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Trump, Twitter, Facebook, and the Future of Online Speech – The New Yorker

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Danielle Citron, a professor at the Boston University School of Law and a 2019 MacArthur Fellow, has argued that the immunity afforded by Section 230 is too broad. In a recent article for the Michigan Law Review, she writes that the law would apply even to platforms that have urged users to engage in tortious and illegal activity or designed their sites to enhance the reach of such activities. In 2017, Citron and Benjamin Wittes, a legal scholar and the editor-in-chief of the Lawfare blog, argued that a better version of the law would grant a platform immunity only if it had taken reasonable steps to prevent or address unlawful uses of its services. A reasonableness standard, they note, would allow for different companies to take different approaches, and for those approaches to evolve as technology changes.

Its possible to keep Section 230 in place while carving out exceptions to it, but at the cost of significant legal complexity. In 2018, Congress passed the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), a bill intended to curtail sex trafficking. Under FOSTA, Internet platforms no longer receive immunity for civil and criminal charges of sex trafficking, and posts that might promote and facilitate prostitution no longer enjoy a liability shield. Kosseff, testifying before a House subcommittee, acknowledged the gravity and urgency of the sex-trafficking issue but cautioned that there were strong arguments against the bill. Rather than allowing states to get around Section 230s immunity shielda move that could force platforms to comply with many different state laws concerning sex trafficking and prostitutionKosseff suggested that Congress enhance the federal criminal laws on sex trafficking, to which platforms are already subject. Two years in, its not clear that FOSTA has had any material effect on sex trafficking; meanwhile, sex workers and advocates say that, by pushing them off of mainstream platforms, the legislation has made their work markedly more dangerous. After the law was passed, Craigslist removed its personals section. Any tool or service can be misused, a banner on the site read. We cant take such risk without jeopardizing all our other services.

There is a strong case for keeping Section 230s protections as they are. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-civil-liberties nonprofit, frames Section 230 as one of the most valuable tools for protecting freedom of expression and innovation on the Internet. Kosseff, with some reservations, comes to a similar conclusion. Section 230 has become so intertwined with our fundamental conceptions of the Internet that any wholesale reductions to the immunity it offers could irreparably destroy the free speech that has shaped our society in the twenty-first century, he writes. He compares Section 230 to the foundation of a house: the modern Internet isnt the nicest house on the block, but its the house where we all live, and its too late to rebuild it from the ground up. Some legal scholars argue that repealing or altering the law could create an even smaller landscape of Internet companies. Without Section 230, only platforms with the resources for constant litigation would survive; even there, user-generated content would be heavily restricted in service of diminished liability. Social-media startups might fade away, along with niche political sites, birding message boards, classifieds, restaurant reviews, support-group forums, and comments sections. In their place would be a desiccated, sanitized, corporate Internetless like an electronic frontier than a well-patrolled office park.

The house built atop Section 230 is distinctive. Its furnished with terms-of-service agreements, community-standards documents, and content guidelinesthe artifacts through which platforms express their rules about speech. The rules vary from company to company, often developing on the tailwinds of technology and in the shadow of corporate culture. Twitter began as a service for trading errant thoughts and inanities within small communitiesBird chirps sound meaningless to us, but meaning is applied by other birds, Jack Dorsey, its C.E.O., once told the Los Angeles Timesand so, initially, its terms of service were sparse. The document, which was modelled off Flickrs terms, contained little guidance on content standards, save for one clause warning against abuse and another, under General Conditions, stating that Twitter was entitled to remove, at its discretion, anything it deemed unlawful, offensive, threatening, libelous, defamatory, obscene or otherwise objectionable.

In 2009, Twitters terms changed slightlyWhat you say on Twitter may be viewed all around the world instantly, a Clippy-esque annotation warnedand expanded to include a secondary document, the Twitter Rules. These rules, in turn, contained a new section on spam and abuse. At that point, apart from a clause addressing violence and threats, abuse referred mainly to misuse of Twitter: username sales, bulk creation of new accounts, automated replies, and the like. In her history of the Twitter Rules, the writer Sarah Jeong identifies the summer of 2013 as an inflection point: following several high-profile instances of abuse on the platformincluding a harassment campaign against the British politician Stella CreasyTwitter introduced a report abuse button and added language to the rules addressing targeted harassment. That November, the company went public. Changes in the Rules over time reflect the pragmatic reality of running a business, Jeong concludes. Twitter talked some big talk about free speech, she writes, but it ended up tweaking and changing the Rules around speech whenever something threatened its bottom line.

Under Section 230, content moderation is free to be idiosyncratic. Companies have their own ideas about right and wrong; some have flagship issues that have shaped their outlooks. In part because its users have pushed it to take a clear stance on anti-vaccination content, Pinterest has developed particularly strong policies on misinformation: the company now rejects pins from certain Web sites, blocks certain search terms, and digitally fingerprints anti-vaccination memes so that they can be identified and excluded from its service. Twitters challenge is bigger, however, because it is both all-encompassing and geopolitical. Twitter is a venue for self-promotion, social change, violence, bigotry, exploration, and education; it is a billboard, a rally, a bully pulpit, a networking event, a course catalogue, a front page, and a mirror. The Twitter Rules now include provisions on terrorism and violent extremism, suicide and self-harm. Distinct regulations address threats of violence, glorifications of violence, and hateful conduct toward people on the basis of gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, and caste, among other traits and classifications. The companys rules have a global reach: in Germany, for instance, Twitter must implement more aggressive filters and moderation, in order to comply with government laws banning neo-Nazi content.

In a 2018 article published in the Harvard Law Review, The New Governors: The People, Rules, and Processes Governing Online Speech, Kate Klonick, who is now a professor at St. Johns University Law School, tallies the sometimes conflicting factors that have shaped the moderation policies at Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. The companies, she writes, have been influenced by a fundamental belief in American free speech norms, a sense of corporate responsibility, and user expectations. Theyve also reacted to government requests, media scrutiny, pressure from users or public figures, and the demands of third-party civil-society groups, such as the Anti-Defamation League. They have sometimes instituted new rules in response to individual incidents. There are downsides to this kind of improvisational responsiveness: a lack of transparency and accountability creates conditions ripe for preferential treatment and double standards.

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Trump, Twitter, Facebook, and the Future of Online Speech - The New Yorker

[OPINION] Pinoy BL, censorship, and problematic LGBTQ+ representation – Rappler

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Following the success among Filipino audiences of the Thai BL (Boys Love) series 2gether, numerous media outlets are starting to create Filipino BL series to please the newfound market. The list of upcoming series includes Darryl Yaps Sakristan, Petersen Vargass Hello, Stranger, Xion Lims #MyDay, and Ivan Andrew Payawal's Gameboys, among others.

I have seen efforts by film producers and writers to veer away from the parloristang bakla narrative, where gays are portrayed as comic relief just starving for the male species. However, when it comes to BL series, how gay characters are depicted there poses another challenge. They are presented as eye candy, with masculine features and fit bodies, charming male leads without a trace of body fat or effeminacy. This poses a problem, as young LGBT viewers could then view themselves as too ugly to be gay, or worse, believe that they do not deserve the same love because of their appearance. (READ: 'Tolerated, but not accepted': Filipino LGBTQ+ speak up vs discrimination)

***

I taught media and communication for a year at a Dominican-run Catholic institution before transferring to the blue Jesuit school. As a partial requirement, I instructed my students from the Dominican school to create a short film about a social or political issue. I stressed the importance of media representation, that it was better for them to create stories on the lives of the least represented.

In 2019, one of the student-made films, Hanggang Dulo, bagged awards in an intra-school student film competition. The film was not perfect. It had its flaws. But I said to my students that what mattered more was that they lent a voice to the least represented in the society. In the film, they shared how young LGBT members cope in relationships where one partner is born with HIV. (READ: What LGBT kids need to hear)

After winning Best Picture, I gave my students the go-signal to publish their film on YouTube. I was usually hesitant to let students post their films on the internet as I wanted to reduce digital footprints and not be held accountable for their works. However, their film was an exception, as I wanted more people not only to watch it, but also spread its message to end the stigma towards people living with HIV/AIDS, and to get tested. As of writing, the video garnered 750,000+ views and more than a thousand comments on YouTube. Not bad for a student-made film.

However, one of my colleagues remarked that the films submitted by my students were hindi pang-hayskul (not suited for high school students). She might have been echoing former MTRCB chair Marissa LaGuardia's classification of homsexuality as an abnormality of nature." She also pointed out how some of my students were even minors. She said that they might be too young to comprehend issues like same-sex relationships, rape, and even death as subjects of films. I understood her concern, because I was still bound to the rules and norms of a Catholic institution. However, I remained firm with my philosophy to be more liberal, while teaching my students to be ethical content producers, and not to be exploitative in their own writings.

***

Communication theorist George Gerbner argues that the more time people spend 'living' in the television world, the more likely they are to believe social reality aligns with reality portrayed on television. Although Gerbners cultivation theory is debunked by most theorists, as most audiences have shifted from getting information on TV to getting it on the internet, content producers of Pinoy BL series still have a responsibility to be more inclusive.

My cis female cousin who is a 'BrightWin,' or a fan of 2gether's main actors, asked me to recommend similar series, and I shared with her one of the Thai series I admired, Diary of Tootsie. My cousin watched a few episodes and was lukewarm towards it. She said that some characters from Diary of Tootsie were not as "visually pleasing" as 2gether's Bright Vachirawit or Win Metawin.

I hope that Pinoy BL series go beyond this hype, serving a greater purpose and injecting pressing social and political realities. Who knows? The next Pinoy BL series might feature a gay character who is plump (or in LGBT lingo, a chub) or an effem person with a disability. Rappler.com

Patrick Ernest C. Celso, 23, is a licensed professional teacher from Makati City. He teaches media and communication at Ateneo de Manila University. He is finishing his graduate degree in Creative Writing and obtained an English Education degree at the University of Santo Tomas.

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[OPINION] Pinoy BL, censorship, and problematic LGBTQ+ representation - Rappler

Why on-screen mobsters, from The Godfather to The Sopranos, are so obviously Catholic – ABC News

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From Michael Corleone to Tony Soprano, on-screen mobsters are far more violent than virtuous.

Yet despite dealings in organised crime and their ability to justify murder as "business" these men, and their families, identify as Catholics.

Baptisms, confessions and other religious sacraments are strewn throughout The Godfather trilogy and the HBO series The Sopranos.

You might think that religion like pasta or Italian curse words is just another tool that screenwriters use to emphasise the mobsters' migrant backgrounds.

But there's more to it than that. As one film critic argues, Catholicism was inserted into this violence-laden genre to get movies past American censors in the early 20th century.

Critic and author Martha Nochimson says the story starts in the 1930s with the introduction of the Motion Picture Production Code, commonly known as the Hays Code.

These moral guidelines prohibited films from featuring nudity, drug trafficking, the ridicule of clergy, and other content deemed profane.

"The original Catholicism was really grafted onto the gangster movie by the censors," she points out.

"They said the gangster had to be punished at the end, and there should be some moral spokesperson, preferably a Catholic priest, in the meanwhile."

The 1938 picture Angels with Dirty Faces typified this morality-based model.

The film depicted the friendship of a hardened felon, played by James Cagney, and a Catholic priest, who sought to stop youths from following a path of crime.

But Dr Nochimson says the Code's attempts to sanitise mobster movies weren't successful.

"The audiences did not identify at all with the moral spokesperson, they identified and this is a problem with the gangsters," she says.

James Martin SJ, a Jesuit priest based in New York City, says audiences now expect these kinds of storylines to involve Catholicism.

"Most of the mob movies that people are familiar with The Godfather, Goodfellas, The Irishman, most recently are about the Italian mob in the United States, which is largely Catholic," he says.

"The Italian-American experience was centred around the Church for the immigrants in the 1900s, right all the way up to 1950, 1960.

"And by now it's kind of a trope ... I think people expect them to go to church."

Despite being a fan of The Godfather and The Sopranos, Fr Martin points out that fictional depictions of mobsters are often laden with racial stereotypes.

"I think the difficulty for a lot of Italian-Americans, like myself, is the portrayal of, 'If you're from Italy you're from the Mafia,'" he says.

James Fisher, an emeritus professor of theology and American Studies at Fordham University, says the role of religion in these films reveals something more about Italian-American life.

For example, in the 1940s the era at the beginning of The Godfather the traditionally Italian neighbourhoods of New York City enabled first and second-generation immigrants to "transplant the values of the old world to the new".

He contrasts this with the late 1990s, when The Sopranos began airing.

"There was a tremendous exodus of Italian-Americans from those neighbourhoods in lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and East Harlem to places like New Jersey," he says.

"Over time, the Italian-American customs that had been so tightly reinforced by the life of these close-knit neighbourhoods, they all kind of dissolve."

While Tony Soprano may be a less observant Catholic than Michael Corleone at least in terms of church attendance religious rituals, figures and structures are still omnipresent in The Sopranos.

The children are sent to Catholic schools, the Virgin Mother is regularly invoked with cries of "Madone!" (Madonna), and when men are "made" (or inducted into the mobster family), they say their oath before a card of St Paul.

"They haven't thrown away all the [Catholic] structure, but the structure is empty," explains Dr Nochimson.

She says Carmela Soprano, Tony's wife, has a particularly interesting relationship with religion.

Throughout the show, Carmela wrestles with the knowledge that she's an accessory to organised crime and her desire to renounce evil. When times are bad, she prays and goes to confession.

But despite being a married woman, she also has a "thing" for the local priest and, in a heated scene during the first season, shares a spiritual-meets-sexual encounter with Father Intintola.

"Allen Coulter directed this episode and he told me ... he directed it like a parody of a porn movie," says Dr Nochimson.

In the scene, Fr Intintola gives Carmela communion in front of a blazing fire. We see an extreme close-up of her tongue and lips as she takes the holy wafer and wine.

"What she does in this episode is what she does with Catholicism all the way through," says Dr Nochimson.

"She uses it as a bridge to satisfying wants and desires that, in the Christian faith and in all major faiths, have been classified as sin."

Carmela Soprano's storyline isn't the only one where sacred rites clash with selfish and sinful objectives.

One of the most iconic scenes from The Godfather splices Michael Corleone at the baptism of his nephew promising to be a good Catholic, renouncing Satan with the brutal murders of the five mobster family heads.

For Fr Martin, it's an image that's difficult to get out of his head even in deeply sacred moments.

"Every time I do a baptism, and I say, 'Do you reject Satan?' ... I'm focussed on the baptism, but I think about that scene, because I saw that scene long before I was a priest," he says, laughing.

"It's a marvellous bit of filmmaking ... it's life versus death, water and blood, so there's a lot of heavy symbolism there."

Fr Martin has another perspective on mobster films, having actually played a role in one appearing as a priest in Martin Scorsese's The Irishman.

The 2019 film chronicles the life of an Irish truck driver-turned-hitman (Frank Sheeran, played by Robert De Niro) who works for an Italian mobster.

And Fr Martin says it's a movie that deals with Catholicism in a more sophisticated way.

"I think there is a sense of repentance, remorse and regret that I didn't see in some of the other films," he says.

"I mean, Michael Corleone doesn't ever seem to be upset about what he's doing. It's just business.

"At the end of The Irishman, no one wants to be Robert De Niro's character he's alone, his family has rejected him, he's sick, everyone's dead. It's not glamorising these people at all."

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Why on-screen mobsters, from The Godfather to The Sopranos, are so obviously Catholic - ABC News

Germany thinks Facebook isnt doing enough to censor hate speech and plans to intervene – Reclaim The Net

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The German government has indicated again that it wants to increase the regulation of Facebook content, and say that the tactics applied by the social network are not enough to prevent the spread of so-called hate speech.

Possible actions by the German government are being decided upon as a response to a campaign against Facebook originated by activist movements in the United States.

These movements, united under names such as Stop Hate for Profit, say that the social network has not contributed much in the fight against hate speech, so they urge the platforms advertisers to not advertise during the whole month of July to put pressure on Facebook until it changes its moderation policies.

Organizers of this boycott even met with Mark Zuckerberg, but have not seen the Facebook CEO have any concrete plans to combat racism and hate on the platform.

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Based on what these activists have stated, Germany is planning the implementation of new laws that would allow them to actively participate in the moderation of the content on the social network since the country does not believe that self-moderation is enough.

Germany has decided that it wants to take advantage of the present sentiment towards Facebook and not let off. This week, Berlin called for more action at a meeting on Monday of the blocs justice ministers.

We cannot accept the public debate being distorted and poisoned, said German Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht. Voluntary commitments and self-responsibility are not enough.

Germany doesnt have the equivalent of the United States First Amendment and the history of the country is not exactly steeped in affordances of liberty and free speech.

Germany already has existing regulations in the country that sought to reduce the spread of extremist comments and criminal content. Just the last month, the government enacted a law that states that social networks must notify federal prosecutors if they get content that promotes ideas of far-right extremism and online hatred.

These measures were strongly criticized by defenders of free speech in Germany, as they say that these actions only make social networks look like criminals, and do not attack the real problem that is unfounded in society.

Left-wing lawmaker Anke Domscheit-Berg weighed in, saying, You cant outsource criminal law.We need better qualified and resourced policebut that doesnt mean we should remove responsibility from Facebook.

Since 2018 there is a law in Germany that requires that content that has been reported as inappropriate be blocked or removed from social networks within 24 hours. This law encouraged social networks to dedicate themselves much more to regulating content.

However, reports from Facebook itself have shown that this has not been enough for Germany. In 2019, the social network eliminated around 1,300 posts in compliance with the law, but this only represented a third of the total number of complaints they received.

Due to this, Germany sued the social network for 2 million euros. The government indicated at the time that the platform makes it difficult for users to report the content.

Facebook, however, indicated that they remove more than 90% of malicious content before users can even report it. The global figure for moderating content in the first quarter of 2020 alone would have exceeded 9.6 million posts.

For the German government and activist groups, its still not enough. And, at this point, its starting to look like nothing ever will be.

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Germany thinks Facebook isnt doing enough to censor hate speech and plans to intervene - Reclaim The Net

8 Ways The NSA is Spying on You Right Now

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You could be calling your doctor to book an appointment, calling your lawyer to discuss an active case in court or your accountant to discuss your company's financial situation. In other words, it might be that you are engaged in any type of communication, and you expect to have total privacy.

Well, you could be surprised to know that it is not the case anymore as someone could be actively eavesdropping on your communication. The US National Security Agency can now listen to your phone conversation, activity online, and even monitor your movement. You ought to know that there is a spying program that was mothballed by the NSA and supported by congress. As scary as that may sound, it is essential to understand how the NSA spies on you. Let us delve in deeper and tell you more.

There exists a warrantless wiretapping program that was first revealed to the public by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Fixed under The Patriot Act, the program allows the NSA to obtain business records that are relevant to a terrorist investigation. The agency gets to collect the phone number dialed, the time, and the duration of the call.

The Obama administration found fault with the program and proposed changes. They now require judicial oversight of access to the database. That said, the NSA still actively collects phone records of millions of people each day. Under the guise of the warrantless wiretapping, your conversations are collected by the agency, which means you lack privacy.

The NSA has an established unit known as The Tailored Access Operation (TAO). As opposed to other programs, the NSA uses it to collect your data. Well, the TAO engages in specialized attacks on defined high-value targets. It has since been established that the NSA has a large library of exploits, meaning they continue to make your device vulnerable to hacking.

They can hack into a wide variety of consumer gadgets, including yours and business Information Technology (IT) systems. According to the confessions by Edward Snowden, the NSA hacks network backbones, such as huge internet routers. This gives them access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers. This is done without necessarily having to hack every single one. It makes it possible for the NSA to hack into your laptop without your knowledge.

A surveillance program known only as PRISM is funded by NSA through which the agency spies on the internet of your device. The NSA has been known to work with countries around the world to tap into the undersea fiber optic cables carrying large volumes of optic data. The NSA has even been tapping into the fiber optic cables in the US. They could be spying on your internet activities and illegally store your data.

The NSA tapped into Google massive data of individuals, recording millions of emails without proper authorization.

This happened after Google failed to add encryption in internal data transfers. It was a major cybersecurity flaw that was exploited by the NSA who likely collected your data.

Google added the Lock symbol to your Gmail account, meaning your email communication is now more secure. Although that could be a reason to believe that your email communication is private, there is still reason to worry. The NSA has been known to exploit Gmail flaws quietly. They can bypass encryption to access your email communication.

Research into the NSA activity has shown that the agency has spied and collects more than five billion records per day about cell phone users' location. That means you are likely to be one of the targets, and they could learn about your whereabouts effortlessly.

While the NSA collection of your cell phone location is not acceptable within the United States, it is still known to happen. In fact, the telecommunication companies that serve you are obliged to collect your exact location details as you use your cell phone. So, even though the NSA will not tap into your cell phone directly to collect information on your location, it can use the courts to force the cell phone providers to surrender your location data to them.

The NSA can also track financial records and activities. As shocking as that may sound, the agency gets to extract data regarding the flow of your money by hacking your credit card details. With such critical data, it can follow through every cent you receive or spend. The agency has the ability to track your sources of income and also analyze your spending habits. This is even possible even if your bank puts in place strict security measures to protect you from hackers.

For the sake of privacy, most of your cell phone communications are protected through encryption. However, in 2013, the NSA cracked one of the most popular encryption standards known as A5. Cracking that protocol then allowed them to intercept the contents of your cell phone communication. This means that your phone privacy is violated!

The NSA can use malware attacks to access the camera of your laptop, smartphone, or even webcam with ease. The hacking happens subtly so that it does not affect your device's operation but still collects your information. Besides, it can turn on the microphone of your device to listen to you remotely.

You are not even safe by switching off gadgets, as they can be turned on without you noticing it. The NSA spying activities have made it difficult for you to keep privacy while using your cell phone or the internet.

Over the years, the NSA has continued to monitor your movements and communications. The agency has done so by tracking your locations and hacking into your device to eavesdrop your communications. You need to know how to protect your privacy. You now know a thing or two about the possible ways NSA can be spying on you. You can now find ways to tighten your security like using tools like VPNs to protect your identity.

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8 Ways The NSA is Spying on You Right Now

What Challenges Affect the Cost of Running a Cryptocurrency Exchange – Cointelegraph

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Running a cryptocurrency exchange comes with a lot of considerations. What are the regulations in the country you operate in? Do you have sufficient liquidity? How will you handle security? Adhering to all of these requirements leads to excessive costs involved with setting up and operating these platforms, which means that a high price is often required to get a coin listed on them. This only makes it that much harder for new assets to find a market.

Depending on where you are in the world, the regulations concerning cryptocurrency can be anywhere from strict to completely absent, with changes often coming swiftly after long periods of silence. While local rules can vary greatly, many governments have been moving toward stronger Anti-Money Laundering laws, such as the European Unions 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive, which is currently forcing some firms in the EU to rethink their location.

In the United States, Representative Paul Gosar, a Republican from Arizona, introduced the Crypto-Currency Act of 2020, which would see unique definitions and oversight of crypto commodities, cryptocurrencies and crypto securities. Moreover, South Korea just passed a law requiring cryptocurrency exchanges to partner with banks to enforce AML policies. Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank of India recently lifted a ban on cryptocurrency that had only been enacted in April of 2018.

The point here is that regulations are subject to change based on geopolitical location and can also quickly evolve within just one jurisdiction. This can be costly to mitigate for exchanges. Paying for professional help just to understand the latest laws can add up, as can employing the teams necessary to collect and verify AML documentation from customers. However, failing to do so could lead to expensive fines or even to the platform being shut down. Unfortunately, these regulations are rarely seen as optional once they are decided upon.

Regulations arent the only obstacles for new exchanges. Issues can arise just in the act of setting up an exchange. There are myriad facets to think about, and all of them can be complex and expensive. Designing an interface, programming the matching engine, integrating AML practices, and working with local banks are just a handful of the concerns a team setting up a new exchange would need to address. All of these would also need a fair amount of time just to be implemented. Then, there is interacting with multiple blockchains in real time, security systems, and the sheer cost of storing and maintaining servers. The amount of time needed just to find quality programmers, build the codebase and debug it can easily take a year or longer if a team is starting from scratch.

Even once that has all been navigated, and the exchange is live, there will still be ongoing and expensive issues to contend with. Take liquidity, for example, which can be a major problem for smaller exchanges as well as smaller markets. This refers to the small number of buyers and sellers available to give traders confidence that they can make the trades they want when they want. Without this, traders will often miss out on opportunities because they cannot enter or exit a position in time, which will be frustrating and hurt business.

In other words, exchanges want to bring in as much traffic as possible and to curate a user experience that pleases everyone. Here, things like security and customer service are front and center. Clients want to know that the exchange is safe from both outside hackers and inside operators and that funds are always available where the exchange says they will be. Inevitably, there will be some mistakes or technical issues. This is why it is important to have support teams to address upset customers, as well as others to fix issues with the platform. Having the capability to respond to all of these matters doesnt come cheap, but without this, a new platform will surely fail.

In addition to the aforementioned issues, it can take a significant amount of capital to open and operate a cryptocurrency exchange. This can lead to platforms having large fees attached to listing fresh assets, which harms new development teams. It also causes much of the market to be channeled through a handful of gatekeepers, namely, the biggest exchanges that have already established themselves.

This is clearly problematic for smaller projects that arent already available across multiple exchanges. If they cannot raise the capital needed to be listed on larger platforms, which can often be in the $100,000 range or higher, then nobody would be able to buy them. Of course, in that case, they wont grow, and potentially sound ideas may get wiped out due to lack of liquidity and exposure. Projects need a way to know that they can create their own market when necessary, but for the most part, the costs may be too steep to launch an exchange platform.

This is where white-label exchanges enter the picture. A white-label exchange uses specially designed software to launch a new platform fast and cheap. A team, for example, could get an exchange running in days instead of months, and for thousands of dollars as opposed to millions. These exchanges generally follow templates but are highly customizable and can negate the need for a company to develop its own proprietary software. Generally, the software should provide everything necessary to get up and running, as well as to be in compliance, though not all exchanges are identical. It is important to know about a few specific options that are available.

In general, exchanges can be centralized or decentralized, and cloud-based or do-it-yourself. A centralized exchange means you will be hosted on another companys servers, which are generally paired with cloud-based models. It could also be hosted on your own servers, but this will also be cost-prohibitive for most. While you wont have as much control, usually the company offering this will handle a great deal of the operations behind the scenes, as well as manage technical issues. Although they offset some costs, subscription fees help to keep the platform running, but the upfront costs of getting started should be relatively cheaper.

DIY exchanges can be either centralized or decentralized, but when it is decentralized, it runs across many servers, and not simply by a single third-party entity. The DIY part means that while the software may be set up to assist you, there will generally not be anyone else operating the exchange behind the scenes. These packages may also come with subscriptions that allow you to access a team of experts for support, but you will be making the final decisions. Such offerings may be less expensive on a monthly basis but can often still have larger, one-time fees associated with being allowed to run the software.

One solution that solves many of the issues faced by teams looking to create new exchanges is the HollaEx Kit, offered by bitHolla. The kit is open-source, free to install and offers the most comprehensive set of tools for anyone to create a new cryptocurrency exchange in minutes. It includes a desktop and mobile user interface, a trade matching engine, and an administrative control panel. You can add any trading pairs you choose, including your own newly created coins or tokens. It is also designed to keep you in compliance with most modern regulations by offering a system that collects relevant AML data from your customers.

The process of setting up a new platform is streamlined, and there are options for getting advanced help from bitHollas team of experts. This makes HollaEx Kit the most attractive option for development teams who need to create new markets for their coins but cant afford to pay the exorbitant fees that come with most exchanges. The bitHolla team has created a product that seeks to be the WordPress of building exchanges. In time, DIY software will likely become the gold standard and will be increasingly integrated into more websites, potentially weakening the draw of centralized services. This is what bitHollas HollaEx Kit is trying to achieve with this software package, which will hopefully make access to building the cryptocurrency market a bit easier for everyone.

Disclaimer. Cointelegraph does not endorse any content or product on this page. While we aim at providing you all important information that we could obtain, readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company and carry full responsibility for their decisions, nor this article can be considered as an investment advice.

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What Challenges Affect the Cost of Running a Cryptocurrency Exchange - Cointelegraph

Cryptocurrency as an alternative during times of inflation – ITProPortal

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We have seen investors and consumers alike deliberate about what the economy will look like post-pandemic. As the world emerges from the crisis, industries that have been shut down will be left surveying the widespread damage, some of it permanent. Consumers will likely be split between the fortunate ones that have been able to work and others whose livelihoods have been compromised as a result of the shutdown.

To mitigate the sever economic impact, governments and central banks globally are printing and distributing extra money to prop up parts of the economy which can no longer function at pre-Covid capacity levels. In the UK alone, an estimated 123bn has already been plugged into the economy and there are estimates that Bank of England stimulus levels could peak at 1 trillion.

Despite the argued necessity of these measures, it is almost impossible not to question the impact on inflation. This massive increase in governmental quantitative easing will have an impact on the global economy, and for asset prices in particular. While inflation is defined as the rate at which the average price level that particular goods and services increase over a period of time, its easier in this context to regard it as the result of a decrease in purchasing power.

As a result, investors will often look safe-haven assets that could provide a hedge against rising prices and avoid the destructive impact of inflation. Gold price is one indicator, and at the time of writing it is seeing a ten-year high while Londons FTSE 100 tumbled 2.8 per cent, and the Eurex Exchange reported a 59 per cent month-on-month decline since April volume. Historically gold had been used as a hedge to protect against economic events including inflation or currency devaluation. Although we can expect this use to continue as a popular option, the pandemic has shown a shift in consumer interest to other safe haven asset classes.

Cryptocurrency is an alternative method of inflation protection which should not be overlooked. Although previously appearing as counterintuitive due to perceived volatility, digital assets have held their own against the stock market, unlike other commodities such as oil. The value of oil has crashed due to vanishing demand and a resulting supply excess causing the price to fall to negative value.

While the comparison between gold and crypto has some nuances the broader theme of Bitcoin as a protective hedge against inflation has broken through especially after the BTC halving we saw in early May. This event has brought attention to Bitcoins controlled supply, with only 21 million max tokens being permitted. At a time when more paper currency is being created in circulation, the amount of Bitcoin halving is causing investors to look away from government-backed paper. While also highlighting the use of cryptocurrency generally as a means of exchange within a more digitally oriented world economy.

In contrast, digital assets have seen a different story. Without the worry of political interference and variable supply rates, cryptocurrencies can benefit from being a less vulnerable investment in times of crisis. We have seen that Bitcoin is still up 22 per cent from a year ago. Newer coins like Tezos are up around 30 per cent so far this year. Both digital currencies highlight that crypto volatility is potentially a sign of the past, especially when compared to the volatility in traditional asset markets.

With crypto trading operating 24/7, 365 days a year with instantaneous settlement while traditional equities still have fixed trading hours and have a settlement cycle of T+3, crypto can provide even more perceived security and flexibility for investors. Cryptocurrencies can also be used as a tool for portfolio diversification and as a method of protection against the economic and political uncertainties to come.

We have witnessed economic disruption before, across ongoing periods of hyperinflation in Venezuela and Zimbabwe more recently, and in Weimar Germany in the 1920s. While it is not helpful to draw comparisons across these countries or their respective banking systems, it is worth taking note of the value crypto offers in terms of being an alternative to unstable national currencies.

Well-known investors such as Paul Tudor Jones are buying bitcoin, saying that his fund may hold as much as a low single-digit percentage of assets in bitcoin futures a measure to protect against a rise in inflation. While Mike Novogratz stated that 2020 will and needs to be Bitcoins year, underlining further investor confidence in digital currencies. Data reinforces this view, by looking at results from the crypto asset manager Grayscale. In Q1, inflows north of $500 million, more than doubling its previous best quarter. Almost a third of this capital came from new investors and most being institutions. Almost every indication that inflationary fears shall add to the tailwinds already powering fresh investment in cryptocurrency, among them institutional involvement and improving regulation.

Bitcoin is inherently structured to encourage a deflationary approach and a relatively stable store of value acting as a true alternative to hedge against inflation, as well as the policies that precede it.

While digital assets emerged out of the embers of the 2008 financial crisis, we can only speculate what technological innovations will rise post-pandemic. Hopefully, the global economy will allow cryptocurrencies to solidify their place in future investment portfolios as it currently demonstrates strong performance and price sustainability.

We are beginning to see the early signs are already there, that investors are turning to cryptocurrencies both as a key tool for diversification and a hedge against uncertainties to come. Ultimately, we are just at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to truly understanding the vast opportunities that digital assets and blockchain for transforming the global economy and we are ready for this challenge.

Stephen Stonberg, COO and CFO, Bittrex Global

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Cryptocurrency as an alternative during times of inflation - ITProPortal

Explainer: What is ‘LBCOIN,’ the new Lithuanian state-backed cryptocurrency? – Euronews

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The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the development of digital currencies by central banks in a bid to encourage people to turn to cashless payments.

One such project is being led by Lithuanias Central Bank, which will open a pre-sale for the worlds first digital collector coins - dubbed "LBCOINs" - on July 9 as part of its trial of blockchain technology and digital currencies.

The Bank of Lithuania (BoL) has been developing the project since March 2018 and is now entering the final phase of the trial.

The project is more of an experiment rather than the official launch of a tradeable currency. 24,000 digital LBCOINs will go on pre-sale this week, sold in packs of 6 for 99. Each token will feature a portrait of one of the 20 signatories of Lithuania's declaration of independence signed in 1918, which have been divided into six categories: priests, presidents, diplomats, industrialists, academics, and municipal servants.

Collectors will be able to trade tokens then exchange a specific set a token from each of the six categories for a physical silver coin worth 19.18. The BoL explained that their use as a means of payment will not be encouraged as it is meant to engage more people, especially the youth, in coin collecting while gaining valuable experience and knowledge in the field of digital currencies.

Decentralised, secure, and encrypted, a blockchain is a time-stamped series of data that is shared and authenticated by a cluster of computers. The technology is considered to be revolutionary because it helps reduce risks, affords transparency, and is not owned by one single entity.

According to Sinop Conseil consultant Florence Presson, the need for blockchain originates from the loss of trust between citizens and institutions. People tend to trust a stranger more than an institution, says Presson. She advocates for trust devolution based on blockchain technology and believes both administrations and citizens could really benefit from it when it comes to official records: birth certificates, deeds of sale, and so on.

Blockchain Partner co-founder, Alexandre Stachtchenko argues that blockchain also tackles other shortcomings of the Internet: how to transfer value and depict something as rare when it is not unique. Unlike an e-mail, once youve sent out a bitcoin, you cannot access it anymore, he explains. The blockchain expert notes with regret that the monetary discussion has been overshadowing the technical one, with blockchain often being associated with cryptocurrencies with much-publicised bitcoins.

Stachtchenko believes that the BoL's interesting, unpretentious initiative will fuel the debate about cryptocurrencies and deal with the elephant in the room. With developments like Facebooks cryptocurrency Libra, which should be launched by the end of the year, governments sovereignty is now being challenged with one of their main prerogatives: the establishment and the management of currency.

There is no doubt that other countries will be following this experiment closely as the race for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) is accelerating. In a report published on July 2, the Bank of Japan announced moving towards a testing phase aiming at introducing a CBDC eventually.

A survey conducted in January 2020 among 66 central banks by the Bank for International Settlements showed that more than 80 per cent of them were developing a central bank digital currency.

In a speech at the Consensus 2020 virtual conference on May 11, Vice-Chair of the Supervisory Board of the European Central Bank (ECB), Yves Mersch recognised that Europe will need to be ready to embrace financial technological innovation which has the potential to transform payments and money faster, and in more disruptive ways, than ever before."

This represents a sea change with ECB leaders, particularly given that former President Mario Draghi stated in 2017 that no member state can introduce its own currency; the currency of the eurozone is the euro in response to Estonian government's proposition to promote the circulation of a new cryptocurrency.

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Explainer: What is 'LBCOIN,' the new Lithuanian state-backed cryptocurrency? - Euronews

UNICEF turning to cryptocurrency in fight against Covid-19 – Finextra

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Global childrens charity UNICEF is looking to greatly expand its use of cryptocurrency as it aims to respond to the demands of donors and better support companies around the world in their fight against the effects of Covid-19.

UNICEF announced last month that it is to invest 125 ether (worth around $28,500) in eight companies from seven different countries as part of its cryptocurrency fund (CryptoFund) aimed at addressing global challenges.

This could be followed in the months ahead by a similar fund which using bitcoin, according to UNICEF blockchain lead, Christina Lomazzo.

To date, we havent had any large bitcoin donors, but were very much looking forward to bringing a large donor onboard, she tells Finextra Research.

In addition, UNICEF is looking to build a consumable block explorer, which would allow the general public to follow the trail of funds, as well as a set of internal tools to track balances and valuations across different crypto exchanges.

This would help us work with cryptocurrency better as an organisation and further enable the crypto funds to support the companies that were working with, Lomazzo adds.

Benefits of crypto

The eight recipients of CryptoFund have already been provided $100,000 in fiat money from the UNICEF Innovation Fund to develop open-source digital services that can tackle economic, health and educational problems in the recipients home countries.

The CryptoFund is aimed at supplementing this initiative to help companies specifically address the challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has brought to a head the problems that UNICEFs funds are seeking to tackle, such as food supply and education.

Investees have sought to mitigate some of the damaging effects of the pandemic on children through collaboration with governments and other local organisations in tracking delivery of food, offering remote learning and tending to other problems caused by lockdown and isolation.

Among the companies receiving 125 ether are StaTwig from India which is piloting a blockchain-based app designed to track the delivery of rice to impoverished communities and Utopic from Chile which aims to help improve childrens literacy from their homes using a WebVR-powered learning game.

Were making investments into emerging technologies across data science, virtual reality and blockchain, says Lamazzo, but were also looking at the modality of the funding with the startups and trying to understand its benefits and drawbacks, so were going through this learning process together.

UNICEF also believes that using cryptocurrency for funding would help to meet the demands of donors who regularly use crypto as a store of value and as a means of exchange.

Lamazzo describes how they were approached by prospective donors who hold substantial amounts of bitcoin or ethereum and wished to use it for charitable causes without the task of liquidating their coins back into fiat currency and incurring additional costs.

But barriers remain

The Coronavirus pandemic has also made the conventional channels for distributing such funds less functional, amplifying the benefits of using cryptocurrency. UNICEF claims that the transfer of funds was completed in less than 20 minutes with costs of less than $20. Chris Fabian, senior adviser and co-lead of UNICEF Ventures, describes the real-time transparency for our donors and supporters as the tolls we are excited about.

Among the many possible benefits of the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency is financial inclusion through bringing the underbanked population into the worlds monetary system and removing some of the barriers and frictions associated with remittances and charitable donations. The transparency offered by a distributed ledger may also offer greater comfort to would-be donors.

This is something weve tried to harness with the crypto funds specifically, Lomazzo says.

Weve launched a crypto fund website that allows people to go on and see the donations coming in and going out. I think the transparency is one of the obvious benefits of using cryptocurrency, as well as the speed of finality.

Lomazzo however believes it is a misconception that the typical barriers to financial inclusion are gone when using cryptocurrency.

While costs and settlement times may decrease, a number of the other processes and procedures that would be encountered using fiat currency remain. For example, verifying the identity of donors does not go away simply because the donation is made using ether or bitcoin rather than dollars or euros.

However, I do believe that using cryptocurrency and other digital currencies more generally allows us to have a conversation around how we make sure that those barriers are being addressed and reduced, Lomazzo acknowledges.

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UNICEF turning to cryptocurrency in fight against Covid-19 - Finextra

Cryptocurrency-Focused Docuseries Airs to Millions of Viewers via the Discovery Science Channel – Bitcoin News

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A new docuseries called Open Source Money recently aired on July 4 and premiered on the Discovery Science channel. The new show gave millions of Discovery viewers information concerning bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, initial coin offerings, and blockchain technology. The cryptocurrency-focused show airing on Discovery will continue this summer with a number of episodes broadcasting once a week.

Open Source Money is the name of a new docuseries that aired on Saturday and premiered on the Discovery Science channel and the on-demand television provider Philo. The new series gives viewers insight into the cryptocurrency ecosystem by talking with a number of digital currency experts and luminaries like Brock Pierce and Charles Hoskinson.

The focus of the story is mainly about the Dragonchain (DRGN) initial coin offering (ICO) and how the projects creators had to deal with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Dragonchain was also initially developed in 2014 at the Walt Disney Company branch in Seattle, but since 2016, the project and Disney severed relationships. The series Open Source Money was produced by the firm Vision Tree and the company raised $1 million via a variety of cryptocurrencies for filming.

The episodes feature Dragonchains issues with the SEC when the U.S. regulators deemed the project an unlicensed security. The episodes also feature the Chamber of Digital Commerce founder Perianne Boring, the notorious John McAfee, and Celsius Networks Alex Mashinsky.

Reports say that Patrick Byrne will also star in one of the five parts filmed for the series. Despite the fact that the filmmakers follow the Dragonchain creators around for a bit, the first episode also acts as a Bitcoin 101 lesson.

The shows theme also focuses on the current regulatory attitude toward cryptocurrencies in the United States. The show will air on Discovery Science and Philo at 10 a.m. ET every Saturday until the finale.

Discovery is an extremely popular channel with an 81 million U.S. network audience and six million in Canada. Outside the U.S., 2019 data shows that the Discovery network has well over 450 million viewers worldwide. Discovery Science is a subset of the official Discovery network of channels and can be found in most locations worldwide.

The San Francisco-based and Mark Cuban-backed on-demand streaming network, Philo has roughly 50,000 subscribers.

Each episode highlights major contributors in the cryptocurrency revolution, including notable figures Patrick Byrne, Brock Pierce, Joe Roets, and companies the likes of Disney, Facebook, and more, explains the Open Source Money website. The websites welcome page adds:

Overall humanity is at a crossroads and the future of money as we know it will be transformed by Blockchain and the new internet of Value. The only question is, where will the US stand in the Space Race of our generation when the dust settles?

The website also notes that theres a provably fair 500,000 DRGN giveaway and viewers need to find clues each week in order to win. According to the Open Source Money docuseries web portal, after each episode the clues can be used to find the elusive treasure.

This weeks question has a number of keywords and numbers that the viewer must choose in order to participate in the contest.

Words and numbers featured this week included: 1776, Pizza, Nascar, Cheesballs, Disney, Ramen, Beaxy, Hyundai, Seattle, or Avacodo Toast. After each episode, a weekly prize winner will be selected, explains the docuseries producers. All correct answers, from the start of the contest, are entered into the Grand Prize drawing.

The Open Source Money trailer can be seen below, while Philo and Discovery Science subscribers can watch from those channels.

What do you think about the Open Source Money docuseries? Let us know in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons, opensourcemoney.tv

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Cryptocurrency-Focused Docuseries Airs to Millions of Viewers via the Discovery Science Channel - Bitcoin News


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