Technology

Facebook has pulled the plug on 30 accounts and 85 Instagram accounts that the company says were engaged in &coordinated inauthentic behavior.&

Facebookhead of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher revealed the latest batch of findings in a late-night blog post Monday.

&On Sunday evening, U.S. law enforcement contacted us about online activity that they recently discovered and which they believe may be linked to foreign entities,& said Gleicher, without naming the law enforcement agency. &We immediately blocked these accounts and are now investigating them in more detail.&

The company didn&t have much more to share, only that the Facebook Pages associated with the accounts &appear to be in the French or Russian languages, while the Instagram accounts seem to have mostly been in English — some were focused on celebrities, others political debate,& he said.

In his post, Gleicher conceded that the company &would be further along with our analysis before announcing anything publicly,& but pledged to post more once the company digs in — including if the accounts are linked to earlier account takedowns linked to Iran.

When reached, a Facebook spokesperson did not comment further.

Itthe latest batch in account takedowns in recent weeks, ahead of the U.S. midterm elections — later on Tuesday — when millions of Americans will go to the polls to vote for new congressional lawmakers and state governors. The election is largely seen as a barometer for the health of the Trump administration, two years after the president was elected amid a concerted state-backed effort by Russian intelligence to spread disinformation and discord on his Democratic opponent.

Only earlier on Monday, a new report from Columbia UniversityTow Center for Digital Journalism found that election interference remains a major problem for the platform, despite repeated promises from high-level executives that the company is doing what it can to fight false news and misinformation.

After Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, more states and counties in the United States are returning to paper ballots from electronic voting machines. While this may help cybersecurity, it also makes it harder for many people with disabilities to cast their vote.

To counteract that, RespectAbility, a non-partisan non-profit that works on inclusivity for people with disabilities, has put together a comprehensive list of resources for voters. The full guide can be found here, and includes the following several tools and services that are using tech to make it easier for people with disabilities to vote.

• A partnership with Democracy Works, a non-profit group of software developers working on tools to improve the voting process, the Voting Information ProjectSMS tool that enables people to get multilingual information about their polling places and voter registration websites by texting VOTE or VOTO to GOVOTE (468-683).
• Carpool Vote connects voters who need a ride with volunteer drivers through its website or an interactive voice response service at (804) 424-5335.
• Lyft and Uber are both working with non-profits to offer discounted or free rides to polling places on Election Day. One of the groups Lyft has partnered with is the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), which will provide rides through its affiliates in Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, Nevada, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.

According to Pew, more than 35 million Americans of voting age have a disability. Though polling places are required by law to be accessible to people with disabilities, research from the Government Accessibility Office showed that polling places with impediments, including entrances that are difficult to navigate or voting stations that can&t accommodate wheelchairs, increased significantly between 2008 and 2016.

Furthermore, Pew says the increase in paper ballots has increased pressure on poll workers, who have very little training, which means some end up discouraging the use of accessible voting machines, making the creation of better resources for voters with disabilities even more imperative.

Meesho, a Bangalore-based social commerce startup, has closed a $50 million investment to grow its business in its Indian homeland ahead of future international expansion.

This Series C round means that Meesho, which graduated Y Combinator in 2016, has now raised three funding rounds in the past year. Its $3.4 million Series A came in October 2017 with an $11.5 million Series B closing in June of this year. Thatquite the rollercoaster and over the last year, Meesho has seen its top line revenue grow by over 100X so co-founder and CEOVidit Aatrey told TechCrunch in an interview.

This time around, the $50 million raise includes new investors Shunwei Capital from China, DST Partners and RPS Ventures, as well as returning backersSequoia India, SAIF Partners, Venture Highway and Y Combinator.

Meesho has adjusted its focus considerably since it graduated YC, and today it operates as an enabler for people in India wanting to sell products using social media.Primarily the focus is WhatsApp, the worldmost popular messaging app which counts India as its largest market with over 200 million monthly users.

The company providers sellers with products (which it sources from suppliers) and inventory management and other basic seller tools. In turn, sellers hawk their catalog to friends and family as they please. Meesho handles all payment and logistics, providing a cut of the transaction to sellers.

Interestingly, thereno fixed price for products. That means that sellers can vary the price and even haggle with their customers just as they&d do in real life.

&We want to simulate the exact experience that happens offline,&Aatrey explained. &Sellers have theliberty to sell to 10 different people at 10 different prices.&

Sales typically happen between friends and family because there is a trusted relationship. Selling consistently to familymembers doesn&t seem like an easy task, but Meesho operates in a range of verticals, including fashion, living, cosmetics and more, which the company said makes repeat custom easier. The firm is working on technology that helps sellers figure out which products to push to their customer list, but Aatrey believes a good seller has a knack for what their customers will want on a given day or week.

Aatrey— who started Meesho with fellow IIT-Delhi graduate Sanjeev Barnwal in 2015 — told TechCrunch that the startup is picky about who it selects as a seller, and those who are not active enough are removed from the platform — although he said the latter doesn&t happen a lot. Instead, Meesho offers training and skill development programs to sellers who perform well.

&We go and intentionally invest more to scale up the sellers who show more promise,& he explained.

(Left to right) Meesho founders Sanjeev Barnwal and Vidit Aatrey

Meesho says it has registered some two million sellers to date but the goal is to reach 20 million by 2020. A majority 80 percent are female because the startup first targeted housewives, but increasingly, Aatrey said, it is seeing male sellers grow. Nearly one-third of sellers are students and many others use the app part-time to add to an existing income source.

In one example, Aatrey explained that typically households that earn 30,000 INR ($410) per month can make 8,000-10,000 INR in additional capital if one of the homemakers uses Meesho full-time. Thata pretty significant addition.

One of the more intriguing pieces of the Meshoo business is that by tapping into peopletrusted relationships and offer them incentives to sell products without requiring operating capital, the business has cut a lot of the expensive overheads associated with e-commerce. Customer acquisition cost is low, for example, while thereno need to dole out discounts, both of which are expensive line items for Amazon India and its rival Flipkart, which is owned by Walmart.

&We don&t burn a lot of money,&Aatrey said, although he declined to provide specific financial information.

With this new money in the bank, Meesho is working to go deeper into its existing areas of business. That&ll include offering more product categories, bringing on more suppliers, extending its supply chain and developing tools to help sellers sell better.

Aatrey also confirmed that the company is also looking to develop a supply chain in China, thatwhere Shunwei and its network will come into play. He also revealed that the company is beginning to think about the potential for its own labeled product — an Amazon-style move — although that isn&t likely to happen just yet.

Another longer-term objective is international expansion.

&For the next 12 months we won&t go beyond India,& Aatrey explained. &But what we are doing here is very similar to Southeast Asia, Latin America and even the Middle East so at some point we&ll think about venturing overseas.&

With three funding rounds in the past year, the Meesho CEO revealed that the company is well capitalized but he didn&t rule out the potential to raisemoney again.

&If we get a good offer that makes sense for the growth of the business, we are open to it,& he said.