almost unbelievable results...

One industrial equipment supplier is using AI to crush its advertising goals.

A financial services company is using AI to personalize advertising messages to individual customers at scale.

One travel firm even used AI to find customers it didn't know it had.

Long story short...

If you're not using AI for digital advertising, you're at a competitive disadvantage.

We're here to help. At Marketing AI Institute, we've spent years researching and piloting AI marketing tools-including AI advertising tools. We've published over 700 articles on AI marketing and advertising. And we're actively tracking thousands of AI marketing and advertising companies with more than $6 billion in combined funding.

In this article, we'll:

Help you understand what AI for advertising is-and why you need it

Outline the top use cases for the technology

Recommend the best tools for AI advertising, so you can get started with AI

Let's dive in.

What Is AI for Advertising?

You don't need to know everything about AI to use it in your advertising-you just need to know these basics.

The best definition of AI comes from Demis Hassabis, founder of AI company DeepMind, which was acquired by Google. He says:

AI is the "science of making machines smart."

That means making machines that can do intellectual tasks that humans can do. Tasks like: read, write, and understand text; see and identify objects; move around obstacles; hear and understand language; and sense the external environment.

Machines are able to do all of these things thanks to AI.

That's because AI allows machines to learn. Unlike traditional technology, AI can actually detect patterns in data, then learn to make predictions from those patterns. It can then learn from its outcomes to make better and better predictions over time.

Once trained by humans, AI can go learn and improve on its own. The more data you give an AI system, the better it can learn and improve.

Whether you know it or not, you use AI dozens or hundreds of times each day.

Gmail and Google Docs use AI to understand what you're typing, then predict what you want to type next. Every time you (and millions of others) use this feature, you train the AI to get better and better at predictive text.

Self-driving cars use AI to detect obstacles and drive safely. Every mile they drive gives them more data to improve their driving abilities.

Siri and Alexa use AI to understand voice commands and predict what responses make the most sense. Every time you talk to them, they learn to improve the quality of their responses.

In fact, AI isn't just one technology. It's an umbrella term that encompasses a range of smart technologies like these that can learn and improve on their own. Some AI technologies you might hear about are: machine learning, computer vision, natural language generation (NLG), natural language processing (NLP), deep learning, neural networks, and speech recognition. There are dozens of others, too.

You don't need to know every term to be successful with AI. You just need to understand that AI-powered technology has the revolutionary ability to learn and improve on its own.

The ability to learn and improve on its own is why AI gives you a huge competitive advantage in advertising.

Why Do You Need AI for Advertising?

AI is an absolute must if you want to win in the new landscape of modern programmatic advertising.

Thanks to the internet and programmatic advertising, we now have the ability to reach consumers across hundreds of digital platforms. We also have the ability to target them based on hundreds and thousands of demographic and behavioral data points. We can even test hundreds or thousands of different ads to see what they respond to best.

Unfortunately, humans aren't good at managing any of this.

Make no mistake, we're great at being strategic and creative. This served us well in the Mad Men days of advertising, when a smart idea and clever slogan meant your ad campaign would succeed. Today, we are still integral to strategizing and creating unforgettable ads.

But we're not good at the rest of it. We can't analyze all the data we now have quickly enough to take action to improve campaigns. We can't manage hundreds or thousands of ad, targeting, and budget variations to get the best results. And we certainly can't find new customer opportunities in a sea of data.

AI can do all of these things and more. That's why forward-thinking companies are using AI to:

Allocate advertising budgets, both across channels and audiences

Adjust advertising budgets automatically to hit KPIs

Find new advertising audiences and conversion opportunities

Build richer audience profiles

Determine and hit campaign goals

Gain insight into competitors' ad spend, creatives, and strategies

Create ad copy

Create visual ad creative

Hyper-personalize ad messages and images to individual consumers

Hyper-personalize ad targeting

Predict ad performance before launching campaigns

And much more

Top Use Cases for AI in Advertising

There are dozens of use cases for AI in advertising-here are some of the most powerful ones.

Buy and Place Programmatic and Digital Ads

Today's advertising relies on programmatic to target and deliver ads in real-time across the internet. AI is critical to the infrastructure that underlies advertising products on many platforms, though you may not always see it. Modern programmatic platforms often use AI to manage real-time ad buying, selling, and placement.

In fact, all digital advertising exchanges and platforms use artificial intelligence to regulate the purchase and sale of advertising in real-time. That includes programmatic exchanges, third-party networks, and advertising on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.

You won't find these exchanges, services, and platforms revealing how their AI algorithms work anytime soon though. But that's the point: Even behind the scenes, artificial intelligence dictates how your ad spend gets used, who sees your ads, and how effective your overall campaigns are. That means if you run paid advertising, you need to understand the terminology around artificial intelligence and ask the right questions about how the AI used by ad platforms may be affecting your spend.

A very basic example of this is:

Facebook advertising, specifically ad frequency and relevance score. These two numbers are key pieces of data that Facebook's algorithms use-without human involvement-to dictate how much you pay and how your ads are displayed.

Traditional advertising research has shown that optimal ad frequency is at least three exposures within a brand purchase cycle. Traditional advertising schools say that you need to "hit" your audience with the same ad as many times as possible. However, repeat exposure on Facebook might actually hurt your campaign.

That's because Facebook's algorithms take into account user feedback. If you show your ad too often, and it's rated poorly by users, your relevance score may go down. "In most cases," says Social Media Examiner, "the higher the frequency, the lower the relevance score."

A high relevance score means your ad is more likely to be shown to a target audience than the other ads you're competing with. That translates into better performance and lower costs.

In modern advertising, you need to try to understand the algorithm as much as you understand your audience.

Optimize Advertising Budget and Performance

Performance optimization is one of the key use cases for AI in advertising. Machine learning algorithms are used by commercially available solutions to analyze how your ads perform across specific platforms, then offer recommendations on how to improve performance.

In some cases, these platforms may use AI to intelligently automate actions that you know you should be taking based on best practices, saving you significant time. In other cases, they may highlight performance issues you didn't even know you had.

In the most advanced cases, AI can automatically manage ad performance and spend optimization, making decisions entirely on its own about how best to reach your advertising KPIs and recommending a fully optimized budget.

In another case, there exists at least one platform that allocates ad dollars automatically across all channels and audiences, so human beings can focus on higher-value strategic tasks, rather than manual guesswork about what works and what doesn't.

Your ad targeting matters just as much as, if not more than, your ad copy and creative.

AI can help here. We know of at least a few AI systems that look at your past audiences and ad performance, weigh this against your KPIs and real-time performance data coming in, then identify new audiences likely to buy from you.

Create and Manage Ads for You

AI-powered systems exist that will actually partially or fully create ads for you, based on what works best for your goals. This functionality is already present in some of the social media ad platforms, which use some intelligent automation to suggest ads you should run based on the links you're promoting.

But it also exists in some third-party tools, which actually use smart algorithms to write ad copy for you. These systems leverage natural language processing (NLP) and natural language generation (NLG), two AI-powered technologies, to write ad copy that performs as well or better than human-written copy-in a fraction of the time and at scale.

See AI for Advertising in action!

If you're a brand marketer handling your paid spend, see how AI-powered AiAdvertising can help you at every stage of the advertising cycle from persona building to analysis.

You can make informed decisions through interactive and dynamic dashboards, get more from your marketing budget and increase your return on ad spend. Kevin Myers, AiAdvertising's Chief Product and Marketing Officer, dives into the platform.

Real-World Examples of AI in Advertising

AI advertising is reshaping how brands do business.

Equipment Company Attracts Top Talent Using AI Advertising

HOLT CAT is a heavy equipment company that was interested in attracting talent across a specific line of business. Limited talent was delaying work for customers and slowing down new sales. HOLT CAT turned to AI to create an ad campaign that could attract talent quickly and effectively.

Using employee data and AI-powered ad platform AiAdvertising, HOLT CAT was able to personalize ad messages to appeal to top candidates for open positions. Using the tool, they were also able to get clarity on exact ROAS, and lower their cost per hire by 20%. Not to mention, the company hired 270 new people since the start of the campagin-and, on average, 40% of those hires report being influenced to join the company by the advertising.

One of World's Largest Investment Firms Uses AI to Boost Ad Conversion Rates by 15%

Vanguard, one of the world's largest investment firms ($7 trillion in assets under management), turned to AI language platform Persado to conduct highly personalized advertising.

The company's Vanguard Institutional business faces a heavily regulated advertising environment, and was only able to run ads on LinkedIn. Due to regulations of what companies could and couldn't say in ads, the financial services ad landscape lacked easy ways to stand out.

Using AI from Persado, Vanguard was able to hyper-personalize its ads and test them at scale to see exactly what approaches resonated with consumers-a level of personalization and testing impossible without AI. As a result, the company saw conversion rates go up by 15%.

Ecommerce Company Gets 3,000% Return on Ad Spend Using AI

Entrepreneur Naomi Simson, a host on Shark Tank Australia, owns a company called RedBalloon, which sells gifts and experiences online (think: an experience-focused Groupon). She was spending $45,000 per month on ad agencies alone to run digital advertising for the brand. She was paying over $50 to acquire a single customer at the time.

The tool was able to do things humans couldn't. In one day alone, it tested 6,500 variations of a Google text ad and learned from the experiment. Over time, the tool was so effective at learning from data to improve performance that it skyrocketed RedBalloon's return on ad spend. At one time, the company was getting a whopping 3,000% return on ad spend. They also cut marketing costs by 25% thanks to improved efficiency.

Top AI Advertising Tools

Here are some of the top AI advertising tools to look into for smarter, scalable ad campaigns.

AiAdvertising

The company's solution uses proprietary machine learning at every stage of the advertising process and is customized to each brand's specific KPIs.

As a result, marketers can predict, scale, and execute hyper-personalized campaigns. In the process, they eliminate waste and supercharge performance. The company even says it can convert what used to take 24,000 hours of human work into less than three days of effort.

This eliminates human guesswork, and provides data-driven insights and performance gains during each phase of an advertising campaign.

Persado

OneScreen

Pathmatics

The tool shows you exactly how your ads perform across channels and gives you competitive intelligence about how your competitors' ads perform, fueling ideas for effective creative and placement.

Beam.city

The company uses AI to do automatic ads setup, monitoring, learning, and optimization pattern recognition. They also use AI to create predictive datasets for targeting personas based on where they live and work in Canada and the US.

Albert

GumGum

Another AI-powered tool is GumGum

This content is presented by:

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AI in Advertising: Everything You Need to Know

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Learn why AI is transforming advertising as we know it-and how you can increase revenue, reduce costs, and build a competitive advantage using it.

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Are Virtual Influencers the Future of Luxury Retail?

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Are Virtual Influencers the Future of Luxury Retail?

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Victor

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Oscar Wilde famously said, "One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art." According to Fashion and Imagination: About Clothes and Art, since the 1960s, we have obscured the boundaries between the two. Imagination and fantasy are components of any art form, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that the retail world is moving further away from realism, while it embraces the realm of imagination. And today, modern technology is transforming the luxury world as we know it, bringing consumers closer to brands through the use of retail intelligence and analytics, Artificial Intelligence-powered software, gamification reality, augmented reality, and even virtual influencers (VI).

Some fashion aficionados will argue that VI sounds like an unreal and implausible reality. Interestingly enough, viewers offered the same critic in 2002 for Simone. In the movie, Al Pacino plays a disenchanted producer who creates "the first totally believable synthetic actress." Back in 2002, the movie didn't impress critics and movie goers branded it a flop, arguing that the " plot isn't believable enough to feel relevant." Fast forward 17 years and today we live in a world where digital creations are proposed by social media and luxury brands as personalized testimonials. Evidently, artificial intelligence and digital talents have come a long way from Max Headroom and other cartoonish characters. In fact, today's virtual characters look and act like real humans. Furthermore, the content creation behind them is equally impressive.

These virtual influencers act like cool Gen Zers, have captivating, aspirational life stories, take part in the right events, hang out with the right celebrities, and they even engage with the In-crowd on social media. Basically, they are a flawless response to society's need of an Insta-perfect lifestyle. Plus, they work 24/7 and are easily controlled. Thus, luxury retailers won't have to overcome PR disasters and abnormal communication strategies that could tarnish the carefully curated brand image. Moreover, VI don't age, have radical look changes, or get sick.

Additionally, there are also financial considerations. According to estimates by WalktheChat and Jing Daily, " WeChat influencer After Party, with 550,000 followers and about 32,000 average views charges RMB 40,000 (roughly $5,500) for one post. WeChat KOL blogger手账 with 70,000 average views charges RMB 33,000 (roughly $4,600) for one post." And in the West, top influencers and celebrities like Selena Gomez and Kylie Jenner can make up to $1 million per Instagram post. By contrast, creating a virtual influencer from scratch and using him as a brand ambassador would come cheaper.

There's also a level of authority that we associate with VI. As end-consumers we are merely followers of trends and fashions, tracking every move of celebrities and KOLs. But virtual influencers transform us from spectators into creators. It's us and our feedback that dictates what outfit the VI should wear, where they'll go, what social causes they'll follow or with whom to engage. This character manipulation is empowering and responds to current trends that see a shift from KOLs (key opinion leaders) to KOCs (key opinion consumers).

Given the ongoing benefits of partnering with VI, it shouldn't come as a surprise that luxury brands like Prada, Dior, and Balmain used them in their marketing campaigns. Olivier Rousteing, Balmain's Creative Director, intergrated Margot, Shudu and Zhi, three computer-generated models, in the Balmain virtual army, showing that the ranks are open to everyone who has status, looks and a strong social media presence. But despite clear advantages for using computer-generated personas, there are even some challenges.

According to Incitrio, Vanitha Swaminathan, a marketing professor at the University of Pittsburgh believes "these virtual influencers might just be so real that consumers might not even realize the difference, which can potentially harm consumer-brand relationships over time." This could raise not only serious ethical issues but also legal challenges.

According to Heather Nolan from the Adweek, "Shudu's creator is a white male whose digital creation was inspired by real-life African American models." Nolan points out that the brand is already "facing cries of cultural appropriation" because a white male gains serious financial benefits by exploiting the image of a black woman. Obviously, a communication crisis might imply hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Calvin Klein came under fire after promoting their "Get Surreal" ad featuring Bella Hadid and Lil Miquela. Fans were outraged seeing the passionate kiss between the virtual model and Hadid because they felt that Calvin Klein is "queerbaiting." Shortly after the event came the brand's apology saying that "the specific campaign was created to challenge conventional norms and stereotypes in advertising." The uproar calmed down, but the misstep shows that luxury brands can have serious PR disasters even while using virtual models.

In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Bryan Gold, CEO of creator media platform #Paid, said that the situation is "getting kind of scary." Since "brands are partnering with virtual influencers who don't have any defined values or belief systems," Gold believes authenticity is stolen from the process. He raises a valid argument by mentioning that the end consumer doesn't even know if the computer-generated persona enjoys the product because he cannot test it. And what if the advertised product is flawed? As a consumer, you can't rely on a virtual model to tell you how a moisturizer or a cream feels on your skin. This could raise serious moral issues.

Luxury retailers are becoming increasingly desperate to connect with a generation of digital savvy buyers, we (the consumers) force them to turn to personalized solutions that prove that their brands can remain relevant even in a high-tech world. Moreover, the market seems saturated with KOLs and v-loggers, so luxury brands turn to media targeting by using avant-garde solutions that secure them great media coverage and good PR.

It's too early to acknowledge the success of virtual influencers but according to Kolsquare, at the very least they will pressure real influencers "to offer better quality content and to build loyalty among their subscribers."

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Are Virtual Influencers the Future of Luxury Retail? | Jing Daily

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Oscar Wilde famously said, "One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art." According to Fashion and Imagination: About Clothes and Art , since the 1960s, we have obscured the boundaries between the two.

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The virtual dressing room trend: What retailers need to know

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The virtual dressing room trend: What retailers need to know

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The combination of virtual fitting and pay later option will be the future trend for merchandise shopping -Alexa

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The global shift toward e-commerce has exploded in the past five years, and the multi-trillion dollar industry is only projected to expand. Yet for all the convenience of online shopping, some fun has been lost along the way.

Window shopping? Quaint. Picking things up just to put them down? Not anymore. Trying on that piece that fits the mannequin so perfectly to see how it will fit your unique shape? Well, you can't do that digitally.

Or, can you? Today's shoppers are savvy and are getting more choosey. Retailers that manage to offer both convenience experience are winning out on e-commerce business big time.

Enter the virtual dressing room.

Virtual Dressing Rooms Go Mainstream

Need new glasses? Upload a selfie and match frames to your face online instead of shlepping to a store. Just moved across town? Check out how couches will fit into your new space without ever leaving your living room.

This new way of shopping - using a virtual dressing room experience as opposed to the traditional brick and mortar equivalent - has gone from exceptional to commonplace as the trend becomes more popular with retailers and consumers alike. According to PwC's 2018 Global Consumer Insights Survey , 60 percent of global citizens surveyed have experienced virtual reality while shopping.

Today more than ever before, individuals are asking for what they really want, and refusing to accept mediocrity in all aspects of life. You've heard about the plight of the millennial who wants to save the world, work flexible hours in a cool environment, and make six figures while doing it? Depending on your personal take, you might find that refreshing or frustrating. Either way, that same millennial wants to try on her lipstick before she pulls out her card, and retailers are hearing her loud and clear.

How Merchants Are Adopting the Virtual Dressing Room Trend

The advantages of a virtual dressing room extend to both retailers and their customers, and there's lots of room to get creative.

With its Virtual Artist app, makeup giant Sephora lets customers try on products to their hearts' content. Users can upload close-up facial shots so that they can virtually apply anything to their unique features, from eye shadow to bronzers and blush. The app ensures customers are sure and satisfied with their decision to drop $40 on concealer.

Making further use of these close-ups, the app allows shoppers to interact with the platform by watching tutorials on how to apply makeup products they might not know how to use. In this way, the beauty brand exposes customers to products they may have otherwise overlooked.

Other cosmetic companies, like Smashbox and Covergirl, have also invested in artificial reality platforms to enhance purchaser engagement. The goal is to get would-be-buyers across the finish line.

Traditional clothing retailers are following suit (no pun intended). If you've ever squeezed yourself into a traditional dressing room, you know they can be uncomfortable and time consuming. Whether you're a big city shopper who tires of long lines or a rural fashionista who has to drive 30 minutes to the nearest mall, fitting rooms usually aren't the highlight of your day. That's why bridging the gap between a need to see how things fit and an aversion to seeing yourself bare in gas station-like lighting is starting to take off.

Gap has entered the virtual fitting room scene with an app called Dressing Room for trying on clothes before making a purchase. Users can access the app with any Google-Tango device. Customers have the ability to move their self-made avatar around so they can check themselves out from all angles in their new outfit.

Gap isn't alone in the clothing space - several sites exist just to serve as virtual 3D fitting rooms. In these online "rooms", window shoppers can enter their height and weight (as well as hair and eye color if the AI allows) to see how clothing will fit their exact body type.

It all comes down to customer experience - buyers want to be in control when it comes to spending their hard earned dollars.

Taking the Dressing Room Home

Marketers have the task of making shopping experiences more seamless, and they have become experts at creating environments that make it as easy as possible to buy.

Virtual dressing rooms are a revolutionary first step. Adding the option for deferred payments takes the experience even further. Sure, virtual dressing rooms help shoppers visualize what they're buying, but the experience still lacks that physical, visceral touch.

With the rise of payment solutions like Klarna's e-commerce merchants can offer shoppers more payment options , including the ability to pay they make a purchase. With Pay Later, shoppers can have their order delivered, test it out, and then pay for what they want to keep. That pair of jeans that looked so good in the virtual fitting room aren't so flattering in the stark light of reality? Send them back! You don't need that kind of negativity.

In an e-comm environment driven by innovation and infinite options, customers are finally king (and queen) and it's okay to act like it. Virtual dressing rooms paired with the ability to try before you buy are the latest way for retailers to bring the ultimate in customer experiences.

Interested in giving your customers what they want? We're always ready to chat.

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The virtual dressing room trend: What retailers need to know - Klarna Knowledge

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The global shift toward e-commerce has exploded in the past five years, and the multi-trillion dollar industry is only projected to expand. Yet for all the convenience of online shopping, some fun has been lost along the way. Window shopping? Quaint. Picking things up just to put them down? Not anymore.

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Implications 5G will have for marketers- data revolution

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Implications 5G will have for marketers- data revolution

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Jane

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As marketers, we're bombarded with the message that we have more consumer data than ever. While inarguably true, when 5G becomes commonly available it will be the rocket fuel of the data revolution.

Although the US government shutdown threatens to delay the 5G rollout that many connection providers and smart-device manufacturers hoped for in 2019, we can nevertheless count on the next-gen of mobile connection to start making waves this year.

As I wrote in a recent post on the need for marketers to prepare for the transition to 5G, there are two key areas of connectivity that will be impacted: Speed and data. In that article, I discussed some of the key areas in which the much-improved connectivity speeds and data processing capabilities will affect the future of marketing.

I want to look here at specifics: How that ability to process and exchange higher volumes of data at higher speeds will reshape digital marketing because 5G isn't simply going to adjust how marketers approach their work. Rather, it will revolutionize the entire industry, unleashing a tsunami of real-time, in-depth consumer data that will alter how we design and manage marketing campaigns - taking real-time analytics and personalization in marketing to the next levels.

Marketing leaders will do well to ensure they're ready for the revolution so that their departments - and companies - aren't struggling to catch up.

Reaching more consumers

First up: Marketing teams will be capable of reaching entirely new sets of consumers.

5G offers fixed wireless, meaning that it can connect almost any consumer to ultra-fast speeds without needing fiber connections that require physical installation - which explains why Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam dubs it "wireless fiber."

With 5G, brands can target consumers outside urban areas via wireless connections in rural and remote areas in ways broadband simply couldn't. Moreover, 5G will provide those consumers with high-speed connections, not just broadband-speed connectivity.

Therefore, all these newly-connected people will soon be exposed to the platforms, sites and types of media that marketers most commonly use to sell their services and products.

Considering that a 2016 Federal Communications Commission report estimated that 34 million Americans still lack access to broadband speeds, that's a lot of potential customers brands and companies will be able to target.

The Internet of... everything

As 5G becomes increasingly ubiquitous, every smart device will be built with 5G applications.

As such, all these devices will become "mobile." As Julie Coppernoll, VP of global marketing at Intel, puts it: "Nothing will be 'mobile' anymore because everything will be mobile."

OK, so that doesn't mean that we'll be able to take any connected device - like our refrigerators - everywhere we go. What it does mean, though, is that every device will be ever-connected at lightning speeds, constantly receiving and passing data to the Internet of Things.

The implications of this vast network are far-reaching, especially when these massive troves of data are paired with the next-generation connectivity power of 5G. The faster exchange and gathering of data will allow for marketing campaigns to become impressively complex.

If 5G connects every aspect of a consumer's life, real-time analytics will become substantially more advanced. Companies will create a detailed portrait of each individual consumer, including preferences, destinations, needs and desires.

The number of consumer touchpoints will grow exponentially as companies gain access to consumers' location data and their online engagement profiles (e.g. in-store beacons, smart city connections and myriad home appliances).

Marketers will be able to leverage that information to optimize campaigns in real time on an incredibly intricate level, and to upgrade real-time capabilities like location-based marketing and push notifications. In other words, it will be possible to deliver each consumer the most relevant content instantaneously.

Meanwhile, companies will be able to input massive amounts contextual data into their AI solutions, which will help relevant martech tools to discover invaluable consumer insights that can be used to improve the customer experience.

That ability to predict consumer behavior means that marketers can target specific individuals on an unprecedented granular level. By combining all that data with machine learning and AI-powered marketing technology, brands can design one-to-many campaigns that provide tailored and personalized experiences to each individual consumer.

How can marketers prepare?

Marketing leaders must update their martech stack to incorporate key technologies that can handle the 5G data inundation - think automation, AI, virtualization and cloud computing.

Since we can expect a data overload, companies that have dynamic customer data platforms in place will be well-prepared.

The customer experience - and the entire customer journey, really - is going to change. With data being the key driver, marketers must make sure they get comfortable employing a data-centric approach to designing their campaigns.

Finally, get up to speed on 5G. Know the ins and outs of what to expect because it will be critical to be prepared for the many ways 5G will impact every industry.

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What Does 5G Mean for Marketers? Data, Data and More Data

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Marketing leaders must update their martech stack to incorporate key technologies that can handle the 5G data inundation - think automation, AI, virtualization and cloud computing. Marketing leaders will do well to ensure they're ready for the revolution so that their departments - and companies - aren't struggling to catch up.

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chinese social credit system black mirror

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chinese social credit system black mirror

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Anqi

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Chinese authorities claim they have banned more than 7 million people deemed "untrustworthy" from boarding flights, and nearly 3 million others from riding on high-speed trains, according to a report by the country's National Development and Reform Commission.

The announcements offer a glimpse into Beijing's ambitious attempt to create a Social Credit System (SCS) by 2020 - that is, a proposed national system designed to value and engineer better individual behaviour by establishing the scores of 1.4 billion citizens and "awarding the trustworthy" and "punishing the disobedient".

Liu Hu, a 43-year-old journalist who lives in China's Chongqing municipality, told the ABC he was "dumbstruck" to find himself caught up in the system and banned by airlines when he tried to book a flight last year.

Mr Liu is on a "dishonest personnel" list - a pilot scheme of the SCS - because he lost a defamation lawsuit in 2015 and was asked by the court to pay a fine that is still outstanding according to the court record.

"No one ever notified me," Mr Liu, who claims he paid the fine, said.

"It's baffling how they just put me on the blacklist and kept me in the dark."

Like the other 7 million citizens deemed to be "dishonest" and mired in the blacklist, Mr Liu has also been banned from staying in a star-rated hotel, buying a house, taking a holiday, and even sending his nine-year-old daughter to a private school.

And just last Monday, Chinese authorities announced they would also seek to freeze the assets of those deemed "dishonest people".

Bonus points for donating blood and volunteer work

As the national system is still being fully realised, dozens of pilot social credit systems have already been tested by local governments at provincial and city levels.

For example, Suzhou, a city in eastern China, uses a point system where every resident is rated on a scale between 0 and 200 points - every resident starts from the baseline of 100 points.

One can earn bonus points for benevolent acts and lose points for disobeying laws, regulations, and social norms.

According to a 2016 report by local police, the top-rated Suzhou citizen had 134 points for donating more than one litre of blood and doing more than 500 hours of volunteer work.

The city said the next step was to use the credit system to punish people for transgressions such as dodging transport fares, cheating in video games, and restaurant no-shows.

In Shenzhen, authorities recently launched the use of facial recognition and online shaming to crackdown on small crimes such as jaywalking.

In Xiamen, where the development of a local social credit system started as early as 2004, authorities reportedly automatically apply messages to the mobile phone lines of blacklisted citizens.

"The person you're calling is dishonest," whoever calls a lowly-rated person will be told before the call is put through.

Citizens profiled by their consumption behaviour

Private companies in China have also run pilot programs using complex analytical systems to profile their customers, further advancing various technologies - such as facial recognition and online shaming - that could be used with official 2020 rollouts.

For example, Sesame Credit is a private credit system developed by the Alibaba-affiliated company Ant Financial.

The system uses algorithms and data from Alipay, Alibaba's massively popular payment platform, to rate people by their consumption behaviour and preference among other factors.

"Someone who plays video games for 10 hours a day, for example, would be considered an idle person," Li Yingyun, Sesame Credit's technology director, told Chinese media.

"Someone who frequently buys diapers would be considered as probably a parent, who on balance is more likely to have a sense of responsibility."

However, according to its website, Sesame Credit maintains that despite using the data to openly profile customers it currently does not share the information with Chinese authorities.

'Wifi sniffers', night vision and big data

Meanwhile, recent reports have revealed that in some areas China employs what is known as the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP) - a high-tech mass surveillance system that pools information on citizens' bank records, computer details, and legal past.

It reportedly runs in parallel to the social credit system and gathers its information from multiple sources or "sensors".

One source is CCTV cameras, some of which have facial recognition and infrared capabilities giving them "night vision" and are positioned in locations police consider sensitive.

Another source is "wifi sniffers", which pool the unique identifying addresses of computers, smartphones and other networked devices.

The IJOP also reportedly gathers information including licence plate numbers and citizen identification card numbers from security check points.

"They basically just do monitoring and surveillance of people and particularly categories of people who the authorities consider as focused personnel," Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, told the ABC.

"That could be people with mental disabilities or with mental health problems, or people who complained, petitioners, and Uyghurs [minorities] and so on as a national project."

"The IJOP sends a list of people deemed suspicious to the police and they are then detained - the social credit system can result in a small punishment and warrants that discipline people in a number of different ways."

Could China combine these projects to engineer society?

Surveillance software identifies details about people and vehicles in Beijing.(Photo: Reuters/Thomas Peter)(Yvonne Yong)

If the Chinese Government manages to amalgamate the regional pilot projects and the immense amounts of data by 2020, it will be able to exert absolute social and political control and "pre-emptively shape how people behave," Samantha Hoffman, an independent consultant on Chinese state security, said.

"If you are aware that your behaviour will negatively or positively impact your score, and thus your life and the lives of those you associate with, then you will likely adjust your decision-making accordingly," Ms Hoffman said.

But the question remains if the Chinese authorities could really "pull it off", Ms Wang said.

"The Ministry of Public Security runs a number of databases, and then regional authorities also run their databases," Ms Wang said.

"It is difficult to know how these databases are related together and how they're structured and how they are updated.

"At the moment, I would say that they [are] updated to some extent but they're not very well integrated, and the integration is going to be difficult."

Hu Naihong, a finance professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, who is helping to build the national social credit system, seems to agree.

"The top-level design, the institutional framework, and the key documents are all in place, but there are still many problems to be solved," the professor said in a 2017 meeting in Zhejiang.

"The most serious problem being that all kinds of platforms are rigorously collecting [data], while having vague legal and conceptual basis and boundaries."

There have been many cases where the current algorithms wrongly trapped innocent people in the blacklist.

In 2015, Zhong Pei, a then 16-year-old student living in Jiangsu, was blacklisted for being dishonest, after her father killed two people and died in a car accident.

It took Ms Zhong four months to dispute the court's decision and get her name off the list in 2017 to board a train and enrol in her university.

Li Jinglin, a lawyer at Xinqiao law firm in Beijing, said the current pilot schemes of the social credit system had mainly been targeting two groups of people: those who fail to follow court orders or pay debts, and those who pose threats to the Communist Party's rule or general "social stability" - dissidents and petitioners, as well as their families.

An abuse of state power, and breach of laws

Aforementioned blacklisted journalist Mr Liu, whose case has attracted international media attention, appears to fall into both categories. He previously exposed corrupt Chinese officials and was held by police for "spreading rumours".

While it is expected that governments make reasonable attempts to enforce court orders, experts say it is against local Chinese laws and is an abuse of fundamental human rights to restrict citizens' movements and deny them equal access to education.

"Banning citizens from traveling by flight or high-speed rail for having low credit records is a violation of civil rights," Mr Li told the ABC.

"Especially that the railway and aviation are state-owned industries, and are obligated to grant every citizen equal access to transportation."

Many observers fear human rights could be increasingly violated via the social credit system, and - combined with a growing surveillance system and technologies such as facial recognition being rolled out across the country - the Chinese Government could have the ability to turn the system on its citizens.

"China is characterised by a system of 'rule by law', rather than true rule of law," Elsa B Kania, an expert in Chinese defence innovation and emerging technologies at the Centre for a New American Security, said.

"That law [and extra-legal measures] can be used as a weapon to legitimise the targeting of those whom the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] perceives as a threat.

"In such an environment, such a system could be abused to those same ends."

The question that remains to be answered in coming years, experts say, is where the line between "bettering society" and "controlling society" will be drawn.

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'Punishing the disobedient': China's Social Credit System could engineer social behaviour by 2020

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Chinese authorities claim they have banned more than 7 million people deemed "untrustworthy" from boarding flights, and nearly 3 million others from riding on high-speed trains, according to a report by the country's National Development and Reform Commission.

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Tesla now is planning to introduce models with full self-driving option. 

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Tesla now is planning to introduce models with full self-driving option. 

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Charlotte

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Back in July, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the auto company would be increasing the price of its 'Full' Self-Driving option by $1,000 on August 16, something that would happen as part of the regular price increases the option will experience 'every few months.' Once August arrived, however, Musk said Tesla would postpone the price increase - and now the time has come to roll it out.

Tesla offers Autopilot as standard with its cars; customers who want some of the more advanced features, however, like Auto Lane Change, will need to pay $6,000 for the Full Self-Driving Capability. This option also adds Navigate on Autopilot, Autopark, and the new Summon feature that was released with the new version 10 software update.

In August, Tesla revealed that it would delay the Full Self-Driving price increase until the release of the version 10 update with the Smart Summon feature, which enables users to summon their car from its parking spot to where they're located. That feature arrived in late September.

As anticipated in light of the previous plans, Musk announced in a tweet on Friday that the Full Self-Driving price increase of $1,000 will arrive by November 1. This will put the new price for the option at $7,000 USD.

Whether consumers will consider Smart Summon an adequate enough reason to pay the higher price is yet to be seen. Though the option is called Full Self-Driving, Telsa's Autopilot capabilities haven't reached the point of being fully autonomous, which would be Level 4. At the present time, Tesla's autonomous capabilities amount to an advanced driver assistance system that exceeds what is offered by most competing models.

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Tesla Full Self-Driving option will get a big price increase next month

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Back in July, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the auto company would be increasing the price of its 'Full' Self-Driving option by $1,000 on August 16, something that would happen as part of the regular price increases the option will experience 'every few months.'

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How Augmented Reality Is Changing The World Of Consumer Marketing

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How Augmented Reality Is Changing The World Of Consumer Marketing

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Huajing Zhao ( Ada)

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Imagine delivering a marketing strategy in real time. Customers and clients get to experience your product or service as it is meant to be used.

Augmented reality (AR) marketing takes the reins from virtual reality platforms to create a new, interactive consumer experience. It is so popular right now, its growth is expected to reach $117.4 billion by 2022. As little as five years ago, consumers knew little or nothing about this marketing tool. But AR has become a marketing strategy that businesses need to become educated on.
What Is Augmented Reality?
Have you ever watched a football game and seen the yellow line that highlights the distance between the ball and the first-down mark? What about when a tennis player challenges an "out" call and we see a line pivot toward the mark and a dark circle that marks the spot? These are examples of the first uses of augmented reality. Some date back almost 20 years.

So, what is augmented reality? It is the ability to integrate digital data into a real-time experience. Unlike virtual reality, which is popular among gamers, there are no bulky video headsets to contend with. New apps come out every day and smartphone users swoop them up.

AR marketing takes the available digital data and creates an integrated 3-D image of a product. It allows consumers to experience that product up close and personal. Watch how Lemon&Orange created AR experiences for different brands, including a virtual fitting room for the clothing brand Timberland.

With new technology and the incorporation of apps in almost every aspect of our lives, augmented reality has advanced and expanded. Today, it is used in sports, medicine, education and marketing. AR is the future.
How AR Marketing Is Used In Our Day-To-Day Activities
Many retail stores are using AR marketing to impact consumers' buying decisions. Many of these interactive experiences are done through the use of apps accessible through smartphones and tablets.

For example, home improvement giants like Home Depot and Lowe's allow customers the chance to see paint colors before making a purchase. Home Depot describes its app as "bringing colors to life virtually." With this technology, users can choose a paint color by holding their smartphone up to a wall and seeing what the color will look like. Users can also see the wall in similar shades for comparison.
Taking 360 Video To The Next Level
Whether it's a Google Street View, a visual of a hotel room or a home for sale, 360 Video is a popular tool in marketing today. Using video in your digital marketing strategy has already become a big success. Add to it augmented reality marketing and those videos take on a life of their own.

For instance, Amikasa 3-D Room Designer allows users to virtually walk through their completed floorplans to determine if they like the concept created for them. Using 360 Video helps complete the finished product for the user and gives clients or potential customers an inside look at a business's service or product.

Hotels are beginning to see the benefits of AR in promoting a guest's true experience at its venue. Through apps, users are able to tour properties and get a 360 view of guest rooms, meeting facilities, restaurants and the pool area. In addition, guests will be able to make reservations, leave reviews and more through the app. Imagine being in the airport, holding your smartphone up to an ad on the wall, and seeing everything you need to know about the hotel on your smartphone.

But it's not only hotels that are going this route. Lipton Iced Tea took us inside the cup with their Magnificent Matcha Tea campaign. The video gives tea drinkers an animated experience. We get to live the life of a tea bag as it goes through the brewing process to become the perfect cup of tea. "The idea was to immerse the viewer in a cup of tea, and energize them with rich imagery and motion graphics that speak to each tea's origin," said Harun Zankel, the creative director at Carrot Creative, in a press release.
Social Media Is Engaging Audiences With AR
Social media has revolutionized marketing strategies. Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook use AR marketing to keep users engaged. For example, platforms like Snapchat use AR through filters. People of all ages think it's cool and fun to doctor their images with dog ears, cat whiskers and floral headbands.

The trend is so popular that Instagram now offers their own version of photo enhancements. Facebook's filter app is currently in beta stage, experimenting with the app to compete with Snapchat and lure younger users back to its platform.
Where Do We Go From Here?
As more augmented reality marketing takes hold, consumers will most likely abandon their desktops and laptops for better inclusion. This is hopeful news for businesses wanting to tap into the market and utilize social media platforms that attract their target audience. Imagine using AR glasses at a business or social gathering and being able to have public information of the nearby guests. You would know their names, occupation and other basic facts and information.

Brands that understand the possibilities of AR are developing apps that will allow them to create their own social media platforms. This is an opportunity to direct the course of their marketing without third-party influences. While utilizing marketing on popular social media platforms, you're competing with every other business. Why not be your own social media to a captivated audience?

We know what we want from augmented reality: We want entertainment and practical functionality put together. How these two requirements come together will be the deciding factor as to which platform leads the way.

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How Augmented Reality Is Changing The World Of Consumer Marketing

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Imagine delivering a marketing strategy in real time. Customers and clients get to experience your product or service as it is meant to be used. Augmented reality (AR) marketing takes the reins from virtual reality platforms to create a new, interactive consumer experience.

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Chi Nguyen

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Starting this summer, Google will let users experiment with augmented reality makeup in YouTube. The idea is to use the experience like an interactive ad; you watch a beauty vlogger talking about a specific brand of cosmetic, and a new "Virtual try on" feature will show you how you could look while wearing the product. MAC Cosmetics is the first brand to launch an AR Beauty Try-On campaign.

Google is positioning the new feature as a way of getting more of people's attention compared to a non-interactive video ad. The company says that during its testing it found 30 percent of people activated the AR experience, and spent an average of 80 seconds trying on virtual lipstick. However, it's unclear how much of this attention is due to the technology's novelty.

Google isn't the only tech company to have tried using AR for advertising. Both Facebook and Snapchat experimented with the functionality last year, and the glasses company Warby Parker has an app which overlays its glasses onto your face. However, YouTube has the advantage of having a massive beauty vlogging community, which serves viewers with a pre-existing interest in the products being shown.

The AR feature is currently in alpha, and will eventually be available to other brands through YouTube's FameBit " influencer marketing platform. "

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YouTube's AR ads let you try on virtual makeup alongside beauty vloggers

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Starting this summer, Google will let users experiment with augmented reality makeup in YouTube. The idea is to use the experience like an interactive ad; you watch a beauty vlogger talking about a specific brand of cosmetic, and a new "Virtual try on" feature will show you how you could look while wearing the product.

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Myer processes a sensory marketing by using the VR technology.  --  Lancy

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By David P. Harris, CQUniversity Australia
Department store Myer and online shopping giant eBay have teamed up to offer something different to consumers in a bold bid to change the way we shop, interact with, research and purchase products.

Their creation of a virtual reality (VR) department store - a place where consumers can shop if they are unable to visit Myer's bricks-and-mortar stores - enables them to challenge the retail status quo.

Whether it came about by chance, intuition or meticulous research, the new offering is an experiment in sensory marketing. This is an area of marketing that combines perception, sensation and cognition.

How we use our senses to shop

There's been a recent rush towards the field of sensory marketing, which was first pioneered by Professor Aradhna Krishna.

Krishna defines sensory marketing as "marketing that engages the consumers' senses and affects their perception, judgment and behaviour". Essentially, sensory marketing considers how a consumer sees, tastes, touches, smells and even hears the product and/or service experience. Sounds like common sense, but the uptake by retailers and managers to incorporate sensory elements into their products, stores and exchange designs has been slow. This is intriguing considering the plethora of emerging evidence on the power sensory modalities have on our decision making.

We use our senses to navigate our world and shape our decisions. Incorporating sensory elements into physical settings may be relatively easy, but an online environment presents a much harder, yet equally as important challenge. The Myer/eBay initiative is definitely a step in the right direction.

The service incorporates both vision and touch. It facilitates a means for consumers to connect with their brands in a new and novel way. I can hear you saying: "Don't we look at products all the time normally?" "How are you touching the products?" There are two answers. First, customers have to hold the VR system in their hands and against their face. By doing this they are physically connecting their skin receptors to the VR department store. This could facilitate what is known as an endowment effect.

Secondly in terms of vision, customers are looking at products in a very different way. They have a deep and sustained focus, something they have unlikely embraced before. Research suggests that a deeper and longer visual fixation on products and brands during visual search may create positive connections in consumers' minds. What this means for purchase behaviour in the VR store only time can tell.

Where to next?

With the deep focus required to operate the VR department store, opportunities are available to expose consumers to subliminal imagery which could be used to trigger a favourable response. Further sensory opportunities exist by providing congruence of sight, sound and touch during the shopping experience. It's likely smartphone manufacturers will soon start building eye-tracking technology into their devices so this type of shopping becomes commonplace.

Initially at least, the VR department store may see a reciprocity effect - where consumers who have received the free eBay VR device return in kind by spending hours in the virtual store and shopping above and beyond their discretionary budgets. The fear of course is the novelty will wear off quickly.

The challenge for the Myer/eBay alliance is to maintain any interest they attract and convert this interest into a real return on investment. In terms of online stores, maybe we have always been looking, now for the first time we may be seeing.
David P. Harris is a PhD student in sensory marketing and consumer psychology and a sessional lecturer in marketing at CQUniversity Australia. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Myer and eBay's virtual reality shopping turns looking into seeing - SmartCompany

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By David P. Harris, CQUniversity Australia Department store Myer and online shopping giant eBay have teamed up to offer something different to consumers in a bold bid to change the way we shop, interact with, research and purchase products.

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Thanks to social media, the pandemics of the future could be psychological

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Thanks to social media, the pandemics of the future could be psychological

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Earlier this month Germany's Federal Court of Justice granted the parents of a deceased teenager full control of her Facebook account. The basic argument was that social media accounts should be inherited just as books and letters are. The fact that this teenager died in 2012 and the case took several years to resolve underscores the massive and uncertain role social media plays in modern life.

Last week Abu Dhabi Public Prosecution ordered the arrest of three social media influencers after they used social media to post videos of themselves taking part in the "In my feelings challenge". This is a recent and no doubt short-lived social media craze, which can endanger lives. In the same week, a Kuwaiti social media influencer sparked outrage and embarrassment when she made insensitive Marie Antoinette-eqsue comments about workers' rights.

These episodes raise a serious question: how should we best prevent social media abuses?

The societal and psychological consequences of social media in the information age are emerging slowly. The consequences of the headline-grabbing examples above are fairly obvious, but other implications might not be as immediately apparent.

For instance, a recent government survey cited social media use as a factor in the UAE's increasing divorce rate.

Other implications of our information age are also coming to light in the consulting rooms of mental health professionals. For instance, the subject matter of delusions, the false beliefs sometimes held by people experiencing mental health issues, is now increasingly focused on information age themes.

In the past decade, psychiatrists have begun reporting patients with delusions involving things like the belief that their whole life is a staged reality show, secretly being broadcast online to an enthralled public. This condition has been observed frequently enough to have earned a name: the Truman show delusion (after the 1998 hit movie dealing with a similar theme).

The emergence of the Truman show delusion highlights just how much our societies are being shaped by the information age. In medicine, the term "pathoplasticity" refers to symptoms that change their form and content in response to external influences. Delusions are pathoplastic and their content is undoubtedly being remoulded by the information age.

The ubiquity of digital cameras, the popularity of reality shows and the dominance of social media are at least three strands that have converged to radically impact the way we act and interact as a society. The Truman show delusion is not caused by these new technologies, but it reflects just how ingrained these developments have become.

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Read more from Justin Thomas: In space, behavioural psychology and mental health are matters of life and death What happens when amateurs misuse mental health terms? Forget the decade of deceit - we are heading for a millennium of mistrust
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And while delusions don't appear to be caused by information technology, other psychological complaints might be. Every study that has explored the relationship between depression and social media use finds a link. Whether the survey looks at the frequency of use, style of use or the number of different platforms used, there is always a trend towards higher levels of depressive symptoms among those who use social media most.

One study published earlier this year in the American Journal of Health Behavior looked at a nationally representative sample of 1,730 US adults aged between 19 and 32. The study categorised patterns of social media use based on style and frequency of use, generating five unique categories of user which the researchers termed: wired, connected, diffuse dabblers, concentrated dabblers and the unplugged. The wired and the connected, the heaviest users of social media, had significantly higher levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms.

Is it that depressed people use social media more? Or is there a causal relationship, a mood-altering mechanism, perhaps driven by the tendency to make social comparisons on social media?

We still don't have definitive answers to such questions, let alone solutions. If answers and possible antidotes are to be found any time soon, then we need to commit more effort and resources to research.

I would like to see a national research center for the psychosocial implications of new technologies, or at least something similar.

An early adopter of many innovative and experimental technologies, the UAE has energetically embraced the information age. In 2016 Google ranked the UAE number one in global smartphone penetration, at 73.8 per cent. The UAE also makes the global top 20 in the internet penetration rankings. In short, the UAE is well-wired and would benefit significantly from research exploring the psychological and social implications of the information age.

When food production technology advanced to a stage that enabled masses of people to consume calorie-dense diets, we saw the emergence of an obesity epidemic. What psychosocial pandemics might our information technologies spawn?
Dr Justin Thomas is professor of psychology at Zayed University Follow The National's Opinion section on Twitter

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Thanks to social media, the pandemics of the future could be psychological

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Earlier this month Germany's Federal Court of Justice granted the parents of a deceased teenager full control of her Facebook account. The basic argument was that social media accounts should be inherited just as books and letters are.

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Australian bill that is trying to get passed to allow facial recognition biometrics to be shared within government agencies to use as surveillance - Andy Rong

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Applying make-up to appear older, splashing your face with infrared light, combining multiple photographs to "morph" identities: these are all techniques people are using to subvert facial recognition (FR) systems, experts have warned.

As the Australian Government considers a bill to share people's facial data with agencies across the country, scientists in Europe are working to overcome so-called "obfuscation" and "impersonation" techniques that allow people to fly under the radar from unwanted surveillance.

Using make-up to appear old is among the simplest and easiest techniques, according to Sebastien Marcel from Switzerland's Idiap Research Institute.

This is because it appears natural and realistic, can be applied with little artistic skill using readily available tutorials and, unlike other make-up techniques that are achieved through lipsticks, eyeliners and foundation materials, can create an appearance that was acceptable for all genders.

"Researchers demonstrated that make-up can be used to alter significantly the appearance to obfuscate the identity [evade recognition] and even to impersonate an identity," Dr Marcel said.

"However, this last attack to impersonate someone with make-up is extremely complicated to put in place as you need a skilled make-up artist."

Facial recognition backlash

Efforts to subvert FR technology have existed since the technology was commercialised two decades ago, including disguises, wigs, prosthetics and accessories like cardboard glasses, along with silicon masks of somebody else's face and make-up that prevents a face being detected at all.

Some techniques are advertised freely by various groups who believe surveillance without cause or notification is an infringement against basic freedoms and an individual's right to privacy.

Germany's The Peng! Collective, for example, in 2018 invited people to morph a profile photo with another person's to create a fake face for their passport photos.

Peng said it wanted to "empower" people with their own data, "flood the [FR] databases with misinformation", and avoid "automatic detection".

"Where previously strict rules applied to what may happen with our biometric data, under the pretext of fighting crime, the rules have now changed," it said in a statement.

"Rich and powerful companies and states will also be able to access and manipulate this data."

Hong Kong demonstrators in recent months have used masks, hoodies, sunglasses and umbrellas to avoid FR detection, vandalised lamp posts with FR capabilities, and pointed lasers at police cameras.

Aged make-up a 'challenge' for AI

FR systems typically work by mapping an individual's facial features, such as eye sockets, nose, chin and jawbone, as well as skin texture, lines and blemishes.

The biometric measurements are captured as data that can then be distributed and used by authorities to recognise individuals in a crowd, such as was attempted unsuccessfully at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Queensland, or while passing through regulated checkpoints.

Aged make-up works by changing the shape of the face, especially around the eyes and chin to replicate aging's sagging effect on the skin. It also adds highlights, shadows and wrinkles or emphasises existing wrinkles in a way that does not draw attention to a person.

"This is clearly a research challenge," Dr Marcel said.

"As the make-up can be applied in many different ways and directly on the face, it is very difficult to detect all sorts.

"A research direction is to investigate the use of multi-spectral images, combining visual spectra [what is visible to the naked eye] with others, such as near infrared, short-wave infrared or even ultraviolet A [light]."

But Vinod Chandran from Queensland University of Technology said systems using infrared images to check for heat and "liveness" to assist with face detection could themselves be tricked by a person using a localised infrared light emitter.

Some scientists, for example, have successfully experimented with button-sized LEDs hidden under the peak of a cap that wash a face with infrared light.

"Such attempts are most likely to result in an invalid transaction or error rather than a false identification, but for a subject trying to avoid a watchlist, this is a successful attempt at evading the system," Professor Chandran said.

He said other research to detect obfuscation techniques included liveness detection from eye or lip movements in facial videos, "contextual information surrounding the presented face", textural information in the image, and systems that required a subject to rotate their head.

Identity matching bill 'may limit human rights'

The Australian Government is currently reviewing a bill that, if successful, would allow the Department of Home Affairs to draw biometrics from driver's licence photos and share it across Commonwealth, state and territory agencies for identity matching.

It is also reviewing an amendment that would allow data from passport photographs to be used in the same way - a system that it also plans to extend to the private sector.

In its own explanatory memoranda, the Government admits the amendment "may limit human rights, particularly the right to privacy", but considered it "reasonable, necessary and proportionate" to promote the safety and security of people.

The Australian Law Council (ALC) has already called for better safeguards and oversight on how the biometric data is accessed and used by local government and non-governmental organisations and wants more robust privacy protections in place.

"It is critical to ensure that the legislation which enables the use of this type of technology does not permit a creep toward broad social surveillance in Australia," it said in a Parliamentary inquiry submission.

A Department of Home Affairs spokesperson claimed the private sector would only be able to check a person's photo with an individual's consent under the bill, and "only where this is permitted by applicable privacy laws".

"The system will only provide sector organisations with a 'match/no match' response [and] it won't return a person's photo or personal information."

She said the private sector had been able to use the Government's Document Verification Service since 2004 and there were 900 users among the financial sector, telecommunication groups and other major employers.

Inaccuracies questioned

The ALC also wanted an annual report that disclosed the number of false matches and data breaches that occurred as a result of the identity-matching system.

Earlier this year, Law Council of Australia president Arthur Moses pointed out that a London police trial of FR technology generated 104 alerts, of which 102 were false.

The technology scanned CCTV footage from the Notting Hill carnival and Six Nations Rugby matches in London.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology research published last year found FR algorithms trained to match mostly white male faces subsequently had significant difficulties identifying women with darker skin.

Australian Border Force SmartGate passport control at international airport terminals, which already uses FR technology, was earlier this year blamed for an IT outage that created delays.

Professor Chandran said the majority of research papers into obfuscation and impersonation addressed mobile device-based platforms, as opposed to border control with fixed cameras and supervision.

"Weaknesses and vulnerabilities will continue to exist and be exploited but these measures may make more access control applications reliable enough to be accepted in the next four or five years as mobile telephones move into 5G technology more widely," he said.

The Home Affairs spokesperson said the Australian system would be designed in such a way that any match generated by technology would have to be reviewed by an operator "trained in facial examination" as well.

She added the face-matching services had been independently assessed and used the most commercially accurate algorithms available - based on testing by the US Government's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

One in 1,000 fail rate for mugshots

In 2018, NIST evaluated FR test results from four face databases containing more than 30 million still photographs from some 14 million individuals, with the primary dataset being law enforcement mugshots.

They were mostly profile shots and lower quality webcam images.

Professor Chandran said the best system NIST found, from a dataset of about 12 million individuals, was incorrect for every one in 1,000 tests on average.

"Recognition rates have improved considerably, by about two orders of magnitude since 2010, arising from the use of deep learning neural networks," he said.

But he added that such algorithms could perform worse in transactional systems where the test conditions were different.

"For example, the algorithm may have been trained on a very large dataset of predominantly Caucasian and African American faces and may have poorer performance with Asian subjects," Professor Chandran said.

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Facial recognition technology can be thwarted by aged make-up techniques

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Applying make-up to appear older, splashing your face with infrared light, combining multiple photographs to "morph" identities: these are all techniques people are using to subvert facial recognition (FR) systems, experts have warned.

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Integrate AI in the Future Marketing Campaigns

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Integrate AI in the Future Marketing Campaigns

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AI can beused to collect, analyse and visualize customer related data, and provide useful suggestions for marketing strategies — Yanling Zou (Karina) 958185

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Latest Digital Transformation Trends | Cloud News | Wire19

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As of this time of writing, there are over 4.3 billion users worldwide that are active on the web - included in this figure are both your customers and potential consumers, of course.

That's a considerable market you can reach and market to.

If you want to reach those users, you need an efficient and robust technology to back your marketing strategies - a technology like artificial intelligence (AI).

AI has capabilities that can achieve multiple tasks and give you the best results possible.

It's no wonder many companies are adopting AI as a game-changing strategy for their marketing campaigns.

I hate to break it to you, but if your company isn't leveraging AI for marketing yet, you may be at risk of losing against your competitors.

As an executive in your company, your decisions have a significant bearing on your organization's marketing and overall performance.

The impact of AI on business leadership will go a long and profitable way - if you decide to invest in this technology.

To help you decide, allow us to share several compelling reasons why company executives like you should integrate AI in your marketing campaigns.

Let's begin.

1. AI enhances your customer service.

How you serve and engage with your customers throughout your marketing and sales interaction is crucial.

It can spell the difference between their long-term loyalty and repulsive never-again experience with your brand.

Customers now have higher expectations for quality user experiences with brands, like personalized interaction and communication.

Fortunately, AI helps to create a positive customer experience. It enhances your customer service through chatbots that think and talk like humans do.

Chatbots and AI are one of the functionalities a modern website needs to have in this digital era.

Chatbots provide your customers with smart recommendations, personalize their replies and messages, interact like humans, and respond to their queries 24/7.

One AI chatbot, for example, is Rulai.

Rulai's third-level AI chatbots can follow the conversations and contextualize messages to identify the next action correctly, including asking the person for clarification or more details, changing its tasks, and others.

As a result, these AI chatbots streamline your customer service as they reduce your live chat requests and email volume.

They also help resolve concerns at your customers' first contact and augment your sales conversions through automated purchasing guidance.

2. AI lets you define your buyer persona.

As a business organization, you can't market your products and services effectively if you don't know who your target buyers are and what they're like.

When you build your buyer persona, you can employ marketing strategies appropriate for your target audience and ensure that your resources spent are worthwhile and not wasted.

In building your buyer persona, you need as much data as you can gather to make it precise.

The more accurate your buyer personas are, the more effectively you can run your marketing campaigns.

AI can help you define accurate buyer personas for your company through tools like SocialBakers.

SocialBakers turns your manual audience analysis into an instant, single-step system.

Powered by AI, SocialBakers collects data on your consumers' demographic profile, as well as the influencers they follow and type of content they like.

That way, when you've defined your buyer persona based on real data, you can boost your content engagement, uncover their interests, and know them with unparalleled accuracy.

You can also align your campaigns with their influencers and your marketing budget to the optimum.

3. AI assists in building your visual branding.

A smart, consistent, and precise visual branding is critical for your company's marketing campaigns.

Visual branding comes in the form of web design, colors, typography, creative outputs, and most importantly, your logo.

If you build your visual branding accurately, you can attract the right consumers for your company.

If you think your company logo needs some visual rebranding, invest in it. Your logo plays a huge role in your visual brand and the success of your marketing campaigns.

Consider tapping logo designers and logo designs at LogoMyway, for instance, to design an excellent and accurate logo for your company,

For other aspects, AI helps you build your visual branding in collaboration with your designer.

Take the AI-powered Adobe Sensei, for example.

Adobe Sensei helps your designers understand more deeply how your users work and then deliver simple workflows in enhancing a creative.

Using content intelligence and computational creativity, and understanding events on content delivery, designers and AI can personalize applications at scale.

The AI tool also feeds designers with analytics and insights that they employ back into the creative workflow which helps them increase their productivity.

When you incorporate other online tools like Track.ly - a time-tracking software - to help your designers monitor their activity and time (among other things), their productivity skyrockets even further.

Time-tracking platforms like Track.ly has online timesheets that your designers (and your managers) can use to monitor and study the team's level of productivity.

4. AI aids in your social listening.

Are you aware of what your customers say about your company and your brand?

Customers share their thoughts about your company on various social media sites.

It's crucial that you're updated about how your customers see your brand. Knowing so helps you improve your marketing campaigns and other aspects of your business.

Thankfully, AI can help you keep tabs on your social listening. One tool called Brandwatch has an AI analyst named Iris.

For every growth on conversations surrounding your brand and posts, Iris presents to you what caused it across all your data in real-time.

What's more, Iris sifts through the truckloads of data and extracts valuable insight in seconds.

In this way, you don't miss a trending story, hashtag, and others. With the insights, you can also learn and understand your brand health even without technical know-how.

Using AI for your social listening saves you the time and effort it takes for manual analysis and monitoring.

This ability allows you to focus more on your marketing campaigns with social listening insight gleaned by AI.

5. AI personalizes your sales offers.

AI can serve as influential marketing and sales representatives for your company.

It learns from your customers' likes and dislikes and intelligently recommends items that match their interests and preferences.

When AI finds and suggests such items for them, your customers feel special and delighted to discover something that perfectly suits them.

In other words, AI personalizes your sales offers.

Not only does personalization reinforce your customer service, but your customers are also more likely to continue purchasing from your store.

Personalizing your sales offers is one of the many ways that AI is changing the digital world.

In the world of fashion, personalized offers by AI help users decide on an outfit or clothing they should buy.

H&M AI chatbots powered by Kik are one example. Here's what the conversation looks like:

H&M AI chatbots ask you what clothing wear you'd like and then recommends some pieces according to your likes and dislikes.

To know your preferences, you can choose from among the smart replies, like "Looks great" or "Try again."

These AI chatbots allow you as well to save outfits for a later decision, share with your friends, or buy directly from the store.

The chatbots even use emojis to make the conversation light and casual, and your customers feel like they're talking to human marketing and sales representatives.

In this way, marketing your items does not sound forced but friendly and approachable.

6. AI helps you optimize your content.

In the digital marketing world, including ecommerce, content is king. Likes, clicks, and reposts yield online visibility, brand awareness, and eventually, conversions.

If you have a Shopify store, for example, you can't merely display your products in your store. You have to compel and interact with your audience. One way to do so is through content.

Thus, you have to find ways to optimize your content, engage your customers, and drive traffic to your website or social media platform.

Some of the best Shopify apps like Alt Text can help supercharge your store by optimizing your content for search engines.

Next, for maximum SEO and content performance, pair those apps with AI.

AI helps you optimize your content based on insights and thorough data analysis.

One tool you can use is MarketMuse.

MarketMuse optimizes your content to rank higher for keywords and uncovers gaps and opportunities for producing new content.

Armed with its built-in editor, MarketMuse also reveals areas for improvement, allowing you to edit and enhance your content immediately.

Integrate AI in marketing.

AI can work wonders in your marketing campaigns, and these are only some of the benefits you can get from them.

It helps enhance your customer service, buyer persona, visual branding, social listening, content, and personalizes your offers.

Integrating AI revolutionizes the way you market to your target audience - and spells a difference that you, as the company's executive, can't bear to miss.

Think this post was helpful? Please take three seconds to share this with your colleagues. Cheers!

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Why Company Executives Should Integrate AI in their Marketing Campaigns

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As of this time of writing, there are over 4.3 billion users worldwide that are active on the web - included in this figure are both your customers and potential consumers, of course. That's a considerable market you can reach and market to.

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The possible opportunities and problems that marketers may face in the era of 5G - Lu

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If you're a tech watcher you probably noticed that the UK's first 5G mobile network launch this month. If you're an EE customer, you might well be using it. And if you're a marketer, you're probably wondering what this technology means for you. Is 5G just a faster version of 4G? Or is it a game-changer for digital? Here's a quick guide to what 5G could mean for marketing.

5G technology promises connection speeds up to 400 times quicker than 4G, a reduction in latency (the time it takes a message to go from one device to another) and the ability to connect far more devices to the network. But while marketers should be excited about the possibilities 5G will open up, they should also be wary of being caught up in some of the wilder predictions around it.

5G will certainly deliver a dramatic change in what mobile is capable of, to the point of eliminating the need for fixed-line connections. When you can get 80-100Mbps connections via mobile, why bother with copper wires, fibre or WiFi? Every device will be a mobile device, and because of the improved connectivity offered by 5G, there'll be a lot more of them. There will also be a lot more people connected, as 5G removes the need to install fixed broadband in remote areas.

Increased speed should encourage greater consumption of content, as streaming becomes seamless and all downloading happens in seconds rather than minutes. And the massive amount of bandwidth available may also see the business model around mobile changing, so that users aren't charged for the data they use, but in other ways that encourage them to use their devices more, without worrying about cost.

And these are just what futurists and technologists call "first order effects"; those that can be directly linked to 5G's properties. Beyond these, 5G will help realise the potential of many other emerging technologies, and usher in new approaches, ideas and business models that no-one has yet thought of.

This is just as true of marketing as any other sphere of activity. Retailers such as IKEA are already experimenting with augmented reality via mobile to enable customers to see what products will look like in situ. One 5G version of this idea will be to allow customers to create an avatar using their measurements, and then use it to try on virtual clothes, giving ecommerce another huge boost. Consumers in South Korea are already able to visit the supermarket in virtual reality to do their shopping.

5G will also make smart speakers smarter still. Rather than having our interaction with them limited to simple voice commands, the combination of cloud-based AI and 5G will allow us to conduct proper conversations. This opens up the possibility of people using the next generation of smart speakers as a kind of electronic butler-cum-concierge, and in turn raises the idea of brands advertising to them. If you ask your intelligent agent to buy butter, for example, how will it make the decision about which brand to buy?

But while 5G will undoubtedly create huge and unexpected opportunities, it shouldn't be seen in isolation. It will be limited by surrounding technologies and, ultimately, by what consumers are prepared to accept.

For starters, the roll-out will take several years, which means we'll be living in a hybrid 4G/5G environment for some time.

5G won't deliver faster programmatic ads automatically. It depends on ad serving technology keeping pace with those speeds. And although it removes one source of irritation (ads making pages load more slowly, particularly on mobile) it won't make a bad ad less annoying when it does arrive.

Similarly, 5G raises the possibility of a Minority Report-style world where personalised ads appear to individuals as they walk past outdoor screens. However, this would require a serious investment in OOH infrastructure - only 5% of the UK's poster sites have so far been converted to screens. What's more, while outdoor advertising can be personalised if there's only one person near the screen in question, it breaks down entirely when there's a crowd waiting for their morning train. And there's also the question of whether people really want the equivalent of a digital sandwich-board man yelling at them every few paces as they walk down the street.

Behind all this is the question of data. 5G's proponents point out that the technology will allow much more data to be captured about individuals, their activities and especially their location. This should mean even better targeting of advertising messages. But attitudes to privacy are changing, and 5G could also spark a backlash if consumers feel brands are spying on them, or if the value they get from such targeting isn't clear.

Connection speed has tended to be under-rated as a force for innovation, but each jump - whether in fixed line or in mobile - has had a profound impact, enabling new technologies, ushering in new business models and creating new opportunities. 5G has the potential to transform the digital experiences that marketers can create, potentially even the task of marketing itself, but none of these things will happen automatically. They will require investment, careful planning, and above all, awareness of what audiences actually want.

Thanks to Dr Alex Connock, MD, Missile Digital Studios, for his help with this article.

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If you're a tech watcher you probably noticed that the UK's first 5G mobile network launch this month. If you're an EE customer, you might well be using it. And if you're a marketer, you're probably wondering what this technology means for you. Is 5G just a faster version of 4G?

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Zara - and other brands like Pull & Bear and Bershka - have promised to only sell sustainable clothes by 2025.

The company that owns these shops says all cotton, linen and polyester they sell will be organic, sustainable or recycled.

Zara has 64 UK stores, and its parent company has 7,490 shops worldwide.

Reacting to the news, Friends of the Earth told Radio 1 Newsbeat it would be "better for everyone if the industry sold clothes made to last."

Over the past few years, a lot of what we buy has been criticised for being fast fashion - clothes we barely use.

What will you see in the shops?

From next year, containers will appear in Zara stores to collect your old clothes so they can be reused or recycled into new items.

Some people in the fashion industry have been calling for more clothes recycling in order to protect the environment - while politicians think brands and shops should fund clothes recycling.

People in the UK send 235 million items of clothing to landfill each year, according to the most recent figures.

A 'ridiculous amount of clothes'

Friends of the Earth told Newsbeat that high street chains can do more to tackle the environmental problems caused by fast fashion.

"Part of the problem is there are too many brands, with opaque supply chains, making a completely ridiculous amount of clothes," spokeswoman Muna Suleiman said.

"They rely on creating 'trends' so shoppers are pressured to come back to buy more stuff each season."

Zara is one of the stores not to currently use plastic bags and Inditex, the company that owns the chain, says that by 2020 it will eliminate the use of plastic bags across all of its brands.

Primark and Boots are among the big-name shops that have switched from plastic to paper bags.

By 2023 Inditex promises it will have fully eliminated single use plastic in its stores.

Inditex also has a scheme called Join Life running in its shops, which identifies clothes which are made with more environmentally friendly materials than conventional high street stores.

These are made from things like organic cotton and recycled polyester.

The boss of Inditex revealed the company's plans at its annual general meeting this week.

"Sustainability is a never-ending task in which everyone here at Inditex is involved and in which we are successfully engaging all of our suppliers," said Pablo Isla, in front of shareholders and company executives.

Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here.

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All Zara clothes to be sustainable by 2025

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Zara - and other brands like Pull & Bear and Bershka - have promised to only sell sustainable clothes by 2025. The company that owns these shops says all cotton, linen and polyester they sell will be organic, sustainable or recycled. Zara has 64 UK stores, and its parent company has 7,490 shops worldwide.

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https://eminencekidsfoundation.org/eminence-organics/

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OUR COMMITMENT

At Eminence Organic Skin Care, our mission is to enhance your well-being naturally - and that also means that we believe in providing education about the benefits of living organically. In addition, we seek opportunities to give back organically, too. This commitment led us to create the Eminence Kids Foundation. We believe that providing organic, locally sourced and nutrient-rich foods to seriously ill children is essential for the healing process. Since 2013, Eminence Organic Skin Care has been donating a portion of the proceeds from every Eminence Organics product sold towards the Eminence Kids Foundation's important mission.

It's an unfortunate fact that a loved one's sickness results in costly medical expenses. Family members usually resign their paying jobs to act as the caretaker. This combination of events means that the family falls upon extreme financial difficulty, in already emotionally challenging situation. It's no surprise that families in this position feel overwhelmed. Then, the Eminence Kids Foundation steps in, providing organic and locally sourced foods at no cost to alleviate financial burden while providing healing and nutritious food.

For families struggling with pediatric illness, our Foundation provides vital help at an extremely stressful and trying time. Through our initiatives, we have provided over 45,000 organic meals throughout the United States, Canada and Hungary at no additional cost to the facility, family or child. To see these brave children and their families smile in gratitude for the organic nutrition we provide inspires every team-member at Eminence Organics to support the Foundation with both time and energy.

Soup Night

One of our most popular volunteer events is our annual Eminence Kids "Soup Night" where many of our employees have prepared hundreds of liters of organic soup for the Foundation's deliveries. Under the guidance of award-winning chefs, we transform organic ingredients into hundreds of servings of soup to distribute to children in need and their families. This is a wonderful way to bring people together in the service of a good cause, and is a feel-good night for all who participate.

A Personal Origin

For Eminence Organics' President, Boldijarre Koronczay, this calling has a personal origin. Boldijarre was diagnosed with a rare form of childhood leukemia and given less than 0.1% chance of survival. While undergoing treatment, Boldijarre's mother and grandmother fed him natural, organic and Biodynamic® foods. Miraculously, Boldijarre survived. This holistic care left a lasting impression on Boldijarre, who believes strongly in nourishing the body both inside and out to achieve total health and wellness. By providing organic fruits and vegetables to sick children, Boldijarre continues the family tradition with care and humor - personally visiting many of the Eminence Kids Foundation locations with teddy bears and jokes to bring smiles to children and their families.

Each week, the Eminence Kids Foundation serves hundreds of organic meals around the world with no sign of slowing down. This initiative is a great source of pride for over 300 team-members at Eminence Organic Skin Care. The help we are able to provide to so many in need means that we can share our mission to enhance your well-being naturally and fulfill our promise to deliver happiness and extraordinary service.. A portion of the proceeds from every Eminence Organic Skin Care product sold supports the Eminence Kids Foundation.

Forests for the Future

In addition to supporting the Eminence Kids Foundation, Eminence Organics is deeply committed to protecting the future of our planet through green practices and the award-winning Forests for the Future program - Eminence Organic Skin Care plants a tree for every product sold. Since the inception of Eminence Organic Skin Care in 1958, we have been using sustainable farming and green practices to create natural, organic and Biodynamic® products.

An Invitation to Learn More

To learn more about Eminence Organic Skin Care, the ingredients, the Green Spa Program, awards, certifications and memberships, as well as the many celebrities and spas around the world who share their adoration for organic products, we welcome you to visit https://eminenceorganics.com/.

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OUR COMMITMENT At Eminence Organic Skin Care, our mission is to enhance your well-being naturally - and that also means that we believe in providing education about the benefits of living organically. In addition, we seek opportunities to give back organically, too. This commitment led us to create the Eminence Kids Foundation.

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Nestlé plans to make 100% of its packaging recyclable or re-usable by 2025

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Nestlé plans to make 100% of its packaging recyclable or re-usable by 2025

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Jane

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As part of its recognition of a Circular Economy, the company will focus on the elimination of non-recyclable ​ plastics; encourage the use of plastics that can be recycled better and eliminate or change complex combinations of packaging materials.

Here in an exclusive interview with Duncan Pollard, sustainability expert, Nestlé, we find out how this announcement will affect the confectionery industry.

CN: Why has Nestle only decided to announce this now when the problem of recycling has been in the news for the last five years?​

DP: ​ Stakeholder interest in reducing the impact of plastic waste on the environment is increasing. Concerns focus on the significant and rising quantities of plastics being produced and discarded in the environment, thereby entering the world's rivers and oceans, both as visible waste and in the form of invisible micro plastics. Interest is also gaining in the concept of developing a circular economy, where plastics and other waste is used as valuable raw material. Packaging is also one of the main contributors to the problem of littering.

Given the scale and reach of Nestlé's business, and the quantities of plastic that we use for various product categories in the form of flexibles and PET bottles, we have an important role to play. The commitments that we are announcing, come at a time when the issue of plastic packaging waste has become a priority for us all. Our commitments build on an extensive body of work we have undertaken in recent years, which has focused on minimizing the environmental impact of our packaging.

We are determined to help improve plastic recycling rates and increase the amount of recycled plastic that we use. We welcome the animated societal, political and industrial debates, and are committed to taking a responsible and active role in the transformation to a circular economy.

The issue of plastic packaging is a highly complex one, particularly for global food and beverage companies who must to adhere stringent consumer health and safety regulations. In each of the 189 countries where we operate, we must comply with individual food regulations and standards that can vary significantly from country to country.

In order to make meaningful and credible commitments, we first need to understand where we need to place our focus, and what organizational capacity is needed to deliver against them. We feel strongly about not making commitments without being serious about meeting them. Because of the size, scale and complexity of our business operations, and the different packaging types we use, it has taken us a little more time than we would have liked to determine the shape and nature of our efforts to address the issue of plastic packaging, and the commitments we need to make to keep us on this path.

CN: What changes can we start to see within the confectionery sector following this announcement?​

DP: ​ The confectionery category as a whole uses a variety of packaging materials to protect and maintain the freshness of the products. Flexible Plastic laminates have become the main material used in wrapping single serve snacking products, bars and larger tablets. Whilst paper and cardboard remain the main material for boxes and gifting products. Moving away from these flexible laminates will be a challenge as this material provides a barrier in ensuring that the product remains high quality and safe up until the consumer enjoys it. As an important and highly visible category in Nestle's portfolio we can expect to see changes to some of the brands that we know and love. At present we are working on the detail of how the confectionery category will contribute to the overall commitment.

CN: How will you make the packaging recyclable? - a lot of packaging has individual layers within one piece of packaging - the problem in the past has been separating these for landfill​

DP: ​ Multi-material laminates are flexible packaging materials, which consist of two or more layers of different packaging materials (different types of plastic or even a combination of plastics and aluminium). Each layer has a specific function (print quality for consumer information, protection barrier to prevent product degradation, conservation function, sealing tightness etc.). We use those materials for pouches, sachets, flow-packs, wrapping etc. At Nestlé, packaging is something we think about carefully. In recent years, we have made considerable progress in minimising the amount of packaging used to pack our products, while ensuring quality and safety until they are consumed. Laminates (pouches for example) are lightweight and compact and so help to reduce transport emissions and the overall environmental impact of our packaging.

We are actively working with governments and other interested stakeholders to address the recyclability of plastic laminates. In the UK, we partnered with Enval and contributed financially to the development of its patented technology for recycling laminate packaging. We also participated in the 2015 'Flexible Aluminium Containing Laminate Packaging Collection' project funded by the UK's Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). While this technology offers a potential solution, the trial showed that more work is required for the material to be collected, sorted and transported before it can be processed. We are now participating in a new European project called CEFLEX, which will work towards the development of an infrastructure to collect, sort and recycle all types of used flexible plastics across Europe by 2025.

CN: How will you phase in the changes ​to become 100% recyclable or re-usable by 2025?​

DP: ​ Our ambition is that 100% of our packaging is reusable or recyclable by 2025. This is in line with prevailing industry expectations and something we are working hard to achieve. To reach this ambition we are focusing on three core areas; eliminating non-recyclable plastics (e.g. PVC, PS, ePS); encouraging the use of plastics that allow better recycling rates of major plastics used today, where value already exists (e.g. PET, PP, PE); and working to eliminate or change complicated combinations of packaging materials (e.g. paper/plastic, laminates, etc.).

To address complex packaging materials such as paper and plastic combinations and multilayer flexible packaging, we will explore switching to easier 'mono-materials' or simple packaging types such as paper, simplifying the number and type of layers used in multilayer plastic packaging. We will also work on changing the colors of our plastic packaging to make them easier to recycle from the outset, with lighter colors, being easier to recycle.

With an honours degree in forestry, Pollard worked for a variety of forest companies and spent nine years with Shell, firstly in their London head office, then in Chile and Uruguay. He spent almost 10 years with WWF International, initially in the Global Forest Programme and finally as the director responsible for WWF's global thematic work on energy, water, forests, species, oceans and policy. In 2010 he joined Nestlé as an independent advisor on sustainability and became a permanent employee in 2013. ​

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Nestlé: 'It has taken us a little more time than we would have liked to address the issue of plastic packaging'

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As part of its recognition of a Circular Economy, the company will focus on the elimination of non-recyclable ​ plastics; encourage the use of plastics that can be recycled better and eliminate or change complex combinations of packaging materials. Here in an exclusive interview with Duncan Pollard, sustainability expert, Nestlé, we find out how this announcement will affect the confectionery industry.

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https://www.insightnews.com.au/Article3/2010/Oscar-Wylees-philanthropic-claims-are-called-into-question-wrongdoing-denied

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Snickers and Mars chocolate bars -- Lancy

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Snickers and Mars chocolate bars -- Lancy

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This case shows a successful crisis management from MasterFoods. After the crisis,  sales of Mars and Snickers bars were 250 per cent higher than
average during the product’s first week back on New South Wales shelves.

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Snickers and Mars Bar manufacturer MasterFoods has received a new extortion threat on the same day tests showed a chocolate bar posted to its head office was laced with a chemical similar to pesticide.

MasterFoods said it had received a fourth threatening letter from the extortionist behind the chocolate contamination scare.

The company recalled all Snickers and Mars Bars in NSW last Friday after it received three extortion letters claiming seven bars had been contaminated in the Sydney area.

The fourth letter was not accompanied by a chocolate bar and was received on Wednesday at MasterFoods' head office in Ballarat, Victoria, a company spokesman said.

MasterFoods would not outline the content of the new letter but said it did not require changes to the massive product recall, which affects only NSW.

"We've received another letter from the extortionist today and immediately passed it onto police," the spokesman told AAP.

"In relation to the new letter, there was no information in it that requires a change of our current course of action as far as the recall is concerned."

MasterFoods received the new letter on the same day tests confirmed a Snickers bar sent to the company's head office last month was contaminated with a pesticide-like substance.

A scientific report on the chocolate bar was inconclusive in defining the contaminant but revealed the substance was similar in appearance to a number of commercially available pest poisons and could be harmful to children, NSW Police said.

"The interim report does state if consumption of a similar amount of the contaminant - as found in the infected bar - were to occur, then ill effects cannot be ruled out in people of small body mass, such as children who are potentially the most vulnerable," police said in a statement.

"The contaminated Snickers bar is currently undergoing further analysis in NSW in an effort to positively identify the contaminant."

Masterfoods regional president Andy Weston-Webb welcomed the report, which he hoped would help the police investigation.

"I'm very pleased the police have released details of the forensic report because it may help with the (police) investigation and could also assist doctors in dealing with inquiries," he said.

Masterfoods again warned the NSW public not to eat Snickers and Mars bars after learning a 15-year-old boy had suffered "flu-like symptoms" after taking one bite of the Snickers bar he bought at Seven Hills railway station in Sydney's west.

The boy did not require hospital treatment and was now feeling fine, Mr Weston-Webb said.

The boy's illness comes after 19 people who had consumed the products had called the company's hotline complaining of illness at the weekend. Two had sought hospital treatment.

Mr Weston-Webb said people had returned more than one million chocolate bars to the company since last Friday's recall.

"We are asking for the help of everyone in NSW - please let us know if you see a Mars or Snickers bar for sale at any retail outlet, including vending machines," he said.

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Snickers and Mars Bar manufacturer MasterFoods has received a new extortion threat on the same day tests showed a chocolate bar posted to its head office was laced with a chemical similar to pesticide. MasterFoods said it had received a fourth threatening letter from the extortionist behind the chocolate contamination scare.

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By 2030 Lego will replace plastics with plant-based/recycled materials 

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By 2030 Lego will replace plastics with plant-based/recycled materials 

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Anqi

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At Lego, petroleum-based plastics aren't the packaging, they're the product - and the bricks making up these dinosaurs have barely changed in more than 50 years. Credit Credit Carsten Snejbjerg for The New York Times

BILLUND, Denmark - At the heart of this town lies a building that is a veritable temple to the area's most famous creation, the humble Lego brick. It is filled with complex creations, from a 50-foot tree to a collection of multicolored dinosaurs, all of them built with a product that has barely changed in more than 50 years.

A short walk away in its research lab, though, Lego is trying to refashion the product it is best known for: It wants to eliminate its dependence on petroleum-based plastics, and build its toys entirely from plant-based or recycled materials by 2030.

The challenge is designing blocks that click together yet separate easily, retain bright colors, and survive the rigors of being put through a laundry load, or the weight of an unknowing parent's foot. In essence, the company wants to switch the ingredients, but keep the product exactly the same.

"We need to learn again how to do this," said Henrik Ostergaard Nielsen, a production supervisor at Lego's factory here in Billund.

Consumers worldwide have voiced growing alarm about the impact of plastic waste on the environment, and increasing numbers of companies are trying to use packaging materials that are recyclable or otherwise less polluting. Coca-Cola, for instance, plans to collect and recycle the equivalent of all the bottles and cans it uses by 2030. Unilever, the consumer goods giant, says all its plastic packaging will be recyclable or compostable by 2025. Others, like McDonald's and Starbucks, are doing away with plastic straws in their outlets.

With so many large businesses changing their practices, recycling will "become the norm," said David Blanchard, Unilever's head of research and development.

Lego faces a more complex problem than other consumer businesses, though - for this Danish company, plastics are not the packaging, they are the product.

The toymaker's highly automated manufacturing facility here in Billund is a picture of clock work. At a mammoth factory more than 500 yards long, machines arranged in rows melt plastic pellets into a molten paste and press them into molds. A few seconds later, a batch of colored bricks pops out, and is deposited into driverless carts, taken to be stored for shipment. Each day, the facility churns out about 100 million "elements," the term Lego uses for the bricks, trees and doll parts it sells.

Lego - the company's name is a contraction of the Danish words for "play well" - traces its roots back to the early 1930s, when a carpenter named Ole Kirk Kristiansen began making and selling handsome fire engines and other wooden toys.

By the 1950s, he was experimenting with plastic bricks. His son Godtfred began marketing the distinctive little blocks not just as toys, but as a building system that could be expanded and passed on to later generations. Bricks that date back to 1958 are still compatible with current products, according to Lego.

Today, the company sells its wares worldwide and has secured partnerships with film franchises like Batman and Star Wars to market not just themed brick sets, but movies and video games featuring Lego toys. It brought in 7.8 billion kroner, or about $1.2 billion, in profit last year, making it larger than its American rivals Mattel and Hasbro. The Kirk Kristiansen family, which still controls Lego, was paid a $1.1 billion dividend.

But more and more children are using mobile devices for entertainment, pitting Lego not just against toy makers but against technology and gaming companies like Activision Blizzard, Microsoft and Sony. That has put the company under pressure. Lego said last year that it would cut 1,400 jobs after its revenue and profit both fell for the first time in a decade.

Its heft, however, brings with it a substantial carbon footprint. Lego emits about a million tons of carbon dioxide each year, about three-quarters of which comes from the raw materials that go into its factories, according to Tim Brooks, the company's vice president for environmental responsibility.

Lego is taking a two-pronged approach to reducing the amount of pollution it causes. For one, it wants to keep all of its packaging out of landfills by 2025 by eliminating things like plastic bags inside its cardboard packaging.

It is also pushing for the plastic in its toys to come from sources like plant fibers or recycled bottles by 2030.

The problem with that target, though, is that virtually all of the plastic used worldwide - including that molded by Lego into toy bricks - is created from petroleum.

Currently, Lego mostly uses a substance known as ABS, short for acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, a common plastic also used for computer keys and mobile phone cases. It's tough, yet slightly elastic, and also has a polished surface.

To wean itself off products like ABS, Lego has begun an exhaustive search for new, sustainable materials.

It is investing about 1 billion kroner and hiring about 100 people to work on these changes. Technicians methodically test promising materials to see whether they can take a whack without breaking, or survive a hard pull. They are checked to see if they withstand the heat of a Saudi Arabian summer, and take on the bright color palette that Lego bricks are famous for. The company's bricks may look simple, but they are made with incredible precision.

"We look at how does it look, and how does it feel," said Nelleke van der Puil, Lego's vice president for materials.

Company researchers have already experimented with around 200 alternatives. Among them, Ms. van der Puil said, was a substance called PLA, one of the few bio-based plastics that are readily available. Lego is also already using polyethylene made from sugar-cane husks in flexible pieces like dragon wings, palm trees and fishing rods, but these constitute only 1 percent to 2 percent of its output, and the material is too soft for the company's toy blocks.

Most test materials, both bio-based and recycled, have so far fallen short. Some bricks made with the new materials have broken, leaving sharp edges that could injure a child, or have popped out with ugly, muddied colors. Others have on occasion produced misshapen or pockmarked bricks.

The search for a substitute for petroleum-based plastic could yet take years of work, Mr. Brooks acknowledged. Still, executives argue that, as a company that models itself as a de facto educator as much as a profitable enterprise, it has little option but to keep trying.

"It is important," said Mr. Brooks, "that we can make a toy that doesn't jeopardize" children's future.

Video

Step inside a factory that makes the bricks for your favorite Lego toys in this 360° tour. Credit Credit Tim Chaffee/The New York Times. Technology by Samsung.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Lego Hunts New Bricks For a Sustainable Future. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Lego Wants to Completely Remake Its Toy Bricks (Without Anyone Noticing)

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BILLUND, Denmark - At the heart of this town lies a building that is a veritable temple to the area's most famous creation, the humble Lego brick. It is filled with complex creations, from a 50-foot tree to a collection of multicolored dinosaurs, all of them built with a product that has barely changed in more than 50 years.

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Samsung Engineering Opens ‘Hope Library’ For Children In Rayong

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Samsung Engineering Opens ‘Hope Library’ For Children In Rayong

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Yanling Zou (Karina)

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Thailand Construction and Engineering News

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Samsung Engineering opens 'Hope Library' for children in Rayong
8 March 2019

Samsung Engineering, a leading engineering, procurement, construction and project management (EPC&PM) company in Thailand, announced in a press release on Friday that it recently hosted an opening ceremony for a newly donated "Hope Library" for children from Nong Fab Village, MapTa Phut, Muang, Rayong.

The ceremony was attended by 130 people including Insee Kerdmanee, Deputy Governor of the Rayaong Province, Aran Jaitang and Prasan Boontem, both Deputy Mayor of Maptaphut Municipality, MapTa Phut public officials, citizens of the Nong Fab Village and PTT, PTTGC, Thai Oil and Samsung Engineering.

According to the Samsung Engineering, the new Thailand "Hope Library" was built in 13 months in partnership with Plan International. Beyond building the library, Samsung Engineering fully equipped it with 5,000 books, electronic devices such as TV and DVD player and further donated IT equipment including computer, printer, and software, library supplies such as book cart, desks and chairs.

Additionally, Samsung Engineering hired and trained librarians to provide a long, prosper and sustainable library operation. Around 700 children, youth, teachers living near the library including from 222 children from the Nong Fab School will be the major beneficiaries of the library. Furthermore 2,000 community members in or near the village will also benefit from Samsung Engineering's "Hope Library".

Samsung Engineering started the "Global Hope Library" campaign in 2012 and donated libraries in counties such as Iraq, Bolivia, Azerbaijan, Algeria, Nepal, etc.

Source: http://www.nationmultimedia.com/detail/Corporate/30365420

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Samsung Engineering opens 'Hope Library' for children in Rayong - Thailand Construction and Engineering News

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Samsung Engineering opens 'Hope Library' for children in Rayong 8 March 2019 Samsung Engineering, a leading engineering, procurement, construction and project management (EPC&PM) company in Thailand, announced in a press release on Friday that it recently hosted an opening ceremony for a newly donated "Hope Library" for children from Nong Fab Village, MapTa Phut, Muang, ...

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Burger King raises awareness about 'Pink Tax'

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Burger King raises awareness about 'Pink Tax'

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huajing Zhao (Ada)

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Burger King is tackling gender inequality in a new campaign featuring "Chick Fries" aimed at women.

Beginning on Thursday, July 26, Burger King will be serving "Chick Fries" in a pink box in select restaurants while supplies last in an effort to raise awareness and counteract the "pink tax" tax.

The "pink tax" is a tax that targets female consumers and marks the price of products made for women significantly higher than the male equivalent of those products.
CHICK-FIL-A ANNOUNCES PLANS FOR FIRST INTERNATIONAL LOCATION IN TORONTO
Some examples of products affected by the pink tax include personal care items such as razors, dry cleaning, toys, and vehicle repair. The "pink tax" is used to mark-up female-geared products about 42 percent of the time.

Burger King released a short video to explain the problem with the tax.

In the video, unsuspecting female customers are charged $3.09 for "Chick Fries," which is 83 percent more than the price of "Chicken Fries" at $1.69.

The only difference between the two is that the "Chick Fries" are in a pink box.
STEAK 'N SHAKE THROWS SHADE AT WENDY'S ON TWITTER, GETS PROMPTLY SHUT DOWN
On average, products made for women or girls cost 7 percent more than comparable products for men and boys, according to ListenMoneyMatters.

Personal care products for women cost 13 percent more, toys made for girls cost 7 percent more, and female clothing costs 8 percent more.

With this campaign, Burger King is joining the fight toward financial equality between men and women and hoping other brands to will join in on eliminating unequal pricing based on gender.

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Burger King raises awareness about 'Pink Tax'

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Burger King is tackling gender inequality in a new campaign featuring "Chick Fries" aimed at women. Beginning on Thursday, July 26, Burger King will be serving "Chick Fries" in a pink box in select restaurants while supplies last in an effort to raise awareness and counteract the "pink tax" tax.

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HANGZHOU, China--()--Alipay Ant Forest, a green initiative on the world's leading payment and lifestyle platform Alipay, has been awarded the United Nation's highest environmental honor - the "UN Champions of the Earth" award - for inspiring over half a billion people to take action in their daily lives to live greener lifestyles and help protect the environment through the power of digital technology.

Launched in the Alipay app in August 2016, the Ant Forest green initiative encourages users to adopt low-carbon activities - such as paying utility bills online, and walking or taking buses to work instead of driving - in their daily lives. Such behavior is counted and converted into virtual "green energy points" that accumulate to grow a virtual "tree" in the user's mobile phone. With enough energy points, the virtual tree is converted into a real one and planted by Alipay and its philanthropic partners in desertification areas that need reforesting. In turn, this tree-planting initiative has inspired users to further adopt low-carbon and environment-friendly behavior.

By August 2019, Alipay Ant Forest has attracted over 500 million users, resulting in 122 million trees planted in arid areas in China, and the avoidance of 7.9 million tons of carbon emission. Its influence has also traveled beyond China. Inspired by Alipay Ant Forest, the Philippines' leading mobile wallet GCash introduced GCash Forest on its App in June 2019, enabling local users to contribute to reforestation and environmental preservation by adopting low carbon activities in their daily lives.

"Alipay Ant Forest shows how technology can transform our world by harnessing all the positive energy and innovation of global users," said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. "Although the environmental challenges we face are daunting, we have the technology and the knowledge to overcome them and fundamentally redesign how we interact with the planet. Initiatives like Alipay Ant Forest harness the best of human ingenuity and innovation to create a better world," she said.

Champions of the Earth is the UN's flagship global environmental award, established in 2005 to recognize outstanding figures from public and private sector and civil society that have had a positive impact on the environment. The United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) has recognized Alipay Ant Forest as a Champion of the Earth in the "Inspiration and Action" category.

"We are truly honoured to receive this Champions of the Earth award," said Eric Jing, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Ant Financial. "Alipay Ant Forest reflects our belief that technology can and should be harnessed for social good. We are grateful to our many users and partners who have joined our efforts to plant 122 million trees and advance a shared vision of sustainable and inclusive development. Alipay Ant Forest's popularity shows that the public is ready to take action to combat climate change," he said.

In addition to planting trees, users can also choose to protect certain areas of conservation land through Alipay Ant Forest. The green initiative is further exploring innovative solutions that can help alleviate poverty and improve local lives through the power of digital technology.

By August 2019, Alipay Ant Forest has created over 400,000 job opportunities for local communities and generated RMB 60 million in total income. One of those locals is 57-year-old former herdsman Nie Yusheng, who now looks after over 2,000 hectares of Alipay Ant Forest as a forest ranger.

"'I never thought an ordinary herdsman like me could help change the environment in this way. Today, I am really happy to see that the land I live on is becoming greener in the short span of three years, partly due to my tree-planting work," said herdsman-turned-ranger Mr. Nie, who is also a tree-planter in Alipay Ant Forest No.1 forest zone in the Alashan League of Inner Mongolia.

About Alipay

Operated by Ant Financial Services Group, Alipay is the world's leading payment and lifestyle platform. Launched in 2004, Alipay currently serves over 1 billion users with its local e-wallets partners. Over the years, Alipay has evolved from a digital wallet to a lifestyle enabler. Users can hail a taxi, book a hotel, buy movie tickets, pay utility bills, make appointments with doctors, or purchase wealth management products directly from within the app. In addition to online payments, Alipay is expanding to in-store offline payments both inside and outside of China. Alipay's in-store payment service covers over 50 markets across the world, and tax reimbursement via Alipay is supported in 35 markets. Alipay works with over 250 overseas financial institutions and payment solution providers to enable cross-border payments for Chinese travelling overseas and overseas customers who purchase products from Chinese e-commerce sites. Alipay currently supports 27 currencies.

About Champions of the Earth

The annual Champions of the Earth prize is awarded to outstanding leaders from government, civil society and the private sector whose actions have had a positive impact on the environment. Since 2005, Champions of the Earth has recognized 88 laureates, ranging from world leaders to technology inventors.

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Alipay Ant Forest Named UN Champion of the Earth, the United Nation's Highest Environmental Honor

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HANGZHOU, China--()--Alipay Ant Forest, a green initiative on the world's leading payment and lifestyle platform Alipay, has been awarded the United Nation's highest environmental honor - the "UN Champions of the Earth" award - for inspiring over half a billion people to take action in their daily lives to live greener lifestyles and help protect the environment through the power of digital technology.

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Cisco empower social change agents with technology and expertise 

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Cisco empower social change agents with technology and expertise 

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Jingfang

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Corporate social responsibility home page

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Cisco's corporate social responsibility programs aim to create opportunity for people, empower communities, and protect the planet.

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TOMS, the shoe to coffee brand, is exploring new ways of getting across its ethical marketing message, having discovered "effective media buying with purpose attached".

Speaking at Advertising Week Europe, Lisa Hogg, TOMS marketing director for EMEA, outlined the rise of belief-driven buyers - those consumers who will buy, or reject, a brand for what it stands for.

In an age of uncertainty, "people feel their wallets are their votes", she said. That's both challenging and a massive opportunity, as what a brand stands for is becoming more important than the product features that were previously the focus of marketing activity.

"The brand stand on things is not something you can shy away from any more," she stated. (For more, read WARC's report: TOMS marries brand activism with media effectiveness.)

TOMS has long taken a stand, being founded back in 2006 with the purpose of doing good: buy a pair of its shoes and it donates footwear to someone who needs it.

But the TOMS business model sees the social contributions it makes come out of the P&L rather than being conditional on success, meaning that the marketing budget tends to be a casualty.

"We have storytelling gold," said Hogg, "but it does make it a little bit more difficult for us to drive upper funnel interest and brand awareness - which is one of our biggest challenges."

A tie-up with Good-Loop is changing that: it takes existing video creative and wraps it in an ethical ad player which carries branding along the top and a choice of three charitable causes - chosen by the advertising brand to reinforce brand values.

Once a viewer has watched the ad for at least 15 seconds (a countdown clocks the time) they can decide which of the three charities they want to give their 'free' donation to. The money actually comes out of the media spend.

Good-Loop founder Amy Williams explained that not only is the user actively involved but "when you give people positive reason to engage, to get them to watch your ad for longer, 91% go from 15 seconds all the way through to 30. And that part isn't incentivised".

Hogg concurred that she had been pleasantly surprised by view-through rates, "especially on our longer-form content".

And when a campaign is finished, she added: "We could see how much we were able to additionally give to the three non-profits and that feels really good - really effective media buying but with purpose attached."

Sourced from WARC

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TOMS gives consumers a positive reason to engage | WARC

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TOMS, the shoe to coffee brand, is exploring new ways of getting across its ethical marketing message, having discovered "effective media buying with purpose attached". Speaking at Advertising Week Europe, Lisa Hogg, TOMS marketing director for EMEA, outlined the rise of belief-driven buyers - those consumers who will buy, or reject, a brand for what it stands for.

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The brand has integrated social concerns in their campaign

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NEW YORK, March 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Lancôme is proud to announce Write Her Future, a global commitment to combat illiteracy amongst women and give a voice...

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Why Corporate Social Responsibility Is Important to Millennial.

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When Millennials are part of your target audience, your marketing strategy should be socially focused. But if your mind immediately goes to platforms like Instagram and Twitter, you're overlooking another type of social marketing - one that communicates your corporate social responsibility (CSR).

While it seems a given to use a robust social media approach when engaging this "always connected" generation (born between 1981 and 1996), what may not be as obvious is the appeal and respect gained from socially responsible branding and content. And, yes social media is prime for sharing these efforts with Millennials.

A recent Nielsen study reports that 85% of Millennials say it is extremely or very important that companies implement programs to improve the environment, and 75% say they definitely or probably would change their purchase habits to reduce their impact on the environment.

Keep in mind that 53 million members of this generation are established in the U.S. workforce, and by 2025 will represent approximately 75% of U.S. workers. They're consuming content and making decisions about brands, products, and services through social media. According to a Gartner study, brands that actively and sincerely engage with followers are influencing 62% of Millennials.

Here are some of the types of CSR programs Millennials are looking for online:

Charitable giving and partnerships

Community activity and volunteering (often demonstrated at the franchisee level)

Fair trade programs

Environmental policies like focusing on reducing carbon footprints

Positive labor policies, including anti-discrimination and anti-harassment practices

Integrate CSR into your marketing

It's not unusual for franchise brands to have a CSR program already in place. But not all brands are integrating the message into their marketing. So while franchise employees, vendors, and the planet may be benefiting from your social responsibility programs and activities, your bottom line could stand to gain more by pulling in consumers' attention and dollars by sharing your CSR success stories on social media.

With 66% of U.S. Internet users believing that more brands should take a stand on important social values, and 52% spending more money with brands that align with their social values, your message will not fall on deaf ears.

Where to share?

Where should franchises tell their CSR story to Millennial consumers? According to eMarketer, U.S. Millennials are using the following social sites the most:

1. Facebook - 65%

2. YouTube - 61%

3. Instagram - 55%

4. Snapchat - 42%

5. Twitter - 28%

Be specific

A final note about corporate social responsibility messaging: get specific. Blanket statements wanting the world to be a better place and vague comments about making a difference will be lost. Millennials are generally in touch with sustainability and social problems. CSR marketing will resonate better with specifics on what programs you're managing, how they are run, and who they benefit.

To earn their business, give Millennials something to believe in and get behind.

Andrea Brandon is vice president of marketing and creative services at Mindstream Media. She works across the organization and its client base to build awareness and generate leads for both the agency and its franchise brands.

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Millennial Matters: Corporate Social Responsibility Is Important

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When Millennials are part of your target audience, your marketing strategy should be socially focused. But if your mind immediately goes to platforms like Instagram and Twitter, you're overlooking another type of social marketing - one that communicates your corporate social responsibility (CSR).

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Carson King puts a sign up on TV as a joke and starts receiving money. He decides to donate it all to charity and his donation is quickly matched by a Busch Light distributor and Venmo

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DES MOINES - You just knew a story this good wouldn't end without an exclamation point and today Carson King got it.

WHO reports that on Monday, King's two-week long fundraiser for the University of Iowa Children's Hospital came up just short of his final goal of $3 million. King announced Tuesday afternoon that he'd raised a grand total of $2,950,000.

But today that total was pushed to the $3,000,000 finish line thanks to a late donation from West Des Moines-based Doll Distributing, the local distributor for Busch Light in Central Iowa. The company says 13 different distributors from across the state chipped in to make the final $41,000 gift.

King's fundraiser started before the Iowa-Iowa State football game in Ames when he held up a sign asking for money via Venmo to buy more Busch Light during ESPN's 'College GameDay'. The sign worked, with donations pouring into his account.

King quickly announced that he'd donate all the money sent to his Venmo account to the UI Children's Hospital. Busch Light and Venmo both quickly announced they'd match whatever King raised. Several other donors including RAGBRAI and Carson's employer, Prairie Meadows, announced major gifts as well.

King says he plans to deliver the final $3 million check to the hospital on October 12th when the Hawkeyes host Penn State.
Read more here.

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football fan donates beer money to charity

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Carson King hits $3 million goal thanks to late gift from Busch Light distributors

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DES MOINES -- You just knew a story this good wouldn't end without an exclamation point and today Carson King got it. WHO reports that on Monday, King's two-week long fundraiser for the University of Iowa Children's Hospital came up just short of his final goal of $3 million.

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Well knock us off our unicycles, we had no idea!

Reg Standards Bureau Ever wondered what the equivalent weight of a tram was in skateboarding rhinoceri? The answer is apparently 30, as any Aussie will tell you.

The Beware The Rhino campaign (pictured) was created by Melbourne tram company to prevent pedestrians from being easily distracted when using mobile phones or listening to music.

A tram can weigh up to 50 tonnes, while the average rhino weighs over 1.5 tonnes.

A back-of-the-fag-packet calculation reveals that a London bus is equivalent to eight skateboarding rhinos - or around 120 cycling Boris Johnsons.

Hat tip to respected journo from Down Under Stilgherrian for pointing out that the the correct unit of measuring the mass of a Melbourne tram is the rhino-on-skateboard.

That data has been added to the El Reg online standards converter, which allows instant conversion of commonly-used metric and imperial standards into approved Vulture Central units, and vice-versa. ®

Sponsored: What next after Netezza?

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Aussie trams equivalent to 30 skateboarding rhinos

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Reg Standards Bureau Ever wondered what the equivalent weight of a tram was in skateboarding rhinoceri? The answer is apparently 30, as any Aussie will tell you. The Beware The Rhino campaign (pictured) was created by Melbourne tram company to prevent pedestrians from being easily distracted when using mobile phones or listening to music.

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Meet Graham - Transport Accident Commission (TAC)

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Meet Graham - Transport Accident Commission (TAC)

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Jingfang Chu 855954

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The only person designed to survive on our roads

As much as we like to think we're invincible, we're not. But what if we were to change? What if our bodies were built to survive a low impact crash? What might we look like? The result of these questions is Graham, a reminder of just how vulnerable our bodies really are.

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As much as we like to think we're invincible, we're not. But what if our bodies were to change to cope with the impact of a car accident? Meet Graham at www.meetgraham.com.au

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Mighty Acts of Pinkness for breast cancer

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Mighty Acts of Pinkness for breast cancer

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Crybaby Productions helped bring the campaign to life.

In support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Black Chicken Remedies has launched its 'Mighty Acts of Pinkness' campaign to generate funds for the National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF).

Black Chicken Remedies has turned its Axilla Natural Deodorant Paste pink with $2 from every jar sold will be donated directly to breast cancer research.

This year both Axilla formulas, including Original for active, sporty types and Barrier Booster for sensitive skin, will be part of the Pink Product fundraiser.

A Mighty Acts of Pinkness revolves around the act of pinkness (kindness), purchasing a pink edition product for yourself and also paying it forward through gifting or sharing it with someone you care about, like your mum, sister, daughter, bestie, wife or partner.

"As a woman and founder of a skincare and wellness brand with a philosophy based on supporting health and well-being, raising funds for breast cancer research with our hero product Axilla Deodorant Paste is an initiative we're proud of," Black Chicken Remedies CEO and founder Chey Birch says.

"As a corporate partner given the NBCF does not receive any government funding, our objective is pretty simple - we aim to raise $40,000 for game changing research."

Cry Baby Productions was called on to produce the video content and bring the campaign to life.

"Working with Black Chicken Remedies on this project was a true collaboration," Crybaby Productions creative director Clare Alstin says.

"Our client came to us with the initial idea of 'A Mighty Acts of Pinkness' ... and, well we thought they had nailed it. They really know their brand inside and out."

Faced with a tight schedule the production process came together incredibly quickly.

"Our first step was to brainstorm those little acts of kindness that make a positive difference in our lives every day," Alstin says.

"We then specifically wrote the script so it felt a little cheeky and backhanded, before shooting each scenario of 'pinkness' on a stylised pink set with pink styling, to match the pink tone of the Axilla packaging."

To complete the production Crybaby worked hard on timing the edit with a voiceover to make it feel fun and engaging with a clear call to action: to pay it forward.

The campaign aims to help the National Breast Cancer Foundation reach its goal of zero deaths from breast cancer by 2030.

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Black Chicken Remedies create Mighty Acts of Pinkness for breast cancer - AdNews

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Crybaby Productions helped bring the campaign to life. In support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Black Chicken Remedies has launched its 'Mighty Acts of Pinkness' campaign to generate funds for the National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF). Black Chicken Remedies has turned its Axilla Natural Deodorant Paste pink with $2 from every jar sold will be donated directly to breast cancer research.

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The government agency charged with protecting the nation's health is under fire for defending e-cigarette flavours.

A leading European expert on tobacco control said that flavours were responsible for luring children into vaping, amid mounting concern over its effects on human health.

Alarm in the US over what has been labelled an "epidemic" in teen vaping, as well as the deaths of six people who have used e-cigarettes and the hospitalisation of hundreds more, has seen President Donald Trump announce plans to ban flavours in e-cigarettes, at least for a temporary period.

On Saturday, England's chief medical officer, Prof Dame Sally Davies, also expressed concern about children using e-cigarettes. In an interview with Civil Service World, she asked: "Is this a ticking time bomb? Will they turn out to have long-term consequences?"

With many e-cigarettes designed to mimic the taste of popular sweet brands, desserts and tropical fruits, there are concerns that flavours are encouraging teenagers to try vaping, a claim denied by the industry. Emerging evidence also suggests that chemical reactions created by the addition of some flavours may be harmful to human health.

Despite this, Public Health England (PHE) backs their use, insisting that flavours help adult smokers switch to less harmful e-cigarettes. But Prof Charlotta Pisinger, chair of the European Respiratory Society Tobacco Control Committee, an international coalition of doctors and scientists, whose research has been shared with the European parliament, criticised those who defended their use.

"In Europe we have banned flavours from cigarettes because we know it attracts young people to smoking," she said. "Cigarettes should taste like cigarettes not like candy. E-cigarettes taste like candy and, frequently, we see in small shops where they are sold, e-cigarettes on one side and candy on the other. Of course it attracts children."

Martin Dockrell, tobacco control programme lead at PHE, warned last week: "Banning flavours would likely provoke vapers to relapse back to smoking, leading to more adult smoking role models for young people, which we know is the key driver in young people starting to smoke."

But Pisinger said she was in "no doubt" there should be a ban on flavours in e-cigarettes. "I know opponents will say flavours are essential because there will be heavy smokers who want to quit with e-cigarettes and they will not find it as attractive, but we have to think about the new generation of young people so that they don't get addicted to these products. It is much more important that we don't experience a new epidemic of e-cigarettes. We know there is substantial evidence that use of e-cigarettes increases the risk of smoking conventional cigarettes. So it will also kickstart a new smoking epidemic."

Unlike in the US, e-cigarettes are promoted in the UK as smoking cessation aids rather than a lifestyle choice. Heavy restrictions mean they cannot be marketed at youth. Pisinger, though, questioned whether e-cigarettes really helped smokers quit.

"It is important to remember that none of these very, very rich tobacco companies and e-cigarette companies have registered their product as a smoking cessation product. The only reason why they haven't done it is they have no evidence that vaping is a good cessation tool. If it was effective they would have tried to have it approved," she said.

Some experts believe the recent health problems in the US are linked to people inhaling vitamin E acetate, a cannabis vape oil cutting agent used by black market dealers. The UK, in contrast, has so far reported few health problems associated with e-cigarettes.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) operates a yellow card adverse-reaction reporting system. In the last five years it has received 74 reports relating to health concerns associated with e-cigarettes, of which 49 were considered to be serious.

However, Pisinger said there was no room for complacency. "We are gaining more and more insight as to what is going on in the body when people vape, how it might affect the cardiovascular system, the lungs etc, and evidence is piling up that these products are harmful. We might be surprised that the harm is greater than we thought because there is a huge problem with all the research we have done so far. People are comparing this to conventional cigarettes, but the products are extremely different. We are looking for apples but maybe we should be looking for pears. This is something new."
Topics

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UK attacked for defence of flavoured e-cigarettes

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The government agency charged with protecting the nation's health is under fire for defending e-cigarette flavours. A leading European expert on tobacco control said that flavours were responsible for luring children into vaping, amid mounting concern over its effects on human health.

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Futurologist Dr Ian Pearson, whose job is all about forecasting the future, said: "By 2050, we'll be communicating through a form of telepathy from thought recognition technology. Electronic jewellery which can detect my thoughts may be able to communicate with someone else's earpiece and relay my thoughts to them.

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How do you think people will communicate in the future?

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Forget snail mail and social media, young people have been giving their predictions about how we'll use tech to communicate in the future!

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https://www.bbc.com/news/health-49798627?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.com/news/health&link_location=live-reporting-story

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The number of people vaping in the UK has reached 3.6 million - about half the number of smokers - figures from Action on Smoking and Health suggest.

The data indicates most vapers are former smokers, with the main reason for using e-cigarettes being to give up tobacco.

The findings come as the US continues to investigate a spate of serious lung injuries linked to vaping.

India, meanwhile, says it will ban e-cigarettes as they pose a health risk.
Listen: Beyond Today - Can vaping kill you?
E-cigarettes allow users to inhale nicotine in vapour rather than breathing in smoke.

The anti-smoking charity Action on Smoking and Health has been monitoring trends in their use since 2012.

Its latest report suggests vaping helped an extra 70,000 people quit smoking in 2017.

It says the number of vapers in the UK has gone from 700,000 in 2012 to 3.6 million in 2019 - and of these:

54% have given up smoking

40% both smoke and vape

6% have never smoked

"It's important that all vapers stop smoking completely, as otherwise they are still exposing themselves to the serious risks of disease and disability caused by smoking," says Prof Ann McNeill, who compiled a review of e-cigarettes for Public Health England.

She adds: "Vaping isn't risk free - but it's much less risky than smoking, which kills nearly 100,000 people a year in the UK."

The figures come amid a backlash against e-cigarettes.

The US Centers for Disease Control is investigating a mysterious outbreak of lung injuries linked to vaping, in which eight people have died and more than 500 have become ill.

Most, but not all, have reported "cannabis vaping", in which the vapour contains THC (the psychoactive component in cannabis).

There was a similar case in the UK last year, reported in the British Medical Journal, in which a woman developed lipoid pneumonia and the only explanation doctors could come up with was vaping.

The CDC recommends people "consider refraining from using e-cigarette or vaping products".

The situation in the US has led to President Donald Trump announcing a ban on flavoured e-cigarettes and the supermarket giant Walmart stopping selling them entirely.

Meanwhile, India has announced a ban including three-year jail terms for offenders.

What's behind a vaping illness outbreak in the US?

Walmart ceases e-cigarette sales

Trump plans ban on sale of flavoured e-cigarettes

India e-cigarettes: Ban announced to prevent youth 'epidemic'

The stance from health bodies in the UK has remained that vaping is 95% safer than smoking.

Deborah Arnott, the chief executive of ASH, said: "Vapers should not be scared back to smoking by the news of vaping illness in the US. Nor should smokers stick to smoking rather than switch to vaping.

"It is essential, however, to only use legal vapes bought from reputable suppliers in the UK and not source illicit unregulated products over the internet."

The World Health Organization says e-cigarettes are "undoubtedly harmful and should therefore be subject to regulation".

It also raises concerns vaping is being aggressively marketed at young people - particularly through the use of flavourings - and risked re-normalising smoking.

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The number of people vaping in the UK has reached 3.6 million - about half the number of smokers - figures from Action on Smoking and Health suggest. The data indicates most vapers are former smokers, with the main reason for using e-cigarettes being to give up tobacco.

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https://www.worksafe.vic.gov.au/news/2018-06/new-campaign-redefines-workplace-safety

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It's tough to argue with PRWeek's recent anointing of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty by Unilever and Edelman as the Best U.S. Campaign of the Past 20 Years. Since its 2004 inception, Real Beauty's provocative ads, thought leadership, and educational initiatives for beauty equality combined to form something more akin to a social movement than a gimmicky emotional appeal from a packaged goods giant.

The Dove difference hasn't just come from using more diverse "real" women in its ads. Unilever was one of the earliest to adopt corporate sustainability into its business model, and the often tearjerker Real Beauty ads were backed by lots of action to improve the self-esteem of women everywhere.

The campaign's impact extended beyond promoting a vision for beauty equality. Sales for Dove jumped from $2.5 to $4 billion in the campaign's first ten years. Dove bars became the number one preferred soap brand in the U.S. and Unilever's best selling product company-wide.

That's why so many people scratched their heads over the subsequent missteps that caused consumers to call foul on what they said was racism in some of the Real Beauty messages.

Specifically, in October 2017, Dove released a three-second body wash ad on Facebook. The ad featured a diverse trio of women individually lifting their shirts to transition into one another: a black woman pulled up her shirt to reveal a white woman, who then unveiled an Asian woman.

Depicting a black woman transforming to white through soap was an unwitting nod to an ugly theme of 19th century advertising when blatantly racist messages suggested "dirty" people of color could be purified to white with soap.

Unsurprisingly, the ad swiftly incited a wave of criticism across social media denouncing Dove for racism. Global headlines in top-tier traditional media outlets followed.

This was the third incident; uncomfortably similar missteps had occurred in 2011 and 2014.

As graduate students at Boston University's College of Communication looking for a challenging crisis to analyze in our entry to the IPR's and Page Society's annual case study competition, we decided to examine the lightning rod cultural issues of purpose, profits and race through the lens of the 2017 Dove episode.

Where did Dove go wrong? For us, the most salient issues were the enduring failure to act and listen when consumers tried to have a conversation with Dove.

In each instance, individuals called out the brand and asked for answers. But instead of welcoming the opportunity for dialogue and reflection, Dove tried to diminish those concerns and excuse its own actions.

In 2011, Dove denied any wrongdoing or intent to cause offense, and in 2014, the company attributed its mistake to a production oversight. Together, these response strategies signaled a focus on minimizing responsibility and scapegoating rather than listening to the public.

In short, Dove was dismissive, which inevitably led to the 2017 crisis.

For purpose-driven brands like Dove, success is largely based on the strength of their consumers relationships. Key to those bonds is moving beyond a transactional approach and investing in efforts to listen. Actively listening and engaging with audiences shows that you care. And Dove's repeated, absent responses indicated it did not.

At least, that's how things looked for the last 18 months until Dove's recent unveiling of a new Real Beauty effort grounded entirely in listening. Project #ShowUs asks women to do just that in a crowdsource-driven partnership with Getty Images and Girlgaze "to create the world's largest photo library created by women and non-binary individuals to shatter beauty stereotypes."

Dove rang a bell for asking instead of telling when it announced #ShowUs in a full-page ad in The New York Times that led with a mea culpa.

Not only did Dove hear and admit it sometimes gets things wrong, the company asked for input. It the kind of sound action required of brands that take positions on emotional, and sadly too often divisive subjects like race and gender. To us, listening is a real act of beauty within a noisy, turbulent world.
Sarah Dasher and Olivia Zed are recent graduates of the Boston University College of Communication's Master of Science in Public Relations program. Zed is a graduate development professional at FleishmanHillard New York. Dasher is a communications intelligence consultant at Cisco.

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How Dove's Real Beauty campaign won, and nearly lost, its audience

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It's tough to argue with PRWeek's recent anointing of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty by Unilever and Edelman as the Best U.S. Campaign of the Past 20 Years. Since its 2004 inception, Real Beauty's provocative ads, thought leadership, and educational initiatives for beauty equality combined to form something more akin to a social movement than a gimmicky emotional appeal from a packaged goods giant.

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New domestic violence campaign to focus on 'boys being boys' attitude in society

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New domestic violence campaign to focus on 'boys being boys' attitude in society

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Fangying Li (Tiffany)

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Posted October 03, 2018 10:36:39

A new Federal Government campaign aimed at preventing violence against women and children will target the "boys being boys" attitude that still permeates society at a grassroots level.

Phase two of the $30 million Stop it at the Start campaign has been launched today at the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) National Summit on Reducing Violence Against Women and Children, which is currently being held in Adelaide.

As part of the campaign, advertising on television, radio, in print, online, in cinemas and on social media will be rolled out from Sunday.

"While not all disrespect ends with violence, the cycle of violence certainly starts with disrespect," Minister for Women Kelly O'Dwyer said.

"It's good to remember that our behaviour is a powerful influence on others, particularly the young.

"Throwaway comments like 'it's just boys being boys' or 'he did it because he likes you' can make young people think disrespect is a normal part of growing up. We need to ask ourselves - is that what we meant?"

The Stop it at the Start campaign was launched in 2016, and the Federal Government said a previous series of ads rolled out two years ago were "viewed over 43 million times online, with hundreds of thousands of shares on social media".

The Government said after the first phase of the campaign in 2016, its research had found that more than two-thirds of adults who saw the ads took some form of action.

Minister says women need to feel safe

Ms O'Dwyer said the advertisements and the new campaign would challenge the way people act and show the link between disrespect and violence against women.

"As a community we need to have zero tolerance for violence against women," she told the ABC.

"Women need to be able to be safe in their homes, in their communities, online and also in their work places.

"It's very squarely focused on having adults ask the question, are we teaching our children disrespect?

"Young people take so much from the adults around them, from the statements they make and the behaviours they display.

"This will prompt people to have conversations. Changing attitudes and behaviours take time but we know that with a concerted effort it can have a huge impact."

She said the statistics on the issue showed that one in six women had experienced physical or sexual violence by a current or former partner since the age of 15.

Those figures increased to nearly one in four women when violence by boyfriends, girlfriends and dates were included.

"It's also concerning that one in four young people are prepared to excuse violence from a partner," she said.

Talking about respectful relationships important

Minister for Families and Social Services Paul Fletcher said the first phase had been highly effective and the second phase was aimed at making a change within the community.

He said the second phase would also look into and showcase how words and actions could be misinterpreted by young people.

"Violence against women and their children takes a huge toll, and the human cost is incalculable," he said.

"The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reported that on average, almost eight women were hospitalised each day in 2014-15 from assaults by current or former spouses or domestic partners.

"It's important to know that we can help stop it at the start. Each of us can play a role by intervening when we see disrespectful behaviour, or talking to our kids about respectful relationships."

The campaign is an initiative under the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children 2010-2022.

It is jointly funded by national and state governments and will be supported by online tools that can be found at www.respect.gov.au.

Topics: domestic-violence, family, family-and-children, community-and-society, law-crime-and-justice, federal-government, australia, sa, adelaide-5000

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New domestic violence campaign to focus on 'boys being boys' attitude

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Posted October 03, 2018 10:36:39 A new Federal Government campaign aimed at preventing violence against women and children will target the "boys being boys" attitude that still permeates society at a grassroots level.

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Only a little bit over? You bloody idiot. -TAC drink drive campaign

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In 2015, 12.5 million people misused prescription opioids. Between 1999 and 2015, more than 183,000 Americans died from overdoses related to prescription opioids, and the battle to overcome this public health crisis continues.

Most recently, the CDC launched the Rx Awareness(www.cdc.gov) campaign, which features real-life testimonials of people affected by the opioid epidemic in the United States and communication tools family physicians can use to educate patients on this issue.

The campaign, which uses the tagline, "It only takes a little to lose a lot," will offer resources(www.cdc.gov) that include videos, radio spots and transcripts, social media images, internet banners, web graphics, signs and posters highlighting the importance of knowing the risks associated with prescription opioids to prevent misuse and overdose.

"This campaign is part of the CDC's continued support for states on the frontlines of the opioid overdose epidemic," said CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald, M.D., in a news release(www.cdc.gov) . "These heartbreaking stories of the devastation brought on by opioid abuse have the potential to open eyes -- and save lives."

Real Stories From Those Affected

Maybe the most powerful resources the Rx Awareness campaign offers are the stories told by those who have been affected by opioid misuse and abuse. These currently include accounts from eight people who themselves have been addicted to opioids or who have lost family members to the powerful drugs.

For example, Judy Rummler speaks about her son Steve(www.youtube.com) , who she described as a gifted musician who excelled in sports. After college, Steve became a financial adviser. He suffered a back injury as an adult that left him with severe, constant pain that physicians had trouble treating. Following related depression, Steve was prescribed antidepressants and subsequently opioids.

Initially, Steve was happy the opioid medication finally provided him pain relief, but he quickly became addicted. After three years, he was visiting multiple physicians to try to obtain new prescriptions.

Steve realized he was addicted and tried rehabilitation and treatment programs numerous times without success. Finally, after completing a 28-day addiction treatment program, Steve relapsed and died of an opioid overdose at age 43.

After his death, Judy found a message on a Post-it note that Steve had written about his experience with prescription opioids: "At first, they were a lifeline; now they are a noose around my neck."

Judy, along with her husband, William, subsequently founded the Steve Rummler Hope Network(steverummlerhopenetwork.org) to "heighten awareness of the disease of addiction as it relates to the physical and emotional burdens of chronic pain and to improve the associated care process."

Five-point Strategy to Combat Opioid Crisis

HHS and the CDC have committed to using evidence-based methods to communicate targeted messages about the opioid crisis and to prevent addiction and misuse, according to the news release. Rx Awareness is part of HHS' five-point strategy to fight the epidemic by

improving access to prevention, treatment and recovery services, including the full range of medication-assisted treatments;

targeting availability and distribution of overdose-reversing drugs;

strengthening our understanding of the crisis through better public health data and reporting;

providing support for cutting-edge research on pain and addiction; and

advancing better practices for pain management.

Curbing the misuse of prescription opioids is also important because it's a strong risk factor for heroin use, which continues to climb in the United States. In fact, among new heroin users, about 75 percent reported having misused prescription opioids before using heroin, according to the CDC.

Campaign Rollout Details

Rx Awareness campaign ads began running Sept. 25 in Ohio, Kentucky, Massachusetts and New Mexico and will continue for 14 weeks. The effort is expected to later expand to additional states through funding from the CDC's Prescription Drug Overdose: Prevention for States(www.cdc.gov) and Data-Driven Prevention Initiative(www.cdc.gov) programs.

Overall, said the agency, the success of the Rx Awareness campaign depends on state and local agencies and organizations such as the AAFP to share its messages and resources with physicians, their patients and the general public.

Related AAFP News Coverage
2017 Congress of Delegates
Family Physicians Tackle Tort Reform, Opioid Crisis, Drug Prices
(9/18/2017)

2018 Family Physician of the Year
FPOY Finds Joy in Treating Challenging Patients
(9/15/2017)

AMA Opioid Task Force Issues Updated Naloxone Guidance
(8/28/2017)

Overcoming Barriers to Opioid Treatment Takes Center Stage
Presidential Commission, Annals of Family Medicine Study Call for Greater Access to MAT
(8/11/2017)

More From AAFP
Pain Management and Opioid Abuse

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In 2015, 12.5 million people misused prescription opioids. Between 1999 and 2015, more than 183,000 Americans died from overdoses related to prescription opioids, and the battle to overcome this public health crisis continues.

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'Dumb ways to die' public safety campaign goes viral

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'Dumb ways to die' public safety campaign goes viral

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Updated November 22, 2012 17:05:01

A safety campaign for Metro Trains in Melbourne has become an international YouTube sensation.

The quirky clip called Dumb Ways to Die has had nearly 12 million views on YouTube since it was leaked less than a week ago.

The video features animated characters killing themselves in a variety of "dumb" ways.

Leah Waymark from Metro Trains says they are not completely surprised by the popularity of the video.

"[But] you can never predict the speed and the take up, which in this case has been amazing," she said.

Ms Waymark says Metro spoke with their employees about dumb things they have witnessed in and around train stations.

''All our staff were talking to us and complaining about some of the dumb behaviour people exhibit out on our networks," she said.

"So that's really where that evolved from, and we workshopped the best way to reach young people."

The brains behind the clip, John Mescall, says he has been taken back by the response.

He says YouTube has told him it is one of the most successfully shared files on mobile devices.

''From the beginning we planned to make it very shareable, but look you can never plan for something to be the biggest viral campaign in the world," he said.

The song can also be downloaded from iTunes. It has become an unexpected hit in several Asian countries including Taiwan, Vietnam and Singapore.

Ms Waymark says while the popularity of the video has been overwhelming, she says the importance of the message should not be lost.

"To have young people singing about safety around trains is just a terrific outcome for us," she said.

Topics: internet-culture, social-media, melbourne-3000

First posted November 21, 2012 12:35:28

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'Dumb ways to die' turns into internet sensation

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Updated November 22, 2012 17:05:01 A safety campaign for Metro Trains in Melbourne has become an international YouTube sensation. The quirky clip called Dumb Ways to Die has had nearly 12 million views on YouTube since it was leaked less than a week ago.

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Emergency 'grab bag' campaign accused of scaremongering

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A police campaign to get the public to prepare a "grab-and-go" bag in case of emergencies has been both criticised and mocked by social media users.

A Police Scotland tweet urged people to pack essentials such as a first aid kit, radio, torch, and food and water.

Its recommendations were part of an annual Preparedness Month, which is being promoted by local authorities and emergency services across the UK.

However, the police force has been accused of scaremongering.

The tweet read: "September is preparedness month. Emergencies can happen at any time and it's recommended to have a #GrabBag ready containing essential items including medication, copies of important documents, food/water, torch, radio and other personal items."

Image Copyright @polscotcontrol @polscotcontrol Report

Image Copyright @polscotcontrol @polscotcontrolReport

An accompanying diagram showing a cross-section of a rucksack also included medication, phone charger and battery bank, whistle, pen and paper, and seasonal clothing.

Some users were concerned that the the tweet would scare people into thinking there was a reason for the sudden advice.

Should you pack a 'grab bag'?

One user, bellshillbaker, wrote: "This is crass. Scaring people with no explanations. What emergencies do you envisage? Brexit? War? Civil disturbance? Flood? Pestilence? Nuclear accident? Martial Law?"

Sharon Gathercole, replied to Police Scotland: "Confusing/worrying. I'm 50 years old, lived here all my life and have never been given this kind of advice before. You need to explain."

Image Copyright @velobetty @velobetty Report

Image Copyright @velobetty @velobettyReport

But social media quickly responded with humour as the tweet went viral. Robby McBobby asked: "Some advice please on #grabbag re "seasonal clothing". I have packed some fancy dress for Hallowe'en and then a Santa suit for Christmas. Will that be enough do you think?"

Others offered alternative suggestions for their grab bags, many featuring Scottish snacks or alcohol.

Image Copyright @scottreid1980 @scottreid1980 Report

Image Copyright @scottreid1980 @scottreid1980Report

Image Copyright @GLove39 @GLove39 Report

Image Copyright @GLove39 @GLove39Report

A Police Scotland spokesperson said: "The messaging is part of a general resilience awareness campaign that runs each year during September which emergency services and partners across Britain are taking part in."

National Preparedness Month was originally a US campaign run by the Department of Homeland Security. The department's theme for 2019 is "Prepared, Not Scared".

It has been adopted by a number of UK councils, police forces and fire services over the past five years under the banner 30Days30WaysUK.

The organisation co-ordinating the UK campaign describes emergencies as power cuts, water main bursts, gas leaks, fires, transport strikes and road closures, as well as major disasters.

"Taking proactive steps to be better prepared will help you not only with everyday emergencies but also with far less likely incidents," it advises on its website.

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'Grab bag' campaign accused of scaremongering

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A police campaign to get the public to prepare a "grab-and-go" bag in case of emergencies has been both criticised and mocked by social media users. A Police Scotland tweet urged people to pack essentials such as a first aid kit, radio, torch, and food and water.

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As of yesterday, Australia's holiday road toll was already at 18.

That's 18 people who won't be with their families next Christmas. Grandparents, mothers, fathers, siblings, children. Gone.

It's the time of year when mistakes are made and accidents happen, but most of them could be prevented.

A new anti-speeding campaign from the NSW Government is urging people to slow down this summer.

You might have seen the TV ad for it air during last night's Big Bash cricket, or if you've been watching other programs over the Christmas period. If you did, odds are you're still thinking about it.

It's one minute long and utterly devastating.

Two cars are set to collide at a country intersection, but time stops.

The car's drivers - both men - get out and confront one another.

"Mate, I'm so sorry, I thought there was time," the first apologises, realising he is at fault.

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The anti-speeding ad everyone's talking about these holidays.

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As of yesterday, Australia's holiday road toll was already at 18. That's 18 people who won't be with their families next Christmas. Grandparents, mothers, fathers, siblings, children. Gone. It's the time of year when mistakes are made and accidents happen, but most of them could be prevented.

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The artistic paradox of Ethiopia's water woes

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Renowned Ethiopian artist Aida Muluneh has taken a series of striking images to depict the harsh life of many women in rural areas - especially their daily efforts to obtain clean water for their families.
Her Water Life series, which was commissioned by the charity WaterAid, will be on display at London's Somerset House from 24 September.

"We cannot refute that it is mainly women who bear responsibility for collecting water, a burden that has great consequences for our future and the development of our nation," Muluneh said.

Almost 40% of Ethiopians do not have clean water close to their homes, compared to the global average of 10%, according to Water Aid.

Muluneh shot some of the photos in a studio while others were staged in the extreme landscape of one of the hottest and driest places on earth, Ethiopia's northern Afar region.

This image shows that a woman's work never ends, and demands a great deal of strength.

The traditional coffee pot on the ground, called a "jebena" in Ethiopia's Amharic language, is symbolic of a woman's traditional role, while the broom highlights her responsibility for keeping the house in order.

The woman on the right symbolizes that she has to take care of chores inside and outside the house, and the window to the left her quest for a better future.

This piece reflects the strength of women who have to endure much to ensure that their families have water to drink and food to eat every day.

The jerry cans are tied to a rope to reflect the shackles of carrying water while the woman in red has a clay water pot called an "insera" tied to her back to reflect the burden that comes with it.

"I assume there must be a glimpse of a thought that she has in the hopes that a better tomorrow will come for those she is caring for," Muluneh says.

This image deals with the impact that water has on sanitation and health.

The lack of water means people do not have proper bathrooms, creating a huge health risk in communities.

"I wanted to express this point through the structure that we built.

"The red door has been placed higher to express the lack of access and to emphasise the point," Muluneh says.

In this image, the prop of a traditional wooden bed expresses the reality that people in rural areas lie in this type of bed when they are ill, and may even be carried to a clinic for treatment.

The mask symbolizes the bacteria and diseases contracted from drinking contaminated water.

"While developing this concept, I have always questioned the many diseases that arise from the lack of clean water.

"I remember working in the southern regions of Ethiopia and hearing an old man speak about how the simple fact of getting a water well has reduced the number of deaths and illness in his community," Muluneh says.

This shot focuses on girls - especially how the lack of water and bathrooms in schools affects their education.

"The fact that most girls don't attend school when they are menstruating is a major hindrance on the progress of women in our society," Muluneh says.

In this piece, the moon is based on a woman's monthly cycle, the red wings illustrate her freedom and strength but also the fact that she cannot achieve her full potential because she is shackled by the natural occurrence of menstruation.

"In a sense, it is like a caged bird that cannot fly but is grounded.

"The striped floor is symbolic of the road to destiny in which our path to success is in front of us but we must take the step forward," Muluneh says.

Photographed on the salt lakes of Dallol in northern Ethiopia, this image is intended to show that Ethiopia has huge water reserves underground, but many people still do have access to clean water.

"In a sense I wanted to express that we are walking on lands with water but due to the limited irrigation of the water, we are living in a paradox," Muluneh says.

And finally in this image, the white bottles symbolize clean water while those marked with red dots address the relationship between water and life (blood).

"The access to clean water might be a norm for those living in the city while the same reality is not a privilege in rural regions," Muluneh says.

Al images are subject to copyright

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The artistic paradox of Ethiopia's water woes

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Renowned Ethiopian artist Aida Muluneh has taken a series of striking images to depict the harsh life of many women in rural areas - especially their daily efforts to obtain clean water for their families. Her Water Life series, which was commissioned by the charity WaterAid, will be on display at London's Somerset House from 24 September.

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Parents may be among the world's best multitaskers, but they're no match for the internet's ability to churn out content designed to grab kids' attention. From new apps to websites to social media platforms, it's futile to keep track of every new product your child might encounter. At the same time, parents often approach internet safety with outdated ideas about the most worrisome threats. Those typically includes bullies and strangers, but research increasingly suggests we should be focused on how internet use affects their well-being.

Here's our radical idea: If parents want to find the safest places online for their children, they should use a more expansive definition of safety. Ideally, that includes whether a child's use of digital media leads to things like intellectual stimulation, meaningful human connections, creative expression, and rewarding IRL experiences.

This four-part series offers a comprehensive guide for how parents can redefine internet safety and navigate those conversations with their child; a list of 12 digital media products built with child safety and well-being in mind; guidance based on original survey results for new parents anxious about screen time; and insight from young people who've shared their highs and lows from spending time online.

Our hope is that this series provides you with fresh answers to complex questions about screen time, and that it gives you more freedom and confidence as a parent to help your child feel happy and fulfilled on - and off - the internet.

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Parents may be among the world's best multitaskers, but they're no match for the internet's ability to churn out content designed to grab kids' attention. From new apps to websites to social media platforms, it's futile to keep track of every new product your child might encounter.

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How McDonald's keeps kids hooked on Happy Meals

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How McDonald's keeps kids hooked on Happy Meals

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How McDonald’s keeps kids hooked on Happy Meals

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Fast food isn’t an occasional treat for children in this country. It’s a dietary staple.

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A 19-year-old Juul user sued the company Monday for targeting minors and using deceptive marketing practices. Christian Floss filed his complaint in federal court in Chicago, saying he's addicted to nicotine because of Juul, whose advertising Floss says leaves out critical safety information and copies the approach of tobacco companies that marketed to minors in the past.

Unless the court stops Juul, "the harms will continue as minor children will continue to be exposed to their deceptive youth marketing campaigns," Floss' lawyers said in his complaint.

The lawsuit also names Altria and Philip Morris. Altria invested in Juul in December, and is the parent company of tobacco giant Philip Morris.

It's not the first sign of trouble for Juul and the vaping industry more broadly. The companies have been sued on similar grounds in other courts. San Francisco banned the sale of e-cigarettes in June. What's more, on Saturday, the CDC reported that almost 100 people have been hospitalized with lung issues after vaping. Also, the US Surgeon General said in a report in December that e-cigarette use is an epidemic among young people.

"Our product has always only been intended to be a viable alternative for the one billion current adult smokers in the world," said Juul spokesman Ted Kwong in a statement. "We have never marketed to youth and do not want any non-nicotine users to try our products."

Kwong also pointed to Juul's action plan to fight underage use of e-cigarettes as well as its support for laws that prohibit tobacco use for people under the age of 21.

"We believe the claims against Altria and Philip Morris USA are meritless and will move to dismiss the case at the appropriate time," Altria said in a statement. "Altria's minority stake in Juul provides no basis for liability against Altria or PM USA."

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Juul, Philip Morris sued for marketing to minors, deceptive advertising

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A 19-year-old Juul user sued the company Monday for targeting minors and using deceptive marketing practices. Christian Floss filed his complaint in federal court in Chicago, saying he's addicted to nicotine because of Juul, whose advertising Floss says leaves out critical safety information and copies the approach of tobacco companies that marketed to minors in the past.

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Apple’s revised policy for kids’ apps allows devs to collect anonymised data and display ads

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Apple’s revised policy for kids’ apps allows devs to collect anonymised data and display ads

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Jingfang Chu 855954

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Apple has revised its App Store Review Guidelines with regards to kids' apps, and its upcoming Sign in with Apple authentication feature.

Its guidelines have now been updated to state that, in limited cases, third-party analytics may be permitted in kids apps - provided that the services do not collect or transmit any identifiable information about children, such as their name, date of birth, email address, location, or unique device identifier.

While Apple explicitly forbids developers from collecting any device or network information that could be used directly or combined with other information to identify users and their devices, it's permitting third-party advertising on the condition that the services have publicly documented policies for Kids Category apps.

Newly submitted kids apps are expected to follow the new guidelines with immediate effect, while existing apps will have time till March 3, 2020 to ensure compliance.

With these changes, Apple is attempting to reach a middle ground that allows developers on the platform to flourish with expanded avenues for monetization, while also ensuring children's digital privacy and safety to a certain extent.

The development also comes close on the heels of YouTube's $170 million fine for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). In response, the company has instituted an explicit ban on violent or "mature" videos targeting children, in addition to getting rid of targeted ads on children's videos.

In a similar development, Apple has clarified its policy around single sign-on (SSO) feature. Sign in with Apple, as it's called, lets users sign in without providing any personal information like email addresses to third-parties.

The company has said the SSO option won't be required in an app in the following cases:

Uses an exclusive account setup and sign-in system

Requires users to sign in with an existing education or enterprise account, like G-Suite

Uses a government or citizen identification system or electronic ID to authenticate users

Acts as a client for a specific third-party service, like Google's apps for iOS

Starting today, new apps submitted to the App Store that don't meet any of the above requirements must offer Sign in with Apple to users. Existing apps will have until April 2020 to be fully compliant.

The tech giant said it made the updates in response to its conversations with developers, analytics companies, and advertising services, according to TechCrunch.

In June, Apple took a very strong stance for apps catering to the kids category by prohibiting all kinds of third-party ads or analytics and data transmission to third-parties. But app developers voiced concerns that the practice could jeopardize their businesses, forcing Apple to accommodate the changes.

Apple has been increasingly feeling the heat from regulators in recent months, putting its data privacy goals at odds with running a tightly controlled App Store.

Democrat senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, in an interview with The Verge earlier this year, called for a break up of Apple from its App Store: "Either they run the platform or they play in the store. They don't get to do both at the same time."

Read next: 11 Ways Novices Can Start the Process of Learning AI Programming

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Apple's revised policy for kids' apps allows devs to collect anonymized data and display ads

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Apple has revised its App Store Review Guidelines with regards to kids' apps, and its upcoming Sign in with Apple authentication feature. Its guidelines have now been updated to state that, in limited cases, third-party analytics may be permitted in kids apps - provided that the services do not collect or transmit any identifiable information about children, such as their name, date of birth, email address, location, or unique device identifier.

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Under the Australian Communications and Media Authority rules, alcohol advertisements cannot be shown on television until after 8:30pm on weekends when the media watchdog's designated children's viewing hours end, but an exemption exists for sporting matches.

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Under the Australian Communications and Media Authority rules, alcohol advertisements cannot be shown on television until after 8:30pm on weekends when the media watchdog's designated children's viewing hours end, but an exemption exists for sporting matches.

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Posted October 10, 2018 06:27:59

Fans watching the 2018 NRL grand final on TV were exposed to more than three times as much alcohol advertising as those who watched the AFL grand final, according to analysis of the weekend's coverage by a research group.

The Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) found there were 376 instances of alcohol advertising during the broadcast of the NRL grand final, and 120 instances of alcohol advertising during the AFL grand final coverage.

Researchers counted each new occasion an alcohol brand or alcohol-sponsored message appeared on the TV across the course of the match, including ad breaks and the 10 minutes of coverage before and after the games.

They found alcohol advertising appeared an average of 7 times every 10 minutes for AFL viewers, and 29 times every 10 minutes for NRL viewers.

Under the Australian Communications and Media Authority rules, alcohol advertisements cannot be shown on television until after 8:30pm on weekends when the media watchdog's designated children's viewing hours end, but an exemption exists for sporting matches.

Sport a 'conduit' for alcohol ads

FARE chief executive Michael Thorn said the "extraordinary levels" of "pernicious" alcohol advertising during two of Australia's major sporting finals demonstrates the need to close the exemption.

"The problem with this, is that it's alcohol advertising that is exposing young people to these alcohol brands," Mr Thorn said.

"And we know from extensive research conducted here in Australia and internationally, that the more children are exposed to alcohol advertising, the greater the risk they will commence their drinking earlier and engage in more incidents of binge drinking."

The majority of alcohol advertisements which appeared during the AFL grand final were in the form of rolling or electronic banners around the MCG oval, while Victoria Bitter logos displayed on the field at the NRL final accounted for 215 instances of alcohol advertising.

"The two on-field advertisements, for Victoria Bitter, were placed close to the try line on either end of the field," the report said.

"As well as ensuring high exposure this also associated the alcohol brand with many of the key moments in the game, being visible as teams were in the penultimate, high stakes moments before scoring."

By contrast, the analysis found there were only 11 appearances during the NRL grand final of a New South Wales Government advertisement warning of the dangers of drink driving.

FARE's report concluded that "professional sport is currently being used as a highly effective conduit for mass population alcohol marketing during children's viewing hours."

Doctors and alcohol researchers have called for bans on alcohol advertising during sporting matches for several years, but major sporting codes argued last year that banning alcohol advertising during games could undermine the economics of professional sport.

"It's clear that these major sports are addicted to these unhealthy commodities," Mr Thorn said.

"It's not just alcohol, it's gambling, it's junk food and this has got to come to an end."

Mick Malthouse joins push to close exemption

Mr Thorn said FARE is using its analysis to launch a campaign to end alcohol advertising during sporting events.

"Our campaign objective is to end the exemption that allows alcohol brands to be shown on television before 8:30pm," he said.

"The bigger issue here is the association with sporting heroes and these major sports.

"Young people associate the drinking and these alcohol brands with those sports and the behaviour of those sports people and those sports."

AFL greats Mick Malthouse and Rod Butterss are backing the campaign, along with former cricketer Dr Ric Charlesworth.

"Kids should be able to watch sport and identify with just sport, not harmful advertising that impacts their health," Malthouse said in a statement supporting the campaign.

The AFL and NRL were contacted for comment.

Topics: alcohol, health, alcohol-education, advertising, information-and-communication, nrl, rugby-league, sport, australian-football-league, australia, melbourne-3000

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NRL fans see triple the alcohol ads of AFL fans during finals TV coverage

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Posted October 10, 2018 06:27:59 Fans watching the 2018 NRL grand final on TV were exposed to more than three times as much alcohol advertising as those who watched the AFL grand final, according to analysis of the weekend's coverage by a research group.

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OREO Is The #1 Brand Among Kids 6-12

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NEW YORK, Oct. 21, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- OREO, America's "wonderfilled" classic cookie, tops this year's list of Kids' Most Loved Brands, according to findings...

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The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has many laws regarding advertising and marketing. As you can imagine, when it comes to minors, those laws get enforced severely. In fact, every violation can result in civil penalties of up to $16,000 per incident.

What's more, the content and style of the ad are more closely scrutinized. For instance, the kind of exaggeration and "over the top" ads that are fine to show to adults, are not viewed the same way when it comes to children. Depending on the age of the child, he or she may not be able to distinguish the fantasy of the advert from the reality of the product.

If the ad shows a bicycle with sounds dubbed over it of a motorbike, that bicycle had better make those sounds in real life. Otherwise, the child will have been lied to by the ad.

But even if advertisers follow the rules to the letter, it doesn't stop them from finding creative, and legal, ways to bend them from time to time.

There are plenty of celebrities out there on social media, and they are more than happy to push out paid tweets and Instagram posts that children will see. It may take just a few seconds to write the post (and in many cases, it's simply given to the celebrity verbatim), but they can earn up to $75,000 for an Instagram post and $30,000 for a tweet. While that's a staggering sum of money, it's peanuts compared to the cost of a TV spot, and will probably have a much bigger impact. What's more, the posts don't even have to be labeled as ads, which means a lot of gullible kids and teens think the celebs they adore are genuinely into that product.

Kids and teens love animation. Think back to your younger days, and you'll remember that most of your favorite shows growing up were animated. These days, it's easier than ever to create animation digitally, and that means advertisers and brands are able to crowbar fun, friendly, and cool animated characters into their ads. From cereal and toys to candy and clothing, if the children are the targets of the ads, cartoons and kid-friendly images will be front and center.

Following on from the animation mentioned previously, some advertisers go even further and produce series or "webisodes" featuring characters connected to the brand. This series of webisodes by Lucky Charms follows the exploits of Lucky the Leprechaun. The whole series is to devised to make Lucky a hit with the kids, who then spot the character on the cereal box in the store and ask for it. And let's not forget the series that were created specifically to sell toys, like Transformers, He-Man, and many others since.

A close relation to branded content, this aims to advertise to children on a much more subconscious level. Perhaps the greatest example of this is "E.T.-The Extra-Terrestrial," which showed the cute alien being lured into the house by a trail of Reese's Pieces. There were boxes of Cheerios front and center in "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids," a huge McDonald's logo in "Richie Rich," and cans of Pepsi in "Home Alone." Product placement is a multi-million dollar investment for brands, and if the film is successful, it can have a huge impact on sales. While adults know what's going on, children are not as perceptive. After the movie, they will not realize why they want a certain product; they just do.

Children want what their friends what. They also want what other kids are enjoying. It's no surprise then that so many ads aimed at children feature kids of a similar age loving the product like it was the greatest thing ever invented. From amazingly delicious junk food to toys and games that have about ten minutes of playability. This is, of course, just par for the course in advertising. However, when adults see people just ecstatic about a product, we take it with a grain of salt. Children, they're not as skeptical; especially children under ten years old. They see their peers just laughing it up, crazy about a toy, and they want it. The nag factor kicks in, and sure enough, that toy is unwrapped on his or her birthday.

Most scholars and experts agree that children should not be targeted in ads and that there should be stricter rules around it. Adults make the purchasing decisions, children are not armed with enough life experience to know they are being manipulated. But, for the time being, ads will still target children because they are worth billions in sales.

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How Advertisers Target Children to Increase Sales

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The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has many laws regarding advertising and marketing. As you can imagine, when it comes to minors, those laws get enforced severely. In fact, every violation can result in civil penalties of up to $16,000 per incident. What's more, the content and style of the ad are more closely scrutinized.

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Push for junk food ad ban so kids won't be tempted on train to school

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Push for junk food ad ban so kids won't be tempted on train to school

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Fangying Li (Tiffany)

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About one in four Victorian children are deemed overweight or obese.

In the study, researchers tracked 21 areas they earmarked as Melbourne's busiest public transport routes for school-aged children, from the CBD, to Glenferrie, Richmond, South Yarra, Box Hill, Camberwell, Dandenong and Frankston stations.

The snapshot - which was taken over 17 days in February this year - found of the almost 1400 advertisements on display at train stations, 27 per cent were for junk food, compared with 19 per cent for healthy foods. The rest of the advertisements were for non-food items.

About two thirds of the food advertisements were for unhealthy food options. Nearly a quarter were for sugary drinks, and a similar proportion were for fast food restaurant chains.

Researchers defined junk food advertisements as sugar sweetened drinks, flavoured milk, confectionary, savoury snacks, sweet snacks, ice-cream, desserts and fast food, while healthy food included water, fruits and vegetables.

Executive manager of the Obesity Policy Coalition, Jane Martin, said the findings amplified calls for Victoria to follow the lead of other states and territories, including Queensland and the ACT, to outlaw junk food promotions at government-owned sites.

An Oporto chicken ad at Glenferrie station. Credit:.

"Kids are bombarded with unhealthy ads everyday on their way to and from school and we know that marketing influences what kids eat, what they want to eat and what they pester their parents for," Ms Martin said.

"With many of these ads featured in places frequented by school-aged children, there is little doubt they drive demand and normalise unhealthy products in the minds of children, fuelling unhealthy weight gain."

She added a smaller sub-study had found tram stops in the earmarked areas were also covered in junk food ads, as were about two thirds of bus stops examined.

"This is extremely worrying because we know thousands of young people use public transport and they're exposed to this sort of marketing ... it's wallpaper in their lives," Ms Martin said.

"This kind of action is recommended by agencies around the world, like the World Health Organisation, to protect children from the influence of junk food marketing."

When asked whether the Australian Food and Grocery Council would back binning junk food advertisements at publicly owned sites, chief executive, Tanya Barden, threw support around existing regulations.

"The food and grocery industry takes responsible advertising seriously," she said.

"This is demonstrated by strong compliance with industry self regulatory codes for advertising to children."

Health Minister Jenny Mikakos, also stopped short of supporting the push to phase out junk food advertising.

She pointed to the government's various initiatives to reduce obesity including rolling out mandatory kilojoule labelling at fast food and supermarket chains.

The findings follow a landmark Murdoch Children's Research Institute study which found children with poorer health outcomes were at far greater risk of developing diabetes, heart and lung disease, cancer and osteoporosis in adulthood.

Last month, a study of more than 100,000 people also found those who regularly drink sugary beverages may have an increased the risk of cancer.

Drinking almost 200 millilitres of sugar-sweetened drinks and fruit juice a day has been linked to an 18 per cent increased cancer risk, the French study suggested.

Melissa Cunningham is The Age's health reporter.

Craig Butt joined The Age in 2011 and specialises in data-driven journalism. In addition, he helms the popular Melbourne Express blog on Thursdays and Fridays.

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Push for junk food ad ban so kids won't be tempted on train to school

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About one in four Victorian children are deemed overweight or obese. In the study, researchers tracked 21 areas they earmarked as Melbourne's busiest public transport routes for school-aged children, from the CBD, to Glenferrie, Richmond, South Yarra, Box Hill, Camberwell, Dandenong and Frankston stations.

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TikTok With Record $5.7 Million Fine Over Children’s Privacy

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TikTok With Record $5.7 Million Fine Over Children’s Privacy

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When the lip-syncing app Musical.ly first exploded in popularity nearly four years ago, it was best known for being a teen sensation. But according to the Federal Trade Commission, the app also illegally collected information from children under the age of 13. The agency announced Wednesday that Musical.ly, now known as TikTok, has agreed to pay a $5.7 million fine to settle the allegations, which the agency described as "the largest civil penalty ever obtained by the Commission in a children's privacy case." TikTok must also comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, going forward and take down any videos uploaded by users under 13.

"This record penalty should be a reminder to all online services and websites that target children: We take enforcement of COPPA very seriously, and we will not tolerate companies that flagrantly ignore the law," FTC chair Joe Simons said in a statement. The FTC's complaint alleges that Musical.ly violated COPPA by failing to require parental consent for users under 13, neglecting to notify parents about how the app collected personal information on underage users, and not permitting parents to request to have their children's data deleted.

TikTok subsequently announced on Wednesday that it was launching a separate portion of its app for children under 13, which "introduces additional safety and privacy protections designed specifically for this audience."

By essentially combining Vine with Spotify, Musical.ly captured the attention of around 100 million finicky Generation Z consumers. In November 2017, it was bought by Chinese company ByteDance and later rebranded as TikTok. The app-which lets users share 15-second video clips set to music-has now been installed more than a billion times, including 96 millions times in the United States, according to the research firm Sensor Tower. After receiving $3 billion from SoftBank and other investors in October, Bytedance is now considered one of the most valuable privately held startups in the world.

The FTC alleges that TikTok was aware that a "significant percentage" of its users were younger than 13, and that it received thousands of complaints from parents whose underage children had created accounts. Until April 2017, the app's website even warned parents that "If you have a young child on Musical.ly, please be sure to monitor their activity on the App," according to the FTC's complaint. But the app didn't start requesting users provide their age until later that year, the agency notes. Since then, the app prevented anyone who indicated they were under 13 from creating an account, but its operators didn't confirm existing users' ages.

"Kids' lives are increasingly lived online, and companies like TikTok have been all too eager to take advantage of child app users at every turn," Ed Markey, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts and a crucial figure in COPPA's passage 20 years ago, said in a statement. He and other lawmakers introduced legislation last year designed to update the law.

TikTok accounts are public by default; other people can see the content users post unless they adjust their privacy settings. But the FTC complaint alleges that even if users set their profiles to private, others could still message them. For years, a number of media outlets have reported that underage users were being solicited to send nude images on Music.ly, and later on TikTok as well.

TikTok says it has now created a separate app experience for users under 13, which does not permit them to share personal information. It doesn't allow uploading videos, commenting on others' videos, messaging with users, or maintaining a profile or followers. In short, TikTok will now only allow young kids to consume content-not share it. Starting Wednesday, both new and existing TikTok users will be required to verify their birthday. They will then be directed to the kid-friendly portion of the app if they say they're under 13. The company also launched a new tutorial series emphasizing privacy and security on its platform.

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FTC Hits TikTok With Record $5.7 Million Fine Over Children's Privacy

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The company will pay $5.7 million to settle allegations that the social media app formerly known as Musical.ly illegally collected information from children under 13.

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State prosecutors in one Illinois county sued Juul Labs, one of the largest e-cigarette makers in the country, on Tuesday accusing it of targeting young people by using deceptive marketing practices to intentionally get them addicted to nicotine.

Michael Nerheim, the state's attorney in Lake County, Illinois, said at a news conference Tuesday that his office was joining with several private Chicago law firms in the lawsuit.

"Companies like Juul Labs are preying on our teens and pre-teens by turning them into addicts," Nerheim said. "Like dope dealers on a street corner, Juul intentionally created addicted teen customers, to get them to continuously come back for life."

One Juul pod, as they're called, contains as much nicotine as an entire pack of cigarettes, according to the Truth Initiative, an anti-tobacco nonprofit.

Vaping among teenagers has surged in recent years. In February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a 78 percent increase in high school students using electronic cigarettes from 2017 to 2018, and an almost 50 percent increase among middle school students.

The Illinois lawsuit claims Juul used social media to encourage young people to post selfies using the devices.

In a statement to NBC News, Juul Labs said the company has never marketed to youth in this manner, and is no longer using certain social media platforms. "We have exited Instagram and Facebook and work constantly to remove inappropriate social media content generated by others," wrote Ted Kwong, a spokesperson for Juul.

In May, one of the country's top tobacco producers - North Carolina - also filed suit against Juul Labs, saying the company used "unfair and deceptive" marketing to get to kids.

In its lawsuit, the state claims Juul is largely responsible for what the surgeon general and the Food and Drug Administration have called a youth e-cigarette epidemic.

"In developing its e-cigarette products, Juul deliberately designed the flavors, the look, and even the chemical composition of the e-cigarettes to appeal to youthful audiences, including minors," the North Carolina lawsuit reads.

Juul pods come in flavors like mint and mango, and look very much like computer flash drives.

The state of Connecticut has also launched investigations into Juul's marketing practices.

"It will take years of education and money to right the wrongs and cover the damages caused by Juul's marketing campaigns," said Nerheim. "The company should be held accountable for the massive expected cost to undo the damage they created."

During a hearing in front of the House Oversight and Reform's Economic and Consumer Policy Subcommittee, a Stanford professor testified that Juul stole the university's renowned tobacco prevention toolkit and used it to get its marketing messages to kids.

Juul Labs denied targeting kids.

"We have never marketed to youth and do not want non-nicotine users, especially youth, to ever try our product," Kwong said in the statement to NBC News.

"Our current marketing efforts feature adult smokers who offer their personal experiences about switching to Juul products," he wrote.

The statement also said that Juul Labs "exists to help adult smokers switch from combustible cigarettes."

The FDA has not approved any e-cigarette - including Juul - as a smoking cessation method.

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Illinois county sues e-cigarette maker Juul over youth marketing

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State prosecutors in one Illinois county sued Juul Labs, one of the largest e-cigarette makers in the country, on Tuesday accusing it of targeting young people by using deceptive marketing practices to intentionally get them addicted to nicotine.

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​Kids don't often know the difference between games and ads; they don't know about advertisers' persuasive intent until 8 years old. Why, then, is it ethical to advertise in games meant for preschoolers?​​

When Michael Robb's two kids, 4 and 6, play games on the family tablet, the games are occasionally interrupted by ads. Although they sometimes forget what to do, Robb trained them to look for a red X when ads pop up-short of that, they'll turn the device face down until the ad ends.

This isn't how most kids interact with ads on apps: Developmentally, children don't know where games end and ads begin until they're 8 years old, according to the American Psychological Association. Robb says that kids don't understand persuasive intent, the fact that advertisers are trying to sell them something.

Robb has a Ph.D. in psychology and works as the senior director of research at Common Sense Media, an advocacy and education nonprofit supporting safe use of media and technology for children. He's spent the last 15 years researching media's effect on children and says that apps have made for a vastly different media landscape. Robb recalls how Saturday morning cartoon ads in the early 1970s would blend in with TV programming, which gave way later in the decade to clear demarcations that an ad break was coming ("After these messages, we'll be right back!"). These show-bumpers were a mandate from the Federal Communications Commission's 1974 Policy Statement, a compromise struck after advocacy group Action for Children's Television requested in 1970 that no commercials air during programming for kids. But there's no such bumper between ads and gameplay in free apps; Robb says that there should be, as kids playing free apps often think that ads are just another part of the game.

There's risk of children clicking an ad and making an erroneous purchase. In 2014, the Federal Trade Commission responded to these purchases by filing federal lawsuits against Apple, Google and Amazon for allowing children to spend millions of dollars on in-app purchases. Apple and Google each settled that year; Google refunded at least $19 million to customers and Apple refunded at least $32.5 million. Amazon battled the lawsuit in court until 2017, when it dropped its appeal. Now, Amazon must refund customers approximately $70 million.

The FTC can't decide what is and isn't ethical, only what's unfair or deceptive. Mary Koelbel Engle, associate director for advertising practices at the FTC, says that the organization has a policy statement on what constitutes deceptive or unfair practices. If something is deceptive or unfair, they can file a federal lawsuit or an administrative cease-and-desist order. The main question of deception: Is this practice likely to mislead reasonable consumers about something important? The question of unfairness: Will the practice cause injury to consumers that they can't avoid?

"When you're talking about advertising to children, you look at it from the standpoint of an ordinary child and understanding that kids obviously are less sophisticated than adults," Engle says.

But if young children are less sophisticated consumers, not knowing where games end and ads begin, it may not be ethical to advertise to them on apps at all.
A Brief History of Tiny Targeting
It's always been considered ethically murky to target young children with ads. In 1984, Lynda Sharp Paine wrote in Business & Professional Ethics Journal that advertising is justified if it helps consumers make wise decisions in the marketplace, but she argued that young children don't yet have the capacity to make wise decisions. In the 2000s, many studies concluded that childhood obesity was tied in part to ads for snacks, sodas and sugary cereals-most companies cut down on advertising sugary cereals, and later cut down on the sugar content of the products themselves. But as the media landscape changed, so did advertising to children.

On smaller screens, parental oversight became tougher and apps took advantage. In 2017, researchers wrote in the journal Pediatrics that online ads are more aggressive in engaging with children through gaming platforms and more aggressive about telling children to reach out to their friends about advertised products. A 2018 study led by University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital and published in the Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics found that 95% of apps marketed to or commonly played by children younger than 5 contain at least one type of advertising. Another 2018 study, published in the journal Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies​, examined thousands of free apps targeting children and found that the majority were in violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a federal law passed in 1998 to protect the online privacy of children 13 years old and younger. Most of the apps targeting young children don't allow users to easily shut off tracking and behavioral advertising, the study found. Worse, 19% of these apps collect personally identifiable information, leaving children's data at risk.

"It's hard to enforce the law, but again: These are apps for kids where they're clearly trying to better target advertisements to these kids," Robb says. "In doing so, they're hoovering up lots of information that they shouldn't be collecting, parents probably aren't aware that they're collecting and kids certainly aren't aware that they're collecting."

Many free apps also offer in-app purchases for digital items to be used in the game. The "Strawberry Shortcake Bake Shop" app, for example, is listed as appropriate for ages 4 and older, but features $45 worth of in-app purchases. Robb says that the game asks kids to help the character bake a cake, but it can't be completed until they buy a special utensil. In the meantime, he says that the app's character makes a frowny face and looks pleadingly at the screen.

"That, to me, is emotionally manipulative," Robb says. "Trying to extract that stuff from games will be a step forward."
What's Fair?
"The question is, how ethical is it to take advantage of young children's limited cognitive abilities while they're playing an app they enjoy in order to sell them something?" Robb said during a November 2018 press conference held by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. During the press conference, Blumenthal said that parents who allow their children to play with these apps are opening their homes to "a Trojan horse." In a letter to the FTC, Blumenthal and Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., asked the FTC to investigate how children are targeted by free apps. Specifically, the senators want to know to what extent developers, advertisers and app stores comply with COPPA.

"I think that the FTC letter was a really good first step," Robb says two days after speaking at the press conference. "There probably needs to be more discussion between industry and the child development experts about what kids know and at what ages [they know it]."

Robb also believes that new research should examine what's fair for kids in advertising. Should it be easier for kids to take app gameplay offline, away from the reach of advertisers and data collectors? Do ads in apps need to be clearly marked, just as ads during Saturday morning cartoon commercials were? Perhaps there can be an agreed-upon framework by the advertising industry, app stores and childhood development experts, Robb says. This way, everyone can know what kids' rights are when it comes to online and mobile experiences.

"A lot of people who make games or experiences for children aren't necessarily child development experts, so they may not even realize that they are unfairly manipulating or preying on a child's psychological vulnerabilities," Robb says. "And then there's probably a lot of game designers who don't care. It's their business and maybe they don't think it's particularly harmful or it's just what the bottom line is."

Until advertisers and game developers address the problem, it falls to parents. Robb says that parents should try to play on the apps with their kids, teaching them what ads are when they pop up; he says that the most important learning happens between the child and their caregiver. Parents may also consider avoiding free apps for their children-those most ad-ridden-and instead pay a buck or two for the app's uninterrupted premium version.

Changes to app-based advertising to kids will likely come with time, whether from within the app and advertising industries or from pressure outside. But the industry is still adjusting to the changes wreaked by easy access, shrinking screens and advancing technology. FTC's Engle, who has worked in her role since 2001, says that the business is much different than it was when she was sending her teenage daughter into a TV- and computer-free bedroom. Now, kids almost always have a tiny screen within reach, an open window to the world. For now, what floats into those windows is largely up to app stores, game developers and advertisers.

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Game Apps Are the Latest Battleground in Child Advertising

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When Michael Robb's two kids, 4 and 6, play games on the family tablet, the games are occasionally interrupted by ads. Although they sometimes forget what to do, Robb trained them to look for a red X when ads pop up-short of that, they'll turn the device face down until the ad ends.

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Barbie introduces barbie dolls with wheelchairs

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Barbie introduces barbie dolls with wheelchairs

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is hello barbie eavesdropping on your kids? - cnn

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Is Hello Barbie eavesdropping on your kids? - CNN

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A new, Wi-Fi connected version of the iconic doll can record, analyze and respond to kids' remarks, raising serious moral, ethical and potentially legal issues.

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Cookies and the concern about consumer privacy 

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Cookies and the concern about consumer privacy 

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"Cookies are just a fundamental part of how the Web works, about as essential as Wi-Fi, HTML, or electricity," explains Silktide founder, Oliver Emberton. "All cookies do is recognize your computer as it travels between Web pages - so you need them for critical things like logging into a website, or buying something from a store."

Cookies are small text files that reside on your computer, and the information they contain is set and accessed by the servers of the websites that you visit. Cookies allow servers to identify you and remember things about you.

"The problem is that those same cookies can also be used to track people, and do things that many people don't like, like deliver targeted ads," says Emberton. "And this has got a lot of people understandably concerned."

In Europe, it generated so much concern that the European Union legislated in 2011, demanding that websites gain user consent to use cookies. That law is still the subject of much debate, but before we get into it, let's rewind and take a look at where cookies came from in the first place.

A brief history of cookies

The man responsible for cookies is Lou Montulli. He developed one of the earliest Web browsers, Lynx, in 1991 and joined Mosaic Communications Corporation, later to become Netscape, in 1994. He was responsible for a variety of Web innovations including the blink tag, server push and client pull, HTTP proxying, and cookies.

According to the man himself, cookies are named after the computer science term "magic cookie," as discovered by Clouseau on Google Answers. The Jargon File describes a magic cookie as "something passed between routines or programs that enables the receiver to perform some operation; a capability ticket or opaque identifier."

"The vulnerability of systems to damage or snoop by using Web browser cookies is essentially nonexistent."

Montulli had the idea to use a similar system in the Netscape browser for Web communications, and he used the familiar programming term, cookie. They were first used to verify whether users had visited the Netscape website before, and they enabled websites to remember your preferences. The cookies also presented a handy solution for virtual shopping carts, enabling e-commerce websites to remember what you were shopping for the last time you visited.

The public didn't really become aware of them until 1996, when the media started reporting on the potential threat to privacy. Concerns focused on the fact that cookies were storing information on user's computers without their knowledge or consent.

The revelation generated enough fuss that in 1998, the U.S. Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability released an information bulletin, which included this assessment: "The vulnerability of systems to damage or snooping by using Web browser cookies is essentially nonexistent. Cookies can only tell a Web server if you have been there before and can pass short bits of information (such as a user number) from the Web server back to itself the next time you visit. ... Information about where you come from and what Web pages you visit already exists in a Web server's log files and could also be used to track users browsing habits, cookies just make it easier."

What is the threat?

Clearly cookies have an important function, and they make Web browsing much more convenient for us, since we don't have to identify ourselves again every time we visit a website. Many people don't see much of an issue with cookies, but the potential threat is described succinctly on Cookie Central:

"Unfortunately, the original intent of the cookie has been subverted by some unscrupulous entities who have found a way to use this process to actually track your movements across the Web. They do this by surreptitiously planting their cookies and then retrieving them in such a way that allows them to build detailed profiles of your interests, spending habits, and lifestyle.

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

On the surface, this practice may seem harmless and hardly worth fretting over since the worst thing most imagine is that corporate concerns will use this information to devise annoying, yet relatively innocuous advertising campaigns, targeted towards specific groups or individuals. However, it is rather scary to contemplate how such an intimate knowledge of our personal preferences and private activities might eventually be used to brand each of us as members of a particular group.

But remember a site only knows what information you have entered. Not all cookies are bad, they can also provide useful functions on the Web. The threat posed by cookies is a legitimate concern for people worried about privacy, but it pales in comparison to other threats, particularly in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations about the NSA and government surveillance.

Cookies are the thin end of the wedge

"Cookies aren't the problem," says Emberton. "There are equivalent or worse technologies that most people don't know about (like local storage and LSOs), which can do the same thing. Cookies just happen to have caught mainstream awareness. The real issue isn't the technology, it's what people choose to do with it, but that's harder to police."

"Over 95 percent of websites use cookies, mostly for boring things that never cross our minds, like ensuring a website responds quickly, or counting visitors. The data most sites hold can't be used to identify you personally," he explains. "However, a handful of big companies - most notably Google, Facebook, and Amazon - hold a vast amount of personally identifiable information about millions of people. For example, Google's history might tell someone if you have a medical problem, or your sexual orientation, or what political party you support. This information is likely linked to your real name."

"Google's history might tell someone if you have a medical problem, your sexual orientation, or what political party you support."

The FTC has tangled with Google and others on the issue of online privacy several times in the last few years. In 2012 Google agreed to a $22.5 million settlement over Apple's Safari Web browser, which has a default setting to block third-party cookies that Google bypassed. A U.K. court recently ruled that Safari users can sue Google over cookie tracking.

In the States, there have been attempts to introduce "Do Not Track" legislation, mirroring the "Do Not Call" law, which prevents telemarketers from contacting people who opt out. The idea is to give users the right to opt out of being tracked by third-party websites. According to its website, as part of its remit to protect consumer privacy, the FTC has been considering the "Do Not Track" proposal, but has yet to vote on whether to support it.

From 2011 various bills have been introduced, but later withdrawn or failed. The difficulty of establishing standards and agreeing workable legislation seems to have scuppered its progress. By contrast, legislation was passed in the EU, but how effective it has been in protecting consumer privacy is highly questionable.

EU Cookie law

In May, 2011, the e-Privacy Directive changed the law with regard to cookies in the European Union. In order to comply with the new law, website owners were charged with telling visitors about the cookies they use and obtaining their consent. In practice, websites that have complied now display a pop-up when you first visit that links to an explanation of their cookie policy and allows you to accept it.

European website owners and online businesses were understandably upset. Particularly because the law could penalize them, but not their competitors beyond EU jurisdiction. At first it wasn't clear how the legislation would be enforced.

In the U.K., it fell to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) to decide, and the agency gave websites a grace period of a year to comply. Many did comply, in no small part because the ICO was empowered to impose fines of up to £500,000 ($768,000), but the lack of will to enforce the law across the EU soon led to resistance.

Silktide develops software to help measure website quality. It released a free, open source cookie consent plug-in to enable websites to easily comply with the new law, but then it decided to challenge the ICO with nocookielaw.com, which begins "Dear ICO, Sue us," and goes on to ridicule the law and explain why it's largely pointless.

There was no lawsuit. We contacted the ICO, and Lead Communications Officer Anya Burgess confirmed that "so far the ICO have not issued any fines for ignoring the EU cookie law."

She also pointed us to ICO's latest study, which reveals the average website places 34 cookies on your device on your first visit, and 70 percent of them were third-party cookies (set by websites other than the one being visited). The study also raises concerns about the expiry dates on cookies, with some, optimistically, set to expire in the year 9999.

"I find the law misguided, but it has softened over the last couple of years, as the EU wrestled with how to implement it," says Silktide's Emberton. "The difference between what was written - which pretty much made every website illegal - and what has been policed is immense. I expect the letter of the law will slowly catch up with reality over time, but I don't expect the law will actually do anything for user's privacy."

That's the way the cookie crumbles

There are still efforts in motion to get some legislation on the books Stateside, but resistance remains fierce, and even if some kind of "Do Not Track" law is passed, will the FTC have the power or the will to enforce it against big business?

"Improving online privacy would be a noble goal, but regulating cookies would be a terrible way to accomplish it," says Emberton when asked about the U.S.

"Cookies by themselves pose no threat to the average person, but the information that companies store about you (with or without cookies) is always a concern, and should be protected for good reason."

Editors' Recommendations

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The History of Cookies and Their Effect on Privacy | Digital Trends

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"Cookies are just a fundamental part of how the Web works, about as essential as Wi-Fi, HTML, or electricity," explains Silktide founder, Oliver Emberton. "All cookies do is recognize your computer as it travels between Web pages - so you need them for critical things like logging into a website, or buying something from a store."

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Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook haven’t clearly told consumers what they do with their voice and video information. None of those companies’ data policies state that what we say and do in front of our voice assistants, internet-connected cameras, and messaging apps can be shown to strangers employed by the companies or their contractors. But these big platforms are tapping into our microphones, and they aren’t telling us.

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Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook haven’t clearly told consumers what they do with their voice and video information. None of those companies’ data policies state that what we say and do in front of our voice assistants, internet-connected cameras, and messaging apps can be shown to strangers employed by the companies or their contractors. But these big platforms are tapping into our microphones, and they aren’t telling us.

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Voice assistants seem simple. You say something like "Alexa" or "Hey Siri" followed by a request and then - bam! - your Discover Weekly starts playing over the speaker. But a human being could be listening to everything you say - and the tech companies want to hide those people from you.

As we found out yesterday, Facebook paid outside contractors to transcribe voice memos from users who turned on chat transcription in the Messenger app. The company is the latest in a string, including Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft, caught sending users' audio to third-party firms for analysis.

To experts, the news might not have come as a revelation. Among people who understand the mechanics of artificial intelligence-powered software, it's well known that humans review verbal commands to improve speech recognition. But among the general public, there was a sense of shock: The big platforms are tapping into our microphones, and they aren't telling us.

Those reports seem to have produced changes. Today, Microsoft updated its privacy policy to explicitly say humans review user content, as a result of the practice made public by Motherboard. Facebook, meanwhile, told Bloomberg it paused human review "more than a week ago." The Irish Data Protection Commission also launched an inquiry into the social media giant's practices.

But if it seems like the tech companies aren't being clear with consumers, according to privacy and artificial intelligence experts, that's because they aren't.

Most folks buying Google Homes and Echos from a mall kiosk aren't aware. That's in part because of the products' "just like that!" marketing, but largely because Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook haven't clearly told consumers what they do with their voice and video information. None of those companies' data policies state that what we say and do in front of our voice assistants, internet-connected cameras, and messaging apps can be shown to strangers employed by the companies or their contractors.

That's bad regardless of whether or not one should expect humans to review voice commands to help train machine learning algorithms at scale.

"I certainly expected that these companies would be feeding recordings to a team of annotators - but that's only because I have a background in AI," Jeremy Gillula, the tech policy director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told BuzzFeed News. "I don't expect people to understand that. Companies should be making [human review] far more explicit - in their packaging materials, in their help pages, basically everywhere they talk about this product. They should say, 'yes, honest-to-god humans can listen to what you say,'" he said.

"[The companies] should say, 'yes, honest-to-god humans can listen to what you say.'"

Asking for the weather forecast and setting a timer don't particularly seem to violate privacy. But wake word detection is far from perfect. Devices with voice assistants are always on, and often capture audio that wasn't intended for them.

Reports in the last six months revealed that human reviewers heard audio snippets mistakenly captured by Amazon's Echo smart speakers, spoken home addresses picked up by Google Assistant, and private discussions recorded by Apple's Siri.

After the stories were published, Amazon added the ability to opt out of human review in the Alexa app, but confusingly named the setting "Help Improve Amazon Services and Develop New Features." Google introduced a similar opt-out feature, but buried it under three different menus in the Home app, in addition to suspending human review in Europe, where it may have been worried about the implications of GDPR. Apple temporarily halted its Siri contractor program and said it would let customers opt out of human review in the future.

Contractors aren't just listening to our smart speakers. Whistleblowers have also claimed that third parties listened to or watched live footage streamed from the homes of Ring security camera customers, personal conversations conducted on Skype through the app's translation service, and, most recently, audio calls between friends over Facebook Messenger.

All the while, consumers have had little knowledge about what tech companies are collecting and sharing about them.

"For a long, long time, when we bought a product, we expected the product to work for us, that it was ours, and that we controlled it. The tech community has taken a different approach," Gillula said. "Now, when you're using a product, yes, the product will do what you want it to do, but [a company] is also going to use what you do with it to improve future products - and that's about the extent of what they say in their terms of service."

Dokyun Lee, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University researching machine learning, told BuzzFeed News that Facebook and others should clearly explain how human involvement can improve the technology. "Of course, many companies would risk people opting out, but a robust system like this would be beneficial for earning users' trust," Lee said.

Instead, Facebook's data policy says this: "Our systems automatically process content and communications you and others provide to analyze context and what's in them for the purposes described below." Nowhere does the policy explain that humans can access your audio. In fact, "systems" and "automatically" could easily be taken to imply that a robot, machine, or software is processing the content - and that language is precisely where this data policy, and others like it, fails its users.

Even the setting on Amazon's Alexa to say no to human review doesn't clearly say that analysis will be done by humans. Its new opt-out page explains that voice commands are "manually reviewed to help improve our services," and "only a small fraction of voice recordings are manually reviewed" - which doesn't explain much at all.

"Opt out is basically worthless," said ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley. "Studies show that most people leave defaults the way they are. What Amazon is saying is that your privacy only matters if you're savvy enough to opt out. It should be opt-in, instead."

Stanley, Gillula, and other privacy experts are calling for strong privacy laws that would create uniform expectations about the use of personal data. Today, Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton from Massachusetts proposed a bill called the Automatic Listening and Exploitation Act (ALEXA for short) that would penalize companies if a smart device recorded audio without the consumer triggering it with a wake word.

Such legislation would compel companies to add disclosures to their products, instead of using privacy as a PR tool. Before the Consumer Electronics Show in January, Apple bought a billboard above the conference with "What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone" in giant text. In April, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, " the future is private." A month later, Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote an op-ed about how privacy shouldn't be a luxury good. But in light of recent disclosures, the companies' privacy policies have been revealed as mere posturing.

Perhaps Silicon Valley - and especially Apple, which has sought to market itself as a privacy-forward tech company - should heed the advice of Steve Jobs, the late Apple founder and CEO, who said in 2010, "Privacy means people know what they're signing up for. In plain English, and repeatedly, that's what it means. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you're going to do with their data."

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Humans Have Always Been Listening To Your Voice Recordings. Why Don't Tech Companies Just Tell Us That?

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Voice assistants seem simple. You say something like "Alexa" or "Hey Siri" followed by a request and then - bam! - your Discover Weekly starts playing over the speaker. But a human being could be listening to everything you say - and the tech companies want to hide those people from you.

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Asos is introducing changes to its site to make the shopping experience ‘more edited and personal’ as it looks to boost customer loyalty and reach its target

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Asos is introducing changes to its site to make the shopping experience ‘more edited and personal’ as it looks to boost customer loyalty and reach its target

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Jingfang 855954

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Sales at Asos were up 27 per cent in the year to the end of August, with the UK the best performer with sales growth of 35 per cent. International sales growth halved to 22 per cent in part due to the…

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Amazon's Alexa recorded private conversation and sent it to random contact

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Amazon's Alexa recorded private conversation and sent it to random contact

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No matter how suspicious it has seemed that Amazon is encouraging us to put listening devices in every room of our homes, the company has always said that its Echo assistants are not listening in on or recording conversations. Over and over again, company spokespeople have promised that they only start recording if someone says the wake word: "Alexa".

It's a spiel Danielle, an Alexa user from Portland, Oregon, had believed. She'd installed Echo devices and smart bulbs in every room in her house, accepting Amazon's claims that they were not invading her privacy. But today she asked the company to investigate after an Alexa device recorded a private conversation between her and her husband and sent it to a random number in their address book without their permission.

Danielle found out her Alexa was recording when she received an alarming call from one of her husband's colleagues saying: "Unplug your Alexa devices right now, you're being hacked."

She told KIRO-TV in Seattle that at first she didn't believe the co-worker, but then she said: "You sat there talking about hardwood floors." Danielle realised the colleague must have heard everything.

"I felt invaded," she told KIRO-TV. "A total privacy invasion. Immediately, I said, 'I'm never plugging that device in again because I can't trust it.'"

An Amazon customer service representative confirmed that Danielle's audio had been sent to the number and apologised but didn't provide any information about why the device had been activated. A spokesperson for the company said it had "determined this was an extremely rare occurrence".

At 6pm ET on Thursday, an Amazon spokesperson provided an updated statement with an explanation for why they believe Alexa forwarded the conversation. They said:

"Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like 'Alexa'. Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a 'send message' request. At which point, Alexa said out loud 'To whom?' At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customer's contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, '[contact name], right?' Alexa then interpreted background conversation as 'right'."

Recognising the improbability of this series of mishaps occuring, they added: "As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely."

Although Amazon maintains this was a malfunction rather than proof Alexa is always listening, the company has filed patent applications in the past for functionalities that involve always listening, such as an algorithm that would analyse when people say they "love" or "bought" something. The patent included a diagram where two people have a phone conversation and were served afterwards with separate targeted advertisements.

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Amazon's Alexa recorded private conversation and sent it to random contact

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No matter how suspicious it has seemed that Amazon is encouraging us to put listening devices in every room of our homes, the company has always said that its Echo assistants are not listening in on or recording conversations. Over and over again, company spokespeople have promised that they only start recording if someone says the wake word: "Alexa".

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Tencent denies storing WeChat records after Chinese billionaire reportedly questions monitoring

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Tencent denies storing WeChat records after Chinese billionaire reportedly questions monitoring

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Tencent says it doesn't store WeChat conversations

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Tencent denies storing WeChat records after Chinese billionaire reportedly questions monitoring

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How Cambridge Analytica exploited Facebook users’ data

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How Cambridge Analytica exploited Facebook users’ data

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A threat to not only privacy but also arguably democracy.
(Victor Tang)

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How Cambridge Analytica used Facebook, and why it matters

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How Cambridge Analytica exploited Facebook users' data, and why it's a big deal

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Apple boss Tim Cook told his employees on Monday that the company's refusal to cooperate with a US government to unlock an iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the two shooters in the San Bernardino attack, was a defense of civil liberties.

The Apple CEO called for the Department of Justice to withdraw its order in an email to staff sent the morning after the FBI director, James Comey, said the company should comply in order to help bring justice to the victims.
Apple or the FBI... whose side are you on in the iPhone privacy battle? | Will Hutton
"This case is about much more than a single phone or a single investigation, so when we received the government's order we knew we had to speak out," Cook said in an email to employees.

Cook's email - with the subject line: "Thank you for your support" - is the latest salvo in the public dispute between the US government and one of the largest companies in the world.

Cook said Apple has "no tolerance or sympathy for terrorists" but that following the Department of Justice's orders would set a dangerous precedent.

"At stake is the data security of hundreds of millions of law-abiding people and setting a dangerous precedent that threatens everyone's civil liberties," Cook said.

On Sunday night, Comey said the order was not about setting a legal precedent, but is instead about providing the victims with a complete investigation.

"We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist's passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. That's it," Comey wrote in a public letter. "We don't want to break anyone's encryption or set a master key loose on the land."

A federal court in Riverside, California, on Tuesday granted the justice department the order. Apple must respond by Friday to formally protest against the ruling.

Some victims of the attack plan to support the government's efforts, attorney Stephen Larson told Reuters.

"They were targeted by terrorists, and they need to know why, how this could happen," he said.

Larson said he was approached by the justice department last week about representing the victims. He did not specify how many victims he was representing.

Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, carried out the 2 December attack in which 14 people were killed and 22 people were injured.

Apple said it had the technical capability to obey the government's order, but it was "something we believe is too dangerous to do".

Cook said if such a system were developed, the company would try to protect it from being released, but it "would be relentlessly attacked by hackers and cybercriminals".

Cook said: "The only way to guarantee such a powerful tool isn't abused and doesn't fall into the wrong hands is to never create it."
Topics

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Tim Cook says Apple's refusal to unlock iPhone for FBI is a 'civil liberties' issue

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Apple boss Tim Cook told his employees on Monday that the company's refusal to cooperate with a US government to unlock an iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the two shooters in the San Bernardino attack, was a defense of civil liberties.

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My sexual assault case was dropped because I wouldn't hand over my phone 

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My sexual assault case was dropped because I wouldn't hand over my phone 

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Vera Baird QC, the newly appointed victims' commissioner for England and Wales, has been making headlines for her support of a civil liberties campaign which argues that rape case phone search requests amount to an "illegal digital strip search". Police and prosecutors have warned that, in some cases, if victims do not allow the contents of their phones to be downloaded, their investigations may be abandoned. Just 1.5% of rape cases lead to a charge or summons.

Today, the London rape review has said more must be done to end the excessive intrusion into personal data through the criminal justice service in rape cases. I reported my own sexual assault to the police with the intention of stopping a dangerous and sadistic predator from ever hurting another woman again. As part of my healing process I needed to take power back, but I ended up feeling more powerless after a two-and-a-half-year investigation that I can only describe as torture. The crown would make requests for deeply personal information, such as counselling notes, with the ultimatum that if I refused they wouldn't pursue my case any more. This caused panic attacks and crippling anxiety, and my previously successful career began to suffer. Eventually my case was dropped because I refused to give the government access to the entire contents of my mobile phone. Many victims talk about their experiences with the criminal justice system being more traumatic than the assault itself. I share those sentiments because I was left feeling I could be raped with impunity.
Only 3% of rape claims in London result in convictions, study says
The CPS has claimed that they only make such requests for personal information from victims when there is a "reasonable line of inquiry". Certainly there could be rare situations where a claimant's phone should be investigated, but it is impossible for the public to really know if a request was legitimate without understanding details of the case. I was told they needed an entire download to see if I was hiding something or if there was anything that would discredit me. I was happy to provide them information relevant to the crime, but did not think a fishing expedition into my phone was reasonable, especially when such personal data could be handed over to my attacker as part of disclosure. When I refused to comply my case was immediately dropped.

More weight was put on hypothetical evidence that I could be lying than on real evidence that I am telling the truth, for example an eyewitness testimony from the night of the assault.

I am not an outlier. I have been told anecdotally by a contact at the Met police that this is being asked of pretty much everyone who is a victim of a sexual crime. This is in direct contradiction to being told that such requests are only made in very few circumstances.

Mistakes can be made, but it does not mean we should stop prosecuting crime or do away with the right to privacy

An investigation where a defendant's freedom is on the line needs to be thorough. In campaigning against these policies I am often asked how I expect to make the legal process equal for victims and defendants. I would love to make it equal. That just 1.5% of rape cases lead to a charge or summons means that the chance of a rapist seeing a day in court, let alone jail, is almost zero (when you factor in how many rapes go unreported).

These statistics are dismal, and yet whenever I try to have a meaningful conversation about the prosecution rate, the handful of cases in which a miscarriage of justice occurred are brought up. The system is not always perfect and mistakes can be made, but it does not mean we should stop prosecuting crime or do away with the right to privacy.

These cases are cited as a cautionary tale of the dangers of the "lying women", but they are extreme outliers. It is so frustrating to see them hijack 50% of the debate. Sexual abuse is a pervasive problem that is causing a public health and safety crisis. How many rapists will be able to operate with impunity when victims across the country choose privacy over justice, as I did?
Rape victims deserve more support every step of their way to court | Barbara Ellen
I believe that the people responsible for digital consent forms understand this. A detective who investigates rape told me that he does not feel these consent forms are necessary for justice to be served. He told me that such policies have nothing to do with helping the handful of innocent men who get prosecuted every year, rather that the CPS are actively trying to encourage victims to drop their cases so their statistics look better. If a victim does not do everything they request, however intrusive and excessive, then the case can be closed with a clean conscience because the victim did not cooperate fully.

When such behaviour is put in the context of government cuts to the justice system, it begins to make sense. Because of austerity, the Met have had to sell £1bn of assets just to operate, funding to the Ministry of Justice has been slashed by 27% in 10 years and the CPS received 34% less funding in the same period. How do we expect to afford to prosecute rape, especially at a time when so many victims are riding a wave of empowerment as a result of #MeToo? Victims are finally gaining the confidence needed to hold their attackers accountable, yet they are left feeling powerless, not only at the hands of their attackers, but at the hands of a system that is making no meaningful effort to help them.
Topics

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My sexual assault case was dropped because I wouldn't hand over my phone | Anonymous

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Vera Baird QC, the newly appointed victims' commissioner for England and Wales, has been making headlines for her support of a civil liberties campaign which argues that rape case phone search requests amount to an "illegal digital strip search".

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'Deepfake' app causes fraud and privacy fears in China

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'Deepfake' app causes fraud and privacy fears in China

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An artificial-intelligence app that allows users to insert their faces in place of film and TV characters has caused controversy in China.

Zao has sparked privacy fears and suggestions it could be used to defeat systems using facial recognition.

It appeared in China on 29 August and has proven wildly popular.

But it has led to developers Momo apologising for its end-user agreement, which stripped users of the rights to their images.

And as the app went viral, Zao's owners aired fears users were devouring its expensively purchased server capacity.

Its popularity has also lead to assurances from Alipay, part of the Chinese web giant Alibaba, saying that it's impossible for so-called deepfake videos created by the app to be used to cheat its Smile to Pay facial-recognition system.

What's Zao and why is it so controversial?

Zao is a face-swapping app that uses clips from films and TV shows, convincingly changing a character's face by using selfies from the user's phone.

But some users had noted the app's terms and conditions "gave the developers the global right to permanently use any image created on the app for free", Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reported.

"Moreover, the developers had the right to transfer this authorisation to any third party without further permission from the user," the paper said, adding experts believed this broke Chinese law.

Momo had subsequently deleted the controversial clause and issued an apology, saying its app would not store users' biometric information nor "excessively collect user information", Shanghai-based The Paper said.

But popular social media platform WeChat quickly banned users from uploading Zao videos via its platform, citing "security risks".

The app may also be a victim of its own success, with Zao saying, on its Sina Weibo social media account, it had used up a third of its monthly server capacity, budgeted at 7m yuan (£805,000), on its first night.

And the following day, as users complained of a slow service, it said, "with a heavy heart", servers were at fully capacity.

Could Zao be used to defraud banks?

Alipay, the world's largest mobile payment platform, with over 870 million users, has assured its users videos created in Zao cannot be used to defraud its systems.

Many Alipay users take advantage of its Smile to Pay system, which allows payment verification by the user looking into a camera at a shop or restaurant's point-of-sale.

Alibaba, which owns Alipay, says it uses sophisticated anti-spoofing algorithms to make sure it isn't fooled by still photographs or deepfake videos.

"There is a lot of online face-changing software - but no matter how realistic, it is impossible to break through the facial payment system", the company said on its Weibo account.

Even before the system attempts to match the face, it detects whether the presented image is a still, video or software simulation.

"This avoids fraud caused by face-changing technology," Alibaba said.

Dangerous AI offers to write fake news

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Momo also moved to calm fears Zao could be used for fraud, clarifying Alipay's point it only used and adapted still photographs for its deepfake videos.

"The facial payment security threshold is extremely high, and 'face-changing' technology realised by only one photo can't break through the security system," the developers said.

It was "completely impossible" for deepfakes of this kind to threaten payment security, Momo told The Paper.

And last year, academic Pan Helin told China Daily Alipay's facial recognition was "theoretically a more secure and convenient method than the conventional use of passwords".

What's the reaction been?

Concerns over the app reached state-run Chinese press.

Global Times said it was another example of "concerning" AI-powered apps "which could be used maliciously".

China was already considering tightening regulations governing AI face-stitching technology, the paper said.

And lawyer Zhang Xinnian told it the laws governing phone apps' terms and conditions needed to be tightened.

Zao's initial terms "violated user privacy and once personal information is leaked and abused it could lead to criminal incidents", he added.

Meanwhile, law professor Zhu Wei told state news agency Xinhua: "People are using a mobile client that involves information about personal identity, property, scan codes and mobile payments and they can't see exactly what information is obtained by the app, so it is very dangerous."

A commentary in the Beijing News even asked whether the app could become "a threat to national security".

With genuine concerns about national and personal security from Zao and future deepfake services, "it is necessary to regulate them as soon as possible with clear legal provisions", it added.

A Guangzhou Daily editorial said: "Changing-face videos is fun but the potential security risks cannot be ignored."

And The Paper said while Zao's popularity would be short-lived, its arrival had made it easier for dark actors to take advantage of face-changing technology.
BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook.

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'Deepfake' app causes fraud and privacy fears in China

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An artificial-intelligence app that allows users to insert their faces in place of film and TV characters has caused controversy in China. Zao has sparked privacy fears and suggestions it could be used to defeat systems using facial recognition. It appeared in China on 29 August and has proven wildly popular.

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Fangying Li (Tiffany)

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Open Rights Group in UK installed a public toilet on a busy Friday afternoon in Brick Lane but this toilet is not as it seems.
It is clear they aim at protecting citizen privacy.
I think the message in this campaign was conveyed smartly and powerfully.
(Jane)

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Google in $250m settlement over charges it tracked kids on YouTube

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Google in $250m settlement over charges it tracked kids on YouTube

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Hannah 961456

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By Tony Romm, Greg Bensinger and Craig Timberg

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Google will pay $US170 million ($249 million) to settle allegations that it illegally collected data about children younger than age 13 who watched toy videos and television shows on YouTube, settling a long-running US government investigation.

In a sweeping complaint, regulators alleged Google knew that some channels on YouTube were popular among young viewers and tracked kids' viewing habits for the purpose of serving them targeted ads, ultimately raking in "close to $US50 million" from just a short list of channels that violated children's privacy laws.

YouTube has long maintained its main service is for 13-year-olds and over, but US regulators showed it knew children were using it.

The settlement brushed aside years of claims by YouTube that it was not intended for children under 13 by citing numerous examples in which the company bragged to toy makers such as Mattel and Hasbro about its popularity among children. In one boast cited by regulators, YouTube claimed to be watched by 93 per cent of "tweens," roughly in line with independent surveys of the viewing habits of preteens.

Regulators said the settlement would force YouTube and other social media companies to be mindful when children under 13 are using their services. But a wide array of privacy advocates and lawmakers said the penalties against Google would serve as no deterrent given its massive revenues.

While the fine set a record for a violation of the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the federal law that forbids the tracking of users under 13 without parental permission, it amounted to less than two days' worth of profits for the tech giant, advocates noted.

The settlement also held no Google executives directly accountable, didn't require the company to admit guilt and left some experts fearful that it might contain a loophole allowing YouTube to avoid liability for kids' privacy missteps in the future.

"The settlement shifts far too much of the responsibility onto the content creators and not enough to YouTube, and the fine is woefully inadequate," said Josh Golin, executive director of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, an advocacy group based in Boston that was among those who filed the complaint last year.

The settlement accepts many of the claims raised by more than 20 consumer and privacy groups in an April 2018 complaint and echoes years of concerns that YouTube had become the most popular site for children while sidestepping COPPA. Privacy advocates long had pointed out that many popular channels on the site are directed to younger audiences, featuring nursery rhymes as well as videos of children unwrapping toys.

Regulators agreed, finding that Google's own content-rating systems had identified certain YouTube channels as directed toward children.

The settlement was notable for the extent to which regulators used YouTube's own statements and actions against it. They cited that YouTube's own rating system often labelled videos as intended for viewers under 13 but still allowed tracking and targeted advertising. Regulators cited the channels featuring My Little Pony, Barbie, Thomas & Friends and Hot Wheels as evidence that they were intended for a young audience.

YouTube created a separate app for children in 2015, called YouTube Kids, in part to address complaints that the main platform had too many young viewers. But regulators noted that many videos appeared on both services. The only difference was that viewers were not tracked and targeted on YouTube Kids but were when the same children's videos appeared on YouTube itself.

Along with its fine, YouTube agreed to develop a system that would require content creators to indicate if their videos are directed to kids or not, turning off tracking for targeted ads in cases where it believes a child is watching. YouTube also announced a series of additional changes on its own, including work to train its software to detect content that is kid-oriented using a type of artificial intelligence known as machine learning.
Washington Post

Most Viewed in Technology

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Tony Romm, Greg Bensinger and Craig Timberg

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Google in $250m settlement over charges it tracked kids on YouTube

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By Tony Romm, Greg Bensinger and Craig Timberg Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Google will pay $US170 million ($249 million) to settle allegations that it illegally collected data about children younger than age 13 who watched toy videos and television shows on YouTube, settling a long-running US government investigation.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook: ‘Privacy to us is a human right...a civil liberty

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Apple CEO Tim Cook: ‘Privacy to us is a human right...a civil liberty

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Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'Privacy Is 'A Human Right' | MSNBC

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No stranger to public discontent, Facebook Inc. is digging out of one of its biggest crises yet. The personal data of up to 87 million users, mostly in the U.S., was obtained by an analytics firm that, among its other work, helped elect President Donald Trump. In response to that revelation, lawmakers and regulators in the U.S. and U.K. increased their scrutiny of the social media giant, and at least some Facebook users canceled their accounts. The uproar has only added to the pressure on Facebook and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg over how the company was used during the 2016 presidential campaign to spread Russian propaganda and phony headlines.

1. Who took what from Facebook?

During the summer of 2014, the U.K. affiliate of U.S. political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica hired a Soviet-born American researcher, Aleksandr Kogan, to gather basic profile information of Facebook users along with what they chose to "Like." About 300,000 Facebook users, most or all of whom were paid a small amount, downloaded Kogan's app, called This Is Your Digital Life, which presented them with a series of surveys. Kogan collected data not just on those users but on their Facebook friends, if their privacy settings allowed it - a universe of people initially estimated to be 50 million strong, then upped to 87 million. The app, in its terms of service, disclosed that it would collect data on users and their friends.

2. Did Kogan have Facebook's permission?

In a general sense, yes. Since 2007, Facebook has allowed outside developers to build and offer their own applications within its space. When Kogan offered his app, Facebook also allowed developers to collect information on friends of those who chose to use their apps if their privacy settings allowed it. "We clearly stated that the users were granting us the right to use the data in broad scope, including selling and licensing the data," Kogan wrote in a March 18 email obtained by Bloomberg.

3. Then what's the issue here?

Facebook says Kogan "lied to us" by saying he was gathering the data for research purposes and violated the company's policies by passing the data to Cambridge Analytica. Kogan says his app's terms and conditions specifically allowed "commercial use." Facebook says that after it learned of the situation in 2015, it removed Kogan's app and demanded that he "and all parties he had given data to" destroy the data.

4. Has the data been destroyed?

The New York Times - which broke the story along with The Observer of London - reported on March 18 that emails and documents suggest the firm "still possesses most or all of the trove." Cambridge Analytica has maintained that it deleted all the data Kogan provided and, at Facebook's request, "carried out an internal audit to make sure that all the data, all derivatives, and all backups had been deleted." Facebook's chief technology officer, Michael Schroepfer, said in an interview on April 5 that pending the results of investigations, "we don't know exactly what they have."

5. Why did Cambridge Analytica want the data?

It uses such data to target voters with hyper-specific appeals, including on Facebook and other online services, that go well beyond traditional messaging based on party affiliation alone. This is known as "psychographic" targeting or modeling.

6. Did Cambridge Analytica pay Kogan?

It covered his costs in creating his app - more than $800,000 - and allowed him to keep a copy for his own research, the Times reported, citing company emails and financial records.

7. Who is Cambridge Analytica?

It's a company that "uses data to change audience behavior," both commercially and politically, according to its website. Its London-based affiliate, SCL Group, has a history of dubious tricks in elections around the globe. Cambridge Analytica worked in support of the 2016 campaigns of Trump, Ted Cruz and Ben Carson, all Republicans. It was founded in 2013 by former Renaissance Technologies co-CEO Robert Mercer, a major supporter of Trump in 2016; Trump's campaign manager, Steve Bannon, served on the firm's board. Days after the first reports about Facebook data, Cambridge Analytica said it had suspended its chief executive officer, Alexander Nix, who caught on camera boasting about the firm's willingness to use bribes, entrapment with sex workers and other possibly illegal tactics to undermine political candidates.

8. Did the Facebook data help Trump win the presidency?

Cambridge Analytica flatly denied using Facebook data from Kogan's firm in the 2016 election or employing psychographic modeling techniques on behalf of Trump's campaign. But it's not clear whether the firm used the Facebook data in other ways to better understand and target voters. Whether Cambridge Analytica's models really work is itself a point of contention; even some of the firm's clients have said they saw little value in it.

9. Did any of this violate any rules?

That remains to be seen. The U.K. has data-protection laws that ban the sale or use of personal data without consent. And in 2011, Facebook settled privacy complaints by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission by agreeing to get clear consent from users before sharing their material. The FTC is now investigating whether Facebook violated the terms of that 2011 consent decree. The company would face millions of dollars in fines if it were found to have violated that pact. Lawmakers in the U.S. and U.K. are conducting their own inquiries.

10. What's been the fallout?

Facebook shares dropped almost 18 percent in the 10 days after the news broke on March 17. An online "#DeleteFacebook" movement drew some high-profile support, though Zuckerberg says there's been no "meaningful impact" on Facebook's business. Facebook said it removed a feature that let users enter phone numbers or email addresses into Facebook's search tool to find other people. The company also will make it easier for users to adjust their privacy settings.

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Facebook Cambridge Analytica Scandal: Here's What Happened

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No stranger to public discontent, Facebook Inc. is digging out of one of its biggest crises yet. The personal data of up to 87 million users, mostly in the U.S., was obtained by an analytics firm that, among its other work, helped elect President Donald Trump.

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It's time for browser startup Brave to see if this whole privacy-respecting ads business is really going to pay off.

The startup, co-founded by former Firefox leader and Mozilla Chief Executive Brendan Eich, got its start by releasing a browser in 2016 that blocks ads by default -- a design the company's studies say dramatically improves not just performance but also cuts memory usage and saves phone battery life.

But the plan was never just to remove ads -- it's also to replace the ones you usually see on websites with something that doesn't track you around the web. Brave started testing these privacy-respecting ads this year, and now the technology is active in the main version of Brave for personal computers. And if you opt in, you'll get a share of the resulting ad revenue.

"Ads have become spyware," Eich said, and ad tech is riddled with middlemen and fraud that are problems for both advertisers and the publishers who place ads. "We think we have a better technique."

Brave has convinced 5.9 million people to use its browser each month and should reach 10 million this summer, Eich said. That's a far cry, though, from the billion-plus who use Google's dominant Chrome and the 264 million who use Firefox. To fulfill its ambitions of " putting chlorine in the pool" -- building an improved ad system extending far beyond its own company -- Brave will need a lot more users to sign up.

And privacy protections, while important, historically have been a tough sell for consumers.

Recent privacy scandals and data breaches may have changed your mind, though, and Brave has a carrot to coax you aboard.

Ad revenue for Brave users

With this first phase of Brave ads, you'll keep 70% of the revenue. A second phase, involving cooperation with website publishers, will give you 15 percent of each ad's revenue. It won't generate enough for you to get rich quick, but Eich hopes it'll be enough to help sustain free sites on the internet. The system will expand to Android and iOS phones in coming months.

Disclosure: I transferred some bitcoin into my Brave wallet for testing when Brave launched its payments system in 2016. That later was converted into BAT. After that initial purchase, Brave's grants, BAT from ads I've seen and BAT transferred to website publishers, I now have a BAT balance worth $26.59. I have received no bitcoin or BAT from Brave.

Conventional online ads can generate more revenue for publishers if they're targeted toward a specific audience. Nobody likes irrelevant ads. But that targeting can involve a privacy tradeoff, since advertisers want to know about what sites you've visited or what your social media profile says about your interests.

Brave Software wants to show targeted ads, too, but it lets the browser decide on the targeting without spilling your data over the network to publishers, advertisers or Brave itself. It gauges your interest chiefly by the content of websites you visit -- for example, news articles. But it also will include what can be a very strong signal that you want to buy something: searches for products or services.

Small text-based search ads are how Google got its start making immense piles of money. Brave ads right now are similarly terse, but instead of being built into the website, they appear as operating system notifications.

And unlike with search ads, you get 70 percent of the Brave ad revenue.

You won't get rich off Brave ads

So how much could you earn in Brave's monthly payout plan?

"I'm still a bit of a bear, so I say $5, but it could be $10 or more," Eich said. Just seeing an ad generates a little money, but clicking generates more, and doing something very valuable to an advertiser, like booking an appointment to test-drive a car, could be worth something more like $50, he said.

One catch: You get paid in Brave's crypto-tokens, called basic attention tokens (BAT), not real money. Another catch: for now, the money goes into the browser, but the only way to get it out is to use the Brave Rewards system to contribute that BAT to websites, YouTubers and Twitch videogame streamers you visit who've signed up for the Brave system. Later, Brave will let you export your tokens so you can convert them to regular money.

"We don't currently have a way to get tokens out," Eich said. "We will add that as soon as we can," using partnerships with cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase and Uphold and requiring a fraud-thwarting process that means users must identify themselves, he said.

Brave advertisers include Vice, Home Chef, ConsenSys, Ternio BlockCard, MyCrypto, and eToro, BuySellAds, TAP Network, AirSwap, Fluidity, and https://uphold.com/ Uphold, Brave said. The browser periodically retrieves a catalog of ads from such advertisers and shows its best guess about the one it calculates will be most interesting to you. Advertisers know only that their ads were seen, not who saw them. Brave is designed to show them during moments when you won't be as bothered by the interruption.

Publisher ads, set to arrive later this year, will place Brave ads directly onto publishers' websites. There, publishers will keep 70%, while you and Brave will evenly split the remaining 30%.

Brave also could sign a larger-scale search-ad deals with search engines to boost revenue further, Eich said. "We have a model that gets us to profitability."

First published April 24, 9 a.m. PT.

Update, 12:39 p.m. PT: Adds a disclosure about the $26.59 value of the author's BAT holdings.

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Brave now can show its privacy-first ads on PCs, giving you 70% of the proceeds

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It's time for browser startup Brave to see if this whole privacy-respecting ads business is really going to pay off. The startup, co-founded by former Firefox leader and Mozilla Chief Executive Brendan Eich, got its start by releasing a browser in 2016 that blocks ads by default -- a design the company's studies say dramatically improves not just performance but also cuts memory usage and saves phone battery life.

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Burger King decided not to sell its best-selling whoppers to support McDonald's charity campaign on November 11 in Argentina.