Codacy, a startup based in Lisbon, Portugal that offers what it calls an “automated code review platform,” has raised $5.1 million in Series A funding. EQT Ventures led the round, with participation from existing investors Faber, Caixa Capital, Join Capital, and Seedcamp. Read More
Nathan is a true animal lover, and has built a wonderful niche e-commerce company with the mission of helping elephants. Beautiful story. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your...
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A new patent recently published by the US Patent and Trademark Office shows that Motorola may be working on a phone that features a self-repairing display, as first reported by Engadget.
The company is envisioning a device that uses a "shape memory polymer" instead of glass, which may be able to reshape itself and return to the original composition by applying heat to a scratched area.
The phone in question would generate the heat by itself, and enter a low-power mode to begin the process â which, Motorola envisions, could be manually kickstarted by the user via a built-in app.
The technology would allow the device to analyse the display's structure, spot anomalies, and slowly use heat to modify the scraped area by remolding it in a way as close as possible to the original.
The phone's self-healing process could be activated overnight when the phone works while keeping its battery running via a specially designed dock.US Patent & Trademark Office
The process could be lengthy, so the patent mentions that it could be done overnight while the phone is cradled inside a specially-designed dock. That would give the phone the necessary power for its heat-creating components to keep working without risking that the phone runs out of juice.
This doesn't mean that such a device would be able to self-repair a broken screen, but rather iron out small scratches and minor cuts that may occur when your phone is inside your pocket alongside a pair of keys, for instance.
Motorola already offers shatterproof displays with its Moto Z Force lineup of phones, which offer a much increased durability over regular front panels.
LG, too, made a foray into self-healing smartphones back in 2013, when it launched the LG G Flex in Korea. That device had a plastic coating on the back that worked very similarly to Motorola's device, although its screen was made out of traditional glass.
Swedish YouTuber PewDiePie. YouTube
PewDiePie has gone off Nazi jokes.
In his latest video, the YouTube superstar has said he won't make any more off-colour references to fascist ideology after watching footage of the white nationalist Charlottesville rally which took place in the US over the weekend.
PewDiePie, real name Felix Kjellberg, linked the rally to a controversial incident in February, when he was criticised in the press for paying two Indian men to hold up a sign saying "Death to all Jews."
"Nazi memes are not even that funny any more," he said in a video released on Wednesday. "It's sort of a dead meme."
The February episode, originally reported by the Wall Street Journal, resulted in Kjellberg losing his show on YouTube's Red subscription service, and Disney dropping him from its Maker network. Kjellberg apologised at the time, saying: "I'm sorry for the words that I used, as I know they offended people. And I admit that the joke itself went too far." But he also responded viciously to media reports which he claimed took the joke "out of context", referring to the original Wall Street Journal article as "absurd." He said subsequent coverage implying he was a fascist was "nothing but insanity."
His latest video is titled "I guess this needed to be said." It begins with a reference to this tweet by Kjellberg during the Charlottesville rally.
He said in reality he was alarmed that he "actually got grouped in with these people."
He said he was just "a guy making jokes on the internet", and added that he wanted "nothing to do with these people". He also said in February, he hadn't really believed Nazis still existed.
"I thought now would be a good time as any to just say I want nothing to do with these people," he said. "I don't think anyone that watches me thinks I'm an actual Nazi, but I know a lot of people might still have doubt."
Whatever Kjellberg's original intent in February, it gave substantial ammo to the online far-right. Neo-Nazi news site The Daily Stormer leapt on the "Death to all Jews" fallout with several favourable write-ups. It also defended Kjellberg when Disney dropped him, referring to the company by the anti-Semitic term "kikes."
The Daily Stormer is having its own problems after Charlottesville and is currently offline, but you can still see cached versions of the articles.
Here are some screenshots :
The Daily Stormer writes that "Death to all Jews" is a statement "we can all get behind" Google
And while the "Death to all Jews" video is no longer available on YouTube, PewDiePie made several baiting follow-ups referencing Hitler after the controversy. In one video, he makes a video game character look like Hitler and narrates his fictional backstory of wanting to "kill Jews."
Kjellberg said in his latest video: "If for some reason Nazis think it's great I'm making these jokes, I don't want to give them that benefit so I'm going to stop doing it.
"It's not me censoring myself. It's more like I don't want to part of it."
Digi.me and Personal, two companies that broadly play in the personal data space by offering apps to securely store and share various data about yourself, are announcing a merger. Terms of deal remain undisclosed. Read More
Amazon is planning to open a huge new warehouse in Bristol, England, next year, creating more than 1,000 jobs in the region
The Seattle-headquartered ecommerce company announced the news on Wednesday, saying it will look to hire operations managers and engineers, as well as HR and IT staff.
The warehouse will be based at Severn Beach, which is 17 miles north west of Bristol in West England.
"We are very excited to expand our network into Bristol, which will in total create more than 1,000 new permanent roles with competitive wages and comprehensive benefits starting on day one," said Stefano Perego, Amazon's director of UK customer fulfilment, in a statement.Â
Perego added: "There are several factors we consider when deciding on where to place a new fulfilment centre, and Bristol offers fantastic infrastructure and talented local people who we look forward to joining the Amazon team."
Amazon currently has 13 other warehouses in the UK located in Daventry, Doncaster, Coalville, Dunfermline, Dunstable, Gourock, Hemel Hempstead, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Peterborough, Rugeley, and Swansea Bay.
The company says it has invested £6.4 billion into its UK operations since 2010, with money going towards research and development, a new head office in London, and several new warehouses.
Amazon said its UK workforce will be 24,000 by the end of this year.
How do I use this?EssayRooYour favourite brands haven't always had the sleek, user-friendly interfaces you're used to today.
Everyone must start from somewhere, even the likes of Amazon and McDonald's.
Unfortunately, most of the resulting efforts were pretty terrible. There was no winning model to follow, so designers were left stabbing in the dark.
We used a combination of images from Educational consultants Essayroo and the Wayback Machine, which archives old websites, to dig up some of the most basic sites brands like Coca-Cola and Booking.com had when they first launched.
Scroll down to laugh at their primitiveness, ordered by launch date.
An earlier version of this article was written by Will Heilpern.
Bitcoin is posting new record highs on Thursday, continuing its recent bull run.
The cryptocurrency is down 1.51% to $4,451.00 at 11.20 a.m. BST (6.20 a.m. ET). That marks a new high for the currency, which has been on a tear since breaking through $4,000 early on Sunday morning.Markets Insider
Bitcoin has been on a strong bull run since the start of the year, gaining over 300% since January amid renewed interest in the digital currency and blockchain technology more generally.
Other digital currencies continue to move inline with Bitcoin, which is the biggest cryptocurrency by market value. Bitcoin Cash, which was split off from Bitcoin proper at the start of the month, is up 0.17 against the dollar to $299.42 on Thursday morning.
Ethereum, the second biggest digital currency by market cap, is bucking the trend. Ethereum is up 6.34% against the dollar to $320.35.
Mati Greenspan, an analyst at trading platform eToro who closely follows the crypto space, says in an email: "Crypto markets are back on their feet and forging new record gains. The market cap of all the cryptocurrencies in circulation reached a new high of $142.8 Billion earlier this morning."
Samir Desai, CEO and cofounder of Funding Circle. Funding Circle
LONDON â Dutch insurance firm Aegon will lend £160 million to UK small businesses using peer-to-peer lender Funding Circle's online platform.
Aegon will invest in loans to UK small businesses originated through Funding Circle over the next year and the plan is to extend the deal for a further three years.
Funding Circle estimates that the £160 million committed could help fund loans to 2,600 businesses.
Stephen Barclay MP, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, said in a statement on Thursday: "This partnership with one of the UKâs largest FinTech firms is further proof that the UK remains the global leader in FinTech.
"Aegonâs venture also shows that there is significant appetite for inward investment into the UK and we hope to see more deals of this scale in the future."
Funding Circle, founded in 2010, has made over £3 billion of small business loans to more than 34,000 businesses since its launch. The company's platform lets both retail and institutional investors lend money directly to small businesses at attractive rates of return averaging 6.6% a year, Funding Circle said.
Aegon joins the government-backed British Business Bank, the European Investment Bank, and 65,000 individuals in lending over Funding Circle.
Aegon Bank's CFO Mark de Boer said: "The strategic partnership we have signed with Funding Circle is another important step in the strategy of Aegon to cooperate with Fintech partners in the direct lending landscape.
"This partnership gives Aegon access to attractive small business loans over the next four years, which helps to further diversify our investment portfolio. High savings inflow of our successful Fintech Knab banking operation is used to invest in the Funding Circle loans."
De Boer said the deal follows "extensive due diligence" and Funding Circle CEO Samir Desai called the partnership a "validation" of his company's business.
Desai said in a statement: "Now investors of all shapes and sizes can benefit from the stability of the asset class whilst also providing much-needed job creation and economic growth. We hope our joint programme with Aegon will develop to deliver increased lending to UK small businesses over the coming years."
Separately on Thursday, MarketInvoice, another UK lending fintech business, announced a partnership with credit management business Veritas that will allow the invoice financing business to lend to businesses with a turnover of just £300,000, down from its current £1 million threshold.
Apple wants to make its own 'Game of Thrones'-scale shows. HBO
Good morning! Here is the tech news you need to know this Thursday.
1. Facebook shut down an online, internal discussion group after employees starting using it to harass each other about politics. The anonymous group was originally intended for people to talk about their work concerns, but quickly turned ugly.
2. Neo-Nazi news site The Daily Stormer was taken offline by hackers as soon as it lost its last line of defence â protection from web services company Cloudflare. Cloudflare's CEO Matthew Prince said he was "deeply uncomfortable" for dropping a customer over political pressure.
3. Amazon's share price dropped 0.5% after President Trump tweeted the company was "doing great damage to tax paying retailers."Â The company has been a frequent target of Trump on Twitter.
4. Conspiracy theorist and Trump supporter Jack Posobiec called off a multi-city "March on Google" protest, over possible threats of violence from counter-protestors. The march had been planned to protest the treatment of fired Google engineer James Damore.
5. Mark Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Tim Cook have spoken out against "hate" after the violent Charlottesville march. In a letter to employees, Cook said "hate is a cancer", while Zuckerberg asked "where this hate comes from."
6. Bitcoin is recovering from its previous wobble, and is nearing its prior record high of $4339.79. The cryptocurrency hit that record on Tuesday, before falling over, and is now at $4313.91.
7. Female engineers discussing James Damore's firing from Google said he didn't lose his job for, as he claims, "speaking truth to power", but for mishandling a sensitive debate. "Social skills are part of the professional skillset," one wrote.
8. Uber has hired a former Goldman Sachs executive to run its business in Southeast Asia, where it's conventionally faced challenges from regulators. Brooks Entwistle headed up the bank's regional business, and becomes Uber's chief business officer for Southeast Asia.
9. Apple wants to spend $1 billion on original content over the next year, aiming to make up to 10 shows on a similar scale to "Game of Thrones." The company hired two Sony executives in the last few months.
10. Google has bought AlMatter, the Belarusian maker of selfie editing app Fabby, for an undisclosed amount. Fabby will continue to run for now, and the deal illustrates just how popular computer vision startups are right now.
Raisin's cofounders, from left: Michael Stephan, Tamaz Georgadze, and Frank Freund. Raisin
LONDON â German fintech Raisin has doubled the total amount invested over its platform since the start of the year, reaching â¬4 billion (£3.6 billion).
Raisin announced the milestone on Thursday. Its last investment update came in January when the startup said â¬2 billion (£1.8 billion) had been invested over its platform.
Raisin claims to be the fastest growing fintech in Europe and one of the biggest investment marketplaces in Europe, with over 90,000 customers.
Tamaz Georgadze, Raisin's CEO and cofounder, said in a statement: "It took us almost two years to reach the first billion in invested savings products and until the second milestone of â¬2 billion another ten months. For the third and fourth milestone it only took us four months in each case."
Berlin-based Raisin, founded in 2013, lets customers across Europe invest in savings accounts around the EU that offer the best interest rates. It offers euro interest rates as high as 1.92% for one year, on a minimum of â¬10,000.
Raisin, formerly known as WeltSparen, does not hold customer money and instead opens an individual account for each saver with the corresponding account. Raisin currently has a German, English, Spanish, and French-language version of its service.
Georgadze says: "With currently 34 partner banks from 17 European countries, customers find the majority of the highest interest rates available on our platforms."
Georgadze says Raisin hopes to hit â¬5 billion (£4.5 billion) of brokered investments by the end of the year.
The startup raised â¬30 million (£27.2 million) from US investors in January.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rolymo/
LONDON â Online pension manager PensionBee revealed the sky-high exit and management fees charged by some providers, and called for more to be done to protect savers.
The company tracked 1,800 pension transfers from 20 providers, compiling the data into a "Robin Hood Index" of the best and worst performers.
The Index found NOW:Pensions, one of Britain's biggest providers, charges annual fees of 10.4% on average (based on 173 cases), while Friends Life and Phoenix Life charge exit fees that can be over 70% of a pot's worth (based on 238 and 29 cases respectively).
"Some providers are determined to stay stuck in the seventeenth century" and to "trap customers," says PensionBee CEO Romi Savova.Â
Although workplace pensions charges are capped at 0.75%, providers can circumvent this using a combination of charges and fixed fees. Over time, such high fees can erode small pots to nothing.
PensionBee's study also found that although nearly two thirds of providers have 12 day transfer periods, the average could be up to 49 days. According to Savova, while only a quarter of the providers studied charge exit fees, those who do often also charge high management fees, explaining why many customers are willing to pay.
Robin Hood Index: management charges by provider Data from PensionBee
In November last year, the Financial Conduct Authority introduced a 1% cap on early exit fees for customers over 55. But this is not enough, says Savova, since it unfairly penalises young people. The government talks about giving people greater freedom over their retirement, she says, but barriers of this sort send "mixed messages."
There has also been a rise in pension-related scams since the relaxation of pension rules in April 2015, which allowed over 55s to withdraw more regardless of their income.
Scammers, says Savova, tend to target people desperate for cash in the short-term and often operate in broad daylight: "the government has been too slow to act," she says.
"The worst thing for pensions is that the industry gets a bad reputation," she says, pointing out that customers can choose to use ISAs instead.
PensionBee launched just over a year ago, and manages more than £100 million in assets. It has around 40,000 customers, and accounts work like a bank account: customers can see a live balance, make contributions online and use a smart calculator to plan their savings.
PensionBee's study was based on information gathered from current customers, as well as customers who considered switching but decided not to. Although PensionBee's typical customer is in their late 30s, the Index surveyed customers across a range of ages.
Apple CEO Tim Cook. Getty/Chip Somodevilla
In the wake of the deadly protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, Apple CEO Tim Cook emailed employees to say "hate is a cancer" and that the company would be making $1 million donations to two civil rights groups, according to BuzzFeed News.
"The events of the past several days have been deeply troubling for me, and I've heard from many people at Apple who are saddened, outraged or confused," Cook wrote. "What occurred in Charlottesville has no place in our country."
"We must not witness or permit such hate and bigotry in our country, and we must be unequivocal about it," Cook said. "This is not about the left or the right, conservative or liberal. It is about human decency and morality."
Cook also appeared to take exception to President Donald Trump's response to the protests: "I disagree with the president and others who believe that there is a moral equivalence between white supremacists and Nazis, and those who oppose them by standing up for human rights. Equating the two runs counter to our ideals as Americans," Cook's email read.
"We've seen the terror of white supremacy & racist violence before. It's a moral issue - an affront to America. We must all stand against it," Cook tweeted Monday.
Following Trump's controversial statements on the violence, his biggest gathering of business leaders also fell apart.
Team,
Like so many of you, equality is at the core of my beliefs and values. The events of the past several days have been deeply troubling for me, and I've heard from many people at Apple who are saddened, outraged or confused.
What occurred in Charlottesville has no place in our country. Hate is a cancer, and left unchecked it destroys everything in its path. Its scars last generations. History has taught us this time and time again, both in the United States and countries around the world.
We must not witness or permit such hate and bigotry in our country, and we must be unequivocal about it. This is not about the left or the right, conservative or liberal. It is about human decency and morality. I disagree with the president and others who believe that there is a moral equivalence between white supremacists and Nazis, and those who oppose them by standing up for human rights. Equating the two runs counter to our ideals as Americans.
Regardless of your political views, we must all stand together on this one point â that we are all equal. As a company, through our actions, our products and our voice, we will always work to ensure that everyone is treated equally and with respect.
I believe Apple has led by example, and we're going to keep doing that. We have always welcomed people from every walk of life to our stores around the world and showed them that Apple is inclusive of everyone. We empower people to share their views and express themselves through our products.
In the wake of the tragic and repulsive events in Charlottesville, we are stepping up to help organizations who work to rid our country of hate. Apple will be making contributions of $1 million each to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. We will also match two-for-one our employees' donations to these and several other human rights groups, between now and September 30.
In the coming days, iTunes will offer users an easy way to join us in directly supporting the work of the SPLC.
Dr. Martin Luther King said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter." So, we will continue to speak up. These have been dark days, but I remain as optimistic as ever that the future is bright. Apple can and will play an important role in bringing about positive change.
Best,
Tim
A promotional image for Electric Jukebox. Electric Jukebox
LONDON â Electric Jukebox, the British music hardware startup that makes a television set-top box for music streaming, says it plans to go public in the first half of 2018.
The company makes a box that plugs into televisions which lets you use your television to navigate a music streaming service.
The device costs £199 and doesn't require a monthly subscription.
Electric Jukebox said that it has raised $14 million (£10.8 million) in funding from investors including CEO Rob Lewis, 50 high net worth individuals, and previous investor YOLO Leisure & Technology.
YOLO Leisure & Technology is controlled by entrepreneur Nigel Wray, and a spokesperson for YOLO said the company owns 41% of Electric Jukebox.
Electric Jukebox said that it intends to IPO in the first half of 2018 and list on AIM in London.
Stephen Fry with his Electric Jukebox. Electric Jukebox
One rumour that has been floated before on how Electric Jukebox could go public is through a reverse takeover, which would involve it buying a company that's already public. However, Electric Jukebox denied that it plans to go public through that method and instead said that "the company is now planning an independent IPO in the first half of 2018. It will be an independent IPO not a reverse, despite earlier press coverage to the contrary."
The Daily Mail reported that Electric Jukebox is seeking a valuation above £100 million, which is an ambitious goal for the relatively new company. It also said that the company is looking to reach revenues of £777 million over the next five years.
The product was first announced in a London press conference in October 2015 that featured singer Alesha Dixon and comedian Alexander Armstrong.
The initial launch date was Christmas 2015, but it was then delayed to Easter 2016. That release date fell through as well, and the product was finally released in November 2016.
Singer Alesha Dixon during the launch of Electric Jukebox. Business Insider/James Cook
A US launch was also announced during the Electric Jukebox launch event, but it's only just happening â nearly two years after it was announced. Other changes made by the company include renaming the product to "ROXI" and cutting the pink version of its hardware.
Robbie Williams. Electric Jukebox
The company has relied on high-profile backers to raise its profile. Former Take That singer Robbie Williams, Sheryl Crow, "Strictly Come Dancing" star Dixon, and Stephen Fry all posed for product photos with the device.
The launch event was introduced by Armstrong and then-culture secretary John Whittingdale.
Electric Jukebox said that its celebrity backers all have stakes in the business, along with other music industry and technology names including former U2 manager Paul McGuiness, former Bon Jovi manager David Munns, and TomTom founder Mark Gretton.
This is a preview of a research report from BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about BI Intelligence, click here.
Insurance companies have long based their pricing models and strategies on assumptions about the demographics of their customers. Auto insurers, for example, have traditionally charged higher premiums for parents of teenage drivers based on the assumption that members of this demographic are more likely to get into an accident.
But those assumptions are inherently flawed, since they often aren't based on the actual behaviors and characteristics of individual customers. As new IoT technologies increasingly move into the mainstream, insurers are able to collect and analyze data to more accurately price premiums, helping them to protect the assets they insure and enabling more efficient assessment of damages to conserve resources.
A new report from BI Intelligence explains how companies in the auto, health, and home insurance markets are using the data produced by IoT solutions to augment their existing policy pricing models and grow their customer bases. In addition, it examines areas where IoT devices have the potential to open up new insurance segments.
 Here are some of the key takeaways:
The world's largest auto insurers now offer usage-based policies, which price premiums based on vehicle usage data collected directly from the car.Large home and commercial property insurers are using drones to inspect damaged properties, which can improve workflow efficiency and reduce their reliance on human labor.Health and life insurance firms are offering customers fitness trackers to encourage healthy behavior, and discounts for meeting certain goals.Home insurers are offering discounts on smart home devices to current customers, and in some cases, free devices to entice new customers.In full, the report:
Forecasts the number of Americans who will have tried usage-based auto insurance by 2021.Explains why narrowly tailored wearables could be what's next for the health insurance industry.Analyzes the market for potential future insurance products on IoT devices.Discusses and analyzes the barriers to consumers opting in to policies that collect their data.To get your copy of this invaluable guide to the IoT, choose one of these options:
Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIPPurchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORTThe choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, youâve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of insurance and the IoT.
The past week has been a tough one for lovers of freedom. Slippery slopes have been slid down and a side of the human mind that once remained in shadow has reared its head. Charlottesville is just the first step down a dark road.In real life, on the public square, our support of freedom of speech and public assembly – a freedom that has long helped hater and lover alike – is in… Read More
Despite endless reports of sexual harassmentt and all the drama surrounding the Google memo, Merline Saintil, a powerful engineer at Intuit, says things are actually getting better for women in tech, not worse.
Saintil has seen diversity initiatives at Intuit work well, she says. She just landed her first corporate board position â at a bank â and says that as more women join boards, the future will get even brighter.To all women who love tech but fear the industry is rife with sexual harassers and misogynists, Merline Saintil has a message of encouragement:Â Don't listen to the haters.
Saintil, an engineering exec at Intuit, is having a great career and insists other women can too. In fact, she's working to make it easier for other women to succeed, she told Business Insider this week.
"Iâm hopeful and excited about the progress [of women in tech], even with this madness going on," she said.
By madness, Saintil was referring to the firestorm created by the memo written by fired Google engineer James Damore that decried the company's efforts to hire more women. In his memo, Damore argued there are biological reasons that make women less interested in engineering then men, a claim that has been widely debunked.
Damore's memo followed a wave of recent stories in which women in tech have gone public about the sexual harassment they've experienced, be it from co-workers, bosses, or investors. And it came on top of years of criticism directed at the industry for its lack of diversity.
Despite all the negative sentiment and publicity, women have made some progress, at least at companies that were determined to change, she insists.
"It's frustrating to hear that a manifesto would even be written. But I also know that what weâre doing is the right thing, and weâll have history on our side," Saintil said.
Intuit, for example, has vowed to get to gender parity by 2020, a commitment in line with its support for organizations like Girls Who Code. Currently, women make up about 40% of its workforce, including about 30% of its technical position, 50% of non-technical roles and 33% of leadership roles. It still has a ways to go, but women are more highly represented there than at many other tech companies.Â
Google, for instance, is fairly representative of the rest of the industry. At the search giant, located across the street from Intuit in Mountain View, women make up 31% of the overall workforce. And women represent just 20% of tech workers and only 25% of people in leadership positions.Â
She has reason to be hopeful for the future, too, because she's living proof that you can come from nothing and land in the boardroom.
Saintil is working to help other women succeed in tech. Tech Hub/Flickr
Saintil moved to the US from Haiti when she was five years old, speaking no English. She discovered computer science in college and since the early 2000s has worked at a who's who of big tech companies, including Adobe, PayPal, and Yahoo.
Today, she's an exec running Intuit's operations, product and technology.
She's also serves on a corporate board. After taking a "how to be a board member" class at Stanford and getting help from the Athena Alliance, a group that assists women get board positions, she was named a director on the board of Banner Bank earlier this year.
Saintil has previously served on the boards of non-profits like the Anita Borg Institute. But being in a corporate board room will really give her a chance to pay it forward, she said.
"It's about sending the elevator back down from the board room" to help the next generation of women, she said. "I am hopeful because we are staring to have this conversation [about women in tech] at the very top of leadership. In the board room."
And, she emphasizes, for all the ugly stories, there are stories of success, like hers.
"When I walk in a room and Iâm the only woman, or the only person of color, I donât for a second forget that," Saintil said. "But it's a quick conversation with myself that I belong, and that Iâm not giving anyone else the power to tell me where I belong."
Until today, Cloudflare had never dropped a customer due to political pressure.
It's this fact that company CEO Matthew Prince said makes him so "deeply uncomfortable" with his decision early Wednesday to stop providing paid services to The Daily Stormer, including protecting its website from attackers.
As it turns out, attackers took down the neo-Nazi site as soon as Cloudflare stopped protecting it, Prince told Business Insider. Daily Stormer remained offline on Wednesday evening.
Daily Stormer drew national scrutiny and condemnation after it published a story that demeaned Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old woman who was killed on Saturday when a car rammed into people counter-protesting against a white-supremacist demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia.Â
Prince made clear that he found the website's content "vile." But he regrets that he alone was able to decide its fate.
"The ability of somebody to single-handedly choose to knock content offline doesn't align with core ideas of due process or justice," Prince told Business Insider on Wednesday. "Whether that's a national government launching attacks or an individual launching attacks."
While Cloudflare may have been Daily Stormer's last line of defense, Prince's decision didn't actually take the company's site offline by itself. Earlier in the week, GoDaddy and Google both publicly announced they had dropped Daily Stormer as a customer of their domain hosting services. Â
And then there were the attackers.
The site going offline was an outcome imagined by both friends and foes of the neo-Nazi site. One of the services Cloudflare provides is to provide a sort of buffer between visitors and websites, to protect sites from denial-of-service attacks. It does this in part by obfuscating the identity of the websites' hosts. It was that service that helped protect Daily Stormer.Â
"The size and scale of the attacks that can now easily be launched online make it such that if you don't have a network like Cloudflare in front of your content, and you upset anyone, you will be knocked offline," Prince wrote in a blog post Wednesday. "In fact, in the case of the Daily Stormer, the initial requests we received to terminate their service came from hackers who literally said: 'Get out of the way so we can DDoS this site off the Internet.'"
Cloudflare says it handles 10% of all internet requests. So while this is the first time that Cloudflare has stopped working with a website for political reasons, Prince said his company has faced plenty of external and international government pressure.
"There are human rights organizations that are criticizing the Chinese government that we continuously get pressured to restrict," he said "There are LGBT organizations in the Middle East. Often times it's things covering abuses by government that governments would rather not have online."
This is not the first time, though, that Cloudflare has dropped support for a site. It has ended service to other websites in response to illegal activity, such as child pornography. And in 2015, a court ordered Cloudflare to block websites associated with the music streaming service Grooveshark, which was in trouble over copyright violations.
In this case, though, Cloudflare dropped Daily Stormer because the neo-Nazis claimed the company supported their cause.Â
"The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology," Prince wrote in the blog.
Prince said that his team is set to have a debate over how to address such issues moving forward.
People in the Americas and Europe use most of the same services and websites when they go online, with Facebook, Amazon, and Google as mainstays for most internet users. The one place these market leaders have struggled to gain users is China.Â
The Chinese government has strict censorship practices when it comes to the internet and it operates a "Great firewall" that blocks undesirable websites from reaching Chinese users. As we can see in this chart from Statista, the vast majority of people in China flock to domestic sites and services. Facebook was banned in 2009 and Google left in 2010 after getting hit by a cyberattack from within the country. Amazon remains active, but has struggled to pull customers from the Alibaba owned Tmall.Â
Mike Nudelman/Business Insider
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Mark Zuckerberg. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
After the horrific events in Charlottesville on Saturday that left three dead, 19 injured and the nation in shock over the violence of racist hate groups, Facebook deleted blog posts from a well-known white supremacist blog.
On Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said "we've always taken down any post that promotes or celebrates hate crimes or acts of terrorism -- including what happened in Charlottesville. With the potential for more rallies, we're watching the situation closely and will take down threats of physical harm."
He also expressed his personal frustration. "I know a lot of us have been asking where this hate comes from. As a Jew, it's something I've wondered much of my life. It's a disgrace that we still need to say that neo-Nazis and white supremacists are wrong -- as if this is somehow not obvious."
Ever since Donald Trump won the 2016 election last November, people have been questioning Facebook's role in politics, and its role in creating the ideological echo chambers that divide us.
Zuckerberg seems to be taking that criticism to heart, traveling across the country, meeting with people on all sides of the political spectrum and hiring a whole bunch of political strategists. If he's not running for office (which he says he isn't), then these actions appear to be his way of understanding the echo chamber, even if he hasn't solved it yet
Here's Zuckerberg's full post.
We aren't born hating each other. We aren't born with such extreme views. We may not be able to solve every problem, but we all have a responsibility to do what we can. I believe we can do something about the parts of our culture that teach a person to hate someone else.
It's important that Facebook is a place where people with different views can share their ideas. Debate is part of a healthy society. But when someone tries to silence others or attacks them based on who they are or what they believe, that hurts us all and is unacceptable.
There is no place for hate in our community. That's why we've always taken down any post that promotes or celebrates hate crimes or acts of terrorism -- including what happened in Charlottesville. With the potential for more rallies, we're watching the situation closely and will take down threats of physical harm. We won't always be perfect, but you have my commitment that we'll keep working to make Facebook a place where everyone can feel safe.
The last few days have been hard to process. I know a lot of us have been asking where this hate comes from. As a Jew, it's something I've wondered much of my life. It's a disgrace that we still need to say that neo-Nazis and white supremacists are wrong -- as if this is somehow not obvious. My thoughts are with the victims of hate around the world, and everyone who has the courage to stand up to it every day.
There may always be some evil in the world, and maybe we can't do anything about that. But there's too much polarization in our culture, and we can do something about that. There's not enough balance, nuance, and depth in our public discourse, and I believe we can do something about that. We need to bring people closer together, and I know we can make progress at that.Â
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