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The U.S. National Security Agency is warning that Chinese government-backed hackers are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in two widely used Citrix networking products to gain access to targeted networks.

The flaw, tracked as CVE-2022-27518, affects Citrix ADC, an application delivery controller, and Citrix Gateway, a remote access tool, and are both popular in enterprise networks. The critical-rated vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker to remotely run malicious code on vulnerable devices — no passwords needed. Citrix also says the flaw is being actively exploited by threat actors.

“We are aware of a small number of targeted attacks in the wild using this vulnerability,” Peter Lefkowitz, chief security and trust officer at Citrix, said in ablog post. “Limited exploits of this vulnerability have been reported.” Citrix hasn’t specified what industries the targeted organizations are in or how many have been compromised. A Citrix spokesperson did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s questions.

Citrix rushed out an emergency patch for the vulnerability on Monday and is urging customers using affected builds of Citrix ADC and Citrix Gateway to install the updates immediately.

Citrix didn’t share any further details about the in-the-wild attacks. However, in a separate advisory, the NSA said that APT5, a notorious Chinese hacking group, has been actively targeting Citrix ADCs in order to break into organizations without having to first steal credentials. The agency also provided threat-hunting guidance [PDF] for security teams and asked for intelligence sharing among the public and private sectors.

APT5, which has been active since at least 2007, largely conducts cyber espionage campaigns, and has a history of targeting tech companies including those building military applications, and regional telecommunication providers. Cybersecurity firm FireEye has previously described APT5 as “a large threat group that consists of several subgroups, often with distinct tactics and infrastructure.”

Last year, APT5 exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Pulse Secure VPN — another networking product often targeted by hackers — to breach U.S. networks involved in defense research and development.

NSA says Chinese hackers are exploiting a zero-day bug in popular networking gear by Carly Page originally published on TechCrunch

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that hedge fund Muddy Waters had accused Uruguayan payments company dLocal of using client funds to pay a special dividend to its shareholders from before its June 2021 IPO.

The hedge fund said – according to Reuters – that “all (dLocal) needed to do to address this issue was provide an explanation as to how the cash flows reconcile.”

The problem of cash flow reconciliation is an increasingly large one, especially in light of the explosion of digital payments since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As companies that handle customer payments expand to new markets, add new products and handle increasing transaction volume, the more complex the process becomes.

Enter Nilus, a startup which aims to help simplify that process with a no-code financial operations platform. Founded out of a basement last year by Daniel Kalish and Danielle Shaul, Nilus has raised $8.5 million in a seed funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners.

As in the case of many startup origins, both Kalish and Shaul said they experienced the problem they’re trying to solve firsthand in their previous roles. Kalish spent over five years at PayPal, most recently serving as head of market development and GTM for Central Eastern Europe, Russia and Israel. Shaul spent over five years at Fundbox – most recently as a software architect and before that as an R&D manager that led risk and underwriting engineering efforts for both credit and fraud and building cutting edge products using ML and big data.

“The payments industry actually has a huge data problem today,” Kalish told TechCrunch in an interview. “On the surface level, it looks really easy to start collecting payments – by working with Stripe, PayPal, or banks, for example. But behind the scenes, the data is so messy and finance teams are struggling to understand what’s happening, what’s their financial position, or making sure there’s no risk involved in accepting and sending payments to their customers.”

The biggest challenge, he added, is the fact that payment financial data basically sits between multiple locations within an organization.

“You have payment data with your payment processor or with your bank or with your ERP and your finance team is often trying to match those data points either manually or by running some funky Excel or SQL scripts just so they can get the clarity they need around their financial and their activity,” Kalish said.

In building financial infrastructure over the past decade, Shaul said she saw finance teams “going back and forth” to identify incoming payments.

So the pair teamed up to build Nilus, a company they say offers a “plug and play” payments operations platform for finance teams that move significant volumes of dollars. Their goal is to help these teams understand all that underlying data behind the payment activity so they can have “a real-time view of cash, mitigate risk, and always be audit-ready,” said Kalish, who serves as Nilus’s CEO.

Kalish and Shaul say the tech Nilus has built can connect to the data “very easily” via APIs, then analyze it with its algorithms and ultimately automate reconciliation, reporting and payment workflows for finance teams.

“We see reconciliation as kind of like the building blocks on which you can build a lot of capabilities,” Shaul, the startup’s CTO, told TechCrunch. “Once you can move the money with confidence and have visibility, you can manage things, you can predict things, you can forecast – you can do so many great things on top of that.”

Nilus’ target customers are fintechs, financial service companies, marketplaces and vertical SaaS outfits – or basically any company with embedded fintech products that are already moving customer money. While it would not disclose specific customers, Nilus says it is working with companies processing “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The startup’s headquarters and go-to-market team is based out of New York, and its technical team out of Tel Aviv. Presently, the company has 18 employees.

Also participating in the startup’s seed funding round Better Tomorrow Ventures, Symbol and the CEOs and founders of fintech companies including Unit, Alloy, Melio and Lithic.

“We’ve seen so many companies working with out-of-date financial workflows, the space is desperately in need of innovation,” said Adam Fisher, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, in a written statement.

Sheel Mohnot of Better Tomorrow Ventures agrees, noting that his firm was “stunned” at how many companies still used Excel for financial reconciliation.

“Financial teams are really underserved,” Shaul said. “Most reconciliation platforms out there are for banks.”

This startup just landed $8.5M led by Bessemer to help companies automate their financial workflows by Mary Ann Azevedo originally published on TechCrunch

Back in March, at Verizon’s Investor Event, the company announced +Play, a free web-based platform exclusive to Verizon customers that aggregates subscription services across entertainment, music, gaming, fitness, lifestyle and more.

Today, Verizon launched +Play in open beta, allowing Verizon wireless, 5G Home and LTE Home customers to purchase and manage accounts for over 20 services, including Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, ESPN+, discovery+, AMC+, NFL+, NBA League Pass, NBA TV, as well as Live Nation’s live streaming concert service Veeps, Peloton, Calm, and Duolingo, among others.

Alongside the launch, Verizon is giving +Play users a Netflix Premium subscription for 12 months, which normally costs around $240 per year. The exclusive offer is only available for a limited time, the company wrote in today’s announcement.

Verizon customers can get +Play at no additional cost. To get early access to the beta, go to plusplay.verizon.com and log into the platform with your existing Verizon account info. Once a user subscribes to a service through +Play, they can use the service directly through the providers’ app or online portal.

Like many other subscription hubs, +Play includes a Discover tab for users to find content, a Shop tab, and a Manage tab where users can have all their account payments in one central place. Also, users will get +Play notifications every time a free trial period ends or if there are price changes to any subscription.

Verizon noted that the initial beta launch is only just the beginning as the platform will evolve over time, with plans to add new services, exclusive offers and features.

“As the network America relies on and one of the largest direct-to-consumer distributors in the U.S., Verizon is the partner of choice for content and subscriptions services, and we’re positioned to move the industry forward by offering customers more choice and enabling a seamless billing and management experience,” Erin McPherson, Chief Content Officer for Verizon, said in a statement. “We’re partnering with Netflix to offer customers all of their favorite content and a special offer only available in +Play.”

Verizon is likely betting that its millions of customers will want +Play, as the rise of streaming service aggregators increases. YouTube recently launched “Primetime Channels,” allowing users to subscribe and watch content from 30+ services. Other competitors include Amazon, Roku and Apple.

“This is a huge milestone for Verizon and the industry as a whole, and we’re incredibly proud to continue to be trailblazers in the new era of content and subscription services,” McPherson added.

Verizon launches subscription service aggregator, +Play, in open beta by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

During an economic downturn, it’s easy to focus on negative headlines about layoffs and declining business performance. But revenue teams still have targets to meet. Now is the time to get creative.

So how do you drive accountability at a time when every sale matters?

Sales managers: It’s time to get methodical and strategic if you want your reps to hit quota. While there are a multitude of different approaches out there, I’d like to talk about two of my favorite sales methodologies — MEDDPICC and design thinking — and explore why they’re particularly effective when times get tough.

Get curious about your customer with MEDDPICC

It’s difficult for a seller to be creative without truly knowing their customer first.

Proper discovery is a foundational step in the sales cycle and should never be skipped. Your sellers may want to jump right into a selling motion without taking the time to research, but it’s critical to ask the right questions and understand why prospects need solutions like yours instead of simply selling features.

Regardless of whether you’re connecting with buyers online or in person, sales has always been about building and maintaining relationships. If this is something your sellers struggle with, gaining a better understanding of your prospects may require a more structured approach.

I’m a big fan of the MEDDPICC sales methodology, which breaks down into a series of questions sellers must ask themselves during a B2B deal:

Metrics: How will your prospect measure success? What goals do they need to achieve?
Economic buyer: Are you talking to the real decision-maker within the prospect’s organization?
Decision criteria: What’s driving their decision to partner with us? Are there certain technical, budget or ROI requirements we need to meet?
Decision process: Who are the key stakeholders? What steps will they take before making a purchase decision?
Paper process: What steps or actions have to be taken before the contracts are signed?
Implicate the pain: What problem is the prospect trying to solve? What’s at risk if they don’t solve it?
Champion: Who does this problem impact the most within the prospect’s organization? Will they go to bat for your solution to fix it?
Competition: What people, vendors or initiatives are competing for the same funds and resources we are?

Getting back to the basics and conceptualizing your deals through the lens of MEDDPICC will create a more holistic approach to sales, a better understanding of your customers and a sales team that’s well researched and well prepared to win more deals. It fosters connection and conversations about the things buyers actually care about by focusing on the pain of their current issue and how your solution can solve it.

In a turbulent market, it’s time to get methodical about sales by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch

Twitter’s lead privacy regulator in the European Union is being kept very busy indeed by Elon Musk’s erratic piloting of the bird site.

Following a report by Platformer, which suggests Musk is planning to force users to accept personalized advertising unless they pay for a subscription service that will include an opt-out for ads, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) told us it is reviewing the matter.

This adds to a growing pile of data protection concerns piling up on its desk — let’s call these the real ‘Twitter Files’ — such as Musk providing access to Twitter systems to non-staff reporters (um, security and privacy anyone?); the status of Twitter’s main establishment in Ireland (and, therefore, the streamlined situation it currently enjoys with the DPC leading oversight of its compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, aka the GDPR); and whether Twitter has adequate compliance staff and appropriate resources to deal with all the inbound enquiries from regulators and users (such as requests for deletion of data) since Musk took an axe to halve company headcount, to name a small portion of the regulatory chaos he’s kicked up in very short order.

Under the GDPR Twitter needs a valid legal basis to process personal data, such as tracking and profiling users to target them with ads.

Consent is one of the legal bases that can be possible under the GDPR — but you can’t force users to consent; consent must be freely given if it’s to meet the legal bar. Ergo, forcing users to pay up or else be tracked and targeted looks unlikely to pass muster with EU regulators.

Another legal bases permitted in the GDPR is contractual necessity. And it’s worth noting that this is the legal basis currently claimed by Facebook-owner Meta for the ‘personalized’ ads it forces on users of its social networking services.

However in a blow to Musk’s ambitions to follow Zuck and force microtargeted ads into Europeans eyeballs whether they like it or not (or else, in Musk’s case, force Europeans to pay him not to profile them for ad targeting), the European Data Protection Board recently issued a decision on a long running complaint against Meta’s controversial choice of legal basis — which, per press reports, appears to rule out using a claim of performance of a contract to run behavioral advertising.

There is also legitimate interest (LI) — another legal basis that exists in the GDPR. But, again, it’s a sad trombone for Musk on this front as TikTok was forced to abort a planned switch of legal basis for its personalized ads, from consent to LI, this summer — after warnings from Italy’s DPA that this would not be legit.

The DPC also stepped in to ‘engage’ with TikTok on the matter — in its capacity as TikTok’s lead supervisor for GDPR. But it’s not just the GDPR that’s likely to apply here if Twitter similarly tries to force tracking ads on users in Europe: The EU’s ePrivacy Directive, which governs online tracking, also likely comes into play — and, as Italy’s DPA warned TikTok a few months ago, you can’t do tracking without asking for consent. Ergo LI won’t fly for Twitter tracking ads.

Additionally, and unhappily for Musk — who is famously not a fan of regulators — the ePrivacy Directive does not have a one-stop-shop mechanism streamlining regulatory oversight (and oftentimes shrinking risk) via a lead DPA, as is the case with the GDPR. So if he tries to force tracking ads on EU users he’s opening the company up to enforcement by privacy watchdogs across the bloc, from Italy to France, and on through as many of the 27 EU Member States that have DPAs with an appetite for enforcement.

France’s privacy watchdog, the CNIL, has been very active on enforcing ePrivacy against tech giants in recent years — fining Google $120M two years ago for dropping tracking cookies without consent, for instance, and hitting the adtech giant a second time with a further $170M penalty this January over cookie consent dark patterns. It has also spanked Amazon and Facebook with multimillion dollar penalties for ePrivacy breaches over the same time frame. So there’s little reason to think the French would turn a blind eye to a swashbuckling Muskian forced-tracking-ads adventure.

It’s worth noting there are examples in some EU Member States (notably Germany) of certain news media websites putting up paywalls that offer users a choice between subscribing to view their content (i.e. journalism) or getting free access to it but with the stipulation that they agree to be tracked as the ‘price’ for this freebie.

Their approach remains controversial with data protection law experts and may not survive legal challenges. But, in the meanwhile, it doesn’t necessarily offer much succour to Musk’s ambitions to force ads on unwilling Europeans, either, since there is a clear difference between pay-or-be-tracked-gating of journalism (i.e. profession content that the paywalling company is paying to produce) vs pay-or-be-tracked-gating of user generated content which Musk is getting for free for some crazy reason, even as he yells at Twitter users to pay him ~$8pm or else.

So a pay-me-or-else paywall in the microblogging platform case doesn’t look like it would be smooth sailing either.

So what penalties might Musk face if he goes ahead and tries to force ads on European users?

Under the GDPR, penalties can scale up to 4% of global annual turnover — so, on paper, the cost of breaking the law can certainly get expensive (though Twitter has escaped major sanction to date). But GDPR penalties against tech giants have been getting bigger in recent years (even if the bill may take years to arrive). And flagrant/wilful breaches typically invite bigger fines than one-off incidents like a security slip up.

ePrivacy also allows EU regulators to levy dissuasive sanctions for breaches — and these can, demonstrably, exceed a hundred million dollars apiece (i.e. from a single regulator), so costs could stack up quickly here too if multiple watchdogs wade in.

ePrivacy enforcement is also not slowed down by a one-stop-shop mechanism funnelling cross-border complaints through a single lead regulator (as happens with the GDPR). So fines could arrive in fairly short order if Musk pushes ahead with forced tracking despite the lack of a legal path for such processing.

Both privacy laws also enable EU regulators to issue corrective orders against infringing practices. And failure to comply with such orders invites — you guessed it! — further sanction. So if Musk refuses to correct course he is walking into an ongoing world of costly regulatory pain in Europe.

He has more regulatory trouble brewing in the region, too.

Looming on the horizon is application of the EU’s new Digital Services Act (DSA), the bloc’s rebooted Internet rulebook, which concerns itself with content governance issues, so how platforms tackle problems like terrorism, hate speech, disinformation etc. Here again Musk’s ‘free the bird’ approach has quickly thrown regulatory expectations into a spin that has led (already) to closer scrutiny by EU lawmakers than would likely have occurred without the Tesla CEO at the helm of Twitter.

The European Commission itself will oversee larger platforms’ compliance with the DSA, rather than national authorities. And just last month it warned Twitter over the need to have adequate resourcing for compliance in place — saying it would carry out a stress test of its approach at its Dublin HQ early next year. So it’s already putting Twitter on DSA watch.

It remains to be seen whether or not the Commission will classify Twitter as a so-called VLOP — meaning it would take on the burden of regulating Musk’s erratic rule itself. But he is essentially inviting that increased level of EU scrutiny (and regulatory risk) by playing so fast and loose with existing governance and compliance structures. Ergo, Twitter’s DSA compliance being regulated by the Commission looks rather more possible than it probably should, based on an assessment of the platform’s size alone. And that’s all down to Musk’s hard work ripping up existing governance structures and driving out compliance expertise.

Penalties under the DSA can scale up to 6% of global annual turnover. The regulation also contains powers for regulators to ban infringing services if they repeatedly fail to correct governance — so if Musk keeps on trolling the region’s regulators a complete loss of Twitter’s EU revenue cannot be entirely ruled out… Buckle up!

Reports of Musk forcing tracking ads on Twitter put him on a costly collision course with EU privacy laws by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch

WhatsApp Pay India head Vinay Choletti has left the firm, he said, the latest in a series of executive departures for parent firm Meta in the company’s largest user market.

Choletti took over the top role for WhatsApp Pay in India in September this year following the departure of Manesh Mahatme, who joined WhatsApp from Amazon and after a year and a half in the Meta job moved to return to the e-commerce group.

“As I move on to my next adventure, I strongly believe that WhatsApp has the power to phenomenally transform digital payments and financial inclusion in India and I look forward to seeing it leverage its potential in the coming years,” Choletti wrote in a LinkedIn post.

WhatsApp, which has amassed over 500 million users in India, has been struggling to make inroads into the nation’s fast-growing mobile payments market. Google Pay, Walmart’s PhonePe, and Paytm currently lead the market whereas WhatsApp has been regulatory hamstrung to offer the payments service to 100 million users.

At stake is India’s payments market that is estimated to be worth $1 trillion in the next two to three years, up from about $200 billion in 2020, according to Credit Suisse. Google and PhonePe command over 85% market share on the homegrown payments network, UPI.

India said earlier this month that it won’t enforce a check on the market share for players operating on the homegrown payments network until December 31, 2024 in a surprising extension to the deadline that analysts say is a major a win for the incumbent market leaders.

Meta has seen several high-profile departures in India in recent months as the firm makes some internal shifts. Ajit Mohan, the former head of Meta India, left the firm late Octoberto join rival Snap as the president of the younger firm’s Asia-Pacific business. WhatsApp India head Abhijit Bose and Meta India’s Public Policy head Rajiv Aggarwalstepped down last month.

The firm appointed Sandhya Devanathan as the new head for the India business. In her new role, Devanathan will report to Dan Neary, vice president at Meta Asia-Pacific. The firm’s top India executives previously reported directly to the U.S. leadership.

Meta did not respond to a request for comment.

That’s not to say WhatsApp is not making aggressive moves into the country. Meta, which invested $5.7 billion in Jio Platforms, is working closely with the Indian conglomerate to leverage their reach.

WhatsApp Pay India head departs after only four months in the top job by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

A lawsuit against Facebook’s parent company Meta has been filed in Kenya’s High Court over its alleged role in fueling violence and hate in eastern and southern Africa.

The case claims that Meta has failed to employ enough safety measures on Facebook, which has in turn fueled conflict that has led to deaths, including of 500,000 Ethiopians during the recently ended Tigray war. The lawsuit was filed today by Kenyan rights group, Katiba Institute, and Ethiopian researchers Fisseha Tekle, and Abrham Meareg, whose father Professor Meareg Amare, was killed during the Tigray war.

The petitioners say Meta has allowed hateful content to go viral on its platform, and failed to have enough personnel, with an understanding of local languages, to moderate content.

The petitioners are demanding that Facebook stops and demotes viral hate, have enough content moderators at the content moderation hub in Kenya, and creates a restitution fund of $1.6 billion.

Meta and Sama, its main subcontractor for content moderation in Africa, are already facing another lawsuit in Kenya for forced labor and human trafficking, unfair labor relations, union busting and failure to provide “adequate” mental health and psychosocial support.

“Nairobi has become a Hub for Big Tech, and that’s notable. What we must fight against endlessly is Big Tech’s abuse of Nairobi as a base to export human suffering to Africans. Big Tech must put respect for human rights at the forefront; design AI in a way that puts people first, not profit; and resource that hub properly,” said Mercy Mutemi, of Nzili and Sumbi Advocates, said in a statement.

“Not investing adequately in the African market has already caused Africans to die from unsafe systems. We know that a better Facebook is possible – because we have seen how preferentially they treat other markets. African Facebook users deserve better. More importantly, Africans deserve to be protected from the havoc caused by underinvesting in protection of human rights,” said Mutemi.

Whistleblower Frances Haugen previously accused Facebook for ‘literally fanning ethnic violence’ in Ethiopia, and recent Global Witness investigation also noted that the social site was “extremely poor at detecting hate speech in the main language of Ethiopia.”

More updates coming

Meta sued by Ethiopians and Kenyan rights group for fueling Tigray War by Annie Njanja originally published on TechCrunch

Bondaval, the London-based B2B insurtech that gives credit teams assurance that customers will fulfill their financial obligations, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Talis Capital. The round included participation from returning investors Octopus Ventures, Insurtech Gateway Ltd, Truesight and Expa, and new investors FJ Labs and Broadhaven Ventures. Talis Capital general partner Tom Williams will join Bondaval’s board.

TechCrunch last covered Bondaval when it announced its seed funding in October 2021. Since then, it’s expanded its reach to 31 countries in Europe and North America, and grown its team to 20 people, with plans to hire more. Its clients now include BP and Shell.

Bondaval’s new funding will be used on hiring, expanding into new international markets and adding more use cases for its platform. The startup has now raised $25 million since it was founded in 2020 by Tom Powell and Sam Damoussi.

Bondaval’s flagship product are MicroBonds, which serve as an alternative to traditional bank guarantees and trade insurance by fractionalizing the underwriting process. Since surety bonds are usually reserved for large scale transactions and contracts, that means their underwriting is lengthy and expensive. Bondaval speeds up the process and makes it more accessible through through its proprietary credit risk decision engine, which analyzes the probability of a default over a bond’s terms, and enables Bondaval to issue MicroBonds at scale. Customers buy MicroBonds to assure credit teams that they will fulfill the terms of a contract.

Without MicroBonds, credit teams have several options to mitigate risk. For example, they can decide not to extend credit and ask customers to pay upfront in cash, but that means both sides have less liquidity to grow their businesses. Credit teams can ask for collateral-based security, including bank guarantees, but those take about three to six months to enact, and also leave customers with limited liquidity. Another option is credit insurance; the drawback there is that those policies can be cancelled by insurers. Underwritten by S&P A+ insurers, MicroBonds seeks to solve all those problems by giving credit teams and their customers a faster, non-cancellable alternative that is available online.

When TechCrunch first covered Bondaval, it was focused on independent retailers and the supply chain. Small retailers can still benefit from MicroBonds because they only need to pay an annual premium instead of posting collateral-based security, which means more liquidity. But Bondaval has expanded into new use cases for credit managers at large companies, who need to secure payments on a portfolio basis. These include companies in the energy sector, like current clients Shell, BP, Highland Fuels and TACenergy.

In a statement, Williams said, “We are impressed by the opportunity for MicroBonds which can be applied in so many different ways, and the sheer size of the opportunity is mindblowing, to the point where it could transform credit. We see limitless potential for Bondaval and are delighted to be part of the journey.”

Bondaval raises $15M Series A for its alternative to traditional bank guarantees by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

UNESCO calls water pollution one of the main challenges facing societies, with 2 million tonnes of sewage entering the world’s water each day. Oxyle wants to help solve the crisis with a new wastewater treatment that removes micropollutants. The Zurich-based startup announced today $3 million in pre-seed funding that it will use to bring its tech to market. The round was led by Wingman Ventures with participation from SOSV, Better Ventures and another.vc.

The new capital brings Oxyle’s total raised so far to $7.4 million since it was founded in 2020. The startup’s customers include companies in the pesticide, chemical, textile pigments, electronics and pharmaceutical sectors that are regulated by strict discharge limits.

Oxyle’s wastewater treatment was developed five years ago by co-founder and CEO Dr. Fajer Mushtaq during her doctoral research at ETH Zurich. While earning her masters, Dr. Mushtaq worked with synthetic chemicals to develop new nanomaterials for biomedical applications. That resulted in wastewater containing toxic chemicals that needed special handling and disposal methods. Since there wasn’t an effective way to remove the chemicals, the wastewater had to be incinerated.

“For me, this way of handling water was not only costly, unsafe and very unsustainable, but it also completely got rid of one of our most precious resources,” Dr. Mushtaq said. “The more I researched this topic, the more I learnt about the immense scale at which incineration was practiced by small and large international companies.”

She decided to focus her doctoral research on developing novel catalysts to remove micropollutants. Dr. Mushtaq then worked with co-founder and CTO Dr. Silvan Staufert to integrate Oxyle’s water treatment solution into a scalable technology platform. Since then, Oxyle has completed paid pilots with industrial and municipal customers and increased its team to 17 people.

Oxyle’s wastewater treatment removes micropollutants including PFAS (chemicals found in products like cleaning solutions, water-resistant fabrics and nonstick cookware), pharmaceuticals, hormones and pesticides. It involves a nanoporous catalyst (a material with high surface area that takes energy) developed by Dr. Mushtaq. When the nanoporous catalyst is activated by water movements like bubbling or vibrations, it creates a chemical reaction. The chemical reaction generates oxidative radicals that break down organic pollutants into carbon, fluorides and other harmless minerals.

Oxyle uses modular reactors to deploy its tech. For companies that need to comply with discharge regulations, Oxyle also offers an analytics platform for real-time monitoring of micropollutants connected through its reactors.

The startup is continuing to perform on-site paid pilots with customers to get feedback on its technology. It has worked on projects with agrochemical companies whose production processes result in high levels of pesticides, herbicides and insecticides. That wastewater is usually sent for incineration, but Dr. Mushtaq said they were able to remove more than 95% of compounds by using Oxyle’s tech. The startup has also done environmental remediation projects with industrial customers to bring pollutants, including PFAS, in groundwater down to below detection limit.

Other wastewater solutions include activated carbon technology (to absorb pollutants) and membrane filtration (to filter out pollutants) technology, which are in wide use around the world to treat wastewater. But Dr. Mushtaq said that pollutants still remain on the used activated carbon or in concentrated water left over from the filtration process. These technologies also result in high operating costs, since the activated carbon or membranes need to be replaced.

Oxyle’s advantage is that it degrades micropollutants without resulting in secondary waste. Its nanoporous catalyst lasts for a long time, and is fully recyclable, Dr. Mushtaq added. But Oxyle sees filtration technologies as partners instead of competitors, since the highly concentrated wastewater they leave behind can be treated using Oxyle’s methods.

The startup is expanding its tech platform to cover more use cases, including flow-through systems (or artificial water channels), ultra-compact systems like those used in labs, large scale use cases like municipal wastewater and low-cost solutions for developing economies. Oxyle is also working with companies and R&D institutes to improve the speed and cost effectiveness of its pollutant analytics system.

In a statement, Wingman Ventures founding partner Alex Stöckl said, “Our freshwater resources are depleting at alarming rates and toxic micropollutants in water lead to severe damages in our health and environment. New regulations will demand companies to act. But additionally, we need to use sustainable technology to protect our precious water resources for us, and our future generations. We are proud to support Oxyle on their journey to address our global water problem in order to give everyone access to clean water.”

Oxyle’s tech uses water movement to remove pollutants by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Toxic and hateful comments on YouTube have been a constant headache for the company, creators and users. The company has previously attempted to curtail this by introducing features such as showing an alert to individuals at the time of posting so that they could be more considerate. Now, the streaming service is introducing a new feature that will more aggressively nudge such individuals of their abusive comments and take broader actions.

YouTube says it will send a notification to people whose abusive comments have been removed for violating the platform’s rules. If despite receiving the notification a user continues to post abusive comments, the service will ban them from posting any more comments for 24 hours. The company said it tested the feature before the rollout today and found that notifications and timeouts proved materially successful.

At the moment, the hateful comment detection is available only for English-language comments, but the streaming service aims to include more languages in the future. Notably, the pre-posting warning is available for English and Spanish.

“Our goal is to both protect creators from users trying to negatively impact the community via comments, as well as offer more transparency to users who may have had comments removed to policy violations and hopefully help them understand our Community Guidelines,” the company said.

If a user thinks that their comment has been wrongfully removed, they can share their feedback. The company, however, didn’t say if it will restore the comments after looking at the feedback.

Additionally, in a forum post, YouTube said that it has been working on improving its AI-powered detection systems. It has removed 1.1 billion “spammy” comments in the first half of 2022, the company claimed. YouTube has also enhanced its system to better detect and remove bots in live chat videos, it said.

YouTube and other social networks have been able to reduce spam and abusive content in part by relying on automated detection. However, abusers often use different slang or misspell words to trick the system. What’s more, it’s harder to catch people posting hateful comments in non-English languages.

The streaming company has tested a wide-range of tools in recent quarters to reduce hateful comments on the platform. These tests included hiding comments by default and showing a user’s comment history on their profile cards.

Last month, Youtube rolled out a feature that let creators hide a particular user from comments. This control applies to the whole channel, so even if the user posts hateful comments on another video, it won’t show up.

Platforms globally are grappling with the issue of curtailing the spread of hateful comments.

Instagram was a breeding ground for them when England footballers Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford, and Jadon Sancho were harassed for missing penalty kicks in last year’s Euro finals. A new report from GLAAD and Media Matters noted that Anti-LGBTQ slurs have skyrocketed after Elon Musk took over Twitter. While all these platforms have rolled out tools to mute or hide comments and restrict comments to certain folks, the amount of hateful and abusive comments remain a massive scale problem.

YouTube will send a notification to users if their comment is abusive by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch