Its time to click. This week tiktoks troubled, wechats winning, and can robots high five . High five no, maybe not. Theme music. Silicon valley the home of google, facebook, twitter and all those other big social Media Companies that dominate our lives. World changing in their day, but more recently its all getting a bit samey, dont you think . Some say social media Silicon Valley style has stopped innovating. But new rival companies are emerging that are starting to shake things up, and theyre coming from china. Tiktok is the 15 second looping video app thats captured the hearts of teenagers across the world. And with 1 billion users, its firmly on the radar of big tech. And while Silicon Valley may be worried about its huge number of users, it also argues that the companys home country should also give the west cause for concern. In china, things are happening and happening fast. Innovation is rife and Silicon Valley is starting to look over its shoulder. As part of the bbc rivals season, were taking a look at whether china is about to change the global Power Dynamics of the internet. Nowadays, Silicon Valley has a genuine rival in chinese internet companies. Were now seeing genuinely Innovative Products coming out of china, things that the west is now looking on quite enviously and saying we would like to be more like that. Technology supremacy between beijing and washington, it is not only about technology about innovation in itself its also about who writes the rules of those technologies in the future. And that currently the United States has been able to enjoy that exorbitant privilege of having Technology Standards set up by themselves, and followed by the Chinese Companies as well as the American Companies. The internet in almost every country outside of china has been defined by american platforms with strong Free Expression values. But theres no guarantee that these values will win out. So, what we can expect to see is facebook wanting to emulate Something Like chinas wechat. Which is, notjust the messaging component, but also all of the financial activity that you can do via that platform. Facebook would love to enrich its business model, to take its dependence from just advertising on our facebook feeds and towards to, for example, internet based payments. They are looking very enviously at wechat in china. The software to basically do everything. Its all on wechat. And its chinese doesnt really have to get out of the wechat app to get many things done. So for example, i can order food delivery, i can buy a concert ticket, i can book an airline ticket, i can hire a car, hire a bike and i can do online shopping, and i can pay everything on wechat pay. Which allows individuals in china to live their entire lives on wechat. Gonna be all sorts of different percentages that you might be able to take, so instead ofjust advertising, you might actually get commissions if you can start linking advertising to shopping habits. You know, from the ad itself to the point of purchase, and you can track it all through, theres all sorts of ways that you would be able to grow and monetise that. And right now facebook is just making its money from ads. This is a way of building forward. But if you look at tiktok. Tiktok, its a chinese company. But thats gone into the heartlands of the global battle and faced off with instagram, youtube and the facebooks of the world and succeeded. You know, its very popular among teens, for instance, in the United States, so, right in Silicon Valleys backyard. Heres the problem its owned by a chinese company. And under chinese law, that means the communist party has access to all of the data that tiktok scoops up and it scoops up a lot. So tiktok is changing the rules, because this is the first time a Chinese Social Media Company has gone genuinely beyond its borders. And that changes the rules, because these issues around how is this data being used, becomes an issue that it wasnt before. Is china censoring the content that is created and broadcast and disseminated through tiktok . And that we saw recently. This was about a young girl who very cleverly was mimicking a make up tutorial, and while she was doing her curling of her eyelashes, was actually narrating quite subversive content. Curl your lashes obviously, then youre gonna put them down and use your phone that youre using right now to search up whats happening in china, how theyre getting concentration camps, throwing innocent muslims in there. Shortly after posting the videos, ferozas tiktok account was suspended. Had there been a scenario in the future where there is a potential clash between the operations of the company and the bottom line, Chinese National values, the national interest, i think these companies would go for a preservation and safeguarding of Chinese National values, there is no doubt about that. But i think its not deliberately the Chinese Government that tell them what to do, but i think its the natural awareness of those companies in the field. If they want to be at the right side of the trench, they have to, somehow, to show their loyalty to the party. As the big us Silicon Valley based Companies Look at Chinese Companies, theres some envy, theres some fear. They see those companies with seemingly very deep pockets to invest in the technologies of the future, often with a complicit government. Without the same need to make profit that they as western companies have. And that makes them incredibly nervous. Because they dont feel that those Chinese Companies are playing with exactly the same rules as they are. Weve heard how the giants of Silicon Valley are starting to take notice of chinese innovation. And whats being developed in china is unlike anything that we see in the west. Stephen beckett is in china to find out how social media has advanced in very different ways. When it comes to social media, china is a world away from the west. Thats in part due to long Term Government blocking of us tech giants like google and facebook. And thats partially why the country has evolved its own completely distinct online ecosystem. Alibaba is a bit like ebay, weibo was similar to twitter and wechat started life in much the same way as apps like whatsapp and facebook messenger. Perhaps not a surprise, then, but for a time, china had the reputation of a copycat nation. Yes, china in the past has had this reputation for copying from others, but now i think we are seeing the reverse. We are seeing American Companies like uber are copying from Chinese Companies. So the pattern we saw 5 10 years ago is, you know, copy to china model. We copy everything from Silicon Valley, so i think if you are here like 5 10 years ago, almost every time we pitch, that we see, they always say, oh, im doing the china facebook or china twitter. China, with its Huge Population of over 1. 3 billion people, has plenty of room for social ideas and the competition is intense. So, these are the head offices of kuaishou, theyre one of the Biggest Social Networks here, theyve got over 200 million active users. But unless youre in china you probably havent heard of it. Kuaishou has made a name for itself by targeting chinas relatively untapped rural population, and thats a lot of people, around 40 dont live in cities. And that has lead to a platform where the stars arent necessarily what youd expect. Playing music. Kuaishous secret sauce is the options that give streamers to make their streams pay. Translation im a professional musician, i also give lectures via kuaishou in my spare time which teach people how to play the chinese suona. I try to popularise chinese traditional music and knowledge. Between sales of recorded lessons and purchases of virtual gifts during livestreams, he says he makes around £15,000 a month and thats after kuaishou takes their 25 commission. I would say china is really good is not just products, how to monetise products. In future, we probably will see more of these models which are driven by the livestreaming or the shorter videos. But kuaishous 200 million users isnt quite so impressive when you compare it to chinas social titan, tencent, and their so called mega app, wechat. Translation wechat is the largest and most popular social media platform. It has become a lifestyle in china. It was launched in 2011. We have now reached 1 billion unique monthly users from over 200 countries and regions. Our Services Include providing information, entertainment and e payment, Offering Services on all aspects of life. And now wechat is becoming an even greater part of daily life, thanks to something called mini programs. Translation wechat Mini Programmes are an app that doesnt require you to download and install, they are sub applications within the wechat ecosystem and a new tool developed by wechat. Mini programs allow third parties to add new features to wechat on demand. Its a bit like having the entire app store already on your phone. The idea is that you can pretty much do everything you could ever want on your phone without ever closing wechat. So this Convenience Store is set up on the campus of wechats head office. The idea is you canjust walk around, pick up whatever you like and then walk out the door, it will get automatically charged to your wechat account. 0n the other side of guangzhou, another Mini Programme lets you find and pay for your parking. And if you register your numberplate in wechat, you can just ride out and be automatically charged to your account. Wechat relies on users handing over big chunks of their personal data, and now that even includes yourface. These vending machines are set up to use wechats new facial pay feature. The idea is you opt into it in the app and once youve done that you can use your face to buy anything from these machines. It basically links your face to your wechat account and your government id. But, is the convenience worth the possible cost to privacy . In 2016, Amnesty International awarded the Parent Company of wechat, tencent, zero out of 100 for their privacy practices. I think theres a misconception that people in china dont care about their privacy and that perception is completely false. The government, over the last few years, has been trying to roll out its own cybersecurity regulations and trying to educate consumers about the dangers of data being lost or leaked. Wechats Privacy Policy says it will provide the Chinese Government access to much of what you do in the app, when legally required, including the things you type, and data like your location. Translation wechat would not use user Sensitive Data for our other products. We comply with local laws and regulations to protect users privacy and data. Its hard to deny that social apps in china have taken a life on their own. If not outpacing, then going in new directions to competitors in the west. The big question is whether more chinese apps can follow tiktok in going global, despite the concerns around privacy and censorship. Or, if not, it could be the turn of Tech Companies in the west to play copycat themselves. Hello and welcome to the week in tech. It was the week amazon sued the Us Department of defense claiming the President Donald Trump applied improper pressure to stop it winning a billion dollar military contract. Youtube banned clips that include malicious insults and veiled threats to to prevent abuse based on race, gender identity or sexuality. And caitlinjenner, Prince Andrew and borisjohnson were among the most searched for celebrities of the year, google has revealed. Other popular searches concern tvs game of thrones, the viral dance craze flossing and, importantly, how to eat a pineapple. In the us, a tesla crashed into a police car while operating on autopilot a mode the company says the car requires active driver supervision and should not be considered autonomous. The driver said the model 3 accident occurred while he was checking his dog in the back. Fortunately, no one was injured. Bioshock, the First Person Shooter game trilogy that sold more than 33 Million Units is getting a fourth instalment. The games creators 2k said industry veteran Kelly Gilmore will be leading the release. And finally, wibbly wobbly robots could become much more commonplace, thanks to a breakthrough from scientists at mit. Creating simulations of soft robots completing tasks has previously been a huge challenge, but researchers say their model understands how springy, stretchy forms can move in an infinite number of ways. Their next step bringing thesejiggly, jelly forms to life. Star citizen combines elements of a massively multi player role playing game, spaceship sim and First Person Shooter, all in a vast, persistent universe. Thanks, wendy it has a large, loyalfan base. Previously, we could not have done a planet like this before. Cheering and applause. When i was a kid, i wanted to be an astronaut. I ended up being a dentist. I always used to fantasise with being a spaceman, and thats what star citizen is. Coming up behind you. Star citizen is important because its a Chris Roberts game. Chris roberts started out the Wing Commander franchise in the 905. Its almost like hes the george lucas of space games. Star citizen came around because Chris Roberts wanted to create the ultimate space sim that hadnt existed. Hed made Wing Commander and he wanted to make the biggest follow up to that. But i dont want to build any old game. I want to build a universe. I want to build a game i always wanted to build, but i didnt have the tools to do until now. So when people then saw it, they saw what he was selling, they saw what he wanted to create, they wanted to invest in that. And invest, they have so far in excess of 250 million, with 37 million was raised in the last year alone. All this for a game which is still in the testing phase and isnt a finished product. Cloud imperium games has been developing star citizen since 2012. It now has a team of 500 spread across five studios in the uk, germany and the United States. This is the la office. Even though the team here is busy still making the game, it is playable, and being played by gamers at the moment. This game goes out every three months. But its, of course, it is very, very early alpha so, to a degree, theyre having the exact same experience as somebody that would be working on a game as, like, a qa guy or even as a developer. But this is a game which, from its inception, has proved to be controversial. Since the original kickstarter campaign, its scale has dramatically increased, becoming a much bigger game in the process. As the crowdfunding grew, so did the scope. What began as an ode to Wing Commander gradually grew into this giant persisting universe, and, you know, thats a very different product. As a result of changes to the game, earlier this year, Roberts Space Industries, a subsidiary of Cloud Imperium, was taken to court by a backer seeking a refund of almost 4,500 money hed spent backing the game. A california judge dismissed the case without prejudice, due to a clause in the star citizen end user license agreement which prevents anybody from taking Roberts Space Industries to court for a refund. The Games Company says it does issue refunds within a 30 day window. This brings us to the issue that seems to have generated the most headlines for star citizen. Caching money. 250 million sounds like a lot of money, but when you think the movie avatar cost 237 million to make, and most estimates put gta 5 costing 265 million to make, its not a crazy amount of cash to put into a game. From sunny Southern California to grey, wintry manchester. While development on the game continues, here in manchester, citizencon which is a convention dedicated entirely to the video game is kicking off. Citizencon is where fans and backers of the game can meet each other, as well as the Games Development teams. One of the aspects of the game which has attracted a lot of attention is the ships. There are a plethora of different ships in the game, big and small, that can be purchased with in game currency, or backers can use real cash, which Cloud Imperium says goes towards further development. Rumours are rife of some backers spending thousands on ships. Most of the people i meet at citizencon have more modest budgets. How much money have you spent so far . Its only about 75 100. Probably invested about £250 into the game. Maybe like £60 or Something Like that. Theres always exceptions to the rule, though. Yep, that definitely doesnt look friendly ive spent about 7,900 on the game. 7,900 . 7,900 us dollars, yeah. Now, we should say that you are a streamer. Iam. So this is yourjob this is your living, isnt it . It is, yeah. We do these crazy battles, like 50 players going to war, sci fi battles. Like, thats what we do. What the. . Someday send the back up its here in the midst of citizencon that i catch up with roberts. Whats going on . Well, i mean, were trying to build a universe at, like, a level of detail that no ones done before, and so its taking, you know, longer than we were anticipating when we first announced it. Theres an awful lot of online negativity around star citizen. Why do you think that is . Its easy to be an armchair quarterback or am armchair developer. People arent used or dont really know how much work goes into making these games. I mean, theres been some, you know, stuff like Red Dead Redemption 2 or but, you know, that was seven plus years. It takes time to build games of this sophistication and simulation detail that gamers expect now. I mightjust have a gig that i could use you for. So, whats new . The new Planet Technology we have, which is much, much, much higherfidelity. Weve been working on dynamic weather. The other really big thing that wee showing the first time were going through a jump point, or a wormhole. Basically, as we carry on, well be opening up more star systems. Next year, weve been promised the release of squadron 42, the Single Player campaign aspect of the game. But for now, Development Continues on the main star citizen experience. It seems this games journey is far from over. That was star citizen marc. Now, christmas is nearly here, which traditionally is the time when we all lay off the exercise and pile on the food. Not lara, though. Shes not waiting until january to get fit. Shes getting on the case now, with a little help from a friend. Right. Ive got my gym kit, ive got my trainers. Now its just time to meet the robot that ive an appointment with. Hello yep, its putting me through my paces on the treadmill. The idea here is that i am going to be trained by ai, with a spot of help from pepper here. This Bristol Robotics Lab trial aims to teach a robot the empathy and motivational skill of a human personal trainer. Ok, im not quite sure what its got in store for me. Think about getting ready to start running. Speed up now and run for one minute. Along with reacting to participants heart rate data and facial expressions whilst they try to build up to running 5k, it considers personality type in its quest to perfect its patter. That robot, to begin with, knows nothing. And then don, ourfitness instructor, he tells the robot, in real time, right, now its time to have a joke or now its time to sympathise or now its time to challenge. And every time he does that, the robot learns from that example. So after a few sessions, the robot then start suggesting things. The estimated speed of a t rex is 27 miles per hour. I cant go as fast as that i had to write what kind of behaviours the ideal robotic personal trainer should have, yet still keeping that as simplistic as possible for the robot assist and coders to implement. Its quite unnerving when it leans forward. Ifeel like im in trouble. The key human aspects in psychology go in to analysing what that client needs at a given time. Ten people took part in the trial, some totally at ease with the concept. 0n the day of a session i would be thinking 0k, well peppers standing there, waiting for me. Kind of the longer you do this, the kind of you get used to it a lot more. And probably if i was to run on the treadmill now, id be wondering wheres the robot . They didnt just see it as a tool, as an object. It wasnt just a robot. Each of them developed i would say a relationship. They would talk to it in different ways. The bot could be trained by different people, giving it different personalities and styles. But the general idea is that the gym of the future could be a very different place. Nice work well done for today thank you. I hope to see you again soon goodbye. Give me five. 0h, maybe not. 0oh, denied that was lara and pepper, and thats it for this week. Next week, its the click christmas special, which means tons of serious journalism and sensible outfits. In the meantime, you can get in touch with us on social media on facebook, youtube, instagram and twitter at bbcclick. Thanks for watching and well see you at clickmas. Hello there. By the time the sun rises, well have ticked just about every weather box through the night rain, hail, sleet, snow, a bit of thunder, and some gusty winds. All kept going overnight by this area of low pressure to the north of us. Strong and gusty winds on the south feeding those showers across the country. But adding to all that, with some clearer skies between them, temperatures have dropped low enough for some ice around to begin with. But the day ahead, actually, not looking too bad. Lots of dry and sunny weather around. But, as i said, it starts on a cold note. Anywhere, really, from north wales northward, greatest risk of frost and ice. And its here over the hills, most likely to wake up to a coating of snow, too. But the showers we have to start the day will gradually fade away for many. A few will continue across scotland. Lots of dry and sunny weatherfor a time. Some in central and eastern parts staying dry and sunny throughout. But into the afternoon, southern and western areas, those showers get going again rain, hail, sleet, snow, and the winds will start to pick up. Now, the winds not as strong as they were through saturday. But the hebrides and towards the south west, we could see gales, if not severe gales, develop later in the day. Temperatures in the south, though, 9 10 degrees, tempered by the strength of the wind. A chilly day. Scotland and Northern Ireland, only 2 4 celsius for the vast majority. And with the showers picking up through sunday night, well see those develop more widely, the breeze becoming more of a note as well. The greatest chance of some hill snow with a covering parts of northern england, southern scotland, and Northern Ireland, too. And very windy by the end of the night, western scotland and Northern Ireland. But it still wont stop the temperatures from dropping. Many places again close to a frost, if not some icy conditions, to start the new working week. So here we go we go for monday. A few showers across england and wales, particularly around the coast. Many will have a dry and sunny day before cloud increases from the south later. Some very lively showers to the north of Northern Ireland with Gale Force Winds potentially 60 70 mile gusts cant be ruled out. And well see some heavy snowfall across the Higher Ground of central and northern scotland. A chilly day to come here once more. But with that gathering cloud towards the south comes a bit of a question mark in the forecast. Just how much this weather front will influence us as we go through monday night into tuesday. It could be a bit further east, many more of us have a dry day. But this is potentially the story for tuesday. Lots of rain across central and Eastern England and it could be cold enough over the very tops of the hills to see a bit of sleet and snow mixed in. Many, though, to the north and west of the country, either way, will have a drier day, just one or two isolated showers. Another chilly day for most. And even if that weather front does affect us, it will clear out the way as we go through tuesday night into wednesday. Meaning the rest of the week, well, weve strong, southerly winds developing, temperatures on the rise, and rain becoming more widespread. This is bbc world news. Im james reynolds. Our top stories disagreement and deadlock in madrid as delegates at the Climate Summit fail to reach consensus. Talks continue into the early morning. If we cannot agree an ambitious decision, we would have failed to address the hopes of the people that are waiting for us in our countries. Borisjohnson promises to repay the trust of former labour supporters whose votes helped him to victory in thursdays election. Arsenal distance themselves from comments made by mesut 0zil, their star player, who criticised china over treatment of uighur muslims. And tens of thousands take to the streets of rome to protest against the italian far right league party
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