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C losed Caption, Online Protest and Twitter Has A New Head

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Nick Cotton Jun 9, 2017

Here’s the news we’re talking about around the Zbra Studios water cooler. We’ve provided key bullet points from each article for the speed readers out there. For those looking to dig in, click on the links for the full story.

Facebook Live gets accessible with third-party closed captioning
By Josh Constine From TechCrunch
  • “Over 38 million people in the US are deaf or hard-of-hearing, and Facebook wants them to be able to watch the 1 in 5 of its videos that are broadcast live.”
  • “The 360 million people world-wide who are hard-of-hearing aren’t a small niche that Facebook can ignore. In fact, they present a sizeable growth opportunity.”
  • “But closed captions can be inaccurate, especially for Live broadcasts, as Facebook discovered this month when Harvard’s faulty system spawned plenty of jokes during Mark Zuckerberg’s commencement speech.”
Amazon, Kickstarter, Reddit and Mozilla are staging a net neutrality online protest
By Brian Fung From The Washington Post
  • “Some of the Internet’s biggest names are banding together for a “day of action” to oppose the Federal Communications Commission, which is working to undo regulations for Internet providers that it passed during the Obama administration.”
  • “The digital rally recalls a similar online effort in 2012 by Google, Wikipedia and others to protest federal legislation on Internet piracy. The companies blacked out their websites in an effort to show how the bill could lead to censorship.”
  • “But critics of the rules, including the FCC’s Republican majority, say the policy is stifling and prevents Internet providers from finding new ways of making money in a world where many major goods and services have gone digital.”
Twitter has a new head of policy communications from the National Security Council
By KURT WAGNER From Recode
  • “Twitter has hired Emily Horne, most recently the assistant press secretary for the National Security Council, as its new communications director to handle policy and user safety issues.”
  • “The policy comms role is an important one for Twitter, which has made a public showing in the past of booting terrorist-related accounts from its service. Comms deals with censorship issues with foreign governments and also walks a fine line between allowing free speech and allowing hate speech.”

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