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Friday, April 5, 2013

The "Nuclear" Option for Total Facebook App Privacy

April 5th, 2013Top Story

The "Nuclear" Option for Total Facebook App Privacy

By Melanie Pinola

The "Nuclear" Option for Total Facebook App PrivacyIf you don't have any interest in Facebook apps (and, let's face it, many of them are suspect or just plain spammy), Facebook offers an option that works like a kill switch to keep Facebook apps and other websites from sharing or accessing your information: Turn off Platform.

Facebook Platform is the way games, applications, and websites are integrated with Facebook. It allows sharing of your information not just for the apps or sites you visit, but also allows your friends' Facebook apps to access your private data.

Although you can control app information sharing on an individual basis on Facebook, as we recommend in our guide to Facebook privacy, turning off Platform is the surest way to keep your Facebook information from being shared to any apps or sites.

Doing this, however, also means you won't be able to log into websites or apps using Facebook, and friends won't be able to share information with you through apps. Here's the warning Facebook gives about turning off Platform:

The "Nuclear" Option for Total Facebook App Privacy

If you get too many CityVille notifications as it is, don't use any Facebook apps, and don't use it to log into other sites, you can turn off Platform by going to your Facebook privacy settings, then clicking the Edit button in the "Apps you use" section.

Sophos' Naked Security blog offers more details on managing your app privacy settings in the link below.

How to stop your friends' Facebook apps from accessing *your* private information | Nacked Security

Photo remixed from an original by Craig Myran Photography.

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TechCrunch Founder Michael Arrington's History of Abuse Allegations Includes an Assault Investigation

April 5th, 2013Top Story

TechCrunch Founder Michael Arrington's History of Abuse Allegations Includes an Assault Investigation

By Adrian Chen

TechCrunch Founder Michael Arrington's History of Abuse Allegations Includes an Assault InvestigationWhen TechCrunch founder turned venture capitalist Mike Arrington was accused last week of rape and abuse by an ex-girlfriend, many in Silicon Valley were shocked, but not entirely surprised. This is because rumors that Arrington abused women have circulated almost from the time he started his career in the tech industry. Gawker has learned of two previous instances, a decade apart, in which Arrington was accused of violent, abusive behavior towards women. One—in which a coworker and ex-girlfriend accused him of assaulting her in a hotel room—resulted in an internal investigation by his then-employer. In the other incident, he allegedly threw a different girlfriend against a wall. Neither episode ended in any real fallout for Arrington.

Last week, entrepreneur Jenn Allen, who used to date Arrington, publicly accused him of physical abuse and rape in a Facebook post and in a comment on a subsequent Gawker story. The accusations have been much-discussed, at least in private, at least among the Silicon Valley elite, of which Arrington is a truculent but influential member. And it has opened the floodgates, as former friends and colleagues come forward with their own troubling stories about Arrington's past.

Arrington launched TechCrunch in 2005 and quickly became known as an important powerbroker in the hyper-competitive tech start up world. By 2008, Arianna Huffington was calling him "one of the most influential figures on the Web." Coverage on TechCrunch has typically been a coveted prize for new companies hoping to attract investors. And Arrington savvily used the blog as leverage to wedge himself into a position of power far exceeding even the most prominent tech-blog star. He developed a fearsome reputation as an unapologetic asshole who was unafraid to promise favorable coverage to those who helped him out. He was ultimately forced out of the site after stretching the boundary between journalist and insider by launching his own venture capital fund to invest millions in the very start ups TechCrunch covered.

Arrington began his tech career in 1999, leaving a job at prestigious Silicon Valley law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati to work in business development at a new startup called RealNames, which hoped to replace complex web domain names with simple phrases. The first incident uncovered by Gawker occurred there: In late 1999, Arrington was investigated for allegedly assaulting a female RealNames sales representative, according to Cecile DeSmet Sharp, the director of human resources at RealNames at the time.

The accusation stemmed from a conference that Arrington and the coworker, along with a number of other RealNames employees, attended in the fall of 1999, Sharp said. According to Sharp and another source familiar with the allegations, the coworker claimed that one night during an altercation in a hotel room, Arrington violently threw her onto a bed and held her down so hard that she ended up with fingerprint bruises on her arms.

"I believe he threw her onto the bed. And she started kicking and he held her down really hard," Sharp told Gawker.

Soon after the conference, the coworker told Sharp what had happened and showed her bruises on her arm that she said were from the assault. "She felt very uncomfortable coming into the office with [Arrington] there," Sharp said. Sharp said she told RealNames VP of administration Jim Strawbridge and CEO Keith Teare about the incident, and an outside firm was called in to conduct an investigation.

The matter was complicated by the fact that Arrington and the coworker had been in an on-again-off-again relationship, according to Sharp, although they were not dating at the time of the alleged assault. The investigation reached an uncertain conclusion. Arrington was reprimanded, and a note about the incident was put in his file. But he faced no material punishment, according to Sharp.

"He got his hand slapped when it should have been something more," Sharp said. She believes he was protected by his close relationship with Keith Teare, RealNames' CEO. (Teare later co-founded TechCrunch with Arrington in 2005.) The incident was whispered about at RealNames, but when another former employee asked about it at the time, he was rebuffed and told that it was a confidential HR issue. "It was a scandal, just buried under the rug," the former employee told Gawker. "I was essentially told to look the other way."

A few months later, in the spring of 2000, Arrington left RealNames voluntarily, according to Sharp. He soon founded Achex, an internet payment company.

Cecile Sharp left RealNames the next year, partly due to the way they handled the incident. "I lost a lot of respect for the management team," she said. She's speaking out now about the 1999 incident because the disheartening similarity of Jenn Allen's allegations left her "sick to my stomach."

"This has to stop," said Sharp, now a 54-year-old sociology graduate student in Arizona who has a daughter in the tech industry. "If you're a parent and you have daughters, you don't want your daughters to experience this bullshit."

(The coworker who made the allegation against Arrington declined to comment for the record when reached by phone. Sources who corroborated Sharp's account would only agree to speak to Gawker on the condition that we withhold the coworker's name; we agreed.)

In 2009, ten years after the RealNames incident, Arrington was again the subject of rumors he'd assaulted a woman. This time the alleged victim was Meghan Asha, a well-known Silicon Valley socialite and entrepreneur who, according to a friend, had an on-and-off relationship with Arrington for three years, starting around 2007. On September 12th, 2009 Asha flew from New York City, where she lives, to San Francisco. This coincided with the start of the TechCrunch50, a Bay Area tech conference that Arrington organized with his former business partner Jason Calacanis.

On the last night of the conference, a group of attendees including Calacanis, former TechCrunch writer Paul Carr, and Loren Feldman were celebrating at an afterparty at San Francisco's 5A5 steakhouse. The group was having fun "drunk-dialing" various friends and tech personalities, when one woman Calacanis called brought the festivities to a halt: According to two sources familiar with the call, the woman, a good friend of Asha's, told Calacanis that Arrington had attacked Asha that night, throwing her against the wall in a hotel room.

"It was all in good fun and [Calacanis] is suddenly white with a somber face and he's doing a lot of listening," said a person who was with Calacanis during the call. "When he hung up he basically said 'Holy Shit, Mike roughed up Meghan and she split.'"

"There was a call from [the friend]," Calacanis told Gawker. "But I don't feel comfortable discussing what she said."

Carr, whose company NSFW Corp. raised $25,000 from Arrington's CrunchFund, said he vaguely remembered the call. But "I have zero recollection of a conversation involving allegations of abuse. That doesn't mean the conversation didn't happen, of course."

The incident is hinted at in Asha's Twitter feed from the time, which showed her eagerly flying out to the conference from New York, only to return early and with a "breaking" heart.


It was the culmination of a turbulent day for Arrington. Earlier, he'd oddly failed to show up at an awards show that was supposed to be the highlight of the conference. Calcanis would later say the two had a fight that night that led to the end of the TechCrunch50 and their business partnership.

According to one friend, Asha openly shares with friends that Arrington had abused her—mostly emotionally, but sometimes physically. "I've heard it straight from Meghan that Arrington abused her, and she did mention the wall-shoving incident," the friend told Gawker. In tech circles, rumors have circulated about Asha and Arrington for years, but she has never publicly addressed them. "I know she's previously stated that she wants to put the whole thing behind her as the reason why she won't come forward," said the friend.

Arrington has not responded to repeated requests for comment. Asha declined to comment as well. Keith Teare, the former CEO of RealNames, hasn't responded to a Facebook message.

[Image via Getty]

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We Need to Stop Tweeting Annoying Gaming Updates. Here's How.

April 5th, 2013Top Story

We Need to Stop Tweeting Annoying Gaming Updates. Here's How.

By Mike Fahey

Earlier this week the Prime Minister of Egypt was globally ridiculed for a Twitter update generated from within Beeline Interactive's popular Smurfs' Village game. Last year a Spanish politician made headlines when his "son" tweeted a game update from Doodle Jump.When public figures do it, it's mildly amusing, but when the average Joe's Twitter feed starts filling up with game updates, the average Joe gets blocked. The updates need to stop.

During the Facebook social game explosion of 2009-2010, game notifications were a blight, filling friends' feeds with obnoxious requests for in-game items or assistance. It took a few years, but thanks to platform rule changes and the ability to block specific apps, Facebook has become a much nicer place to hang out.

Twitter doesn't give users the ability to block individual keywords or specific applications, so my feed slowly fills with crap like this:

Reporting IS my work, so step the hell off, Papa Hashtag Smurf.

Nearly every social-style gaming app features the ability to send out tweets. It's a feature that allows players to share their accomplishments with their friends, perhaps expecting them to proffer a celebratory pat on the back or something. At least that's how the app developers would prefer players look at it. These are advertisements, pure and simple. I am playing this, here is a link to it so you can play it too. Maybe you'll become addicted as well and spend $27,000 on Smurf berries. It's social marketing. We're the modern-day equivalent of tiny classified ads.

So it's not just that I don't give a damn about your Smurf Village / Springfield / E.T. Garden / Temple Run 2 high score. I also don't like seeing your enthusiasm and enjoyment turned into an advertisement. It's embarrassing, and it needs to stop, but how?

Just Stop.

When a game asks you if you'd like to send a tweet, just say no. Simple, right? If you're excited about something that happened, just tweet it manually. Okay, maybe you need a little help.

Delete Your Twitter Account Information.

No, not your entire Twitter account (though I suppose that would work too).

Both Apple and Android feature a convenient means of storing your Twitter information so that when a program wants you to access it, it's only a button press away. Don't do this. If you've already entered the information, remove it.

Just click on the account name and delete it. You'll still be able to enter the information manually for each application, but the additional step might give you time to come to your senses. For extra-added protection, make your Twitter password the most inconvenient thing to type on a mobile keyboard ever.

Deauthorize Your Apps.

You have the willpower to avoid having to remove your account? That's great. Now let's make sure those games you're playing are going to just spam up Twitter anyway. Once you authorize a game it doesn't technically even have to ask you before tweeting. Most do, but it's so easy to just press that "Yes" button you might just wind up annoying people out of habit. You just can't help it. It comes naturally.

Those games can't capitalize on your predilection for annoyance if you don't revoke their access. It's in your Twitter settings. You'll probably be amazed at how many things are on that list. What the hell is Netvibes?

While you're pruning, be sure to deauthorize any game consoles or services you may have unwittingly signed up for, especially Raptr - if you really want to tell me you've just started playing BioShock Infinite, tell me yourself.

Adopt an Alter Ego.

While just not doing it is most highly effective method for halting the rampage of game marketing tweets, it's also the hardest - just ask your favorite drug addict. It's not the act of putting the pills into your mouth, but the benefits of doing so. It's not like games like Smurf Village are simply begging players to tweet. There's something in it for you.

Free items when you tweet. Free in-game currency when you tweet. Speed up your buildings with tweets. Unlock achievements with tweets. Enter a contest with tweets. Tweets, tweets, tweets. You need to tweet, or you're not getting the full game experience.

Fine. Tweet as somebody else. Create a new Twitter account. When a perpetual annoyance engine revs up in the forest and no followers are around to hear it, does it really exist? Save the existential theorizing for your real Twitter account. @AppSpamForever is where the spam lives.

Sorry, @AppSpamForever is mine.

No Really, Just Stop.

It's not going to be easy. There will be wailing and screaming and gnashing of teeth. There will be confusion between Twitter accounts. There will be people following @AppSpamForever, defeating the very purpose of a secondary spam account.

There are many hurdles to overcome, but I have faith. Faith that one day the Prime Minister of a major country will be able to build a village of tiny people without worrying about an ungrateful nation that doesn't appreciate how terrible he'd be without some means to unwind. Faith that tweets like these...

...are never obscured by tweets like these.

What?

Click to view

Culture Beast: See You at the Movies, Roger Ebert.

The Daily Beast
April 05

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Culture Beast
Five must-dos this week
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FILM
The Great Appreciator
Roger Ebert, the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize and longtime co-host of the Emmy-winning program At the Movies, passed away Thursday after a long battle with cancer. Marlow Stern writes an appreciation of one of the greatest lovers of cinema.
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MAD MEN
What's Wrong With Don Draper?
Mad Men's Don Draper returns for his penultimate season on AMC Sunday—and he's as down in the dumps as ever. Jace Lacob on the dark mood hovering over the show's brilliant sixth season. Plus, get back up to speed on everything that happened last season.
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FILM
Bill Ayers Uncensored
Robert Redford plays a member of the Weather Underground in The Company You Keep. The group's real-life founder, Bill Ayers, tells Marlow Stern about its radical agenda, how we provoked North Korea, and more.
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On March 18, Leno took his most vicious shot yet at the network, calling NBC executives 'snakes' during his monologue."”

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DOCUMENTARY
The Angela Davis We Never Knew
She was on the FBI's Most Wanted list. She was branded a terrorist. But Jada Pinkett Smith tells Allison Samuels that her new documentary gives a more complex look at the African-American radical's life.
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TELEVISION
'Hannibal' Chows Down
Who dares tackle one of cinema's most iconic bad guys in NBC's new series? Danish star and former Bond baddie Mads Mikkelsen talks about making Hannibal his own, eating liver, and an unlikely bromance.
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Beyoncé Lookbook
A Brief History of Men in Heels
Presidents at Play

In response to American Idol Sucks This Season: Here's Seven Reasons Why:

The Voice does indeed kick Idol posterior on a regular basis. It moves faster, the singing is better, the judges are more interesting and have real credibility.

— billindallas

In response to Chopped: Why I'm Obsessed with Food Network's Reality Competition Show:

"Chopped has a magic formula. There's angst, tears, blood, and a laugh or two thanks to Ted. And I agree, I'd like to see Ted get a few more moments for cool facts and info regarding the ingredients and what the competitors are doing."

— microfoam

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