Technology

Ecommerce giants Alibaba, Amazon, eBay and Rakuten have agreed to speed up the removal of dangerous goods being sold on their online marketplaces within the European Union.

The EUexecutive body, the Commission, said the four companies have committed to responding to notifications on dangerous products from Member State authoritieswithin 2 working days,and to take action on notices from customerswithin 5 working days.

Although the pledge is not legally binding. But the Commission is clearly hoping that companies can be persuaded to self-regulate in the first instance, given the ever-present possibility of laws being drafted to more tightly legally rule their activities.

In a statement welcoming the move, theEU commissioner for justice, consumers and gender equality, Vĕra Jourová, called on other other marketplace to join the initiative, saying: &More and more people in the EU are shopping online.E-commerce has opened up new possibilities for consumers, offering them more choice at lower prices. Consumers should be just as safe when they buy online, as when they buy in a shop.&

The Commission says online sales in the EU represented a fifth of the total sales in 2016 — a percentage thatexpected to increase in the coming years.

The Product Safety Pledgecovers non-food consumer products being sold by third parties on online marketplaces, and includes a commitment to provide a clear way for customers to report dangerous product listings and also have an internal mechanism for take-down procedures.

&The ultimate goal is to improve the detection of unsafe products marketed in the EU before they are sold to consumers or as soon thereafter as possible, and to improve consumer protection,& it writes. &These commitments will go beyond what is already established in the EU legislation, including those on product safety.&

Other components of the pledge state the companies will:

• Cooperate with authorities and set up a process aimed at proactively removing banned product groups as appropriate
• Put in place measures to act against repeat offenders offering dangerous products in cooperation with authorities
• Take measures aimed at preventing the reappearance of dangerous product listings already removed
• Explore the potential use of new technologies and innovation to improve the detection of unsafe products

So there are potentially some startup opportunities around enhancing detection systems.

While the Commission making efforts to limit access to dangerous goods online is unlikely to be too controversial, it hasgenerally been pushing for proactive or radically rapid removalsof various types of problem content, and wading into controversy as a result.

Its approach to copyrighted content has attracted the most controversy, with critics arguing it&sregressiveand wildly disproportionate.

Yet despite vocal opposition from multiple corners of the digital ecosystem,earlier this month EU lawmakers moved a step closer to requiring all user generated content be copyright pre-filtered prior to being uploaded —apparently comfortablewith the idea that meme-makers might have to go through an appeals process just to get their remixed snark unblocked.

However support for the Commissionapproach to regulating online content generally seems widespread among EU member states.

And on the terrorist propaganda content front, the UK government has been pushing even harder, for proactive removals — unveiling an AI tool in Februarythat it said could be used to automatically detect ISIS propaganda. (Though it has not forced any companies to use it.)

The Commission hasn&t gone so far where terrorist content is concerned — but itone-hour rule-of-thumb for terrorist takedowns is getting pretty close. On hate speech content generally it continues to apply pressure on platforms to respond more quickly, with the omnipresent threat that if they don&t keep up it could step in and legislate — as Germany already has.

As companies get bigger and bigger, all the critical information about a company — even its mission and culture statements — can get lost in a massive pile of Google Docs or files strewn across dozens of collaboration tools, making it nearly impossible to find. Thatwhere the team behind EveryTeam hopes to step in and clean things up.

EveryTeam serves as a sort of hub for all of the documents and core information about a company — a kind of living library that adapts over time and can easily suck in new information as it comes about. The idea is that employees might not necessarily be going to the same internal portal for that information, or might not be updating that portal, and the information continues to sit across multiple different buckets within a company. The company came about from former GitHubbers Todd Berman, Connor Sears, and Scott Goldman, which are looking to bring that same level of collaboration and simplicity to access to internal employee information. The startup said it has raised $3 million in a seed round from Harrison Metal, Upside Partnership, Index Ventures and Greylock Partners.

&People end up creating content in them but struggling to maintain content in these [internal communications] tools,& CEOTodd Berman said. &Whether they&re using a combination of Google Docs, or Dropbox Paper, or Confluence, theretons of people trying to do a lot of different things here. A lot of these tools are focused on the creation, where people felt there was a lot of opportunity. But for our potential customers, the issue is that their content is all over the place. itnot in one spot.&

EVERYTEAM TOP

EveryTeam works to surface up those kinds of critical employee documents that are probably fine to just exist in some Google Drive somewhere very early on — which might include the information for the WiFi or the schedule for office snacks. But as more and more docs flow in, EveryTeam has to parse through all of those and ensure that the right important ones are surfaced up in front of everyone, especially as they become more and more important over time. For larger and large companies, that content management can get out of control and devolve into a lot of messages across the organization just to find a single document.EveryTeam integrates with GitHub, Google Drive, Dropbox, Figma, and Airtable amongothers.

&It ends up looking in a lot of cases like how GitHub works — GitHub is a tool to maintain, curate and publish software. You&re publishing source code, but a lot of the workflows feel very natural and feel very similar. Ultimately, where we ended up from a product perspective is, itmore about being a layer on top of these services [like Box] to provide a plane of organization.&

EveryTeam isn&t the only startup looking to rethink the internal employee wiki. Slite, another startup looking to create an intelligent internal notes tool that can serve as a hub of information for employees, also said it raised $4.4 million earlier this year. The idea there is to bring the Slack-like simplicity that has become popular among employees — at least, at the startup level — to a variety of different areas that haven&t changed in a while. Internal note-taking, and that Wiki functionality, is one. EveryTeam decided to work with the idea that content is just going to exist all over the place anyway, and try to fit into the employee workflow that way.

&You want to curate and expose content that exists in ten to 12 different tools you use every day,& Berman said. &Ultimately, thatpart of my day-to-day flow. I&m usually in four to five web apps. When [some tools] take the Slack model they often get very focused on recency, and that determines an arbiter of value.[You have to think], what is the desire path for a document that becomes load-bearing in the company. It starts off a little weird, people edit it, it ideates and matures, and it stands the test of time. How do you create an application that helps that happen.&

A report by the UKElectoral Commission has called for urgent changes in the law to increase transparency about how digital tools are being used for political campaigning, warning that an atmosphere of mistrust is threatening the democratic process.

The oversight body, which also regulates campaign spending,has spent the past year examining how digital campaigning was used in the UK2016 EU referendum and 2017 general election — as well as researching public opinion to get voters& views on digital campaigning issues.

Among the changes the Commission wants to see is greater clarity around election spending to try to prevent foreign entities pouring money into domestic campaigns, and beefed up financial regulations including bigger penalties for breaking election spending rules.

It also has an ongoing investigation into whether pro-Brexit campaigns — including the official Vote Leave campaign — broke spending rules. And last week the BBC reported on a leaked draft of the report suggesting the Commission will find the campaigns broke the law.

Last month the Leave.EU Brexit campaign was also fined £70,000 after a Commission investigation found it had breached multiple counts of electoral law during the referendum.

Given thefar larger sums now routinely being spent on elections — another pro-Brexit group, Vote Leave, had a £7M spending limit (though it has also been accused of exceeding that) — itclear the Commission needs far larger teeth if itto have any hope of enforcing the law.

Digital tools have lowered the barrier of entry for election fiddling, while also helping to ramp up democratic participation.

&On digital campaigning, our starting point is that elections depend on participation, which is why we welcome the positive value of online communications. New ways of reaching voters are good for everyone, and we must be careful not to undermine free speech in our search to protect voters. But we also fully recognise the worries of many, the atmosphere of mistrust which is being created, and the urgent need for action to tackle this,& writes commission chairJohn Holmes.

&Funding of online campaigning is already covered by the laws on election spending and donations. But the laws need to ensure more clarity about who is spending what, and where and how, and bigger sanctions for those who break the rules.

&This report is therefore a call to action for the UKgovernments and parliaments to change the rules to make it easier for voters to know who is targeting them online, and to make unacceptable behaviour harder. Thepublic opinion researchwe publish alongside this report demonstrates the level of concern and confusion amongst voters and the will for new action.&

The Commissionkey recommendations are:

• Each of the UKgovernments and legislatures should change the law so that digital material must have an imprint saying who is behind the campaign and who created it

• Each of the UKgovernments and legislatures should amend the rules for reporting spending. They should make campaigners sub-divide their spending returns into different types of spending. These categories should give more information about the money spent on digital campaigns

• Campaigners should be required to provide more detailed and meaningful invoices from their digital suppliers to improve transparency

• Social media companies should work with us to improve their policies on campaign material and advertising for elections and referendums in the UK

• UK election and referendum adverts on social media platforms should be labelled to make the source clear. Their online databases of political adverts should follow the UKrules for elections and referendums

• Each of the UKgovernments and legislatures should clarify that spending on election or referendum campaigns by foreign organisations or individuals is not allowed. They would need to consider how it could be enforced and the impact on free speech

• We will make proposals to campaigners and each of the UKgovernments about how to improve the rules and deadlines for reporting spending. We want information to be available to voters and us more quickly after a campaign, or during
• Each of the UKgovernments and legislatures should increase the maximum fine we can sanction campaigners for breaking the rules, and strengthen our powers to obtain information outside of an investigation

The recommendations follow revelations by Chris Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower (pictured at the top of this post) — who has detailed to journalists and regulators how Facebook users& personal data was obtained and passed to the now defunct political consultancy for political campaigning activity without peopleknowledge or consent.

In addition to the Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal, Facebook has also been rocked by earlier revelations of how extensively Kremlin-backed agents used its ad targeting tools to try to sew social division at scale — including targeting the 2016 US presidential election.

The Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has since been called before US and EU lawmakers to answer questions about how his platform operates and the risks itposing to democratic processes.

The company has announced a series of changes intended to make it more difficult for third parties to obtain user data, and to increase transparency around political advertising — adding a requirement for such ads to continue details of how has paid for them, for example, and also offering a searchable archive.

Although critics question whether the company is going far enough — asking, for example, how it intends to determine what is and is not a political advert.

Facebook is not offering a searchable archive for all ads on its platform, for example.

Zuckerberg has also been accused of equivocating in the face of lawmakers& concerns, with politicians on both sides of the Atlantic calling him out for providing evasive, misleading or intentionally obfuscating responses to concerns and questions around how his platform operates.

The Electoral Commission makes a direct call for social media firms to do more to increase transparency around digital political advertising and remove messages which &do not meet the right standards&.

&If this turns out to be insufficient, the UKgovernments and parliaments should be ready to consider direct regulation,& it also warns.

We&ve reached out to Facebook comment and will update this post with any response.

A Cabinet Office spokeswoman told us it would send the government response to the Electoral Commission report shortly — so we&ll also update this post when we have that.

Update: A Cabinet Office spokesperson said:&The government is committed to increasing transparency in digital campaigning, in order to maintain a fair and proportionate democratic process, and we will be consulting on proposals for new imprint requirements on electronic campaigning in due course.&

The UKdata protection watchdog, the ICO, has an ongoing investigating into the use of social media data for political campaigning — and commissioner Elizabeth Denham recently made a call for stronger disclosure rules around political ads and a code of conduct for social media firms. The body is expected to publish the results of its long-running investigation shortly.

At the same time, a DCMS committee has been running an inquiry into the impact of fake news and disinformation online, including examining the impact on the political process. Though Zuckerberg has declined its requests for him to personally testify — sending a number of minions in his place, including CTO Mike Schroepfer who was grilled for around five hours by irate MPs and his answers still left them dissatisfied.

The committee will set out the results of this inquiry in another report touching on the impact of big tech on democratic processes — likely in the coming months. Committee chair Damian Collins tweetedtoday to say the inquiry has&also highlighted how out of date our election laws are in a world increasingly dominated by big tech media&.

On its forthcoming Brexit campaign spending report, an Electoral Commission spokesperson told us: &In accordance with its Enforcement Policy, the Electoral Commission has written to Vote Leave, Mr Darren Grimes and Veterans for Britain to advise each campaigner of the outcome of the investigation announced on 20 November 2017. The campaigners have 28 days to make representations before final decisions are taken. The Commission will announce the outcome of the investigation and publish an investigation report once this final decision has been taken.&