Confidence issues: The TechCrunch Sunday Snapshot

THE DAILY CRUNCH SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 27 2016 By Darrell Etherington Sunday Snapshot 11/27/16 Confidence issues: The "fake news" saga continues, and this week we saw two examples of just how damaging it can be when media outlets either pick up questionable stories as fact, or have executives who see it as okay to go ahead and change the content of user reports on their site to fit their own personal agenda. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman's decision to modify comments made about him on the site by users who support Donald Trump might be the more serious of these two incidents. Huffman copped to changing mentions of him that were unflattering, to say the least, because, according to the executive, "it does get old calling people a pedophile constantly" and he wanted to flag a user doing exactly that to him to the board's community mods. In "trolling the trolls," as he puts it, however, Huffman has not only shown that Reddit's troubles with top brass and management are not only far from over, but he's also undermined Reddit's core values. For better or for worse, the site could previously claim to have hewed pretty closely to its goal of being an open forum for internet denizens – now, however, when anything on the site is theoretically subject to the petty, personal whims of a CEO throwing a tantrum, even that foundational principle of the site is called into question. Then on a slow post-Thanksgiving Friday, content-hungry outlets grabbed up a report that CNN had accidentally broadcast porn for 30 minutes when it was supposed to be showing Anthony Bourdain's show. Some inside baseball for Snapshot readers: We looked at this at TC, decided it was sketchy as hell for a variety of reasons and passed on writing it up. A lot of other outlets, including The Independent, Mashable, Variety, The Next Web and more did pick up the story, however, which turned out to be single sourced from a lone woman's Twitter account. It was ultimately debunked and outlets followed up, but the initial interest and media spread means that a lot of people pout there probably still think CNN actually did accidentally broadcast porn, when in fact one woman's DVR seems to have had a very weird glitch. Much of the blame for the proliferation of fake news has fallen on Facebook, and even on Russian propagandists. Both of these sources are real concerns that require further exploration and solutions, but this past week's examples show that there are also deep problems present on the side of media outlets and what they choose to run, and on forums that claim to be mostly hands-off forums for free and open speech. SPONSORED CONTENT: Learn About Augmented Reality At Disrupt London We're delighted to say Omar Tayeb, CTO and Co-Founder of Blippar, the a leading augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and computer vision company, is coming along to Disrupt London (5-6 December). With Tayeb at the helm of the company's technology division, Blippar has grown from a groundbreaking idea to a global industry leader with 12 offices and 300+ employees. Augment your reality and save on Disrupt tickets through December 4th before prices go up. Buy tickets now! Learn More… Get the context: Reddit CEO admits he secretly edited comments from Donald Trump supporters The CNN porn scare is how fake news spreads Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during election, experts say Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group Get more stories at techcrunch.com  Newest Jobs From CrunchBoard: CRM Berater (m/f) at eGym GmbH (München, Deutschland) C++ Developer - Qt Product Development (m/f) at eGym GmbH (München, Deutschland) Full Stack Engineer at FactorChain at The Sourcery (Los Altos, CA, United States) UI Engineering @ FactorChain at The Sourcery (Los Altos, CA, United States) Senior Backend Engineer @ MeetMe at The Sourcery (San Francisco, CA, United States) SEE MORE JOBS ON CRUNCHBOARD Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month View this email online in your browser If you do not want to receive this email or you would like to update your preferences click here. 410 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 © 2016 AOL Inc. All rights reserved.   Privacy Policy   Terms of Service

                                                           

Top Stories of the Day // November 26, 2016

Siren Care makes a “smart” sock to track diabetic health | Black Friday online sales to hit a record-breaking $3 billion, over $1 billion from mobile | Watch Dogs 2 lampoons Silicon Valley with open-world hacking fun | Salesforce serves as training ground for SaaS startup execs | How to recruit, hire and retain female engineers | Machine learning can fix Twitter, Facebook, and maybe even America | Peter Thiel taps a principal at Founders Fund for Trump’s transition team |

THE DAILY CRUNCH SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 26 2016 TODAY'S TOP STORIES: TOP HEADLINE | Sarah Buhr Siren Care makes a “smart” sock to track diabetic health Diabetic health tracking startup Siren Care has created smart socks that use temperature sensors to detect inflammation — and therefore injury —... Read More… Sarah Perez Black Friday online sales to hit a record-breaking $3 billion, over $1 billion from mobile Black Friday online shopping is continuing to grow, and this Friday was another record-breaking day. According to a new report out this evening from Adobe,... Read More… Darrell Etherington Watch Dogs 2 lampoons Silicon Valley with open-world hacking fun Kind of like the TV series Person of Interest but somehow with even less humor. Watch Dogs 2 is luckily nothing like that, with a bright, vividly accurate San... Read More… SPONSORED CONTENT The Oscars of Tech - The Crunchies Awards TechCrunch kicks off 2017 with the 10th Annual Crunchies Awards Show, the award ceremony to recognize and celebrate the most compelling startups, internet, and technology innovations of the year. We've just announced our finalists and we can't wait to see who wins! Buy your tickets today. Learn More Ron Miller Salesforce serves as training ground for SaaS startup execs When startups go looking for executive talent, they want someone with some experience working for a successful organization. When it comes to the cloud, there... Read More… Sharon Wienbar How to recruit, hire and retain female engineers Leaders at tech startups are alarmed by the absence of women from mission-critical roles -- software engineering, especially. This article is a how-to guide for... Read More… Jonathan Shieber Machine learning can fix Twitter, Facebook, and maybe even America Quitting Twitter is easy — I’ve done it a hundred times. Someone called it “a clown car that drove into a gold mine,” and like all clown... Read More… Connie Loizos Peter Thiel taps a principal at Founders Fund for Trump’s transition team Peter Thiel is famously loyal to his employees and vice versa. Many of the dozens of people employed by his venture firm, Founders Fund, once worked for Thiel... Read More… Get more stories at techcrunch.com  Newest Jobs From CrunchBoard: CRM Berater (m/f) at eGym GmbH (München, Deutschland) C++ Developer - Qt Product Development (m/f) at eGym GmbH (München, Deutschland) Full Stack Engineer at FactorChain at The Sourcery (Los Altos, CA, United States) UI Engineering @ FactorChain at The Sourcery (Los Altos, CA, United States) Senior Backend Engineer @ MeetMe at The Sourcery (San Francisco, CA, United States) SEE MORE JOBS ON CRUNCHBOARD Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month View this email online in your browser If you do not want to receive this email or you would like to update your preferences click here. 410 Townsend Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 © 2016 AOL Inc. All rights reserved.   Privacy Policy   Terms of Service