Facebook has cut off Prisma’s Live Video access

Style transfer startup Prisma added support to its iOS app for livestreaming its art filter effects in real-time via Facebook Live earlier this month — but almost immediately the startup’s access to the Live API was cut off by the social media platform giant.

It’s a David vs Goliath tale that’s oh–so–familiar in tech.

Of course it’s Facebook’s API and they can do what they like about who can access it but the explanation they gave looks a little wonky. Facebook told Prisma: “Your app streams video from a mobile device camera, which can already be done through the Facebook app. The Live Video API is meant to let people publish live video content from other sources such as professional cameras, multi-camera setups, games or screencasts.”

Yet in an FAQ on the Facebook Live site for developers Facebook does not explicitly say streaming from smartphone cameras is prohibited — although it does flag up other types of camera, such as standalone cameras and drones, as examples of its preferred use-case for the API.

The FAQ also says the API can be used to apply special effects to video — which you could argue describes Prisma’s style transfer feature.

One rather salient detail in this story is that Facebook is in the midst of rolling out its own style transfer filter feature — which it previewed in October, the day before Prisma showed off its style transfer preview on a Facebook Live broadcast.

So Facebook evidently does not want Prisma cannibalizing its push into Prisma-style style transfer.

The Russian startup popularized the current craze for style transfer, after launching their app in June — initially offering a series of art filters that could be applied to photos. This quickly went viral on Instagram as users shared arty-looking selfies created with Prisma. By October, the app had racked up more than 70 million downloads, and the team added support for video.

“We were trying to fix the issue but Facebook has a strong policy, they only let broadcast to different cameras, drones. Our app is no drone or camera. So this means we cannot do it,” says Prisma’s Aram Airapetyan, discussing what happened when Facebook cut off its access to the Live API earlier this month.

Despite being blocked on Facebook’s platform, Airapetyan says Prisma still has “big plans for live”. “The fact that we can do it is great and we’ll probably give users an opportunity to stream to different websites,” he tells TechCrunch.

While the future of Prisma’s live video support remains up in the air at this point, the team’s current priority is working on a social-focused release, pegged for mid December.

“The priority is the social feature coming soon. But after we launch it, we’ll seriously consider giving our users an alternative for live,” adds Airapetyan.

At the time of writing Facebook had not responded to a request for comment on its reasons for booting Prisma out of its livestreaming walled garden.

Zuckerberg Teases Warning System, Labels for Fake News

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, last Friday outlined some of the things his team is doing and considering to combat fake news, including a warning system for suspicious content and bringing in third-party fact-checking services to weigh in on popular content across the site.

"While the percentage of misinformation is relatively small, we have [so] much more work ahead on our roadmap," Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post.

Some might quibble with his assertion that fake news has not proliferated on the site; earlier this week, for example, BuzzFeed reported that fake stories generated more engagement on Facebook in the last three months of the election than stories from reputable news sources. Even President Obama has criticised its spread. "If we can't discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems," he said during a news conference in Berlin this week.

Indeed, this is the third time Zuckerberg has had to address the topic since Election Day alone. The Friday after the election, he told those at the Techonomy Conference that "the idea that fake news on Facebook...influenced the election in any way… is a pretty crazy idea." He followed that up with a Facebook post that said "more than 99% of what people see [on Facebook] is authentic, [and] only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes."

That did little to assuage concerns, thus, prompting Zuckerberg's latest post. "Normally we wouldn't share specifics about our work in progress, but given the importance of these issues and the amount of interest in this topic, I want to outline some of the projects we already have underway," he wrote last night.

Zuckerberg promised "better technical systems to detect what people will flag as false before they do it themselves." He also tipped easier reporting that will make "it much easier for people to report stories as fake [and] help us catch more misinformation faster."

Facebook is also exploring a labeling system for stories that have been "flagged as false by third parties or our community, and showing warnings when people read or share them." The company has reached out to "respected fact checking organizations" and "we plan to learn from many more," he wrote.

"We will continue to work with journalists and others in the news industry to get their input, in particular, to better understand their fact checking systems and learn from them," according to Zuckerberg.

When you click on a news story, Facebook will suggest related articles you might also want to read. Going forward, "we are raising the bar for stories that appear in related articles under links in News Feed," Zuckerberg added.

Earlier this month, BuzzFeed also reported on a group of teens in the Balkans whose raison d'etre is to create fake news that would appeal to Trump supporters. As engagement increased, so did the funds making their way to the scammers' Google AdSense account.

"A lot of misinformation is driven by financially motivated spam," Zuckerberg acknowledged in his post. "We're looking into disrupting the economics with ads policies like the one we announced earlier this week, and better ad farm detection."

That new ad policy bans ads in apps or sites containing fake news stories. Google also said it will punish websites pushing fake news by banning them from using its AdSense service.

Zuckerberg's post came at 9:30pm on a Friday night, leading some to speculate that the CEO is trying to bury his post. In the comments, however, Zuckerberg said he posted so late because "that's when I landed and got into in Lima last night" for the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference.

Facebook Chat 'Rooms' Return in Messenger

Facebook Rooms, the social network's semi-anonymous messaging service, is back—sort of.

Going forward though, those in Australia and Canada will have access to Rooms inside Facebook Messenger.

Rooms is designed as an outlet for people to talk about interests their friends may not share with other like-minded individuals, Facebook Messenger Product Manager, Drew Moxon, told Australia's Courier-Mail.

"Group chats today are focused on people you know—friends and family—and what we've found by talking to users is there's a lot of need for conversations about specific topics," Moxon said. "This will be for topic-based conversations and so people can talk with others they may not know."

If this sounds familiar, Facebook initially released a standalone Rooms app for Apple iOS in the US in October 2014, allowing users to chat anonymously about various topics. However, social-networking app Room, which claimed to be the "first mobile application that enables you to create and join mini private" chat rooms, accused Facebook of stealing its idea.

Ultimately, Facebook pulled the plug on its Creative Labs department, known for producing products like Rooms, Riff, and Slingshot, in December 2015 and, subsequently, ended that experiment.

That all changes now as Rooms is back in the fold, albeit inside Facebook's popular Messenger service. Users will be able to create public rooms to chat about the economy, Toronto Maple Leaves, or an election, for example. They could even create private rooms to talk about films, the environment, or typography, the Courier-Mail reported.

It could also come in handy when organizing large events like protests and rallies or sending out alerts, TechCrunch pointed out.

Facebook did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment.

Zuckerberg: 99% of Facebook Content Is 'Authentic'

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, acknowledged that hoaxes and fake news occasionally show up on his social network, but that it is 'extremely unlikely' they changed the outcome of the recent US presidential election.

Zuckerberg's comments, posted to Facebook last Saturday, echoed those he made last week when asked about Facebook's role in the election and how it resulted in a historic win for President-elect Donald Trump.

"Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99% of what people see is authentic," Zuckerberg wrote. "Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes. The latter that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics."
Facebook has faced repeated criticism following its decision in August to replace the human editors that once curated its 'Trending Topics' section with computer algorithms. Since the change, multiple fake news stories have appeared in the trending section.

Facebook Vice President, Adam Mosseri, acknowledged in August that fake news on Facebook is a problem and has confirmed that the company relies on users to identify it. Zuckerberg hinted that the social network would roll out more tools for users to flag hoaxes and fake news in the near future.

"We have already launched features that enable our community to flag hoaxes and fake news, and there is more we can do here," he wrote. "We have made progress, and we will continue to work on this to improve further."

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Zuckerberg: Fake News Swaying the Election Is 'Crazy Idea'
Citing sources with direct knowledge of the company's decision-making, Gizmodo also reported how an update to the Facebook News Feed that enables it to detect fake news had been shelved earlier this year after it disproportionately impacted right-wing news sites by downgrading or removing that content from people's feeds.

Even as Zuckerberg downplayed the role that fake news on Facebook played in the election, he did not address suggestions that the mere existence of the social network influenced Trump's victory.

A recent Pew Research Center study found that 20% of social media users have modified their stance on a social or political issue because of something they saw on one of these services. Another 17% revealed how social media helped changed their views about a specific candidate.