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Having started MING Labs in China in 2011, we have seen a big development from the old-internet world of overladen landing pages, to digital products of world-class defining design today. In parallel, we have seen the move from clunky desktop applications with small user bases, to the mobile-first B2C revolution to the rise of the super apps that are the new all-encompassing ecosystems in the market.

Throughout those major shifts in digital products and behaviors, some preferences have remained constant that differ from those in Western markets. Understanding what is actually different, and what is just a different stage of development, is an important factor when launching your product in the market. From key differences in UX requirements to the preference for larger ecosystems and a different understanding of value, China is unique in many aspects (as are other markets, to be sure).

Over the years, we have helped many startups and MNCs to launch their products, built and validated in their home markets, into the Chinese market.

We have thereby seen many of those differences in action and came to certain conclusions on what a good approach of scaling into China should be.

Read: [Good design should be inclusive and accessible but whats the difference?]

This article is therefore mainly aimed at those thinking about, tasked with, or actively working on expanding into the Chinese market, and who are wondering what that means for their digital products and services.

When launching in a new market that has some important dissimilarities from your home market, essentially you have three choices in product adaptation.

1. Minimal

At the very least you will have to translate the interface into Mandarin, to make your product accessible. Additionally, there might be certain legal requirements for your industry you will have to adapt to if you want to do business in China. Replacing certain pieces of technology might also be necessary, in order to get through the Great Firewall (many Western services are blocked).

2. Localized

At this stage, you might be redesigning the UX of your product to fit the local market tastes or you might port your product onto local platforms (such as the WeChat and Alibaba ecosystems). In the Marketing, you might also adapt your messaging to emphasize the points that would resonate more with Chinese customers.

3. China business

In some cases, it might be necessary or advantageous to pivot your target audience or business model, which will result in a very different way of doing business. Your core value creation might still be relevant, yet other parts of the business have to change drastically. We call this China Business as the local operations will be very dissimilar for your other operations in a China-focusedapproach.

The trade-off here is that with an increasing China customization you are reducing your Economies of Scale, as a very localized business will not be scalable into other markets and will need a lot of local, dedicated resources, whose learning you cant leverage in your global expansion. At the same time, a low level of customization will stay highly scalable, yet might not yield success as it is a very specific market.

That trade-off and the decision is by no means trivial. Finding a good answer typically requires taking on a beginners mindset (going back to the Exploration stage) and first testing your product and value proposition locally.

Assume that you have lost productmarket-fit as you enter China, and start over with an open mind, local research , and fast iterations to the right approach.

In the next parts, we will assume that you have come to your conclusion and you are opting for a Localized approach (as Minimal is straight-forward and China Business goes to Business Design). What exactly then are the differences in UX design and local platforms you should be aware of and adapt to?

Some of the preferences in design and interaction are rooted in Chinese culture. There are few things to be aware of that make a big difference:

1. Collectivism

On an international scoring of Individualistic versus Collectivistic cultures, China scores among the highest on the Collectivistic scale. This means that every context is about the group, the larger unit, and deviating from group norms or standing out is not desirable. Similarly, group approval and high degrees of communication and social context are important.

2. High-Context Culture

The Chinese culture, and also language, are very high-context. This means that every interaction needs to be seen through myriad lenses of context, instead of being taken at face value. In a low-context culture, a no is a no. In a high-context culture, it can mean ask again, not yet, not like this, have your boss ask me, lets have a drink first or many other things. The context of when it is said, how and by whom matters to understand the answer.

3. Chinese calligraphy

4. Complex Language

The Chinese language is low on grammatical complexity, yet very intense on the complexity of the vocabulary. There are over 20,000 characters in use and different combinations mean different things. Not only is it very tedious to type in Chinese (which means drawing characters or typing in Pinyin to find the right characters), but it is also impossible for search engines to understand whether you made a mistake in your query and suggest corrections.

These are substantial differences from the West and also from some other Asian cultures. And they invariably manifest in specific preferences from social interaction to communication styles and UX design.

The cultural differences manifest in different preferences regarding UX and service design, which produce the services you see on the Chinese internet today. While they often have Western inspirations or counterparts, they work differently in some key aspects. Including:

1. Practicality > Aesthetics

As typing Chinese is painful and auto-correct is not an option, websites are created to allow for browsing as the main behavior rather than searching. What that also means is that aggregating functionality is popular, as quantity and context make it seem useful rather than cluttered. From the early stages of the internet and the local differences, patterns have formed that are now deeply ingrained. Respect them, and do not try to enlighten them.

2. Social anywhere

Everything lives within a social context and the group is more important than the individual. Hence everyone is always connected and sharing. Wangwang is hugely important for Alibaba, because users dont trust the information on the website. They want to speak to people. Similarly, reviews are more trusted than in the West. Do not save on customer service. Always have ways of direct contact and chat available.

3. Everything connected

No experience exists in isolation, it is always embedded in a context and connected to everything else. O2O is a very important trend that has taken over in much of the physical space in China. The key is to remove friction and media breaks for the consumers and connect experiences in the most straightforward way possible. The most popular services in China are dynamic, lively, high-context, and interesting, offering discounts, games, and other interactions.

These are a few guiding principles to consider when redesigning your digital experience for China. Driven by cultural differences, these are expectations that exist with consumers today towards any product or service.

How you incorporate them is up to your creativity, and again we would recommend short and fast iteration/feedbackloops and a discovery mindset, rather than a big-bang design approach.

Any thoughts on product adaptations for China would be incomplete without the considerations of local platforms first and foremost super apps. These are applications owned by the biggest ecosystem players in China (Alibaba, Meituan, Tencent), which aggregate many different services into one touchpoint, offer foundational layers of identity and payments to tie them together, and allow for third parties to write small applications that can be pulled into that powerful context.

As their platforms essentially monopolize consumer attention across verticals, the companies owning them generally let new trends play out, invest in them, and later buy them out. Therefore, creating larger and larger kingdoms that lock in consumers. They are therefore a great distribution channel and are very open to partner with and enable new entrants. It also means that without them, you are facing a heavy up-hill battle.

Of course, there are trade-offsto be aware of. Where on Amazon you run the risk of the marketplace introducing their own brand of products to price you out, Alibaba essentially owns the consumer and their data, with a stark indifference to who wins the battle for their wallet. If you enter with a novel product, Chinese competitors will soon copy you and there is no one to protect you from it.

In terms of platforms, probably everyone is more or less familiar with WeChat and Alipay. Some of the key ecosystems that are open to a degree to integrate with. The way to get in there, except for acquisition, are mini-programs. This is a rising trend of apps-in-apps that are becoming very important for business.

Mini programs account for the majority of customer interaction already in all major consumers verticals. They have only really been launched in their current shape about over a year ago but are taking over quickly. They are becoming entry points into engagement with brands from shared content, over quick entry to the official accounts. Mini programs are the new beachhead to customer interaction.

They are not great for retention. Usually, they underperform other owned touchpoints, such as native apps and web applications, in terms of retention. Tencent has invested a lot of effort to make them stickier and they are improving already. With high barriers to get people to install native apps though, Mini Programs are a great entry point to then lead people over to install native apps.

Mini programs are ideal for simple and low-frequency use cases. Entry is easy, retention is low. Yet they are powerful at mitigating media breaks and reducing friction. So, identifying the right use case is key. Like order to the table at a restaurant. The more complex or frequent a use case is, the stronger the need for an app or web app.

In China, customer preferences pivot quickly, and markets move fast.

Competition is happening at a breakneck pace, with todays lauded innovation being the next spectacular failure tomorrow. To successfully launch into this environment, it is paramount to keep an explorers mindset, be aware of underlying foundational differences, and iterate quickly. And to keep iterating and adapting even after a successful launch, as the market and the customers will keep moving on, in a country where change has been the only constant for decades.

This article was originally published on uxdesign.cc

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How to adapt your product's UX for the Chinese market - The Next Web

As an engineer, Elizabeth Davis helped plan the construction of Porsches North American headquarters in Hapeville, Georgia and was on the team that built the MGM Casino at the National Harbor in Washington, D.C.

But when she wasnt working, Davis, now 34, loved spending time on an entirely different interest: Hair. In a perpetual quest for longer locks, Davis would mix up natural elixirs and other products she made with herbs, essential oils and Ayurvedic products at her home.

After testing her recipes on herself and her friends and finding they worked, Davis turned her passion into a side business called Shedavi. Registering the company with the state of Georgia in 2014, she worked on it during every spare moment. It took me time to develop the product, get the branding done and do all of the basic things I needed to launch, she says.

Engineer Elizabeth Davis turned her passion for long, healthy hair into a beauty brand called ... [+] Shedavi.

In 2016, she began selling her first products, a hair and scalp elixir and a vitamin to support healthy hair. Customers snapped them up. Davis has since grown the luxury hair care brandwhich sells vegan products such as shampoo, styling products and vitaminsto a seven figure, one-person business with close to 65,000 followers on Instagram.

Davis is part of a growing trend toward solo entrepreneurs bringing in seven-figure revenues. The U.S. Census Bureau found that the number of nonemployer firmsthose staffed only by the ownerswith revenue in the $1-2.49 million range reached 36,984 in 2017, up 38% from 2011, when it was 26,744.

Million-dollar, one-person businesses are subject to the same economic forces as other small businesses, and Davis has had to navigate the tough conditions COVID-19 has brought.But her propensity for planning has helped her keep the business thriving since the coronavirus struck. Shes added a detailed order tracking system to make sure customers know where their products are until theyre delivered and stays in close communication with her fulfillment center daily to make sure orders are delivered in a timely manner. One early decisionto make all of her products in the U.S.has made logistics easier during the crisis.

Fortunately, sales havent slowed at a time many people need to look polished on back-to-back Zoom callsor want a pick-me-up to look forward to. Since people are home, they are engaging in more self-care rituals, Davis says.

Heres a look at how she built her business.

Embrace your personal passions.When Davis was working as an engineer, she knew she wanted to start her own business, but there was one problem: I didnt know what it was going to be, she recalls.

Davis let the idea of entrepreneurship percolate and stayed open to clues from her daily life on what direction to take. As she tested her hair products on herself and her friendsand found that they workedit dawned on her that she was already working on the business, even though part of her resisted the idea that a business could be this much fun. A hair care business sounds too easy or too good to be truebut thats what I did, she says.

In 2014, she made a commitment to turn the idea into a business and formally registered it with the state of Georgia under the name Shedavi.

Stretch your savings. Although Davis had saved up about six months of living and business expenses prior to launch, she didnt want to burn through it quickly.

To make her money last, she turned to two credit cards with zero percent interest deals for 18 months. That gave her about $25,000 to spend on research and development, buying raw goods, tools and packaging, and work on branding.

All I had to do was make a minimum payment on my credit card, she says. She paid off the balance once she started making sales.

Still, Daviss budget was limited. Instead of renting a commercial facility to create her first batch of hair products, she mixed them up in her kitchen. That was where she made the first 1,000 units of her first product, a hair and scalp elixir, pouring it into bottles she ordered online from a packaging store and adding labels from a label company.

One decision Davis made that gave her an edge in the crowded and competitive beauty field was custom formulating her hair products. The most important thing is to distinguish yourself, she says. Even though my products are natural and Ayurvedic, they are unique. No one else is selling my product.

Vitamins cant be made in a home kitchen, under health and safety laws. To make sure her products were made properly, Davis used part of her budget to hire an FDA-approved factory.

Use all of your talents. Although Davis worked as an engineer, shed always had an eye for design and loved to draw, studying architecture her first year at Florida A&M University. When it came time to create her white and gold packaging, she tapped that hidden talent and began sketching her ideas before having a graphic designer finalize the look of the logo and product. I wanted the packaging to be gorgeous, she recalls. I wanted it to look clean, simple and clear but I also wanted it to have a luxurious side to it.

Build a freelance team.Although she did get involved in package design, Davis didnt try to do everything herself. When she needed a graphic designer, social media manager, videographer and digital marketing manager, she turned to freelance professionals, finding them through word-of-mouth and recommendations from her network and even on Instagram.

Although her team was made up for freelancers, she focused on building long-term relationships with them. Its not like a one-off thing, she says. I work with them consistently.

Start your social media work early. Long before she had a product to sell, Davis put up an Instagram page where she shared tips and information about healthy hair. By the time she introduced her hair and scalp elixir and the vitamin, she had attracted 10,000 followers who shared her passion for hair.

Having an audience helped her as she did a countdown to the release of her first product. I put videos together myself on how to use the product, she recalls. We distributed them through social marketing channels. Thats how I was able to get so many people.

Embrace outsourcing.Like many solo entrepreneurs, Davis wasnt in a position to open her own factoryso she did the next best thing and turned to an outsourced manufacturer called a co-packer to make the formulas and put them into the bottles she designed. This gave her access to the manufacturers knowledge and experience, reducing the learning curve and newbie mistakes.

Thats something I recommend initially, says Davis. When you first start your business, you should probably outsource.

When it came time to ship her products, Davis didnt pack them up in boxes herself to mail them to consumers. She found an outsourced partner that does third-party logistics, or 3PL, so she could concentrate on building the brand.

Market smart.When Davis first started selling her first products the elixir and vitamin February 2016, it was only to her family and friends and a then relatively small Instagram following. She brought in about $2,000 the first weekend after her product launch, where she and used a digital and video marketing strategy to promote it.

Shedavi picked up traction quickly. Rather than focus on selling her products bottle by $25 bottle, Davis looked for ways to group them according to her customers needs, which helped in selling more products. Her first kit was the Hair Starter Bundle ($49). Customers like the recommendation and prescription of the bundle, she says. They know the bundle caters toward their specific problem or issues.

From February 2016 to February 2017, Shedavi brought in about $1 million in revenue per year, and Davis has grown business since then, she says.

Take time to decompress.Prior to COVID-19, Daviss escape from work was world travel. Shes hoping that shell be able to continue that passion once the crisis ends and its safe to hit the road. The last place I went to was South Africa, she says. Ill be going to Europe when were allowed to fly again.

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This Engineers Passion For Healthy Hair Sparked A Million-Dollar, One-Person Business - Forbes

In the winter of 2002, nine months before Hanif Qadir unpacked his bag at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, a group of men walked into the London MOT testing centre he owned with his brothers. They were collecting money for civilians caught up in the US invasion of Afghanistan; hundreds of children had been orphaned by indiscriminate bombing, the men claimed. Could he help? The appeal resonated with Qadir, who had lost his father when he was seven. He made a donation.

The men returned regularly. Each time, they asked for more money, before gradually changing the subject to Qadirs faith. Eventually they invited him to a meeting at a local house to discuss the war in Afghanistan more freely. I felt they were sincere and genuine, Qadir recalls. At the meeting, the men encouraged Qadir to visit websites that claimed to show photographic evidence of violence against Afghan civilians by western troops.

Qadir browsed hundreds of distressing images, among them scores of orphans, each accompanied by extended captions that described the way in which the childs family had been killed. One girls story has remained with him. The website claimed she had lost 21 members of her family to a stray US missile. The caption explained it had taken locals three days to scrape their remains from the walls of the girls home. The more he saw, the closer Qadir became to the men who were, unbeknown to him, recruiters for al-Qaida.

If someone calls for genocide against Muslims, theyve essentially tattooed a swastika to their forehead online

Qadir grew up in Thornaby-on-Tees, a small town in North Yorkshire. After his father died, he had disengaged from school, leaving at 14 and moving to London. After a few odd jobs, he founded a business with his brothers, buying, repairing and selling cars. By the early 2000s, the business was profitable enough that he was able to donate generously to charitable community causes, a reputation that, he believes, led the recruiters to his door.

The suggestion that Qadir travel to Afghanistan was seeded gently. When a person is radicalised they become suggestible, he tells me. We discussed that, in order to prevent more loss of life, we needed to be prepared to fight. On 2 December 2002, he flew to Islamabad in Pakistan. A few days later, he crossed the border into Afghanistan.

Soon after he arrived at a training camp, Qadir saw a man measuring up children who lived there. I thought they were being tailored for new clothes, he recalls. Then he heard one of the leaders telling the children they would soon be reunited with their dead parents. They were being fitted for suicide vests. I felt sick and angry, he says. I wanted to walk away.

But in the middle of a desert compound patrolled by armed guards, any attempt to defect could be fatal. Qadir was trapped. I knew that if I asked to leave things would end badly. He had to think carefully.

***

In 2002, when Qadir was being radicalised, the internet was not yet ubiquitous. There was no Twitter, no Facebook; websites looking to groom people into supporting extremist causes were obscure. Two decades later, the digital landscape has been transformed. As the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hate Crime wrote last year, the internet has become a key breeding ground for extremism and hate speech emboldened by the increasing ease of dissemination, anonymity and, thanks to outdated legislation, a lack of meaningful consequences.

Perpetrators of terrorist attacks now routinely leave online statements or manifestos to justify their actions, hoping their words might encourage others. The 28-year-old gunman who killed 51 mosque-goers in Christchurch, New Zealand, last year posted a 73-page white nationalist rant to the fringe web forum 8chan and livestreamed the attack on Facebook.

But now, just as Facebook and Twitter have become the prodigious muck-spreaders of our age, a handful of clandestine startups are using technology to stem the flow. Moonshot, whose office is at a secret location in London, is, at five years old, a veteran in this emerging industry. Its premises have the feel of a typical Silicon Valley operation: distressed floorboards, glass-fronted offices, beanbags by an open fireplace, exposed brickwork, a snug for breathers. There are a few clues that the companys business using technology to disrupt violent extremism is different from that of the fitness app developers, social media influencers and virtual reality speculators with whom it shares an aesthetic. The posters are not vintage prints but disquieting infographics revealing, for example, that after 22 people were shot dead in an El Paso Walmart last August, there was an 82% rise in the Google search term how to murder Mexicans. There is also a bomb-proof door.

Cofounder Vidhya Ramalingam set up the EUs first intergovernmental research initiative to investigate far-right terrorism in the aftermath of the 2011 murder of 77 people by Anders Breivik in Norway. She describes Moonshots work as experimental programming. The company employs 50 people, and uses a mixture of software and human judgment to identify individuals on the internet who, like Qadir, appear interested in extremist propaganda. They then attempt to serve them counter-messaging.

The technology uses a database of indicators of risk. An individual is awarded risk points according to their online behaviour. You score one point for showing curiosity about the Ku Klux Klan or National Socialist Movement. Activity that indicates sympathy with a violent movement or ideology (eg Googling white pride worldwide) earns three points, while showing a desire to join, send money to, or commit acts on behalf of a violent extremist group or individual earns six.

Home Office initiatives such as Prevent have traditionally focused on training teachers and other leaders to identify people likely to be drawn to violent extremism within their communities but these methods risk introducing discriminatory practices. In France, for example, there were posters telling people their sons might be at risk of violent extremism if they grow a beard, start speaking Arabic or stop eating baguettes, explains Ross Frenett, Moonshots cofounder. That is obvious bullshit.

By contrast, Frenett says, if someone makes a post glorifying Hitler, or calls for genocide against Muslims, there is a high degree of certainty that they fall into a high-risk category. Theyve essentially tattooed a swastika to their forehead in the online space, he says. So our level of confidence when identifying individuals who are vulnerable to radicalisation is way higher online than it could ever be offline. And it sidesteps some of the discriminatory, stigmatising practices weve seen in an offline setting.

Moonshot, founded in September 2015, is a for-profit company that earns its income from government contracts in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and across western Europe. It does not limit its work to any particular strain of radicalism; in addition to the far-right and jihadism, Moonshots work covers everything from Buddhist extremism in south Asia, to Hindu nationalism and incel terrorism in Canada.

The skill is in finding out what raised a persons interest in extremist ideology. You cant redirect them until you do

At the broadest level, Moonshot runs what it refers to as redirection material advertising that is designed to get in front of extremist material in Googles search results. Google has granted Moonshot dispensation to advertise against banned search terms such as join Isis. If a user clicks on one of Moonshots camouflaged results, they are taken to, for example, a mental health website with relevant downloadable guides and a chat option. (These sites are run by partnered mental health organisations and groups that have experience dealing with gang violence. As Frenett puts it, they have appropriate risk protocols, and connections with law enforcement, should they be required.) So long as the search terms are carefully calibrated (advertising against white power is useless, Frenett explains, as you end up competing with power-tool companies) this can be an effective first contact.

Success is measured in much the same way as any company seeking to advertise on Google, via click conversions. (We pay for advertising just like any commercial advertiser does, Ramalingam says. We dont get special rates. I wish we had a better story on that front.) A key metric is search impression share, which records the amount of time your at-risk audience saw the ad. Weve had campaigns that have run with only 50%, and thats not good enough, Ramalingam says. So we work hard to get that up to 98% where possible. For this reason, as well as mental health practitioners and ex-police officers, Moonshot also employs marketers. Most of our work is analytics, marketing and social work, Frenett says. It just happens to be marketing, analytics and social work related to terrorism.

Occasionally the company will identify an individual who is too high risk for their interventions. Thats where, depending on the country were working in, we refer a user to the police, Frenett says. In Australia, for example, Moonshot identified someone at the top of a network of around 200 at-risk individuals considered so risky we couldnt intervene. A few days later, the local police arrested the man, who was subsequently convicted on terror charges.

There are deeper kinds of intervention. One of Moonshots advertisements for, say, bomb manuals will take the searcher to a WhatsApp chat manned by a specialist trained in deradicalisation techniques. The company may also identify someone on a particular social media platform openly espousing pro-extremist or pro-terrorist views. Then a trained social worker, typically from a charitable partner organisation, contacts that individual via Twitter direct message or Facebook Messenger. Choosing the right person to make this kind of contact, which may be perceived as invasive, is essential. In many cases, the right person is a former extremist someone like Hanif Qadir.

***

When Qadir realised the children in the Afghan training camp were being measured for suicide vests, his first instinct was to exact revenge on the people who had manipulated him. But I only had a knife, no gun, he says. And I knew that I couldnt tell anyone I wanted out.

He stepped outside the gate of the camp to consider his options. There he spotted the driver of a pick-up truck with whom he had talked a few times. The men did not share a first language, but Qadir gambled. He pulled out 50 and waved it at the man, asking if he could hitch a ride to Turkham, on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The driver nodded. Qadir climbed into the passenger seat. I didnt even collect my bag, he recalls.

Qadir says he cried during the flight to London. I kept asking myself: What the hell have I done? When he arrived home, he and his brothers attempted to find his recruiters, but they had disappeared; the word was that they had moved to Manchester. Qadir decided he no longer wanted to run the car business and convinced his brothers to sell up. I just wanted to stay at home with my children.

After a period of recuperation, he and his brothers opened a gym in a disused nightclub, which became a place where local youths, many of them young Muslims, would congregate. Wed talk, he says. Id ask them questions about Afghanistan. I saw a lot of anger and questioning. It was clear to me that all it would take is for one person to manipulate them emotionally and they would get straight on a plane to fight. Or maybe they would do something here.

Eager to communicate this to someone in a position of power, Qadir started attending local council meetings. A police inspector, Ian Larnder, took him for a coffee, hoping to better understand why this former mechanic seemed so passionate about the subject. Until then, I had told nobody about what had happened, Qadir recalls. Ian was the first person I opened up to. A week later, Larnder was appointed to the polices national community tension team. He took Qadir with him to speak to forces around the country about his experiences.

Today, with a number of other former extremists, Qadir works with Moonshot, where he provides training for online interventions. The skill is in finding out what has raised a persons interest in extremist ideology, he explains. You cant redirect a person until you understand this. Its no good asking something so broad as: What do you think about what is happening in India? It has to be specific and personable. So instead you might say: Is it permissible to seek revenge for the loss of a loved one?

This sort of broad line of questioning and the fact that an anonymous dialogue might tail off, without scope for any follow-up can seem frustratingly opaque for anyone trying to measure Moonshots success. Its a criticism the company is used to fielding. The struggle with preventive work is that, very often, its unscientific and we have to ask people to take it on trust, Frenett says. Its easy for a military contractor to come in and say, I installed a big, high fence and a man with a gun and that reduced terrorism. Likewise, the army can come along and state: We killed 200 Taliban this week.

But its much harder to say, OK. We invested $1m here and we prevented this much terrorism. Our long-term aim is to start to change that calculation. Then well be able to say: If one dollar in every 100 spent on military hardware went towards targeted, community-focused preventive work it would be better value and probably better for the world.

***

In the corner of a chilly room at the end of a corridor in Cardiff Universitys Glamorgan Building, a flood of racial slurs, misogyny, antisemitism and far-right slogans flows across a PC screen. Imagine you had a crystal ball in which you could watch someone perpetrating every hate crime as it occurred somewhere out there, on the streets, explains Matthew Williams, director of HateLab. Thats what youre looking at here, except the hate is happening online.

While Moonshot and Qadir intervene with individuals who are vulnerable to extremism, HateLabs aim is to provide a more accurate picture of hate speech across the internet. It is, Williams says, the first platform to use AI to detect online hate speech in real time and at scale.

Moonshots ads for, say, bomb manuals take the searcher to a WhatsApp chat manned by a deradicalisation specialist

Online hatred is so commonplace that the majority of incidents go unreported. According to British government data, 1,605 hate crimes occurred online between 2017 and 2018, a 40% increase on the previous year. But the Home Office admits this figure is probably a gross underestimate.

Unlike the police, we dont have to wait for a victim to file a report, Williams says. The program reflects a true indication of the prevalence of online hatred.

It offers a granular indication, too. Williams specifies a date range, then picks from a filter of potential target groups: Jews, homosexuals, women, and so on (misogyny is by far the most prevalent form of hate speech on Twitter, he says). He selects anti-Muslim and a heat map of the UK lights up in red blotches showing geographical hotspots. Elsewhere, it reports the average number of hateful posts per minute and the peak times of day (hate speech, the group has found, is most prevalent during the daily commute, when people read and react to the days news).

A word cloud indicates the most-used anti-Muslim slurs, while a spiderweb visualises a network of perpetrators, identifying the thought leaders who are generating the most retweets, and how they are linked, via online accounts. HateLab gives situational awareness to hate speech on Twitter at any given time, Williams says.

Early last month, HateLab identified three forms of coronavirus-related hate speech: anti-Chinese or Asian; antisemitic, focused on conspiracy theories; and Islamophobic, focused on accusations of profiteering. What we are seeing is a threat to health being weaponised to justify targeting minority groups, no matter how illogical the connections may seem, Williams explains.

(Moonshot has monitored similar rises in hate speech targeting Chinese nationals. The hashtag #ChinaLiedPeopleDied was tweeted 65,895 times in March, while #coronavirustruth, implying that the pandemic is a hoax, was used 77,548 times. The company also picked up tweets showing old videos of Muslim men leaving mosques accompanied by text claiming the footage was filmed during quarantine, a seemingly deliberate attempt to create anti-Muslim sentiment.)

Williams, author of a forthcoming book titled The Science Of Hate, is a professor of criminology at Cardiff, but his interest in the field is not purely academic. In 1998, he travelled to London with friends to celebrate a birthday. At some point during the evening, he stepped out of the gay bar in which the group was drinking. Three young men approached. One asked if Williams had a light. As he handed over his Zippo, the man punched him in the face. Williams returned to his friends but said nothing, fearing that they would want to retaliate. Eventually, one of them noticed blood on his teeth and urged him to report the attack. I said no, Williams recalls. At that time my parents didnt know I was gay. My siblings didnt know, and neither did most people from my town. I didnt want to come out to the police.

But Williams returned to Wales a changed person. Any attack on your identity has a profoundly destabilising effect, he says. I became angry and depressed. I modified my behaviour. I stopped holding my boyfriends hand. I still wont show affection in public. He was not alone in failing to report his attackers; based on the combined 2015/16 to 2017/18 Crime Survey for England and Wales, only 53% of hate crime incidents came to the attention of the police. People are fearful of secondary victimisation, Williams says.

As domestic internet use became more commonplace, Williams noticed the hate speech he encountered on the streets reflected online. The difference was that it was there for everyone to witness. Fellow academics were initially sceptical of his preoccupation with online behaviour, but by 2011 everyone knew hate speech was the key problem of the internet. That year, Williams received a lottery grant of more than half a million pounds to accelerate his research.

Every social media platform represents a torrent of information too deep and wide to sift by hand. Williams and his team began by taking a random sample of 4,000 tweets from a dataset of 200,000. The trove was then handed to four police officers, trained to recognise racial tensions, who each evaluated whether every tweet was discriminatory. If three of the four officers concurred, the tweet was classified as hate speech. Over a four-week period, the officers identified around 600 tweets they deemed discriminatory, data that formed the gold standard by which the AI would test if a message was malignant or benign.

You have to engage and create conversations, but direct them positively allow for grievances to be heard and discussed

On the afternoon of 22 May 2013, when fusilier Lee Rigby was killed by two Islamist converts in Woolwich, London, the software had its first live test. Within 60 minutes of the attack, Williams and his team began harvesting tweets that used the keyword Woolwich. As the software sifted the data, the team was able to examine the drivers and inhibitors of hate speech, and identify accounts spreading anti-Muslim rhetoric. The team found that hate speech peaked for 24-48 hours, and then rapidly fell, while the baseline of online hate remained elevated for several months. Astonishingly, this was one of the first times a link between terror attacks and online hate speech had been demonstrated. And importantly, an increase in localised hate speech both anticipated the attack and, in the aftermath, shadowed it, showing that it might be possible to predict real world attacks.

The data fascinated social scientists, but Williams believed it was more than interesting: it could have a practical application in helping counter these narratives. In 2017, he began a pilot scheme with the national online hate crime hub, which was set up to coordinate reporting into this area. It now uses the HateLab dashboard to gauge ebbs and flows in the targeting of particular groups, as well as nuances in local tensions. This information can then inform operational decisions, helping direct frontline police work.

There are obvious privacy concerns, and HateLab must comply with data protection regulations. The platform depends on the willingness of Twitter to make its data available to third-party applications. (Facebook closed down open access in 2018, so independent organisations cannot screen its posts.) Twitter shares data on the proviso that HateLab does not identify individual accounts via its dashboard. In that sense, we can only provide the 10,000ft view, Williams says. The dashboard can highlight patterns, target groups and geographical hotspots but connecting with individuals is outside its remit.

Meanwhile, Qadir and the other former extremists working alongside Moonshot recognise the power that hate speech can have, and know firsthand that a conversation can steer someone down a more positive path. You can only change people if you can reach them via conversation, he tells me. Violent extremists do this very cleverly, and evidence shows that it works for them, so I based all my programmes on this concept. You have to engage and create conversations, but direct them positively allow for grievances to be heard and discussed.

Since Moonshot was founded, there has been a radical shift in the perception of technologys role when it comes to extremist terrorism. Five years ago, there were still people inside the government who thought tech was for the kids, Frenett says. There was a sense that it was almost amusing that terrorists were on the internet. You dont get that any more. Likewise, five years ago there were some great organisations doing great work on the violent far-right, but again it was almost seen as niche. Thats no longer the case.

See more here:
A threat to health is being weaponised: inside the fight against online hate crime - The Guardian

By Janice MacKay May 1, 2020 1:16pm

The Stratford Perth Centre for Business has launched The Digital Accelerator, by Starter Company Plus.

30 grants totaling $45,000 will be distributed to local entrepreneurs within Stratford and Perth County.

The new program will help small businesses in the City of Stratford, the Town of St Marys and Perth County to create a digital revenue stream that will allow them to navigate the new reality of doing business.

Starter Company Plus will deliver 4 weeks of virtual programing starting May 19 providing entrepreneurs with funding, coaching and peer mentorship to support the use of online, digital, and social marketing tools.

The program will assist with the cost of developing a digital strategy including website builds, digital advertising and email marketing. Business advisors will work one-on-one with the participants to design new business models and outline steps needed to deliver their products and services digitally. Areas of focus will include use of templated websites such as Shopify and Squarespace, email marketing integrations, delivery, e-commerce, cyber security, digital systems, and finding new opportunities in existing skills, products, and services.

Holly Mortimer, Business Advisor stated, By end of the program each participant will have received funds to support their pivot, and long-term mentorship and collaboration opportunities and access to our programming for as long as they need it.

Joani Gerber, CEO of investStratford stated The program delivers the kind of support and training that is desperately needed at this time. It assists and trains business owners overwhelmed with the need to pivot their revenue streams and helps them leverage their grant for greater revenue and business growth.

Applications are open now and available at http://www.stratfordperthbusiness.ca until May 12

Excerpt from:
Perth County businesses offered help to cope with COVID-19 - BlackburnNews.com

See the latest coronavirus updates in Idaho as we work together to separate facts from fear.

BOISE, Idaho (Scroll down for the latest news updates.)

Idaho's number of deaths and cases of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, continue to climb amid a worldwide pandemic.

Saturday, May 2

5:11 p.m. - Idaho surpasses 1,900 confirmed cases

Idaho's battle against COVID-19 continues to show a flattening of the curve of infection as only 17 confirmed cases were announced on Saturday evening. There are now 1,908 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. 1,287 of those cases have recovered and only 200 people were hospitalized.

No new deaths were reported on Saturday, with the statewide total staying at 64.

For testing, Idaho has now tested 29,651 people so far.

Friday, May 1

6:20 p.m. - Another death in Ada County, more than 1,200 have recovered

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare released the state's latest official numbers on the coronavirus in the Gem State. There are now 1,888 confirmed cases. The state counts 2,035 confirmed or probable cases, including 20 new confirmed or probable cases today. Another COVID-19 death was reported in Ada County; which brings the statewide total to 64 deaths. 1,215 people are presumed to have recovered.

5:10 p.m. -- Northwest Nazarene University making plans to reopen campus in the fall

In a statement shared with the campus community, NNU President Joel Pearsall stated: "Our plans are still being developed, but here's what we know for sure: We plan to return to campus for the fall semester."

Pearsall's full statement is posted here.

4:45 p.m. -- Boise GreenBike to relaunch May 4, offer free rides

Boise GreenBike will relaunch the bike share program on Monday, May 4, after a brief suspension because of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. The bikes were removed from the streets in March and taken to the shop. Every bike was cleaned, given a tune-up, and made ready for service. The system will relaunch with two weeks of free rides for everyone and certain restrictions on use.

As our city and state start to reopen for business we want to be able to provide a healthy and safe transportation alternative, said Boise GreenBike Director Dave Fotsch. We work hard to keep the bikes clean and disinfected, but were asking our riders to do their part as well.

Boise GreenBike will offer unlimited one-hour free rides for two weeks, running through midnight, Monday, May 18.

4:15 p.m. -- Nampa to open all park restrooms, some youth activities on May 4

Nampa Parks and Recreation will be opening park restrooms, some organized youth activities and day camps as of May 4. Beginning Monday, restrooms in city parks will be open during daylight hours and cleaned twice daily.

The City Parks and Recreation Department will also allow youth sport organizations to practice at city park facilities. At this time, games will not be allowed. Park picnic shelters are not reservable for public functions at this time.

Limited youth activities and day camps will be offered that accommodate suggested health guidelines such as physical distancing and diligent hygiene. The Nampa Recreation Center will remain closed to the general public until Stage 2 of Idaho's reopening plan.

Playgrounds at city parks remain closed. City leaders are discussing guidelines and timeline around reopening playgrounds and hope to have an announcement soon.

4:00 p.m. -- College of Idaho to resume in-person classes in the fall

The private liberal arts college, located in Caldwell, will also open on-campus living areas for Fall Semester 2020.

In a letter to the C of I community, co-Presidents Doug Brigham and Jim Everett stated "based on our ongoing consultation with the local healthcare community, our senior administration and trustees, we feel that as long as people adhere to appropriate guidelines, the systems in place can safely handle the cases we experience here in southwest Idaho."

The college is appointing task forces to work directly on the changes required to be ready to open campus for the fall.

"Our plan is to share more specific details with our extended Yote family by the end of May," the Co-Presidents stated in their letter.

The College of Idaho was the first higher education institution in the state to announce its plan to shift exclusively to online classes for the remainder of the spring semester back on March 13th.

The College of Idaho has a web page for all of its COVID-19 communication throughout the pandemic.

3:30 p.m. -- Eagle mayor discusses how city will address staged reopening

Mayor Jason Pierce writes, "first of all, we want to make sure that Eagle residents and businesses can start to feel normal in their community again while feeling safe. Here in Eagle, education is going to be our primary approach. We encourage everyone to follow the path that the governor has laid out, but we do not have the resources to shut down businesses that open before the governor's timeline. First and foremost, we want to make sure that all Eagle businesses are being safe and smart about their reopening plans so that the people who have been laid off or had to close up shop can get back to working and earning a living."

Pierce is urging Eagle business owners to research and establish health and safety plans to protect themselves, their staff, and customers. He also advises business owners to make sure they don't jeopardize their business by breaking any rules they agreed to when accepting federal aid money.

The Eagle City Council has appointed a Business and Workforce Recovery Task Force comprised of members of the local business community.

2:20 p.m. -- Roaring Springs, Wahooz to open this summer

No date has been set for the opening. The management team for the Roaring Springs water park and Wahooz Family Fun Zone has been working to develop a comprehensive plan, which includes wellness checks for guests and employees, social distancing measures, increased cleaning and sanitation and more. Chief marketing officer Tiffany Quillici says officials at Central District Health, Idaho Health & Welfare and the Meridian mayor's office have expressed their approval.

An announcement about opening day will come by mid-May, Quillici said.

1:45 p.m. -- Boise School District announces graduation plans for Class of 2020

Boise School District announced graduation plans for the class of 2020 in an effort to make sure students and families do not miss out on this important milestone.

Graduation/celebrations planned for May:

Graduation caps and gowns will be distributed on Thursday, May 14 and Friday, May 15. Schools will also be distributing diploma covers, and diplomas themselves will be mailed home. High schools will be communicating specifics about this grab and go distribution process. Social distancing guidelines will be followed.

Boise School District is partnering with Idaho Press to produce a virtual graduation celebration. Graduate profiles, speeches and a printed keepsake graduation program with graduate profiles for each high school graduate will be featured/provided.

Socially Distanced "Turn the Tassel/Walk the Stage":

Every high school will celebrate their seniors in person at the school during the last week of school (May 18 through May 22) -- there will be a staggered schedule to minimize the numbers of students at any one time

Students and parents will arrive and remain in their car

As they come up to the "first station," the student's name will be called and he/she will "turn the tassel" while still in their car -- staff/faculty will be outside to celebrate the graduates.

Student and family will get out of car and "walk the stage" -- a set-up where the student will be in cap and gown and can take pictures in front of the school's backdrop

Parent survey regarding in-person late July Graduation/Celebration:

High schools will be sending parents a survey about the possibility of holding in-rson graduations/celebrations the week of July 20th, contingent upon meeting health recommendations from the CDC.

1:27 p.m. -- New emergency grants announced for Idaho childcare businesses

Idaho Gov. Brad Little has announced a new Idaho Child Care Emergency Grant to get childcare business owners the funds they need to reopen.

"As we begin the staged reopening of Idaho and our residents return to their places of work, I want to make sure they have consistent care for their children," Governor Little said. "These grants not only help working parents in Idaho, they also help the owners of these small businesses."

The application period runs Friday through June 30, and the application is available here.

The grants can be awarded to any fulltime childcare operation that is licensed or ICCP certified, as long as they are open and operating during the months for which funding is requested. The grant money can be used for staff wages or hazard pay, cleaning and janitorial expenses; other materials; and general business operations like rent or utilities.

1:08 p.m. -- University of Idaho gets grant to test COVID-19 in breast milk

The University of Idaho is teaming up with the University of Rochester in New York for a national study testing whether coronavirus can be transmitted through breast milk.

The two schools received $315,000 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to carry out the project. Health officials hope the study will help them better advise breastfeeding mothers who test positive for COVID-19.

"The question is whether the novel coronavirus is in mothers' milk, and whether it can infect infants," said Shelley McGuire, who directs the U of I Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences. "We just don't have a study yet that can provide a reliable answer. I really hope the virus isn't in milk, but hope doesn't make for good science."

Women who want to volunteer to be part of the project can find more information here.

12:25 p.m. -- Meridian City Hall, some other city facilities to reopen Monday

Meridian city officials have outlined a phased reopening plan, which includes screening for those entering city buildings. Public meetings will continue to be held online "to prevent group congregation."

10:45 a.m. -- Eagle Saturday Market opening day postponed

Due to COVID-19 the Eagle Saturday Market will not be opening on May 2, 2020. While we have been looking forward to the 2020 market season, the health and safety of our community is at the forefront of our mind's day in and day out. When the market reopens, it will look different. Efforts are being taking to implement social distancing guidelines for city employees, vendors and the community to follow. You can order from vendors online.

9:35 a.m. -- Boise will not open the city's municipal pools this summer

Leaders from the City of Boise and the Boise Parks and Recreation Department have made the tough decision to keep all six outdoor pools closed in 2020.

Uncertainty surrounding the continued spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19), public safety, and cost evaluations based on a shortened season all factored into the decision.

The health and safety of our residents is important and this was a very tough call, said Boise Parks and Recreation Director Doug Holloway.

More:
Live coronavirus updates: 64 deaths and 1,908 confirmed cases; nearly 30,000 people tested - KTVB.com