company:instagram

  • How owning an Instagram-famous pet changes your politics.
    https://www.salon.com/2019/06/23/how-owning-an-instagram-famous-pet-changes-your-politics

    Ici on apprend que...
    – l’acquisition de followers instagram est big business
    – il faut une équipe composé de la star, du talent pour dessiner, photogrphier, écrire, entretenir des relations, gérer les finances ...
    – une mission et un message clair qui touchent un naximum d’intéressés
    – ne pas souffrir d’une allergie contre toute forme de commercialisation.

    –> les petits enfants et les animaux domestiques ou vivant en groupes familiales constituent le contenu de base idéal.
    #fcknstgrm #seenthis-pour-les-nuls

    Owners of social media–famous animals say the experience has shaped their politics and beliefs

    Matthew Rozsa, June 23, 2019 11:30PM (UTC)

    I must begin this article with a confession: If it weren’t for my fiancee, I never would have gotten so deep into the world of Instagram-famous pets.

    To say that they give her joy is an understatement. Many restful slumbers have been disrupted by her random exclamations of unbridled happiness, followed by her pressing an iPhone against my face while cooing, “Look at the adorable dog!” or “Isn’t this the most beautiful pig in the world?”

    At first I affectionately teased her for her obsession, but then I began to dig a little deeper. What I soon learned — first from a trip to Canada last year to visit the famous Esther the Wonder Pig and then from my own research — is that animal social media stars are more than just cute pets. They are at the vanguard of a new way of viewing humanity’s relationship with other species — one that has left a positive impact on the larger world.

    “We raise awareness for the Toronto Humane Society and the Basset Hound Rescue of Ontario on our social media platforms through posts and live broadcasts,” Nathan Sidon, who along with Carly Bright co-owns Dean the Basset, told Salon by email. Incidentally, Dean the Basset has over 400,000 followers across social media platforms.

    “We also donate a significant portion of the account’s profits to these charities (over $5,000 in the last 12 months),” Sidon adds. “It’s hard to follow Dean’s account and not see how much love, attention and care he’s showered with daily.... It’s my hope that our greatest contribution to this cause is by setting an example to all pet owners and anyone considering getting a pet of how to be the best pet-owner you can be.”

    According to Sidon, he and Bright believe that “pets are a privilege and that animals in your care should be made a top priority.” He added, though, that “in our case we’ve gone so far that whether or not we’ve become Dean’s slaves is a legitimate question. I think this really shines through on Dean’s account. He’s calling the shots!”

    Salon also emailed Gemma Gené, whose social media presence includes not only pictures of her beloved pug Mochi, but also a comic series that colorfully depicts his ebullient personality.

    “I was working as an architect in my first big job in New York,” Gené recalled when asked about how she met Mochi. “It was my dream job at the time but unfortunately the hours were crazy. I used to finish work at night every day and I had to work most weekends. I missed my dog Mochi so much during work. I always liked comics and used comic as a journal. I started drawing little stories about Mochi on my subway commutes. I posted them on Instagram and eventually they become big enough that I was able to focus on my art work.”

    Now she says that she has 250,000 followers on Instagram, over 50,000 on Facebook and over a 100,000 visits every day.

    “We have participated in several campaigns,” Gené told Salon when asked about her animal rights work. “We were part of Susie’s Senior Dogs and Foster dogs NYC #famousfosters campaign where they pair people who have big audiences with a senior dog to foster. This is a great way to show how important fostering is. We fostered a little senior that we renamed Dorito and was adopted after a very few days.”

    Gené says that she donates her artwork to raise money for dog rescues — including pug rescues.

    “A cause that is very dear to our hearts is the ’Animals are not property’ petition the Animal Legal Defense Fund is working on,” Gené explained. “We try to use our influence to share this message to help change the laws on animals so they stop being considered an object and start having rights.”

    “A big part of our work presents Mochi as a little character with a big personality, much closer to a human than what most people think of dogs. We are trying to show the world that animals are much more than objects and that have many more similarities to us than what we think,” she adds.

    Salon also reached out to Steve Jenkins, who, along with Derek Walter, co-owns Esther the Wonder Pig. They told Salon that their various social media pages have roughly 2,000,000 followers and garner around 450,000 interactions every week.

    “Esther was supposed to be a mini-pig, we never had any intention of anything else,” Jenkins wrote to Salon. “By the time we realized Esther wasn’t what we thought she was, and that she would in fact be many hundreds of pounds, we had fallen in love with her and weren’t willing to give up. Technically having a family member like Esther was illegal where we lived, so we kept it quiet and opted to make a ’little Facebook page’ to show our more removed friends and family what was happening. The page went viral somehow, and all of a sudden we had thousands of people checking in every day to see what she was up to.”

    Their ownership of Esther soon caused them to become full-time animal rights activists, eventually purchasing a farm where they keep pigs, dogs, turkeys, horses and at least one (literally) strutting peacock.

    “We have been able to establish the Happily Ever Esther Farm Sanctuary, where we rescue abused and abandoned farm animals,” Jenkins explained. “We donated the largest CT scanner in the world to our local veterinary hospital. Until then, the didn’t have equipment large enough to properly get proper diagnostic images for an animal Esther’s size. We also established a fund called ’Esther Shares’ that we use to pay the medical bills for other sanctuaries and rescue organization. Last but not least, we use our pages to help people build a relationship with Esther, something that can have a deep and lasting impact on the person’s life because of their newfound love and respect for pigs.”

    Jenkins, like Gené and Sidon, also told Salon that he began to reevaluate how human beings view their relationship with animals.

    “We think everybody has a connection with animals, but we learn over time to love some animals differently than others,” Jenkins explained. “Esther really leveled that playing field in our mind, and elevated farm animals to the position we previously reserved for companion animals like cats and dogs. She ignited a passion within us that we didn’t know we had. It became a mission of our to help others see Esther the way did, and to bring her larger than life personality across in a way that people could relate to.”

    These arguments are what makes the social media movements so powerful — and why, I suspect, my fiancee is so enamored with them. It is easy to objectify animals, to view them as vessels for whatever immediate function they can provide human beings (food, clothing, recreation). Yet by presenting their animals online as hilarious personalities, with quirks and stories of their own worth following, these sites help us see animals as more than just tools of human beings. They become individuals — and, like all individuals, worthy of not just affection, but respect.

    Gené, Jenkins and Sidon also had heartwarming stories about how their social media work had improved the lives of the two-legged animals who visit them.

    “Through photos and videos requested by fans, Dean has helped a teenager ask a girl to prom, surprised a bride on her wedding day, been the theme of a 90 year old woman’s [birthday] party, and the list goes on,” Sidon told Salon. “We’ve also received hundreds of very personal messages from fans around the world telling us that Dean’s account has provided them with a much needed daily dose of positivity that’s helped them when they’re going through difficult times in their life. Suffice to say that Dean gets a lot of love from around the world and he hopes to give the love back!”

    Jenkins had a similar story about Esther.

    “My favorite message ever came from a young mother in the southern United States,” Jenkins recalled. “She was having a rough time emotionally, and found Esther’s page was becoming a bit of a crutch for her. She would check every day to see what we were up to, and engage with our posts as a way to take her mind off stuff. One day she sent a message to let us know that we had been the source of most of her smiles lately. She wanted to thank us for helping keep a positive attitude, and for helping her show her two small boys that it was ok to have two dads [Jenkins is in a same-sex relationship with Walter] and a turkey for a brother. A family is a family no matter what it looks like, and I still well up when I think about her message.”

    Gené discussed how lucky she is to “have a very loving audience,” telling Salon that “we get hundreds of messages a day telling us the impact our comic has on people and they really fuel us to keep going. Some of them particularly warm my heart like when people say that our comics make them smile when they are going through a difficult time, or when they bring back sweet memories of an animal they loved that passed away.”

    She added, “If one day we don’t post anything, we get messages of people checking up on us. That made us realize we have a community that look forward to our posts daily.”

    I should add, on a final personal note, that I do not write this article from a position of presumed moral superiority. Despite vowing to eliminate my meat consumption since I visited the Esther farm last year, I have only been able to somewhat reduce it, and aside from writing pieces like this I can’t claim to have done very much to advance the cause of animal rights in my own life. Sometimes I suspect the plaque which clogs my arteries is karmic, a punishment for sustaining my own life at the expense of those animals who have given theirs, and one that will likely shorten my own time in this world.

    The goal here is not to shame those who eat meat, or search for a firm distinction between companion animals and farm animals. The point is that social media’s animals stars have made more people think of animals as individuals — to start to see them as living souls. That isn’t enough to solve the problems facing our world today, but it’s the only place where we can start.

    #animaux #business #politique #morale #affaires #instagram #médias

  • The “Colonial Cartography” of Google Maps - Frontpage - e-flux conversations
    https://conversations.e-flux.com/t/the-colonial-cartography-of-google-maps/8810

    At Real Life, Apoorva Tadepalli examines the ways that maps, historically used by state power to claim and represent territory, have changed in the age of online mapping tools like Google Maps and Instagram geotags. “This social media form of mapping,” writes Tadepalli, “creates personality and imposes a reality onto spaces that are inherently consumerist, in the same way that authoritarian imposition, both state and corporate, once did for the same locations.” Here’s an excerpt:

    Maps have behaved throughout history as pieces of literature or devices of expression used to advance particular agendas. The image of a physical place, seen from above, gives a sense of wholeness, of truth. Maps have the power to give a physicality to places and things that do not exist, as with the maps of the Railroad and Death Valley: they made bad buys look solid and very real. The population of California at the turn of the century was less than two million, compared to the 40 million today; the development of the American West, a place that for most of the 19th century was not solid or real as far as most Americans could imagine or see, relied on maps that expressed aspirations, which included lies, in order to give Americans a picture of something that was being created, something that had to be willed into existence.

    Maps are productive rather than simply informative creatures; they start dialogues and create identities. Historically, they have been used by centralized bodies, disseminating information to individuals — whether companies selling products or governments selling the idea of statehood. The internet takes maps and mapping practices from central bodies to individuals, but through this they remain totally detached from the geographical areas they supposedly represent, and invaluable tools for institutions to exercise power over people.

    #cartographie #décolonisation #cartographie_décoloniale

  • Thanks to Facebook, Your Cellphone Company Is Watching You More Closely Than Ever
    https://theintercept.com/2019/05/20/facebook-data-phone-carriers-ads-credit-score

    Among the mega-corporations that surveil you, your cellphone carrier has always been one of the keenest monitors, in constant contact with the one small device you keep on you at almost every moment. A confidential Facebook document reviewed by The Intercept shows that the social network courts carriers, along with phone makers — some 100 different companies in 50 countries — by offering the use of even more surveillance data, pulled straight from your smartphone by Facebook itself. Offered (...)

    #T-Mobile #Instagram #WhatsApp #Facebook #smartphone #AT&T #marketing #discrimination #écoutes (...)

    ##AT&T ##surveillance

  • Data Exploitation and Democratic Societies
    https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/2850/data-exploitation-and-democratic-societies

    Democratic society is under threat from a range of players exploiting our data in ways which are often hidden and unaccountable. These actors are manifold : traditional political parties (from the whole political spectrum), organisations or individuals pushing particular political agendas, foreign actors aiming at interfering with national democratic processes, and the industries that provide products that facilitate the actions of the others (from public facing ones, such as social media (...)

    #Exxon_Mobil #Google #Mozilla #Facebook #WhatsApp #Instagram #Twitter #YouTube #algorithme #manipulation #électeurs #élections #BigData #publicité #profiling (...)

    ##publicité ##PrivacyInternational

  • James Charles and the Odd Fascination of the YouTube Beauty Wars | The New Yorker
    https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-odd-fascination-of-the-youtube-beauty-wars

    Watching Westbrook’s video, I might have felt boredom (forty-three minutes?), but, instead, I felt the excitement that must overwhelm an anthropologist discovering a lost culture, obscure but oddly fascinating, with its own dramas, alliances, and enmities. Added to this effect was the comedy of the gaping chasm between the flimsiness of the conflict and its melodramatic presentation. Speaking directly to the camera, her hair and skin smooth and gleaming and her legs drawn up to her chest, Westbrook’s tone often seems more appropriate for a bereavement support group than a skirmish kindled by a supplement sponsorship. At one point, she claims that she feels betrayed because she and her husband helped Charles with business decisions for years, without expecting payment in return. “Life will never stop being painful,” she says. “No matter where in the world you are, no matter your circumstances, you are always going to experience heartbreak, and that’s part of being human.” Viewers responded enthusiastically. “Tati is no longer a beauty guru… she’s a freaking legendary life guru,” a fan wrote, in a comment that received a hundred and seventy-four thousand likes. In response, Charles came out with his own YouTube statement, in which he appears weepy and makeup-less, apologizes in vague terms to Westbrook and her husband for “everything I have put you through over the last few weeks,” and promises, in possibly even vaguer terms, to “continue to learn and grow every single day.” (He also said that he didn’t receive any payment for his SugarBearHair promotion and instead did it as a favor to the company; SugarBearHair, he said, had recently given him an artist pass when he felt “unsafe” in the less secure V.I.P. area at the Coachella music festival—the traditional ground zero for influencer drama.)

    In an Instagram post from the Met Gala earlier in the week, Charles had written, “Being invited to such an important event like the ball is such an honor and a step forward in the right direction for influencer representation in the media and I am so excited to be a catalyst.” His suggestion that influencers are a marginalized group that deserves affirmative-action-style media attention was justifiably met with derision, but it did evoke the strange, liminal position that they occupy. On the one hand, people like Charles and Westbrook—so-called civilians who have amassed millions of followers through a combination of relentless vlogging and a savvily fashioned persona—now wield enormous financial power by using their accounts to promote brands. (One report predicts that the influencer economy will be worth ten billion dollars by 2020; Instagram recently partnered with several prominent influencers to test out a program that would enable direct sales on the social-media platform.) On the other hand, influencers’ power relies on their relatability. (“I want to show you guys that, no matter who you are, you can make it,” Westbrook says, feelingly, toward the end of her “Bye sister . . .” video. “I had freaking nothing, nothing, when I started out.”) Traditional celebrities serve as powerful marketing tools precisely because, though we are enticed by the fantasy that they offer, we understand that we could never really be like them. With influencers, conversely, it feels like, with a little help and a little of their product, we could be. Influencers: they’re just like us.

    An influencer is, by definition, a creature of commerce. Unlike with a traditional celebrity, there is no creative project necessary to back up the shilling of products (say, a movie franchise used to promote merchandise)—the shilling is the project. But, paradoxically, the commercial sway that influencers hold over their fans depends on their distinctive authenticity: the sense that they are just ordinary people who happen to be recommending a product that they enjoy . Charles’s sin, according to Westbrook, was trading their friendship for lucre (or at least a Coachella pass). “My relationship with James Charles is not transactional,” Westbrook says in her video. “I have not asked him for a penny, I have never been on his Instagram.” Railing against Charles’s SugarBearHair sponsored post, she continues, “You say you don’t like the brand. You say that you’re the realest, that you can’t be bought. Well, you just were.” Later in the video, she takes on a Holden Caulfield-like tone: “You should have walked away. You should have held on to your integrity. You’re a phony.” She, herself, she claims, would never pay anyone to promote her beauty supplement in a sponsored post: “My product is good enough on its own. We’re selling like hot cakes.” Indeed, one shouldn’t underestimate the value that authenticity, or at least a performance of it, carries in the influencer marketplace. Since “Bye sister . . .” was posted, it has been viewed a staggering forty-three million times, and Westbrook has gained three million subscribers. Charles has lost roughly the same number.

    #Culture_numérique #Influenceurs

  • #Facebook busts Israeli campaign to disrupt #elections in African, Asian and Latin American nations - Israel News - Haaretz.com
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/facebook-busts-israel-based-campaign-to-disrupt-elections-in-african-asian-

    Dozens of accounts, pages and groups operated by private firm peddling #fake_news were deleted, tech giant says

    [...]

    Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, told reporters that the tech giant had purged 65 Israeli accounts, 161 pages, dozens of groups and four Instagram accounts. Many were linked to the Archimedes Group, a Tel Aviv-based political consulting and #lobbying firm that boasts of its social media skills and ability to “change reality.”

  • Facebook désactive plus de 250 pages politiques trompeuses gérées par une entreprise israélienne
    https://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2019/05/16/facebook-desactive-plus-de-250-pages-politiques-trompeuses-gerees-par-une-en

    Les pages, qui pour certaines usurpaient l’identité de candidats, visaient majoritairement l’Afrique subsaharienne. La société de Mark Zuckerberg a annoncé jeudi 16 mai avoir supprimé 265 comptes, pages et groupes, sur Facebook et Instagram, faisant tous partie d’un même réseau utilisé pour diffuser de fausses informations ou influer de manière malhonnête sur le débat politique. La plupart de ces comptes visaient les internautes de plusieurs pays d’Afrique subsaharienne (Togo, Angola, Nigeria, Niger…), (...)

    #Facebook #manipulation #Archimedes #publicité

    ##publicité

  • Una adolescente se suicida después de que la mayoría de sus seguidores en Instagram votaran que se quitara la vida - RT
    https://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/314884-malasia-joven-quitar-vida-resultados-instagram

    Una adolescente se suicidó en Malasia después de realizar una encuesta en su cuenta de Instagram preguntando a sus seguidores si tenía que quitarse la vida o no, informa el periódico local Malay Mail.

    La joven, de 16 años, publicó el lunes una historia en la red social con la frase «Realmente importante, ayudadme a elegir D/L», donde D significaba muerte (’death’, en inglés) y L significaba vida (’life’). La mayoría de sus seguidores, el 69 %, votaron por el suicidio.

    La Policía reportó que su cuerpo fue encontrado el lunes por la tarde por un grupo de hombres después de que la menor se lanzara desde un edificio.

    #époque_formidable #réseaux_sociaux

  • Facebook Opens a Command Post to Thwart Election Meddling in Europe
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/05/technology/facebook-opens-a-command-post-to-thwart-election-meddling-in-europe.html

    The social network took the wraps off a special operations center in Dublin ahead of this month’s European Union voting. Inside a large room in Facebook’s European headquarters in Ireland’s capital, about 40 employees sit at rows of desks, many with two computer screens and a sign representing a country in the European Union. Large screens at the front display charts and other information about trends on the social network’s services, including Instagram and the messaging app WhatsApp. In the (...)

    #Facebook #Twitter #algorithme #manipulation #élections #publicité #filtrage

    ##publicité

  • Newberry Library sur Instagram : Even Flat Earthers have to appreciate Townsend’s Patent Folding Globe. . A 19th-century schoolteacher from Vermont, Townsend found it…
    https://www.instagram.com/p/BwuEprhBsme

    A 19th-century schoolteacher from Vermont, Townsend found it difficult to teach his students geography using two dimensional maps, which he claimed offered “a false illustration, and [could] be understood only by a process of reasoning entirely beyond the mind of the child.” To address the problem, he developed his folding globe as an inexpensive alternative to the wall maps prevalent in classrooms.

    #globe

  • Tuesday’s Top Four Tech Reads
    https://hackernoon.com/tuesdays-top-four-tech-reads-af3f5dbf17f2?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

    Read HackerNoon.com today:“The Influencer’s Dilemma” by Nir Kabessa, Noam Levenson and Vernon Johnson [22 min read]“One secret to becoming a great software engineer: read code” by Nemil Dalal [10 min read]“How to hire the best developers” by David Gilbertson [18 min read]“How to prevent embarrassment in AI” by Cassie Kozyrkov [5 min read]Read more top tech stories and latest tech stories.Hacker Noon Excerpts:“The Influencer’s Dilemma” by Nir Kabessa, Noam Levenson and Vernon Johnson [22 min read]Imagine two Miami club promoters, Brett and Vegas, have 10,000 Instagram followers each and are competing for the attention of partygoers. Since their businesses strongly depend on social metrics, each of them would gain from having more followers than the other (+2) and would lose from having less (-2). Every (...)

    #tech-tuesday #top-tech-stories #top-technology-stories #tuesday-tech-reads #technology

  • 5 #instagram Marketing Trends #micro-influencers Must Be Aware of
    https://hackernoon.com/5-instagram-marketing-trends-micro-influencers-must-be-aware-of-a57fbf68

    If you’re known in your Instagram niche as an authority, you know how hard it is to build up that reputation. It takes constant, consistent hard work. It takes a willingness to do the small things. And it takes an eye for content that people love.Image SourceBeing a relevant, high-engagement micro-influencer is a full-time job.You may be doing great right now, you could do even better if you take advantage of some of these trends that are changing the face of Instagram.Are you ready to take the next step? These are the trends you need to know about.1. Consistent Engagement Driving Organic GrowthIf you want to build up your follows, the easiest and quickest way to do it is to start liking posts so you show up in people’s feeds. With 4.2 billion likes a day, Instagram has engagement in (...)

    #stories #social-media #influencer-marketing

  • Playing With Yourself: The Power of Personal Projects
    https://hackernoon.com/playing-with-yourself-the-power-of-personal-projects-206047344121?source

    7 Node Raspberry Pi SkyMiner — https://www.hackster.io/nick-engmann/56f3cb“Please pray for my son,” is my mother’s go-to phrase whenever she comes to visit my condo in San Diego. My home lab is strung up with a web of audio, visual, and power cords. Wandering eyes will find themselves crossing resistors, soldering irons, microcontrollers, drones, robot pets, and even more robot pets. It’s certainly no surprise why she’s a little worried. My mother’s opinion aside; in the developer community, personal projects can be seen as ways to reinforce bad practices and a poor investment of time and money. Even I notice that my Instagram posts on wire organization might be misconstrued as a red flag. But I believe the personal projects I’ve made have helped me become a better, creative, and more (...)

    #programming #hackernoon-top-story #raspberry-pi #playing-with-yourself #mesh-networks

  • 5 Tools to Help You Get More #instagram Followers in 2019
    https://hackernoon.com/5-tools-to-help-you-get-more-instagram-followers-in-2019-2a653ce6b09f?so

    Everyone knows that having a lot of followers on Instagram is seen as a good thing, whether that’s for visibility, reach, authority or even your own personal pride.Most importantly, though, follower count provides you with social proof. Visitors see your follower count and make a judgment about your product or service.But it’s hard to get followers. Between algorithm changes and the number of businesses already on Instagram, it’s difficult to stand out and expand your following. There are a few things you should already be doing in order to grow your following:Optimize Your BioOptimizing your bio is a great way to stand out from the crowd. Once potential followers see your profile picture and name, the next thing they’re going to look for is your bio. By adding a strong call-to-action and (...)

    #social-media #social-media-marketing #instagram-marketing #influencer-marketing

  • The Programmable Self
    https://hackernoon.com/the-programmable-self-e816dc005f9b?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

    Why there’s always somewhere better to be“It’s hot. It’s loud. Goddamn this mariachi band to hell!” I thought to myself while waiting on the New York City subway platform.My mind sought separation from my body. They couldn’t stand to be together. And so I put on my headphones and scrolled through Instagram until, gradually, my consciousness was taken somewhere else — somewhere better.New Yorkers love Instagram. I love tacos and thought my drawings might too.I sometimes wonder, if you live in New York City, but 95% of the time you are on Instagram — are you ever really in New York City?Sure the body is in New York, but that magic alchemy of human sensation that infuses you with awareness, and empathy, is overridden by #technology. The present is programmed, with my consent, by whoever writes the app (...)

    #programmable-self #life #internet #social-media

  • Lily Liu on #bitcoin Rationalism
    https://hackernoon.com/lily-liu-on-bitcoin-rationalism-ad7c45050aeb?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3-

    Audio interview transcription — WBD081Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Lily Liu. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.You can subscribe to the podcast and listen to all episodes here.In this episode, I talk with the founder of Earn.com, Lily Liu. We discuss Silicon Valley and how funds approach investing in Crypto and what they don’t understand about it. We also talk about Bitcoin Rationalism and what that means to Lily.https://medium.com/media/4aae0608dfbbc86f4b1acc0aa74499f0/hrefConnect with What Bitcoin Did:Listen: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | TuneInFollow: Website | Email | Blog | Twitter | Medium | Instagram | YouTubeInterview (...)

    #silicon-valley #venture-capital

  • Hacking #instagram: How Vince Van Meer Grew A #fashion Influencer Empire
    https://hackernoon.com/hacking-instagram-how-vince-van-meer-grew-a-fashion-influencer-empire-e6

    A picture of Vince Van MeerLet’s face it, if you are trying to grow a brand today, then Instagram is a must. No other social media site has a combination of aesthetics, reach, and positive perception as Instagram does (it has even escaped its parent company Facebook’s PR disaster over the past year). You could find all the negatives that you want about social media like how it is addicting and how we compare ourselves too much on it, but the matter of fact is that we are on it and it has become intertwined with our real lives much more than people want to give credit for.From this, a new class of young entrepreneurs has risen to take advantage of this new cyber landscape of business opportunities. One of them is the 23-year-old Dutchman Vince Van Meer who at one point had six different (...)

    #hacking-instagram #instagram-hack #social-media

  • Jed McCaleb on the Creation of Mt. Gox
    https://hackernoon.com/jed-mccaleb-on-the-creation-of-mt-gox-85645521eabf?source=rss----3a8144e

    Audio interview transcription — WBD075Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Jed McCaleb from Interstellar. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.You can subscribe to the podcast and listen to all episodes here.The first part of my series of interviews relating to Mt. Gox. I talk with Jed McCaleb from #stellar about the creation of Mt. Gox, the handover to Mark Karpelès and what responsibility he shares for its collapse.https://medium.com/media/eb030edcfd736584202e101762b54951/hrefConnect with What #bitcoin Did:Listen: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | TuneInFollow: Website | Email | Blog | Twitter | Medium | Instagram | YouTubeInterview (...)

    #mtgox #ripple

  • Reflecting on Mt. Gox with Andy Pag
    https://hackernoon.com/reflecting-on-mt-gox-with-andy-pag-d68cac57cba6?source=rss----3a8144eabf

    Audio interview transcription — WBD080Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with reported, Andy Pag. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.You can subscribe to the podcast and listen to all episodes here.In the final part of my series of interviews relating to Mt. Gox, I talk with Andy Pag, creator and elected administrator of Mt. Gox Legal. We reflect on my conversations, the history of what happened between Jed and Mark, CoinLab and Brock Pierce.https://medium.com/media/6344a744c066d53c9274927d36ce8108/hrefConnect with What #bitcoin Did:Listen: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | TuneInFollow: Website | Email | Blog | Twitter | Medium | Instagram | (...)

    #mtgox

  • Mark Karpelès on the Collapse of Mt. Gox
    https://hackernoon.com/mark-karpel%C3%A8s-on-the-collapse-of-mt-gox-3568c2a86f9b?source=rss----

    Audio interview transcription — WBD076Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Mark Karpeles, the ex-CEO of Mt. Gox. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.You can subscribe to the podcast and listen to all episodes here.In the second part of my series of interviews relating to Mt. Gox, I talk with Mark Karpelès, the CEO of the now bankrupt #bitcoin exchange. We discuss how he acquired the site, how it was hacked and who is responsible for its collapse.https://medium.com/media/086079234ee9ad258a3277e2178d74f7/hrefConnect with What Bitcoin Did:Listen: iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | TuneInFollow: Website | Email | Blog | Twitter | Medium | Instagram | (...)

    #mtgox

  • #snax Announces Main Net Launch
    https://hackernoon.com/snax-main-net-launch-86577f2d5b03?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

    On the 4th of April this year, after months of beta testing, Snax will be launching the main network.What is Snax?Snax is a public #blockchain with a Delegated Proof of Stake consensus.Snax chain provides you with an ability to send tokens to your friends using their Social Network account names, even if they haven’t joined Snax network yet.Snax also rewards people for the social attention they receive for their content (tweets, Instagram posts, and so on) on already existing public platforms.All major social networks and messengers are now hiring blockchain experts because they want to have cryptocurrencies for their networks, and Snax is beating them to the market.Staying on your social networkSnax blockchain is seamlessly integrated into existing social media networks, you can send (...)

    #cryptocurrency #social-media

  • State Controlled #internet: The Story About VPNs in #china
    https://hackernoon.com/state-controlled-internet-the-story-about-vpns-in-china-a16ee6de5ec7?sou

    Censorship is closely related to politics. The annual global ranking of Internet freedom clearly illustrates this dependence. States that violate human rights also block undesirable websites or block access to the global network.Only 13 of the 65 countries analyzed by the Freedom House researchers do not interfere with the information freedom of their citizens. Most of the rest of the world’s Internet users can access blocked websites only via #vpn services. Residents of China have hard times with this as the hunt for unlicensed VPNs has recently increased there.Chronology of restrictionsBack in 2008, YouTube was blocked in China. A year later in 2009, Facebook, Twitter, and all Google services were blocked. In 2014, access to Instagram was blocked. Chinese authorities said that all (...)

    #privacy #hackernoon-top-story

  • Juan Guaidó, sur Instagram, lance une Opération Liberté, phase de pression maximum et appelle à la constitution dans tout le pays de «  Comités Aide et Liberté  ».
    _Nous devons réussir à associer l’action internationale à la prise de la rue et au refus de collaboration des forces de sécurité et de l’armée.

    Llegó el momento de prepararnos para ejecutar la #OperaciónLibertad, la fase máxima de presión para lograr el cese definitivo de la…
    https://www.instagram.com/jguaido/p/BvaHJR-HQpx

    Llegó el momento de prepararnos para ejecutar la #OperaciónLibertad, la fase máxima de presión para lograr el cese definitivo de la usurpación.

    No nos van a distraer con ollas montadas y nuestros perseguidos nos lo han dicho claramente «no nos detengamos».

    Debemos lograr que la acción internacional se una a la toma de las calles, que la administración pública, las fuerzas de seguridad del Estado y la Fuerza Armada Nacional no colaboren con la dictadura y se unan al clamor del pueblo venezolano y exijan también el cese definitivo de la usurpación.

    Desde cada calle, avenida y espacio de trabajo vamos a movilizarnos, a presionar y no cooperar con la dictadura, contando con todos los sectores trabajando juntos a favor de la ayuda humanitaria y de poder pasar al gobierno de transición que permita unas elecciones libres.

    Para alcanzar esta meta, estamos conformando los Comités de Ayuda de Libertad en todos los espacios. Tendrán la tarea de impulsar en cada zona, sector, sindicato, instituto educativo, organismo público las acciones políticas, sociales y comunitarias para lograr el cese de la usurpación.

    Estamos construyendo las capacidades necesarias, movilizando masivamente a los ciudadanos y comunicando los mensajes y líneas de acción.

    Pronto iniciará el proceso de contacto para que todos nos sumemos activamente a la #OperaciónLibertad. Todos, absolutamente todos, tenemos un rol en esta etapa de nuestra lucha.
    _
    ¡Vamos pa’lante! ¡Vamos Venezuela!

  • Top oil firms spending millions lobbying to block climate change policies, says report

    Ad campaigns hide investment in a huge expansion of oil and gas extraction, says InfluenceMap.

    The largest five stock market listed oil and gas companies spend nearly $200m (£153m) a year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change, according to a new report.

    #Chevron, #BP and #ExxonMobil were the main companies leading the field in direct lobbying to push against a climate policy to tackle global warming, the report said.

    Increasingly they are using social media to successfully push their agenda to weaken and oppose any meaningful legislation to tackle global warming.

    In the run-up to the US midterm elections last year $2m was spent on targeted Facebook and Instagram ads by global oil giants and their industry bodies, promoting the benefits of increased fossil fuel production, according to the report published on Friday by InfluenceMap (https://influencemap.org/report/How-Big-Oil-Continues-to-Oppose-the-Paris-Agreement-38212275958aa21196).

    Separately, BP donated $13m to a campaign, also supported by Chevron, that successfully stopped a carbon tax in Washington state – $1m of which was spent on social media ads, the research shows.
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    Edward Collins, the report’s author, analysed corporate spending on lobbying, briefing and advertising, and assessed what proportion was dedicated to climate issues.

    He said: “Oil majors’ climate branding sounds increasingly hollow and their credibility is on the line. They publicly support climate action while lobbying against binding policy. They advocate low-carbon solutions but such investments are dwarfed by spending on expanding their fossil fuel business.”

    After the Paris climate agreement in 2015 the large integrated oil and gas companies said they supported a price on carbon and formed groups like the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative which promote voluntary measures.

    But, the report states, there is a glaring gap between their words and their actions.

    The five publicly listed oil majors – ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP and Total – now spend about $195m a year on branding campaigns suggesting they support action against climate change.

    But the report said these campaigns were misleading the public about the extent of the oil companies’ actions because while publicly endorsing the need to act, they are massively increasing investment in a huge expansion of oil and gas extraction. In 2019 their spending will increase to $115bn, with just 3% of that directed at low carbon projects.

    Shell said in a statement: “We firmly reject the premise of this report. We are very clear about our support for the Paris agreement, and the steps that we are taking to help meet society’s needs for more and cleaner energy.

    “We make no apology for talking to policymakers and regulators around the world to make our voice heard on crucial topics such as climate change and how to address it.”

    Chevron said it disagreed with the report’s findings. “Chevron is taking prudent, cost-effective actions and is committed to working with policymakers to design balanced and transparent greenhouse gas emissions reductions policies that address environmental goals and ensure consumers have access to affordable, reliable and ever cleaner energy.”

    The successful lobbying and direct opposition to policy measures to tackle global warming have hindered governments globally in their efforts to implement policies after the Paris agreement to meet climate targets and keep warming below 1.5C.

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/mar/22/top-oil-firms-spending-millions-lobbying-to-block-climate-change-polici
    #lobby #climat #changement_climatique #pétrole #industrie_du_pétrole #rapport

  • Facebook stored hundreds of millions of passwords unprotected
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/21/facebook-admits-passwords-unprotected

    Facebook mistakenly stored “hundreds of millions” of passwords in plaintext, unprotected by any encryption, the company has admitted. The mistake, which led to user passwords being kept in Facebook’s internal servers in an insecure way, affects “hundreds of millions of Facebook Lite users, tens of millions of other Facebook users, and tens of thousands of Instagram users”, according to the social networking site. Facebook Lite is a version of Facebook created for use in nations where mobile (...)

    #Facebook #données

    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/29e9ff1463be05fb947bcee875c35d2345431154/0_276_4134_2480/master/4134.jpg