Facebook’s long-awaited oversight board announced Thursday it is now accepting cases. The board, first announced by the social media behemoth in 2018, is meant to serve as an independent check on Facebook’s moderation decisions.
The board is composed of independent members from around the world, who will make final and binding decisions on what content Facebook and Instagram should allow or remove based on respect for freedom of expression and human rights. “Our focus has been on building an institution that is not just about reacting to a single movement or chasing a specific news cycle, but about protecting human rights and free expression over the long term,” administrative director Thomas Hughes said in a Thursday call with reporters.
The members of the 40-person board were introduced in May, and they include a former prime minister, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and the Guardian editor who oversaw the publication of the Snowden leaks. Each board member will serve a three-year term, and Facebook put $130 million in an irrevocable trust to fund its operations. Crucially, Facebook has promised it will not interfere with the board’s decision-making.
For now, the board will only hear cases concerning content that was removed by Facebook. Individual users can bring appeals to the board, and Facebook as a company will be able to refer cases for expedited review if they could have urgent, real-world consequences. The board has sole discretion about whether to accept or reject cases referred by Facebook.
Brent Harris, Facebook’s director of governance and global affairs, said on the call that the company would not submit any cases for expedited review before the US presidential election on November 3rd.
Users won’t be able to flag third-party content that Facebook has decided to leave on the platform, at least not yet. Columbia Law professor Jamal Greene, a board co-chair, said this functionality will be added “in the coming months.”
Board members will take turns in a rotation on a case selection committee, which will evaluate and pick cases for a review by a majority vote of the committee. Each case will be assigned to a five-member panel, which will include at least one member from the region of the content under review. The board will decide if the content violates Facebook’s community standards and values, and if it conforms with international human rights norms and standards.
“We can’t hear every appeal, simply because the volume that will be submitted is too high, but we want our decisions to be influential and have impact beyond the single case,” Greene said.
Helle Thorning-Schmidt, former prime minister of Denmark and another co-chair of the oversight board, said case decisions will be published and archived on the board’s website, presenting information used to make its decisions. Facebook must implement the board’s decisions, unless there’s a legal obligation to block access to content, Thorning-Schmidt said, and Facebook will disclose any actions it takes.
“We will of course hold the company accountable to their commitment,” she added.
The board also decided it would implement a public comment period before it begins deliberation on a case, to allow third parties to share insights and perspectives. Users will be able to sign up to receive alerts when new cases are posted to the website and open for public comment.
While the board has met several times over Zoom to build up its procedures, Greene said it has not met to discuss substantive issues or what cases it would review. “It is conceivable, now that we’ve launched, that we will have substantive conversations and be looking for particular kinds of issues on which to weigh in,” Greene said. Thorning-Schmidt added that the board will set specific criteria for how it will select cases when they start coming in.
Facebook executives are meant to have no influence over the independent operation of the board, although its creation was the result of significant efforts by the company. In an interview with The Information, Mark Zuckerberg said he hopes to expand independent governance of Facebook if the oversight board is successful.
“Assuming the model works as planned, I hope to either expand its role or add other formal governance to more aspects of ou
Artists on Twitter have a request: stop quote-tweeting their work.
It’s all the more pressing now that Twitter has, temporarily at least, changed its retweet system to encourage users to quote tweets and add their own words on top, rather than simply boost someone else’s message. Artists say quote tweets take attention away from their profiles, making it harder for them to be discovered, while someone else gets the glory.
“When you’re quote tweeting an artist, it’s almost like saying ‘I feel like what I have to say about this piece is more important than the actual piece,’” RadiantG, an artist, journalist, and indie game developer, told The Verge.
Twitter made the change yesterday as part of an effort to “encourage more thoughtful consideration” of tweets — and presumably, to curb the spread of misinformation — around the US election. Twitter no longer plainly presents the option to retweet someone else’s post and instead jumps straight into the quote retweet interface. You can still post a straight retweet by not adding a comment, but the interface is designed to discourage it. Twitter said the change was “temporary” and would remain in place through “at least the end of Election week.”
⚠️PSA to All Artists⚠️
Twitter has made the *awful* decision to encourage quote tweets over normal retweets. This is going to be deeply damaging to our community. This change will affect livelihoods & incomes!
Non-Artists: don’t QRT art. Reply below & normal retweet. Thank you pic.twitter.com/62pfZjoTLu
— Radiant G! @ ACNH Update (@RadiantG_) October 9, 2020
It’s a problem for artists who have found Twitter to be a particularly useful platform for getting discovered and getting work. Amalas Rosa, an illustrator whose work includes video game concept art, album artwork, and an in-progress graphic novel, said that most of her jobs have come through people finding her work on Twitter. “Especially this year,” Rosa said, “a lot of remote work is actually due to Twitter.” Radiant said that all of his commissions this year have come through Twitter.
That’s why it’s important to artists that they get the signal boost directly when someone wants to share their work. “It’s easy to go to our profile,” Rosa said, “but many people don’t check it out if it’s only a quote retweet that’s doing the numbers.” Rosa said she doesn’t mind when people quote-tweet her work, but she’s concerned the new interface will confuse people who might otherwise want to directly promote an artist.
In response to Twitter’s change, artists have been retweeting each others’ messages about the new system, with some posts gaining thousands of retweets. Several artists have annotated screenshots about how to skirt the new system and send a plain retweet. One artist even illustrated a diagram about how to avoid the quote retweet.
Twitter changed retweets!!
BUT you can still normal retweet! The default setting will be quote retweet! But if you don’t add any text or anything and just hit retweet it will show up as a normal retweet!
It’s annoying! But please keep retweeting! For artists 😀
— Amalas (@AmalasRosa) October 20, 2020
Quote tweets were a sore spot even before this week’s update was put in place. Many artists already had “No QRT” (for “no quote retweet”) or a similar request in their name, bio, or location, Radiant said.
Matthew Wilson 2 hours ago Featured Tech News, General Tech
Google has faced antitrust allegations all across the world, facing cases in Europe, Asia and other territories. Now, the US Department of Justice is also aiming at Google, filing a new antitrust lawsuit.
The US DOJ says Google has an unfair monopoly over search and search-related advertising. Android is also in the firing line, with the lawsuit taking issue with the mobile OS’s terms and conditions, such as forcing phone manufacturers to include pre-installed Google apps on new devices.
Depending on the severity of the situation, the US could impose restrictions on Google, force a breaking up of various services and Google-owned businesses or this could all end in a series of monetary fines – which is the most common outcome.
This isn’t the first time that Google has faced antitrust criticism in the US. As Engadget points out, the Federal Trade Commission filed a similar legal complaint against Google almost a decade ago, only for the matter to be settled out of court a couple of years later.
The status of this lawsuit will remain unclear until after the next US presidential election, at which point, updates on what’s going on should start to flow again.
KitGuru Says: This could end up being Google’s biggest antitrust battle yet. Ultimately though, one has to wonder if any real change will come out of it, as Google is likely going to continue remaining dominant in Search and mobile apps/services.
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is looking for Among Us teammates. On Twitter, Ocasio-Cortez put out an open call for people to play with “to get out the vote.” In a follow-up tweet, she shared a Twitch page for AOC with the note “getting set up!”
Her tweet has already drawn attention from streamers like Pokimane and HasanAbi. “It’d be an honor,” wrote Pokimane. As Election Day 2020 closes in, politicians have been turning to game spaces to reach prospective voters.
Last week, Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s campaign created a virtual field office in Animal Crossing: New Horizons; in September, the campaign released Biden-Harris signs in-game. Presidential candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang have used Twitch in an effort to reach younger voters.
Anyone want to play Among Us with me on Twitch to get out the vote? (I’ve never played but it looks like a lot of fun)
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) October 19, 2020
Although Ocasio-Cortez appears to have only responded to Pokimane and HasanAbi as of publication time, personalities such as Greg Miller (who recently streamed from Biden’s Animal Crossing island), DrLupo, Neekolul, Felicia Day, and James Charles have all jumped in to volunteer.
Ocasio-Cortez’s choice of game is a strategic one. (She’s also known for being a formidable League of Legends player.) In the last few weeks, Among Us — a party game where players work together to find a saboteur — has blown up into a massive hit on Twitch and mobile. The ga
Innosilicon, a contract designer of ASICs from China, has taped out the world’s first chip using Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.’s N+1 process technology, a 7 nm-class node for inexpensive chips. The tape out is a major breakthrough for Chinese domestic semiconductor industry in general as well as SMIC in particular as the company is trying to catch up with much bigger rivals like GlobalFoundries, Samsung Foundry, and market leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. But will SMIC’s N+1 ever be used for mass production now that the company is in the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Entity List?
(Via cnTechPost, China Renaissance Securities, DigiTimes, EE Times, Innosilicon, IC Insights)
The Tape Out
Being a contract designer of ASICs and a provider of advanced IP, Innosilicon does not disclose whether the chip taped out using SMIC’s N+1 node was a test chip carrying various IP, or an actual commercial product ordered by one of Innosilicon’s clients.
(Image credit: SMIC)
What the company does say is that the chip underwent ‘multiple rounds of test iterations in the past few month’ to help SMIC to achieve viable yields and that the chip has passed ‘all the function tests passed in one stroke.’ Innosilicon also claims that it has invested ‘tens of millions of yuan in design optimization’ (¥10 million is about $1.49 million) since 2019 before the N+1 process was even announced.
Innosilicon and SMIC collaborated for years and the contract chip designer says that it has helped dozens of SMIC’s customers to develop chips using both mature (e.g., 55 nm, 40 nm, 28 nm) and FinFET-based process technologies (14 nm, 12 nm, 7 nm), so it is not particularly surprising that Innosilicon is the first company to try SMIC’s N+1.
Even if SMIC and Innosilicon have taped out the first commercial N+1 chip, it might take a year before that ASIC will be mass produced. In any case, the tape out means that at least some IP for N+1 is now available and Innosilicon knows how to use the technology.
SMIC’s N+1
SMIC’s N+1 fabrication technology is the company’s next major node that will follow the foundry’s 14 nm and 12 nm manufacturing processes.
(Image credit: SMIC)
According to SMIC, when compared to its 14 nm node, its N+1 technology can improve performance by up to 20% (at the same clocks and complexity) or reduce power by 57% (at the same power and complexity). In addition, the technology can potentially increase transistor density by up to 2.7 times (though not for all transistor structures).
While scalability and power consumption improvements of SMIC’s N+1 are significant (over its 14 nm node) and therefore the process can be compared with GlobalFoundries’s 12LP+, Samsung Foundry’s 8LPP, and even TSMC’s N7 (7 nm, non-EUV), its performance enhancements are modest at best. Therefore, SMIC itself positions N+1 primarily for low-power and low-cost devices.
Back in August, SMIC said that its N+1 had ‘finished customer product verification.’
Since SMIC has not received its TwinScan NXE extreme ultraviolet (EUV) scanner that it purchased from ASML back in 2018, its N+1 and N+2 technologies do not use EUV, unlike leading-edge processes from Samsung and TSMC. Relying purely on DUV lithography, significantly reduces SMIC’s ability to advance its nodes in terms of performance and scalability, so it will not be able to compete against market leaders in the leading-edge space any time soon.
For now, this is not a significant problem for SMIC as mature technologies (40/45 nm and thicker) accounted for 90.9% of its wafer revenue in Q2 2020. Meanwhile, 28 nm and 14 nm accounted for only 9.1% of the company’s wafer revenue in the second quarter with the former being considering more popular than the latter. But Chinese companies need advanced FinFET-based process technologies and many of them would prefer to work with a local supplier.
Rising Demand
There are a number of looming megatrends — 5G, AI, edge computing, and HPC — that will increase global demand for chips in the coming years. But in China there is an ongoing semiconductor boom. The number of local chip designers increased from 736 in 2015 to 1,780 in 2017, according to China Renaissance Securities.
(Image credit: SMIC)
All of these Chinese companies need to make their chips somewhere. In fact, Chinese fabless developers are expected to account for 22% of the global foundry sales in 2020, IC Insights believes. It remains to be seen how cease of shipments to HiSilicon affects foundry sales to China in the short and long-term future, but it is evident that the country is the second biggest consumer of foundry services after the USA.
(Image credit: IC Insights)
Today, 67% of Chinese orders for logic chip production are served by TSMC, UMC, and GlobalFoundries in Taiwan, Singapore, and the USA. SMIC is China’s biggest and most advanced foundry that produces 19% of the chips the country needs, so it is logical for the company to keep developing leading-edge process technologies rather than refocusing on specialized nodes as it has a massive room for growth.
(Image credit: IC Insights)
But there is a huge catch for SMIC.
The Entity List
Earlier this year the U.S. Department of Commerce included SMIC into its Entity List as it believes that the company serves needs of China’s People’s Liberation Army, something that SMIC denies it does.
(Image credit: SMIC)
As a result, if a U.S.-based company (or a company that develops or makes something in the USA) wants to sell production tools, parts, materials, software or something else to SMIC, it has to obtain a license from DoC, which is expected to review such license applications under a presumption of denial (at least before the Presidential election in November).
Consequently, it is close to impossible for SMIC to get advanced equipment, spare parts for existing tools, materials, and software it needs not only to keep developing new process technologies, but to maintain and expand current capacities.
Uncertain Prospects for N+1?
SMIC has been gradually increasing its CapEx for several quarters now as it has been investing in new facilities and equipment. Some analysts believe that SMIC’s N+1 and N+2 nodes rely on the same (or nearly the same) set of production tools that is used for the company’s 14 nm and 12 nm technologies.
(Image credit: SMIC)
Therefore, assuming that SMIC has stockpiled enough modern DUV scanners and other tools (as well as spare parts) to build sufficient capacity to compete against its bigger rivals, its N+1 and N+2 processes might have good chances to become relatively popular in the coming years. Meanwhile, neither N+1 nor N+2 nodes are going to be competitive with leading-edge nodes from other companies when they enter mass production in 2021 ~ 2023 timeframe.
Furthermore, even though SMIC has several R&D teams working on new fabrication processes, its roadmap looks increasingly uncertain as the company will be unable to adopt EUV lithography and GAAFET structures — the key enablers for next-generation nodes — for years to come.
Or Uncertain Future for SMIC?
But while EUV and GAAFETs are important for SMIC’s long-term future, the inclusion of the company into the Entity List brings a host of challenges that may force the company to change its plans dramatically, some analysts believe.
(Image credit: SMIC)
SMIC can get DUV scanners from ASML without any restrictions. Lithography tools are very important for production of semiconductors, but they are not the only tools used at a fab. There is equipment used for high-precision metrology, deposition, etching, photoresist stripping, and wafer cleaning that is made primarily by companies from the USA. There are alternative from Europe and Japan, but an insertion of a new tool always means a change of the whole flow, a lengthy and risky process. If the company fails to get one advanced tool or spare parts for it on time, this ruins its whole production flow. In the worst case scenario the company might need to halt production using its FinFET process technologies and retrofit its capacity for legacy nodes.
“We believe the build-up of spare parts/materials should keep SMIC’s operations afloat for 3-6 months, even if its US suppliers now need to get licenses before shipping, and the chance of a positive response is deemed low,” wrote Szeho Ng, an analyst with China Renaissance Securities, in a note to clients. “Our base case now assumes that its FinFET businesses will largely halt (given the high reliance on U.S. tech supply, and the strategic importance of the tech for making core chips in sensitive markets), with the installed capacity retrofitted for lower-ASP legacy 300-mm (28-90 nm nodes) manufacturing. 200-mm (130nm-and-above nodes) fabs will stay as business as usual, in our opinion.”
At present SMIC’s FinFET business probably accounts for 2% ~ 3% of the company’s revenue, so even if the company has to halt production using 14nm and cancel 12nm and N+1 plans, it is not going to suffer a significant sales drop. But advanced nodes tend to be profitable and attractive for big clients. Furthermore, retrofitting new fabs for older technologies will automatically bring net profits down (tools to be replaced have not depreciated yet, which means losses).
Overall, the analysts believe that SMIC’s future largely depends on the U.S. government’s attitude towards the company rather than on its own R&D expertise or manufacturing prowess.
“We see the U.S. government’s attitude towards SMIC as remaining the key to its destiny, as an imminent full decoupling of the company from the U.S. tech reliance (even for legacy 300-mm) may not be as easy as some industry watchers expect,” wrote Ng. “The U.S. tech influence goes beyond the equipment/materials areas, and goes further upstream to the EDA markets where the U.S.’s global dominance is even higher. Furthermore, it remains to be seen what the attitude of Japan may be, as it also plays a fairly important role in global equipment/materials supplies.”
Google is adding new election features to its voice assistant, Google Search, and Google Maps, to make it easier for US citizens to find voting locations ahead of the election next month. In Google Search, queries like “early voting locations” and “ballot drop boxes near me” will give details about where you can vote in person or return mail-in ballots, while asking the Google Assistant where to vote will “soon” provide relevant information on your phone, speaker, or smart display, Google says.
Then, once you’ve found a location, Google says its Maps service can now give you directions to voting or ballot drop box locations, and will provide information about voting hours.
Information like this is especially important this year given many more voters are expected to use mail-in ballots in light of the pandemic. Google says it has partnered with the Voting Information Project to source the voting location information, and plans to list over 200,000 voting locations nationwide. In cases where this information is not available to provide directly, Google says it will point users towards state and local election websites.
As well as proactively providing voting information, Google and its subsidiaries are also attempting to limit the spread of voting misinfo
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