The real consequences of Patreon’s adult content crackdown

NSFW Warning: This story may contain links to and descriptions or images of explicit sexual acts.

On October 17th, crowdfunding website Patreon amended the terms of its acceptable use policy as part of a wider program of reform. The new document was now much more proscriptive about what the site’s users could and could not use its payments platform for. Beyond tightening provisions around hate speech and illegal content, the site essentially banned sex workers and adult content of a sexual nature. Patreon had always described itself as “not for pornography” but offered a broad latitude for projects that contained erotic content, and the change has caused much upset in the community that produces such material.

Despite Patreon’s claims to the contrary, the site has clearly backed pornographers and sex workers in their projects. In 2016, the site very publicly enabled users to receive donations through PayPal subsidiary Braintree after a long battle with the e-commerce provider. It even emailed its adult content creators (a copy is available here), telling them that “as a company we are not happy with [PayPal’s] lack of transparency since it impacts the livelihoods of Adult Content creators.” Now, sex workers feel betrayed.

In her Open Letter to Patreon, artist Liara Roux describes that sense of betrayal, since Patreon had previously made moves to openly court sex workers. The artist even claims that the site offered tips on how adult content creators could use Patreon to fund movies and create websites to “reliably deliver rewards to our patrons.” The letter, at the time of writing, had around 250 signatures from creators who feel that their livelihoods are now under threat.

Based on public information, so far the signers on https://t.co/d1FNYAKCiE collectively have 46101 patrons representing $152,744 in income*

— Liara Roux (@LiaraRoux) October 27, 2017

Patreon’s revised document not only excised references to erotic art, however, but also included a number of new provisions related to sex work. These included forbidding the use of Patreon donations to produce pornographic material, maintain an adults-only website or solicit money in exchange for a private webcam session. All of which were apparently endorsed by Patreon previously, and are key mechanisms to enable sex workers to get paid.

An excerpt from Patreon’s previous policy that permitted sexual imagery.

Roux told Engadget that Patreon’s stance has caused a great deal of nervousness for the sex workers and artists who use the platform. “They can’t say they run a platform for niche artists and freedom of expression,” Roux said, “and also arbitrarily decide what is and is not ‘acceptable’ adult content.” The artist feels that any trust between the community and Patreon has now broken down as a result of the policy change. “The PayPal thing was huge,” said Roux. “It was definitely a big part of them gaining our trust.”

The only way that Roux can envisage Patreon becoming a trusted brand again is if the site says that it will welcome adult content and pornography onto its platform, even if that means placing it in a hidden, adults-only section. “It’s going to be very hard to believe them,” she added. “I’ve worked with them in the past on revising my portfolio, and they just changed the game again.”

The fallout from Patreon’s decision may mean that performers lose their entire income stream, since there are so few available options. “There are reasons porn is dominated by big companies,” Roux explained. “It’s very hard work to start your own site and start using a porn-safe [credit card] processor which is why you usually only see it from big stars.” Patreon, she said, “was that niche platform where those just starting out could still find their audience.” And there are very few alternatives available to those people who do not have the initial backing to launch such an enterprise.

Patreon’s policy was expanded as the result of controversy the site found itself mired in over the summer. In July, Patreon was forced to suspend a number of accounts that it found had violated its content policies. Lauren Southern and the members of Defend Europe had their pages shut down after using pledged cash to attempt to block efforts to save refugees. Not long after, Patreon also withdrew funding to It’s Going Down, a hardline left-wing news website.

In response to the backlash, Patreon CEO Jack Conte was prompted to post an explanation to YouTube. Conte explained that Southern and her colleagues “directly obstructed a search and rescue ship in the Mediterranean,” a violation of the rules on threatening or harming others. Southern denied her involvement in the project, but Conte used footage Southern herself filmed to back his claim. Similarly, It’s Going Down was suspended for doxing — the practice of publishing an individual’s address and phone number online — and advocating a number of property crimes like “pouring concrete over railway tracks.”

“The authority to take away a person’s income is a sobering responsibility and it is not something to be done on a whim.” —Patreon CEO Jack Conte

“We didn’t properly invest in an external communications plan,” said Conte, explaining Patreon’s alleged lack of transparency. The CEO said that while the decision to take down the accounts was the right thing to do, failure to communicate that properly was not. The company affirmed that it would hire more human moderators in its Trust and Safety team, develop an appeals process and improve policy education. Conte even ends the video with the line “The authority to take away a person’s income is a sobering responsibility and it is not something to be done on a whim.”

On October 18th, Patreon legal chief Colin Sullivan posted a lengthy essay in which he talked about “taking a clearer stance on some fringe areas of adult content.” Sullivan specifically mentioned taboo, illegal topics like incest, bestiality, sexual depiction of minors and aggressive sexual violence. But there is a disconnect between Sullivan and Conte’s stance and the revised policy that was made available, because the new policy expressly bans activity that the site has previously had no issue with, as outlined in the penultimate paragraph in the relevant section:

“Lastly, you cannot sell pornographic material or arrange sexual service(s) as a reward for your patrons. You can’t use Patreon to raise funds in order to produce pornographic material such as maintaining a website, funding the production of movies, or providing a private webcam session.” —Patreon’s revised guidelines

But as Motherboard’s Lux Alptraum wrote back in 2016, a long-standing problem for creators has been Patreon’s equivocation on what pornography actually is. The shorthand for what constitutes pornography in the United States comes from Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, in the 1964 case Jacobellis v. Ohio. The justice, when describing what constitutes pornography, famously said, “I know it when I see it.”

Motherboard’s report even drew attention to Four Chambers, which describes itself as “part art project, part erotica cinemascope” and would certainly constitute pornography in the eyes of plenty of folks. And yet, at the time, the page was apparently considered safe enough to remain. (Alptraum joked that the page “apparently gets a pass because the hard cocks and penetration are arty.”)

We sat down with a Patreon spokesperson who declined to be named for the purposes of this interview. That person reiterated that “any kind of porn has never been allowed on Patreon.” So why has the site, for so long, been silently (and sometimes vocally) accepting of accounts related to sex work? The spokesperson explained that Patreon’s Trust and Safety team does not go “scraping the site” looking for accounts to suspend, and relies upon user-based referrals.

“The TL;DR is that if what you were doing before was okay, then probably what you’re continuing to do is okay. And if what you’re doing is in too much of a gray area, then we’ll be reaching out.” —Patreon spokesperson

Instead, the company has doubled its Trust and Safety team and has provided the email address guidelines@patreon.com for creators concerned that they now violate the rules. “Let me be clear,” said Patreon’s spokesperson. “We’re not kicking off a bunch of creators en masse. Instead, we’re telling creators that there are things about their pages that need to be updated.” The spokesperson added that any creator who really is “concerned about how it’s going to affect their page and career, just reach out to us. It’s an open invitation.”

Engadget presented Patreon’s representative with pages* that, while adult in nature, violate only the new terms of service. One adult performer uses her account to create “sexy content for her fans.” In addition, one of the reward tiers offered “personalized sexy pictures” and “access to a secret Instagram account.” Higher-tier members were offered a “10 minute live webcam session, through Skype, once per month.”

Interestingly, even though this account appears to violate both the conditions for pornography and using webcam sessions as an incentive, the spokesperson didn’t feel like that the account would likely be deleted. That stance cannot be taken as a blanket statement that providers have nothing to fear, but also that the definitions are fuzzy. Because Patreon doesn’t appear to have a strict definition of what constitutes pornography, it may be that the accounts affected are an order of magnitude smaller than it would appear.

The spokesperson also tried to reassure creators by saying that “the TL;DR is that if what you were doing before was okay, then probably what you’re continuing to do is okay. And if what you’re doing is in too much of a gray area, then we’ll be reaching out.” As before, the spokesperson added, if users are worried, they can contact the company at the aforementioned email address to receive “personalized guidance” about “what you need to do to make sure your page can stay up.”

Despite Patreon’s reassurances, the content creators now find themselves concerned that their livelihood could be stopped at any point. Girl on the Net is the pseudonym for a British sex blogger who uses Patreon to fund a project creating “audio erotica.” The effort, which began as a way of enabling people with visual impairments to enjoy sexual content, has been running for less than six months. In that time, “the money I made from it meant that I could dedicate time to making a different, more accessible kind of erotic art,” the blogger said. She added that she was “using Patreon exactly the way it was intended: to fund art for people who were interested in that kind of art.”

The future of the audio erotica project now rests on whether Patreon judges it to be porn or erotica. Girl on the Net explained that, while this was a side project for her, “some of my colleagues have used Patreon to build a large platform or make a full-time living, and made Patreon a significant chunk of cash in the process.” The blogger posed the question “We have to wonder how many platforms have to censor sex before we say enough is enough. How much of it has to disappear before you start to notice?”

There is a prolonged history of direct and indirect violence carried out toward the sex work community. As Liara Roux explains, “the people who are going to have the most trouble working with them will be the most vulnerable.” She believes that Patreon’s decision threatens “vulnerable people,” including those who are “queer, trans and people of color,” who are often the ones most in need of the resources to build their own platforms to produce content.

In the UK, a law banning the practice of “kerb crawling” — driving a car slowly along the road for the purposes of solicitation — has had disastrous consequences. A 2002 report by The Guardian found that sex workers in the city of Sheffield previously operated in a well-lit, non-residential street with CCTV cameras. But a crackdown on prostitution forced the sex workers to move to a poorly lit industrial estate with no security cameras. There was a commensurate spike in violent attacks and murder.

There is a similar program of antagonism against sex work in the online space. Financial institutions like PayPal, JPMorgan Chase, Visa, Mastercard and Square have all sought to eradicate commerce undertaken by sex workers. Our 2015 report on the issue found that the process of redlining — a banking practice used to block service to black and Latino people, which was outlawed in 1968 — is alive and well online.

As a key conduit between the traditional banking providers and the internet, PayPal has a big say in how e-commerce is conducted online. Its acceptable use policy prohibits the purchase of items that it considers to be “obscene,” such as sex toys and other adult paraphernalia. In addition, users cannot use the service to buy “sexually oriented materials or services.” That’s why Patreon’s victory enabling payments from the platform was such a big deal back in 2016.

That 2nd to last paragraph is Patreon beginning its sex censorship against artists in a big way. MANY affected. Series C capitulation, much? https://t.co/qhoKIcZeLw

—Violent Boo ® 🎃 (@violetblue) October 23, 2017

Adam Grayson, CFO of the hardcore porn company Evil Angel, feels that there is a disproportionate amount of discrimination against the industry. “I would be more surprised if Patreon didn’t take this stance,” he told Engadget. “The financial industry always, almost without fail, discriminates against sex industries, legal or not. The time and energy our company puts into securing our basic banking needs is mind-blowing. And we’re a pretty boring taxpaying employer which just happens to sell pornography.”

On October 25th, Patreon published a response to Liara Roux’s Open Letter, written by CEO Jack Conte. The CEO says that it “broke” his “heart” that the creators who signed the letter “expressed fear for their pages.” Conte then reiterated that the site’s position has not changed beyond a firmer restriction on the aforementioned illegal content. Conte again justified the action, saying that Patreon has always restricted pornography on its platform and added that the policy would soon include restrictions on “real people engaging in sexual acts, such as masturbation or sexual intercourse on camera.”

“The financial industry always, almost without fail, discriminates against sex industries, legal or not.” —Evil Angel CFO Adam Grayson

There does seem to be some dissonance between Patreon’s stance, which is to restrict adult content, and the statements it is making. It claims to support creators and to not want to block accounts, but at the same time, it seems impossible that any sex worker or erotic artist can remain on the platform with the current policy framework.

The affected users remain unconvinced and posted a rebuttal to Conte’s letter shortly after his note was published. The group believes that Conte’s email has, if anything, made the situation worse than it already was. “We are sorry to hear that the way his company has handled our community ‘bugs’ him, but it’s hard for us to have empathy for those in power while we are fighting simply to be heard, create and survive.” Later, the group charged that “Patreon is saying that they believe sex workers unable to change or censor their work to fit new requirements should lose their income and that legal expressions of sexual creativity do not have a home on their platform.”

“This email exemplifies the mentality of Patreon and other tech companies that their image, perhaps to investors or banking partners, is more important than the wellbeing of the legal content creators who rely on Patreon as a source of income and one of the only “safe” spaces for us.”

*Engadget received assurance that pages discussed in the conversation would not be flagged to the Trust and Safety team, and we will not publish those specific addresses in this report.

Great, now there’s ‘responsible encryption’

Trump’s Department of Justice is trying to get a do-over with its campaign to get backdoors onto iPhones and into secure messaging services. The policy rebrand even has its own made-up buzzword. They’re calling it “responsible encryption.”

After Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein introduced the term in his speech to the U.S. Naval Academy, most everyone who read the transcript was doing spit-takes at their computer monitors. From hackers and infosec professionals to attorneys and tech journalists, “responsible encryption” sounded like a marketing plan to sell unsweetened sugar to diabetics.

Government officials — not just in the U.S. but around the world — have always been cranky that they can’t access communications that use end-to-end encryption, whether that’s Signal or the kind of encryption that protects an iPhone. The authorities are vexed, they say, because encryption without a backdoor impedes law enforcement investigations, such as when terrorist acts occur.

However, backdooring encryption is not the same as wiretapping. There’s no way for law enforcement to be specific about its “lawful surveillance.” Because of the way you’d have to break the end-to-end encryption, bulk data collection would be the only type of access possible. If the authorities were viewed as an attacker on a network, this could be called giving them “persistent access.”

Maybe that’s why Senators Ron Wyden and Rand Paul just introduced a bill prohibiting the Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence from asking for technical assistance (from companies) to crack phones unless it’s in very limited circumstances. Infosec chatter believes this bill suggests Wyden is worried the feds will use the FISA process — requests for surveillance warrants — to force companies to make technical changes (as in, adding backdoors).

They’re not the only ones in Washington who think “responsible encryption” and its torch-bearers are suspect. “Look, it’s real simple. Encryption is good for our national security; it’s good for our economy. We should be strengthening encryption, not weakening it. And it’s technically impossible to have strong encryption with any kind of backdoor,” said Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), when asked about Rosenstein’s proposal for responsible encryption at The Atlantic’s Cyber Frontier event in Washington, D.C.

Still, the problem with backdooring encrypted platforms is that they are no longer secure or private. And as we see every week in the news about everything cyber, if there’s a backdoor, the “bad guys” will find it and use it long before the so-called good guys know what’s happened. It also really, really doesn’t help that, right now, Trump’s “cyber czar” can’t even be bothered to show up to work.

Not to mention the little problem of surveillance and investigatory overreach we see regularly from government agencies (historically a la the NSA) and recently thanks to the Trump administration.

When we had arguments about encryption with our government agencies during the Obama administration, it was FBI director James Comey versus the world, and despite the issue being fairly straightforward about security, the blame was put on privacy advocates.

The tone for that pro-backdoor influence campaign was set in 2015 when CIA Director John Brennan gave a press conference saying multi-department information gathering operations — who need their encryption backdoors — were “hampered” by concerns about privacy. He blamed public “hand-wringing” over its surveillance programs as an obstacle to catching the bad guys.

The DOJ’s rebranding, by way of DAG Rosenstein this month, is like a Silicon Valley startup’s pivot that hopes doublespeak will help them win the war. By saying that there’s such a thing as “responsible encryption,” we’re led to believe that there’s such a thing as “irresponsible encryption.”

It’s like if Facebook said they practice “responsible privacy” (or “responsible democracy” for that matter). Think of it like Backwards Day. Here, encryption that is responsible is broken, and irresponsible companies and developers and apps are the ones who are running correctly implemented, secure encryption.

Rosenstein said:

Responsible encryption is achievable. Responsible encryption can involve effective, secure encryption that allows access only with judicial authorization.

It looks like Rosenstein was just warming us up for what came next. This week press reported that FBI Director Christopher Wray said “the FBI hasn’t been able to retrieve data from more than half of the mobile devices it tried to access in less than a year” AP wrote:

In the first 11 months of the fiscal year, federal agents were unable to access the content of more than 6,900 mobile devices.

“To put it mildly, this is a huge, huge problem,” Wray said. “It impacts investigations across the board — narcotics, human trafficking, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, gangs, organized crime, child exploitation.”

Wow, press noted, 7,000 devices seems like a lot. It’s too bad the FBI Director failed to include some fascinating facts. For instance, that requests from law enforcement to crack open encrypted phones actually doubled in the last half of last year.

When the “responsible encryption” groundwork was laid by Rosenstein, infosec Twitter erupted in its usual mix of laughter and disgust. Some called it dangerous, if not just reckless. Tech press called “responsible encryption” a myth. Naturally the EFF had some things to say, most hilariously that “Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein’s “Responsible Encryption” Demand is Bad and He Should Feel Bad.”

Rod Rosenstein was one of Trump’s handpicked appointees. As the deputy attorney general, he’s in a crucial position at the head of the investigation into alleged connections between the Trump administration and Russia. He was also the guy whose three-page memo was reportedly pivotal to Trump’s decision to fire former FBI director James Comey — Rosenstein wrote that Comey must be removed if the agency hoped to “regain public and congressional trust.”

Trump, as we know, is not a fan of encryption, whatever he seems to actually understand about it. When the FBI-Apple-iPhone encryption issue was brought to his attention, Trump insisted the company should be forced to comply with the FBI, or be punished with a boycott. “I think it’s disgraceful that Apple is not helping on that. I think security first, and I feel — I always felt security first. Apple should absolutely — we should force them to do it,” he said.

Like “going dark” — another buzzword pair used in the government’s agenda to break encryption — I’ll bet “responsible encryption” will be taken seriously (it shouldn’t) and find its way into an executive order. Because if ever we lived in a time when Backwards Day was every day, that time is now.

Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto (Hooded hacker); Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images (Rosenstein)

Twitter’s new hate and violence policies go into effect November 22nd

Just a couple of weeks ago, Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey responded to the #WomenBoycotTwitter movement on his company’s microblogging platform with a promise to help Twitter “take a more aggressive stance” toward hate speech and sexual harassment. A few days after that, an internal email showed that the company was taking the promises seriously and widening its crackdown on violent groups and abusive content. The company just tweeted that its new policies will launch on November 22nd.

We will now launch our policies on violent groups and hateful imagery and hate symbols on Nov 22. During the development process, we received valuable feedback that we’re implementing before these are published and enforced. See more on our policy development process here 👇 https://t.co/wx3EeH39BI

— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 27, 2017

The company began its recent process with a calendar of updates to their policies against sexual harassment, hate groups, and violent images. The policy changes include an expanded definition of non-consensual nudity to include content where the victim may not even be aware of the images taken, as with hidden webcams. Hateful imagery will no longer be permitted in avatars or profile headers.

Twitter also posted a blog post to help explain why it’s taking so long to create the policies themselves. In addition, the company posted new policies prohibiting the posting of private information, the definition of which may vary based on local laws. Twitter attempts to define private as credit card information, social security or other national ID numbers, private home addresses and non-public personal phone numbers and email addresses. It also defines non-private information as your name, birthdate or age, business address, where you go to school or work, and descriptions of your appearance.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey summed up his company’s recent work in this arena in a tweet, as well, with a link to the privacy policies mentioned above. “More clarity on our private information policy and enforcement. Working to build as much direct context into the product too.”

Source: Twitter

Kinect’s value to artists overshadowed its gaming roots

The Kinect is officially dead. But the reality is that Microsoft signed the do-all sensor’s fate years ago. Faced with slumping hardware sales in 2014, then-new Xbox chief Phil Spencer had a decision to make. Either Microsoft would drop the price of the Xbox One, or continue letting Sony and the $400 PlayStation 4 eat its lunch. So it stopped bundling the Kinect with the console and cut $100 off the asking price.

It worked. Microsoft doubled sales the next month, and this move has set the tone for Spencer’s tenure: reversing the string of bad decisions Microsoft made leading up to Xbox One’s debut. To illustrate the sensor’s waning importance to Microsoft, the Xbox One S didn’t have a dedicated Kinect port on the back when it was released in 2016. It’s the same with the upcoming Xbox One X except Microsoft isn’t offering a free USB adapter anymore. The writing has been on the wall for awhile now. If this week’s news was surprising, you probably haven’t been paying attention.

The truth is that Kinect’s greatest successes had nothing to do with gaming. Hackers adopted the sensor with open arms, using it for everything from interactive art installations to motion capture and even trippy stage shows for massive bands like Nine Inch Nails. Why? Because for the tech that’s on board, Kinect was relatively inexpensive and easy to use.

“It’s become the standard for interactive art because it’s affordable,” Rob Sheridan, NIN’s former art director told Engadget. “That’s the best gift you can give someone who has a vision of something creative.”

He compared the sensor and Microsoft’s quasi-open source approach to it to the advent of digital video at the turn of the century, and how that democratized video editing and production. “People can create interactive art in their bedroom now, and that’s something that everybody remembers as an important milestone in moving a creative medium forward.”

Two years prior to the Kinect’s 2010 debut, NIN went out on the road for its Lights in the Sky tour. The stage production featured all manner of high-tech toys including giant “touch screen” LED curtains and video screens. The problem was, it was all proprietary software and hardware from entertainment company Moment Factory, and as such the sensors and screens around the stage were a bit kludgy. NIN shows are far from relaxing; sweat and artificial fog are everywhere, and both make a mess.

Sheridan said there were “numerous” times where the sensors placed around the stage would need to be cleaned during a performance because they weren’t working right. That’d lead to the notoriously meticulous Reznor getting pissed off because the pantomiming he was doing wasn’t translating to the audience.

For 2013’s tour, things were different. NIN partnered with Moment Factory again, but instead of home-made gear, the production company had a simpler solution. “All of the clunky hardware they labored over so hard to get to work was now [replaced with] ‘Oh, just plug a Kinect in,” Sheridan said.

He used the sensors extensively as a way to capture the band’s shadows, and to digitally manipulate the silhouettes on rollable LED panels. Each panel had a Kinect mounted to it and as the setlist went on, the shadows would get progressively glitchier. With Kinect, the only problems the band encountered was if a cord would get knocked loose. “The difference was mind-blowing,” he recalled.

Independent game developer Mattia Traverso hasn’t designed cutting edge concert productions, but he did make one of Kinect’s best games, last year’s Fru. It has only sold a paltry 10,000 copies, but getting rich off of Microsoft’s sensor was never his goal. “I saw Kinect as a way to experiment and make cool shit,” he said. “We never really thought that we were gonna use Kinect to make money.”

In 2014 he entered a game jam with a few friends, not knowing one of them had a Kinect in his bag. Fru was the result, a game that doesn’t use the sensor’s voice recognition or skeletal tracking tech, but instead takes one player’s silhouette and projects it in-game as a means to bridge gaps or reveal secrets; the player becomes part of the 2D game environment itself. A second player moves a fox-masked girl along (or within) the in-game silhouette to reach platforms that would be otherwise inaccessible. It’s both charming and inventive as hell.

He said that Kinect in general was an interesting premise because of how it brought the human body into digital games. “When you were playing Fru, you were moving and contorting your body. You were balancing on one leg while moving your hands in a way that you would’ve not done in any situation unless you were a yoga master,” he said, laughing.

The problem, Traverso said, is that Microsoft marketed the sensor poorly. He said that when the Xbox One launched, there wasn’t a promise of what Kinect could do aside from control a TV with your voice. If you’re not a game designer, explaining what the Kinect can offer your living room was pretty tough. “That’s why it didn’t work. Nobody could imagine what their Kinect could be.”

“We needed a bigger gestation time to figure out how we could use it to make new kinds of games, and we didn’t necessarily have that. It wasn’t meant to be ‘hey, here’s this cool fucking thing that has so many games!’” he said. “No, it was meant to be ‘you don’t have to think about this as a weird, extra thing, think about this as a thing you use to control your console, like a remote.’”

Essentially, Microsoft positioned the last version of the Kinect as a mouse and once the company changed the Xbox One’s focus from being “the all-in-one games and entertainment system” to just being a video game console, the Kinect had to go.

Traverso wasn’t surprised by this, but he did seem frustrated. Fru garnered plenty of praise from the press and the thousands who played it, but gaining any sort of momentum was hard. “Nobody cared about Kinect anymore because the entity making Kinect was trying to pretend it didn’t exist,” he said. “This was the best business decision for them, but at the same time, my team and I were making a game in a market that the owner of the market was trying to shut down.”

Traverso doesn’t think history will be kind to the Kinect, and that it’ll sit alongside Nintendo’s Virtual Boy as one of gaming’s biggest experimental flops. That’s in part because the vocal minority of hard-core gamers will control the narrative. Since they were fed a steady stream of gimmicky titles, or games that they weren’t used to, they’re going to lash out. The problem is, for every Fantasia: Music Evolved from Rock Band developer Harmonix, there were a handful of clunky mini-game collections like Kinect Sports Rivals. So maybe the anger is justified.

Looking to the future, he hopes some of the Kinect tech like facial recognition keeps popping up elsewhere — like it already has in Instagram, Snapchat and the iPhone X. He proposed that since it’s happening for face filters and without “a crazy NASA-like” device such as Kinect, maybe we aren’t far off from easy silhouette recognition in more places.

“The pessimist in me thinks this technology would just be used for shitty Facebook filters, but I’d love a future where we try to actually make interesting interfaces for using our body,” he said.

Sheridan hopes Microsoft recognizes the impact it has had by opening the Kinect up to everyone, and that Redmond keeps embracing the hacker community moving forward.

He isn’t sure what to make of Microsoft stopping Kinect production, but thinks that ending manufacturing isn’t going to make the device itself extinct. There are countless sensors out in the wild, and plenty more still on Amazon and in Microsoft’s closets. “They might be killing it off as an official product, but I don’t think it’s ever going to die as something that’s beloved in the interactive [art] world,” he said.

Microsoft has said that there’s plenty of Kinect’s technology in HoloLens, too, and that its work on the sensor helped push HoloLens to where it is today. Sheridan has seen Microsoft’s helmet, and while he’s cautious, he thinks it could have a similarly bright future for interactive art.

“I’ve seen where they’re taking [HoloLens] with AR and I feel like if they embrace creativity the same way they did with Kinect, it could be the next Kinect.”

YouTube creators are less likely to lose ad money

YouTube riled its community when its effort to automatically demonetize offensive videos led to an “adpocalypse” that stripped innocent creators of revenue, and it’s taking one of its first big steps toward making amends. The service is pushing an update that should reduce the number of misclassified videos. All told, YouTube expects 30 percent fewer videos that have to make do with limited ads on their way to becoming fully monetized. This should lead to “millions” more videos raking in full income, according to the streaming media giant.

The company knows this won’t necessarily solve everyone’s issues, and that the update might accidentally limit ads on some videos. You should appeal (and thus get a human to review your clip) if that happens, YouTube said. A video’s fate is only final if an appeal fails.

The update comes after YouTube used appeals over the summer to refine the machine learning system that automatically categorizes videos. In theory, the system should continue to improve both as more appeals come in and YouTube itself gets better at determining what constitutes an offensive video. The problem, of course, is that this isn’t much consolation to creators who depend on YouTube for income and lost a significant chunk of money.

Imagine if an algorithm accidentally deprived you of an important paycheck, and you were never going to get all of that money back even with a successful appeal. Wouldn’t you be upset? This underscores the risks of not only relying on AI technology for content screening, but of basing your livelihood around someone else’s video service. A change in code could do real damage to people’s lives, and they may not have much choice but to live with the consequences.

Via: Polygon

Source: YouTube Help Forum

‘Stranger Things’ invades ‘Minecraft’ with new skin packs

Minecraft players who love the upside down of Stranger Things have a new skin pack to acquire. It’s available now in concert with the new season of the hit retro-horror show on Netflix. It looks like the whole cast is represented as a Minecraft character, including Hopper, Mike, Eleven, Dustin, Lucas and Will.

Stick around to the end of that trailer and you’ll see the Minecraft skin for that scary monster from the alternate universe, too. The skin pack is ready for purchase now on all “Bedrock” versions of Minecraft (which means mobile, Windows 10, and Xbox One for now) for $3 or 490 coins in the Minecraft Marketplace.

Source: Minecraft

WhatsApp lets you delete your embarrassing texts, if you’re quick

Have you ever accidentally sent a message on WhatsApp that you wish you hadn’t? Well, starting today, you can delete it — as long as you catch it within the first seven minutes. If you do, however, your recipient will instead see a “This message was deleted” alert.

The feature is called “delete for everyone,” and is essentially an extension of a previous feature that lets you delete messages, but only for yourself. Hence, it was fairly useless if you had just sent a message to the wrong person, as the recipient could still see it. With today’s update, however, when you delete a message, it means that everyone will no longer be able to see it.

That said, this feature only works in the latest update of WhatsApp, and all participants in the conversation must have this latest update for it to work. Seeing as the rollout of this new update is relatively slow, you should probably double check your messages before sending for the time being.

Source: 9to5google

Senator wants more details on Russian Twitter and Facebook accounts

As Twitter and Facebook prepare to attend Senate hearings about Russian interference in the 2016 election, they’re hit with yet more investigative queries. This time, the queries come from California Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is demanding both companies turn over reams of data about the Russian disinformation campaign.

The request specifically asks for information and copies of Russian-linked accounts, pages and ads that were aimed at the U.S. Even though Facebook has already turned over 3,000 of those ads to the government, apparently it did not reveal any of the “organic content” posted by the accounts. Feinstein has requested that content, as well as IP addresses and any potentially identifying information. She also would like copies of the correspondence that Facebook employees have had with these accounts.

Feinstein asked the same of Twitter. She even asked Twitter to turn over direct messages to and from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who reportedly corresponded with Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that the Trump campaign used in 2016. She also wanted information about Guccifer, who was accused of hacking the DNC’s email servers during the election.

Feinstein has given both companies a deadline of November 6th to comply with the request. This will be just five days after both companies have agreed to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding the Russian ads.

Source: Recode

MacRumors Giveaway: Win an iPhone X Case From Casetify

For this week’s giveaway, we’ve teamed up with Casetify to offer MacRumors readers a chance to win a case for the new iPhone X, which is launching on November 3. Casetify has created a whole range of new cases for the iPhone X, including the Essential Snap, Essential Woven, Essential Impact, Essential Skin, and DTLA. All of Casetify’s cases work with the wireless charging feature in the iPhone X.

The four Essential cases are similar in design, but each offers unique features. The Snap Case, priced at $35, is one of Casetify’s slimmest cases and offers a grippy non-matte finish along with basic protection from drops.

The Woven Case, priced at $40 with a card slot and $30 without, holds a couple of credit cards and offers more protection than the Snap Case with a woven fabric back and rubber bumpers at the sides.

Casetify’s Essential Impact Case, priced at $45, is thicker and more protective than other cases, and it’s constructed from a clear shockproof material that lets the design of the iPhone X shine through. The case has a hardshell exterior that’s combined with an impact absorbing layer and a raised bezel around front to protect the screen.

The Essential Skin Case, priced at $25, is Casetify’s most basic and affordable case. It’s slimmer than even the Snap Case at .45mm thick, and offers light protection from drops. Though it’s a thin case, there is a slightly raised lip to protect the iPhone’s camera lens at the back.

The DLTA case line, priced at $49, comes in Sand, Olive, Matte Black, and Maroon. It offers military grade shock protection to keep the glass body of the iPhone X from shattering when dropped, and it has a raised lip to protect the display. It’s 0.8mm thick and is made from a thermoplastic polyurethane that both absorbs shock and makes the iPhone easier to grip.

We have 10 Casetify cases to give away to MacRumors readers, and winners will be able to pick the style and color they like best. To enter to win, use the Rafflecopter widget below and enter an email address. Email addresses will be used solely for contact purposes to reach the winners and send the prizes. You can earn additional entries by subscribing to our weekly newsletter, subscribing to our YouTube channel, following us on Twitter, or visiting the MacRumors Facebook page.

Due to the complexities of international laws regarding giveaways, only U.S. residents who are 18 years or older and Canadian residents (excluding Quebec) who have reached the age of majority in their province or territory are eligible to enter. To offer feedback or get more information on the giveaway restrictions, please refer to our Site Feedback section, as that is where discussion of the rules will be redirected.

a Rafflecopter giveawayThe contest will run from today (October 27) at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time through 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on November 3. The winners will be chosen randomly on November 3 and will be contacted by email. The winners will have 48 hours to respond and provide a shipping address before new winners are chosen.

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Some AT&T and Apple Store Customers Faced Unexpected Delays When Trying to Pre-Order iPhone X

iPhone X pre-orders began at 12:01 a.m. on the West Coast and 3:01 a.m. on the East Coast in the United States, with throngs of Apple customers rushing to purchase the device as quickly as possible in the middle of the night.

While many customers were able to complete their order quickly enough to receive a delivery date of November 3, the day the device launches, some using the AT&T app to pre-order faced unexpected delays of 10 to 15 minutes or longer.

One AT&T subscriber, for example, tweeted screenshots of the app showing that her estimated wait time was 18 minutes until she could pre-order an iPhone X, but once she got down to one minute remaining she lost her position in the virtual queue.

@ATTCares …You care?? I just had to wait 18 min to pre order and then redirects me to the site and makes me wait AGAIN now 30 more min???? pic.twitter.com/2TrgOd47e6

— momof4always (@Bayley4everat20) October 27, 2017

A second AT&T customer Chris tweeted a screenshot of the app saying “there’s been an error tracking your place in line” with a “try again” button. When he tried again, he said he was placed into another 35-minute queue.

What is this @ATT I wait 47 min for the iphone X after a supposedly 15 wait and then I get this message? I’m really dissatisfied right now. pic.twitter.com/agmmIxzYUz

— Christopher Saker (@CJSaker) October 27, 2017

Meanwhile, some customers attempting to pre-order on Apple.com or with the Apple Store app said the storefront remained offline for around 10 to 20 minutes after iPhone X pre-orders officially began.

iPhone X shipping estimates slipped to 2-3 weeks for most models within just 15 minutes, and to 4-5 weeks within 30 minutes, so these hiccups mean that some customers might not receive their iPhone X until early December.

Apple typically underpromises with its shipping estimates, however, so some customers may receive their iPhone X earlier than expected.

A bit of good news is that some customers who received a message from Apple stating they “can’t reach the carrier systems” have received an email with instructions to complete their order for delivery as early as November 3.

iPhone X shipping estimates are now holding steady at 5-6 weeks in the United States.

Related Roundup: iPhone XBuyer’s Guide: iPhone X (Buy Now)
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