Daily Archives: February 8, 2020

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Facebook on the App Store

A fierce behind-the-scenes dispute between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office and Facebook erupted into public view Friday, as the speaker's office demanded that Facebook remove a video posted online by President Donald Trump.

The video in question showed Pelosi's viral State of the Union moment ripping up the text of Trump's speech Tuesday night, but was edited to make it appear that she ripped the speech even as Trump saluted a Tuskegee airman in the audience. In fact, Pelosi's speech-ripping gesture came at the end of the president's speech, and her office said it was in response to the totality of the speech and what Pelosi saw as misinformation in it.

The video, labeled "Powerful American stories ripped to shreds by Nancy Pelosi," was posted on both Facebook and Twitter. Trump tweeted the video from his Twitter account just before 6 p.m. Thursday to his more than 72 million followers.

Within hours, the speaker's office was demanding both social media companies remove the video, arguing it was unfair to Pelosi, who actually stood and applauded the airman during the speech.

Both Facebook and Twitter decided against removing the Trump video, although the companies cited different reasons for their decisions.

The dispute became public Friday when Pelosi's deputy chief of staff, Drew Hammill, posted a link to a criticism of the video Friday afternoon, writing "The latest fake video of Speaker Pelosi is deliberately designed to mislead and lie to the American people, and every day that these platforms refuse to take it down is another reminder that they care more about their shareholders' interests than the public's interests."

Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesman, replied to Hammill on Twitter: "Sorry, are you suggesting the President didn't make those remarks and the Speaker didn't rip the speech?"

Hammill fired back: "What planet are you living on? This is deceptively altered. Take it down."

In the end, both Facebook and Twitter declined to remove the Trump campaign post, citing corporate policies.

Facebook's Stone told CNBC, "I can confirm for you that the video doesn't violate our policies."

Stone said the company's policies against altered video specifically refer to video that has been edited to make it appear a person said something they didn't say or did something they didn't do.

Facebook's response left Pelosi's Hammill frustrated.

"I think they have a history here of promoting and making money off of content that is intentionally false," Hammill said.

Twitter, for its part, has a new set of policies around manipulated media that the company announced Tuesday. The company imposed a new rule on its users: "You may not deceptively share synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm. In addition, we may label Tweets containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people understand the media's authenticity and to provide additional context."

To determine that, Twitter said it would examine videos to ascertain "whether the content has been substantially edited in a manner that fundamentally alters its composition, sequence, timing or framing" as well as looking at "any visual or auditory information (such as new video frames, overdubbed audio or modified subtitles) that has been added or removed."

But that policy doesn't go into effect until March 5, and Twitter told Pelosi's office that it will not remove the Trump video under its current rules. Asked if the Trump video would violate Twitter's policies if it is posted again after March 5, Twitter spokeswoman Katie Rosborough wrote in an email: "I can't get into hypotheticals."

A Trump campaign spokesman said the president's reelection effort is unconcerned about Pelosi's reaction to the video.

"If Nancy Pelosi fears images of her ripping up the speech, perhaps she shouldn't have ripped up the speech," said Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh. In less than 24 hours, Murtaugh said, the video has received 2.1 million views, has reached almost 5 million people and has been shared more than 23,000 times.

It wasn't immediately clear who actually produced the video in question. The Trump campaign referred that question to the White House, and spokespeople there did not respond to a request for comment.

As all of that was happening, Pelosi's office was fighting to get Facebook to remove a second video of Nancy Pelosi that the speaker's office also complained about: This one a deceptively edited video of Pelosi appearing on The Colbert Report in a comedy segment. The altered video made it appear that Pelosi was eating Tide Pods, and Facebook has a policy against that.

Facebook took the Tide Pod video down.

"When the Tide Pod challenge began we said we would take down any such videos brought to our attention out of concern for people's safety, which is why we've removed this video from our platform," a Facebook spokesman said.

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Facebook and Twitter decline Pelosi request to delete Trump video - CNBC

Facebook is renewing its pledge tocombat vaccine misinformationafter the death of a young child from the flu.

According to NBC News, the 4-year-old died after his mother followed advice given to herby the members of one of Facebooks largest anti-vaccine groups.

The mother was a member of Stop Mandatory Vaccination, one of the largest known health misinformation groups with more than 139,000 members. According to NBC, she asked the group for advice after her child exhibited flu-like symptoms, including a high fever and a seizure.

None of the recommendations included seeking medical help, and the mother reportedly said she did not pick up a prescription for the anti-viral drug Tamiflu. The child was eventually hospitalized and died.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there have been more than 19 million cases of the flu reported this season. It has hit children especially hard; the CDC reported 78 child deathsfrom the fluduring the 2019-2020 season.

In a statement to NBC, Facebook said it is working hard to reduce vaccine misinformation everywhere on the platform, including in private groups.

But the childs death shows the limits of Facebooks efforts. The company has been reluctant to ban anti-vaccine groups altogether, and instead has implemented policies meant to better promote credible content.

In March, Facebook announced it was takingsteps to limit the circulation of anti-vaccine content on its platform. Under the plan, Facebook will no longer promote anti-vaccine groups and pages in search results, and will not surface them in users' newsfeeds.

Facebook-owned Instagram's search and "explore" features will also no longer promote posts that spread anti-vaccine content.

The company also said it would reject ads promoting false information about vaccines.

Here is the original post:

Facebook vows to combat vaccine misinformation after 4-year-old's death from flu | TheHill - The Hill

Facebook has demanded that Clearview AI stop using data scraped from its social networks for its controversial facial recognition database, CBSNews reports. Scraping peoples information violates our policies, a spokesperson for the company said, Which is why weve demanded that Clearview stop accessing or using information from Facebook or Instagram.

A day later, LinkedIn joined the growing group of companies demanding Clearview stop scraping its profiles for images to fill out its database. Unlike Facebook, however, LinkedIN went so far as to send a cease-and-desist letter similar to what Twitter and YouTube did last month. We are sending a cease & desist letter to Clearview AI. The scraping of member information is not allowed under our terms of service and we take action to protect our members, a LinkedIn spokesperson tells BuzzFeed News.

Although it has asked Clearview AI to stop using its data, CBS says Facebook has stopped short of sending a formal cease and desist letter. However, the social media company has sent multiple letters to Clearview to clarify its policies, and to ask for more information about its practices. Facebook is reportedly evaluating its options going forward, one of which likely involves sending a formal cease-and-desist like its fellow tech companies.

Clearview AIs database first came to light in a New York Times expose published last month. The system is based on a database of over three billion images scraped from the internet, and is designed to help law enforcement quickly identify persons of interest. Clearview AI has claimed that in one case Indiana State Police were able to solve a case within 20 minutes by using the app.

Facebook and LinkedIn arent the only tech giants to have objected to Clearview AIs practice of scraping billions of images from websites and social media to build its facial recognition database. Twitter was first to send a cease-and-desist letter last month, while YouTube followed suit earlier this week. Even police departments themselves have sought to distance themselves from the startup, with the NYPD confirming that it has no formal relationship with Clearview AI.

Clearview AIs CEO Hoan Ton-That argues that his company has a right to use the data, since its publicly available. There is also a First Amendment right to public information, the CEO said in an interview with CBS News, citing Googles practices of pulling in information for its search engine. The way we have built our system is to only take publicly available information and index it that way. However, without explicit permission to use the photos it relies on, Clearview AI may be in a legally precarious position.

Update February 6th, 3:22PM ET: Updated the story to include information regarding LinkedIns cease-and-desist letter to Clearview AI. The headline has been updated to reflect this fact.

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Facebook demands Clearview stop using its images for facial recognition - The Verge

Facebook said Wednesday it will nix mobile web publishers from Audience Network in order to exclusively focus on apps.

Beginning on April 11, Audience Network will no longer fill any ad requests to web and in-stream placements. Facebook warned that campaign performance may fluctuate during the phase-out period. Read Facebooks post on the change here.

But why make the move now?

Facebook is reading the writing on the wall, and the writing says: Third-party cookies are finally on death watch. The final nail came when Chrome said it will stop supporting third-party cookies by 2022.

Theres not just a dotted line between Chromes third-party cookie ban and this its a direct result of the movements by Safari and now Google, said Ruben Schreurs, CEO of Ebiquity-owned digital marketing consultancy Digital Decisions.

Audience Network on mobile web simply wont work as the tracking will be blocked, he said. That means neither the targeting nor the measurement will be available for Facebook, which is the core value of the model.

The larger question, though, is what will happen to Audience Network in the long term if Apple and Google decide to deprecate their mobile advertising IDs, which is increasingly likely considering the moves theyve made on the browser side.

Device IDs next to go?

On Facebooks full year 2019 earnings call last week, CFO Dave Wehner referenced the continuation of Facebooks targeting-related headwinds and that the majority of the impact lies in front of us.

Wehner pointed to three main factors causing these headwinds: global privacy regs; Facebooks own privacy tools, such as Off-Facebook Activity; and product changes and future plans coming from mobile operating systems and browsers providers, such as Apple and Google, that will limit Facebooks ability to use signals that come from activity on third-party sites and services.

Although Facebook is doubling down on apps in Audience Network for now, its possible that Facebook will eventually pull out of everything, said Kunal Gupta, CEO and founder of Polar.

Protecting privacy is a priority for Apple and Apple is the king of the app environment, he said. Apple will keep tightening the screws, and Facebook is really going to feel it.

O&O FTW

Its a fair bet, then, that Facebook will get out of open programmatic altogether in favor of aiming attention at its owned-and-operated apps, where it keeps 100% of the margin for any ads sold, unlike ads sold via Audience Network.

Facebooks properties are also growing steadily. In the fourth quarter, users and revenue grew, while ad prices remained stable, which means people are spending more time with Facebook apps. Why mess around with the potential privacy risks of an off-platform business?

Audience Network is on tap to rake in around $3.4 billion in ad spend this year, up from $3.1 billion last year, based on estimates assembled by ad tech consultancy Jounce, which forecasts that Audience Networks share of the total open programmatic pie will increase from 5.5% last year to 6.1% in 2020.

But think back to when Oracle decided to proactively kill off its third-party data business rather than potentially run afoul of the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe. The situations are different, but both Oracles move and now Facebooks can be filed away under Juice, not worth squeeze.

From a regulatory compliance point of view, it makes a lot of sense for Facebook to limit their exposure to data leakage and consent management issues, as the Audience Network extends beyond their walled garden, Schreurs said.

For now, the Audience Network will continue working with app publishers.

Facebook said its removing mobile web publishers from Audience Network because the growth is with apps, which is why Facebook is focusing our resources there moving forward, a company spokesperson said.

It is true that web and in-stream placements only constitute a small portion of Audience Network supply. Facebook claims removing them wont have a material impact on revenue or available scale.

Although Facebook doesnt break out its revenue for Audience Network, or the exact split between web and apps, its got integrations with roughly 50,000 publishers.

See original here:

Facebook Is Killing Off Its Web Supply In Audience Network And Don't Be Surprised If It All Shuts Down - AdExchanger

The event was meant for kids at a local LGBTQ center, but trolls found out about it and started leaving bad reviews.

Posted on February 7, 2020, at 1:25 p.m. ET

A brewing company in Iowa received a barrage of negative reviews on Facebook this week after trolls got wind of an event that staffers are hosting for LGBTQ kids, but kindhearted members of the community soon came to the rescue online.

Thew Brewing Company, a taproom and community space in Cedar Rapids, had planned a public drag bingo night for Feb. 8, as well as another drag bingo event earlier that day for kids from the Tanager Place LGBTQ Youth Center.

Haley Flenker, co-owner of Thew, told BuzzFeed News that during the last drag bingo fundraiser for the center, some kids had expressed their interest in attending.

The bar wasn't able to accommodate them then, Flenker said so while planning this next event, they scheduled a private drag bingo party earlier in the day, specifically for the Tanager Place kids.

Thew shared a registration link for the earlier event with Tanager Place privately, but word quickly spread.

"It ended up on another page for the [LGBTQ] community," Flenker said, "which is great."

However, she said, somehow "the trolls found out and have been on us ever since."

Flenker said the negative reviews began pouring in Wednesday night.

Dozens of trolls on Facebook accused the bar of "pushing the gay/drag agenda" on children, among other things.

But the reaction from the community was swift.

Locals responded to the wave of bad reviews in full force, writing glowing review after glowing review to counter the hateful messages.

Soon, the overwhelming number of positive reviews on the bar's Facebook page almost entirely drowned out the ones targeting it for the drag bingo event.

Cedar Rapids resident AJ Hope said he first saw the bad reviews when he looked at the event on Facebook. He didn't pay too much attention to them until he saw a friend's post asking people to leave positive reviews for the bar to counteract the trolls.

Hope, who does drag as Hollywood Hope, told BuzzFeed News in a direct message that he knows how mean people can be, having experienced anti-gay sentiments firsthand as an openly gay homecoming king in Iowa in 2012.

"I just wanted to do my part to help out," he said.

Flenker said the community's response has been heartwarming.

"I have loved reading every single positive review from everyone here. I love reading their experiences," she said. "It makes us feel so good about the community were in [] that theyre willing to rally around something like this."

Both drag bingo events on Saturday are still on the bar's schedule. The one for the Tanager kids was initially planned as a private event, but now that others know about it, Flenker said she'll accommodate as many people as she can although the kids from Tanager will have priority.

"We just want to have a fun event and provide a warm and welcoming event for them," she said.

As for the trolls, Flenker doubts their online hate campaign will translate to an in-person protest.

"Im prepared for it but I dont necessarily expect it," she said. "Most of the comments, reviews, bad things that are being said are coming from people who are not even in the state of Iowa or even in the country."

Though the nighttime event is sold out, Hope said he and his friends are considering going anyway and hanging out outside in case there are any protesters.

"I havent been to that bar before, but thats most definitely gonna change soon," he said. "Gotta support those who support you and your community, ya know?

"Were gay [as fuck] and loud as hell!" Hope said. "The small-minded straights have nothing on us and all our shine!"

Craig Silverman contributed reporting to this story.

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Trolls Flooded A Bar's Facebook Page With Bad Reviews Over An Event For LGBTQ Kids. The Community's Response Was Heartwarming. - BuzzFeed News

Google and Facebook seem to have resigned themselves to losing part of the longest and highest profile internet cable they have invested in to date. In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission last week, the two companies requested permission to activate the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) between the US and the Philippines and Taiwan, leaving its controversial Hong Kong and Chinese sections dormant.

Globally, around 380 submarine cables carry over 99.5 percent of all transoceanic data traffic. Every time you visit a foreign website or send an email abroad, you are using a fiber-optic cable on the seabed. Satellites, even large planned networks like SpaceXs Starlink system, cannot move data as quickly and cheaply as underwater cables.

When it was announced in 2017, the 13,000-kilometer PLCN was touted as the first subsea cable directly connecting Hong Kong and the United States, allowing Google and Facebook to connect speedily and securely with data centers in Asia and unlock new markets. The 120 terabit-per-second cable was due to begin commercial operation in the summer of 2018.

PLCN will help connect US businesses and internet users with a strong and growing internet community in Asia, they wrote. PLCN will interconnect with many of the existing and planned regional and international cables, thus providing additional transmission options in the event of disruptions to other systems, whether natural or manmade.

Instead, it has been PLCN itself that has been disrupted, by an ongoing regulatory battle in the US that has become politicized by trade and technology spats with China.

Team Telecom, a shadowy US national security unit comprised of representatives from the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice (including the FBI), is tasked with protecting Americas telecommunications systems, including international fiber optic cables. Its regulatory processes can be tortuously slow. Team Telecom took nearly seven years to decide whether to allow China Mobile, a state-owned company, access to the US telecoms market, before coming down against it in 2018 on the grounds of substantial and serious national security and law enforcement risks.

Although subsidiaries of Google and Facebook have been the public face of PLCN in filings to the FCC, four of the six fiber-optic pairs in the cable actually belong to a company called Pacific Light Data Communication (PLDC). When the project was first planned, PLDC was based in Hong Kong and controlled by Wei Junkang, a Chinese businessman who had made his fortune in steel and real estate.

In December 2017, Wei sold most of his stake in PLDC to Dr Peng Telecom & Media Group, a private broadband provider based in Beijing. That sent alarm bells ringing in Washington, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal last year. While Dr Peng is not itself state-owned or controlled, it works closely with Huawei, a telecoms company the Trump administration has accused of espionage and trade secret theft. Dr Peng has also worked on Chinese government projects, including a surveillance network for the Beijing police.

PLCN has been legal limbo ever since, with Google complaining bitterly to the FCC about the expense of the ongoing uncertainty. In 2018, it wrote, [any further holdup] would impose significant economic costs. Depending on the length of the delay, the financial viability of the project could be at risk.

Google and Facebook finally secured special permission to lay the cable in US waters last year, and to construct, connect and temporarily test a cable landing station in Los Angeles. But while the network itself is now essentially complete, Team Telecom has yet to make a decision on whether data can start to flow through it.

In the past, Team Telecom has permitted submarine cables, even from China, to land in the US, as long as the companies operating them signed what are called network security agreements. These agreements typically require network operations to be based in the US, using an approved list of equipment and staffed by security-screened personnel. Operators are obliged to block security threats from foreign powers, while complying with lawful surveillance requests from the US government.

In 2017, for example, Team Telecom gave the green light to the New Cross Pacific (NCP) cable directly connecting China and the US, despite it being part-owned by China Mobile, the state-owned company it later denied US access to on national security grounds.

Normally there wouldnt be so much fuss over a cable to China, says Nicole Starosielski, a professor at New York University and author of The Undersea Network. Weve had cables to China for a long time and all of these networks interconnect, so even if they dont land directly in China, theyre only a hop away. It is just one of those moments where it is more difficult to land a cable, no matter who the Chinese partner is, because of the political situation.

In September, Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), who sits on Senate committees for technology, communications and homeland security, sent a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai urging him to block PLCN. [PLCN] threatens the freedom of Hong Kong and our national security, wrote Scott. This project is backed by a Chinese partner, Dr Peng Telecom & Media Group Co., and would ultimately provide a direct link from China into Hong Kong China has repeatedly shown it cannot be trusted We cannot allow China expanded access to critical American information, even if funded by US companies.

Google and Facebook saw the writing on the wall. On January 29 last week, representatives from the two companies but not PLDC met with FCC officials to propose a new approach. A filing, made the same day, requests permission to operate just the two PLCN fiber pairs owned by the American companies: Googles link to Taiwan, and Facebooks to the Philippines.

[Google] and [Facebook] are not aware of any national security issues associated with operation of US-Taiwan and US-Philippine segments, reads the application. For clarity, the [request] would not authorize any commercial traffic on the PLCN system to or from Hong Kong, nor any operation of the PLCN system by PLDC.

The filling goes on to describe how each fiber pair has its own terminating equipment, with Googles and Facebooks connections arriving at Los Angeles in cages that are inaccessible to the other companies. PLDC is contractually prohibited from using its participation interest in the system to interfere with the ownership or rights of use of the other parties, it notes.

Neither company would comment directly on the new filing. A Google spokesperson told TechCrunch, We have been working through established channels in order to obtain cable landing licenses for various undersea cables, and we will continue to abide by the decisions made by designated agencies in the locations where we operate.

A Facebook spokesperson said, We are continuing to navigate through all the appropriate channels on licensing and permitting for a jointly-owned subsea cable between the US and Asia to provide fast and secure internet access to more people on both continents.

I think stripping out the controversial [Hong Kong] link will work, says Starosielski. But whenever one of these projects either gets thwarted, it sends a very strong message. If even Google and Facebook cant get a cable through, there arent going to be a ton of other companies advancing new cable systems between the US and China now.

Ironically, that means that US data to and from China will continue to flow over the NCP cable controlled by China Mobile the only company that Team Telecom and the FCC have ever turned down on national security grounds.

Link:

Google and Facebook turn their backs on undersea cable to China - TechCrunch

SALEM A Facebook representative told Oregon elections officials and county clerks Wednesday that the social media giant will implement stricter protocols for elections ads in 2020 but doesnt intend to take down misinformation.

Eva Guidarini, Facebooks manager for politics and government outreach, outlined new protocols and security efforts at a Salem training session organized by the state elections division. State and federal officials and researchers spoke about current challenges that threaten to undermine the integrity of U.S. elections.

They laid out a somber new reality undermining election security: the vast and unwieldy realm of online misinformation. People and organizations can and do infiltrate digital media and leverage it to promote discord, they said.

Many of these efforts are the result of foreign actors deliberately working to divide the nation, and Russia, China and Iran are among the biggest threats, FBI officials warn.

They want to rip America apart at the seams, said Matt Yeager, FBI special agent at the Seattle Field Office.

Misinformation is an umbrella term, said officials, encompassing websites pretending to be news publications and propagating deliberately misleading news, doctored tweets and images, and fake social media accounts. All can spread inaccurate content or seek to polarize people.

Guidarini was on-scene to explain how misinformation can spread on her companys platform and outline new company efforts to address it.

Specific to elections, Facebook has introduced an authorization process for political and election ads, as well as ads for anything that is socially divisive or controversial, she said. To run those ads, advertisers will be required to upload their identification and receive mail at a physical U.S. address.

Election ads will also be flagged with a disclaimer noting that theyre paid for, she said.

The company has also introduced a voter suppression and intimidation policy that prohibits content with inaccurate information about voting, such as false information about locations, dates, or eligibility requirements. Content that threatens voters will be removed, she said.

Facebook is making new efforts in light of backlash following the 2016 elections. The company was criticized for not regulating content and allowing foreign interference during the election.

But the company has also said it will allow questionable and even factually inaccurate content to stay on its site. Content that fact-checkers determine is inaccurate will be flagged, but not taken down. And users will still be allowed to share it.

According to Guidarini, Facebook took down 45,000 posts providing inaccurate information about election dates, locations or requirements during the 2018 midterms. Facebook removed more than 90% of them before they were reported, she said.

Anything that violates the policy will come down from the platform, said Guidarini.

Through the end of the 2020 election cycle, she said, the company will have an incorrect voting info button available that users can click to flag content that seems inaccurate.

So, if you see content that incorrectly represents how you vote here in the state of Oregon, you can report that information directly to Facebook, Guidarini told dozens of elections officials and a few potential political candidates.

Facebook is partnering with elections officials in every state to train them and raise awareness about a 24-hour election reporting channel for state elections authorities. It has also launched enhanced security programs to help government, campaigns, agencies and advocacy groups to secure their Facebook accounts.

The company has hired third party fact checkers to search for and review flagged content in all types of posts, not just those related to politics, Guidarini said. If content is found to be false, it will be demoted lower in Facebooks news feed so its harder to find and surfaces less, and users will be notified that content has been flagged as inaccurate.

According to the sites own publicly available statistics, Facebook ran more than 6.5 million pertaining to politics, elections or socially divisive issues 2018. Advertisers paid more than $1 billion to run them.

Within Oregon, officials are stepping up engagement with county elections offices, including efforts to educate about phishing and misinformation, and federal officials will conduct individual county assessments to assess potential vulnerabilities, said Steve Trout, Secretary of State elections director.

Much of the training session emphasized the voluminous risks of misinformation, and while Facebook provided practical help, the broader problem is one officials say will take cohesive effort and an informed public to combat.

A whole of society response needed to combat this, said Yeager.

-- Piper McDaniel; amcdaniel@oregonian.com; 503-221-4307; @Piperamcdaniel

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.

Continued here:

Facebook lays out protections for U.S. elections but will continue to allow misinformation on its platform - OregonLive

A Winston-Salem man stabbed his girlfriend 11 times because he thought she was cheating on him, posted a video admitting what he had done on Facebook and then drove his girlfriends car head-on into a tractor-trailer in an attempt to kill himself, a Forsyth County prosecutor said in court Wednesday.

Ross Weathers IV, 35, of the 1900 block of Bedford Street, pleaded guilty in Forsyth Superior Court to one count of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury.

Judge Kevin Bridges of Forsyth Superior Court sentenced Weathers to a minimum of four years and 10 months and a maximum of six years and 10 months in prison.

Ebonee Sade Burnette and Weathers had dated for several years and had a son together, Assistant District Attorney Ben White said.

On July 29, 2019, Burnette arrived at her home with a male friend and her son. White said Weathers was already in the house, but Burnette didnt know it.

Burnette went into the kitchen. Weathers, White said, came out and stabbed Burnette nine times in the back, once in the arm and another time in the chest. Burnette fell to the ground, and Weathers kicked her several times, including in the face.

In a victim impact statement, Burnette wrote that Weathers stomped her in the face. She was taken to the hospital and has fully recovered, White said.

Afterward, Weathers posted a video on his Facebook page. He said when he saw Burnette with another man, he blacked out and stabbed her 30 times.

Hopefully, shes (expletive deleted) dead, he said in the video, according to White. He also indicated that he was going to commit suicide.

Soon after posting the Facebook video, Weathers drove Burnettes car along U.S. 64, crossed the centerline and ran into a semi-truck head-on, White said. Weathers was treated and released from a local hospital. He told Davie County Sheriffs deputies and troopers with the N.C. Highway Patrol that he was trying to kill himself after he had committed a passionate crime.

He is facing a pending charge of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury and several other misdemeanor charges in connection to the crash.

After the incident, Burnette sought a domestic-violence restraining order against Weathers. In the complaint, she said her son witnessed the assault. The restraining order was granted and is effective until August of this year. She also obtained a domestic-violence order in 2018 after an incident in which she alleged Weathers held a knife to her throat while she was pinned to the bed. She said Weathers threatened to kill her.

Burnette came to the hearing but had to leave the courtroom because she did not want to be in the same room as Weathers, White said.

Burnettes mother, Teresa Adams, told Bridges that her daughter is traumatized by what happened. Adams also said the whole incident has traumatized her as well, leading to a mental breakdown. She has struggled with how to deal with Burnettes son, who just got home from a road trip with Weathers and now has to face the fact that his father is going away to prison for stabbing his mother.

Adams said she has already lost one daughter to violence and has had to deal with almost losing a second daughter the same way. Adams daughter, Chiquita Lawanna Adams, 35, was found strangled to death in a hotel room in High Point on Christmas Day in 2015, according to a Feb. 8, 2016, News & Record story. When Atrium Inn employees checked on the room, they found Adams 11-year-old daughter crying. The girl said she could not wake up her mother.

Shanion Donta Watson, 39, was convicted of first-degree murder on July 12, 2019, and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in Adams death.

Jason Whitler, Weathers attorney, said his client suffers from bipolar disorder. He said he has remorse for what he did and accepted responsibility for his actions early on in the investigation.

Bridges ordered Weathers to not have any contact with Burnette.

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Man stabbed his girlfriend and admitted it on Facebook, prosecution says. He'll spend a maximum six years in prison. - Winston-Salem Journal

Now that Alphabet Inc. has finally broken out revenue associated with some of its important businesses, other tech giants should follow suit.

As part of Alphabets GOOG, +0.20% GOOGL, +0.21% first earnings with Sundar Pichai as its new chief executive, the search and advertising giant broke out some of the revenue for its popular YouTube internet channel and enterprise-focused Google Cloud segments on Monday. It was not a complete surprise this column noted after Pichai was promoted that the change should happen but it is a welcome change that should have come years ago.

Full earnings coverage: Alphabet stock declines on revenue miss

The YouTube details are not complete. Alphabet said that for 2019, YouTubes ad revenue totalled $15.1 billion, but it did not disclose how much of that went to pay content providers, beyond saying that is pays out a majority of revenues to our creators, reflected in our content acquisition costs. In addition, YouTube non-advertising revenue, mostly subscription fees for YouTube TV and other premium services, are still bundled into Alphabets other revenue segment, the company said.

Even with those slight quibbles, it is still beneficial to investors to finally get this information, which analysts (and MarketWatch) have been demanding for years.

Thank you so much for the enhanced disclosure, Goldman Sachs analyst Heather Bellini said on the companys conference call. I think this is the best Google call or Alphabet call Ive been on since Ive covered the company, so thank you again, youve given us a lot of stuff here.

Now, it is time for other tech giants to find some free praise by finally offering needed financial disclosure. The two that should feel the most heat are rivals of YouTube and Google Cloud, respectively: Facebook Inc. FB, +0.70% and Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +0.14% .

Microsoft does not disclose revenue from its Azure cloud-computing business, which is believed to be more popular than Google Cloud but still trailing Amazon.com Inc.s AMZN, +1.42% Amazon Web Services. Instead, Microsoft bundles revenue from Azure with server sales and some other offerings in a segment called Intelligent Cloud, which grew 27% to $11.9 billion in the last quarter. The only tidbit it typically releases about Azure is percentage growth, including noting that Azure grew by 64% in the most recent quarter.

While that growth looks impressive, it is down from much larger percentages in previous years, and still gives no information about the actual size of its business. As Amazon has learned of late with AWS, investors tend to get worried when growth percentages decline Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky has been telling analysts and investors on recent earnings calls to look at gross dollar gains instead of percentage, which AWS can offer since it actually provides revenue and operating income for its cloud business. Microsoft should do the same now that its two biggest cloud-computing rivals are reporting results.

Another candidate for more disclosure is Facebook, which should by now be disclosing revenue for its slightly hipper, possibly faster-growing Instagram business, and eventually its WhatsApp business, if messaging ever starts to generate real revenue for Facebook. But Facebook seems to be moving further away from individual breakouts as it ages: It has begun bundling all of its services into one combined family metric for daily and monthly average users, a number that tells investors nothing about the use cases, revenue or profit at its different services.

From 2018: The YouTube and Instagram secret Alphabet and Facebook dont want you to know.

Both Google and Facebook are seeing slowing revenue growth in internet advertising. Last week, Facebook reported that revenue grew 25%, its slowest quarter in the past two years, and many on Wall Street began to worry more about its revenue deceleration. If Facebook can show that its brilliant acquisitions, WhatsApp and Instagram, are growing faster than their older, core businesses, it should help its case with investors as they age.

There are plenty of other examples of tech segments that deserve to be reported. Just last week, this column pointed out that Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD, +0.83% needs to begin breaking out its revenue for chips sold in the data-center market, as rivals Intel Corp. INTC, -1.59% and Nvidia Corp. NVDA, -1.04% both already do.

The problem is that not all have been properly pressured to do so. In Alphabets case, the Securities and Exchange Commission had sought comment from the company on why it did not break out some segments, and its reasoning that co-founder and previous CEO Larry Page did not see all its segment results, but that Google CEO Pichai did came back to haunt it when Pichai was promoted.

The full story: Why Google finally disclosed YouTube revenue

The SEC needs to apply similar pressure on other tech companies, or those companies need to face reality and begin breaking out larger businesses, even if it is difficult to give a completely clean view of a segment because of revenue-sharing elements. Its simply not conceivable that Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, and Lisa Su the CEOs of Facebook, Microsoft and AMD, respectively are not seeing the numbers for their growing business segments. They should start sharing them with investors, just as Google has and as the rules state.

Indeed, in some cases, such as Instagram, it may not be possible to give an entirely clean view of one segment, because there may be revenue-sharing elements with other businesses. But the move by Alphabet was an important one, and other tech companies should follow suit.

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Hey, Microsoft and Facebook its time to do what Google just did - MarketWatch