Facebook really doesn’t want users to go to a fake Unite the Right counter-protest next week

According to COO Sheryl Sandberg, getting ahead of an event called “No Unite the Right 2, DC” is the reason behind Facebook’s decision to disclose new platform behavior that closely resembles previous Russian state-sponsored activity meant to sow political discord in the US.

“We’re sharing this today because the connection between these actors and the event planned in Washington next week,” Sandberg said, calling the disclosure “early” and noting that the company still does not have all the facts.

A Facebook Page called “Resisters” created the event, set to take place on August 10, as a protest against Unite the Right 2 — a follow-up event to last year’s deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that left peaceful counter-protester Heather Heyer dead.

The Page, which Facebook identified as displaying “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” also worked with the admins from five authentic Facebook Pages to co-host the event and arrange transportation and logistics. Facebook has notified those users of its findings and taken down the event page.

This isn’t the first event coordinated by fake Facebook accounts with the likely intention of further polarizing US voters. In a call today, Facebook noted that the new inauthentic accounts it found had created around 30 events. While the dates for two have yet to pass, “the others have taken place over the past year or so.”

Facebook will not yet formally attribute its new findings to the Russian state-linked Internet Research Agency (IRA). Still, the Resisters Page hosting “No Unite the Right 2, DC” listed a previously identified IRA account as a co-admin for “only seven minutes.”

That link, and whatever else the public doesn’t know at this time, is enough for the Senate Intel committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner to credit the Russian government with what appears to be an ongoing campaign of political influence.

“Today’s disclosure is further evidence that the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation, and I am glad that Facebook is taking some steps to pinpoint and address this activity,” Warner said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “I also expect Facebook, along with other platform companies, will continue to identify Russian troll activity and to work with Congress on updating our laws to better protect our democracy in the future.”

Facebook’s Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos maintained that the company “doesn’t think it’s appropriate for Facebook to give public commentary on political motivations of nation states” and calls the IRA link “interesting but not determinant.”

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Oppo and Xiaomi join foldable smartphone race

The flexible smartphone race has started. After Samsung revealed its plans to deliver the first ever foldable smartphone with flexible display, Huawei committed to beating it to the punch. Now a new report claims that two more major Chinese manufacturers are joining. Xiaomi and Oppo are reportedly looking for display manufacturers to supply their foldable handsets. The options, for now, are rather limited - BOE, Visionox and LG Display. But instead of following, Xiaomi is planning on leading in the segment by being the first manufacturer to bring a working flexible device by kicking...

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Google partners with news orgs to show more data in its search results

Google today announced that it is working with a number of news organizations to surface more data from their data journalism projects in its search results. The idea here is to make it easier to discover the data that a lot of these organizations produce and then surface it in an easy to read format on the company’s search results pages.

The company is currently working with a few news organizations, including ProPublica, to produce the structured data in the format it needs for its search index. As long as that data is in a table, adding it to the index should be pretty straightforward.

“As a news organization that is focused on having real-world impact, it’s very much in our mission to give people information at the point of need,” said Scott Klein, the deputy managing editor of ProPublica. “If we can make the data we’ve worked hard to collect and prepare available to people at the very moment when they’re researching a big life decision, and thereby help them make the best decision they can, it’s an absolute no-brainer for us. And the code is trivial to add.”

Any news organizations that produce this kind of data can follow Google’s guidelines and have their data indexed. For the right queries, the result of that is going to be prime placement on Google’s search results pages, so it’s probably worth the effort. That first results, after all, is all that counts.

It’s worth noting that Google already indexes and highlights lots of other data it finds online, but this is the first time it’s making a concerted effort to include journalism projects, too.

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Waymo partners with Phoenix to connect people to public transit

Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet, is launching program in Phoenix next month that will focus on delivering people to bus stops, train and light rail stations.

The program announced Tuesday is in partnership with Valley Metro, the Phoenix area’s regional public transportation authority.

The announcement gives clarity to the fourth leg in Waymo’s business strategy. The company’s has publicly shared plans to focus on four areas: create a ride-hailing service, develop self-driving trucks for logistics, and license its technology to automakers for personally-owned vehicles

But it was the fourth piece—connecting people to public transportation—that was nebulous until now.

The program will be initially offered to employees of Valley Metro. These riders will be able to use the Waymo app to hail a ride in one of the company’s autonomous Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans to take them to the nearest public transportation option.

Waymo will expand the program and provide first-and-last mile travel to Valley Metro RideChoice travelers, which cover groups traditionally underserved by public transit.

Waymo and Valley Metro hope to learn more about how people use public transit and what role self-driving cars can have in connecting people to the buses, trains, and light systems found in cities.

The company said it hopes to open the service to the public in the future.

Phoenix has become a major testing hub for Waymo. The company has been testing its self-driving vehicles there for months and launched an early rider program. In March, Waymo began shuttling a group of early riders in self-driving vehicles without a human test driver behind the wheel.

Last week, the company, announced a series of partnerships with Walmart, AutoNation, Avis and others to give customers access to autonomous vehicles. Under the partnerships, Waymo will pick up customers and drive them to businesses in the Phoenix area.

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[Update: Live in North America] HTC U12+ update adds camera auto zoom, improved pressure sensitive buttons, & more

Update 7/31: This update for the HTC U12+ is now rolling out in North America.

The HTC U12+ was released just last month, and it brought a lot of controversies. One of the main reasons for that is the buttons, or rather, the lack of buttons. Instead of standard physical ones, HTC went with pressure sensitive buttons. Not many people have been happy with HTC’s approach. The good news is the company seems to have listened to its customers and is trying to improve the buttons. The new update just aired in Taiwan, which brought the June security patch as well as some buttons and camera improvements.

I’m quite confused about why they included the June security patch instead of the more recent July patch, but receiving a security update is always welcome. The camera application got an “auto zoom” feature, which lets you adjust the zoom by swiping on a gray dot. Not much of an automatic process, as the name implies. It is definitely different from Sonic Zoom, which automatically zooms in on the source of the audio.

As for the buttons, HTC made them more responsive and synchronized with this update. HTC U12+ users also reported that double-tapping on the Edge gesture is more accurate and reliable. As I already mentioned, the update is only rolling out to users in Taiwan at this time. It is only 422MB in size and bumps the system version to 1.21.709.3. The update will roll out in other regions, including Europe and North America, over the next few weeks.

The new software will roll out in other regions, including Europe and North America, over the next few weeks. (Your region’s software number may be slightly different.)

— Jeff Gordon (@urbanstrata) July 13, 2018

Update: Rolling out in North America

True to their word, the update is now rolling out in North America. The update comes in at 437.1 MB and includes all of the same features highlighted above.

@LlabTooFeR North American version of the #HTCU12Plus gets new update. pic.twitter.com/WqWavAnT6z

— Rove McClain (@Rove_McClain) July 30, 2018

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Photos via @ChengmingAlpert

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Just 24 hours until prices go up for Disrupt SF 2018 passes

A lot can happen in 24 hours. Just ask Jack Bauer, the hard-charging protagonist from the TV drama series 24. Seriously, he had to save the world every dang episode. All you have to do is buy your pass to Disrupt San Francisco 2018 before the prices go up in — you guessed it — 24 hours.

We want you to join us on September 5-7 at Moscone Center West, and we want you to get the best deal possible. You have until midnight PST on August 1 before the price hike hits. Depending on the pass you buy, you could save up to $1,200. Jack Bauer would take action, and so should you. Buy your ticket right now.

What can you expect at Disrupt SF 2018? Plenty, and we’ll get to that in a minute. But sometimes it helps to hear what your peers found most beneficial. For example, Vlad Larin, one of the founders of Zeroqode, shared his Disrupt experience with us.

“TechCrunch Disrupt was a massively positive experience,” said Larin. “It gave us the chance to show our technology to the world and have meaningful conversations with investors, accelerators, incubators, solo founders and developers.”

If you’re more interested in a VC’s point of view, here’s what early-stage investor Michael Kocan of New York-based Trend Discovery had to say.

“Attending Disrupt San Francisco helped me plug into that community and take the pulse of what’s going on,” he said. “It’s probably the best place for us to meet the most early-stage founders quickly, so that’s the biggest benefit for us.”

There’s plenty of programming to keep you happy as you search for opportunity. Don’t miss an incredible roster of speakers talking about the most pressing tech and investment issues of the day. And take a peek at the conference agenda while you’re at it.

Check out our first Virtual Hackathon — from thousands of submitted hacks, we’ll have the top 30 contenders showing their stuff at Disrupt SF.

You’ll find more than 1,200 startups and exhibitors in Startup Alley — along with the startups that earned a TechCrunch Top Pick designation. We have Top Picks in each of these categories: AI, AR/VR, Blockchain, Biotech, Fintech, Gaming, Healthtech, Privacy/Security, Space, Mobility, Retail or Robotics.

And, of course, you don’t want to miss Startup Battlefield, the crown jewel of TechCrunch Disrupt. This year, we doubled the prize money to $100,000. The competition’s going to be intense!

Disrupt San Francisco 2018 takes place on September 5-7. You have only 24 hours left before the prices increase. If you leap into action now, you won’t save the world, but you will save some money. Buy your pass today.

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Facebook has found evidence of influence campaigns targeting U.S. midterms

In a newsroom post Tuesday, Facebook revealed that it has detected evidence of “coordinated inauthentic behavior” designed to influence U.S. politics on its platform.

According to Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity Policy Nathaniel Gleicher, the company first identified the activity two weeks ago. So far, the activity encompasses eight Facebook Pages, 17 profiles and seven accounts on Instagram. Facebook stated that the activity “violate[s] our ban on coordinated inauthentic behavior” though so far is unable to attribute the activity to Russia or any other entity with an interest in influencing U.S. politics.

Facebook has been in contact with Congress and law enforcement about the discovery, which suggests that social platforms should expect to again detect the kind of coordinated disinformation campaigns targeted the 2016 election around U.S. midterm elections this November. The company stated that more than 290,000 accounts followed one of the Pages it identified. The Pages in question were created starting in March 2017 and most recently in May of 2018.

The most popular Pages displaying this kind of behavior were “Aztlan Warriors,” “Black Elevation,” “Mindful Being,” and “Resisters.” The other Pages had less than 10 followers each and the Instagram account did not have any followers. That does not necessarily discount other kinds of potential activity like commenting and messaging.

According to Facebook, “They ran about 150 ads for approximately $11,000 on Facebook and Instagram, paid for in US and Canadian dollars” between April 2017 and June of this year. The Pages also made around 30 Facebook events.

As Gleicher writes in the post, these accounts are operating more cautiously than the infamous Russian disinformation accounts around the 2016 election.

“For example they used VPNs and internet phone services, and paid third parties to run ads on their behalf. As we’ve told law enforcement and Congress, we still don’t have firm evidence to say with certainty who’s behind this effort. Some of the activity is consistent with what we saw from the IRA before and after the 2016 elections. And we’ve found evidence of some connections between these accounts and IRA accounts we disabled last year, which is covered below. But there are differences, too. For example, while IP addresses are easy to spoof, the IRA accounts we disabled last year sometimes used Russian IP addresses. We haven’t seen those here.”

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