How to Create Custom WordPress Write/Meta Boxes

Creating meta boxes is a crucial part of WordPress theme/plugin development. It's a way to add an appealing editor to the post screen and avoids forcing users to rely on custom fields. If you've ever created a custom post type in WordPress, you've probably wanted to add some sort of additional data to it. Sure, you could use custom fields, but that's ugly. Getting started with custom meta boxes is easy, so let's dive in!

What Are Custom Meta Boxes?

A custom meta (or write) box is incredibly simple in theory. It allows you to add a custom piece of data to a post or page in WordPress.

Imagine that you're working on a theme for a client that wants to catalog his extensive collection of concert posters. You immediately start looking to the core WordPress functionality to see how you might organize the theme: Every post will represent a poster, which is perfect for adding an image, title and description. We can also use the categories and tags system inside of WordPress to organize the posters. But what if we wanted to add a new type of meta data for the "artist" of each poster? Hmph. WordPress doesn't quite have anything for that right out of the box... which brings us to custom meta boxes.

A custom meta (or write) box is incredibly simple in theory. It allows you to add a custom piece of data to a post or page in WordPress - what's better is that it can fit directly into most of the default pages inside WP, so you can easily place it inside the Post-Editor for easy use by non-technical types. As I said in the intro, you can add this same kind of "meta data" to your post using the built in custom fields for a post or page. There's nothing wrong with this persay, but it's not a very graceful or user-friendly.

Instead, you want to create a custom meta box that contains fields for all of your data and saves all of that stuff right when the post is published. That's what we're covering here. This is broken down into three big steps:

• Adding the meta box


• Rendering the meta box


• Saving the data (the right way - yes, there is a wrong way)

It's worth noting that a lot of this information can also be used inside the custom post types API (we'll get to that point later!), but for the sake of keeping things focused today, we're going to add this directly to the default post editor.

For the advanced readers in the audience: Yes, custom post types is where we'll be going with this eventually, but it's important to setup some fundamentals first. Plus, as you can use the custom meta boxes in all sorts of places, it's good for anyone to know.

Anything in this tutorial will work in a theme's functions.php file. That is not the correct place for it, however. If you're adding data to a post, chances are you want it there regardless of your front end design. As such, you should place this code some place that isn't dependent on your design: a plugin file.

Step 1 Adding the Meta Box

Conveniently, WordPress provides a function for adding meta boxes to a given admin screen: add_meta_box.

The codex entry is well done for this function, but here's a brief overview. Its prototype:

1	<?php add_meta_box( $id, $title, $callback, $page, $context, $priority, $callback_args ); ?>

$id is the html ID attribute of the box. This is useful if you're loading custom CSS or Javascript on the editing page to handle the options. Otherwise, it doesn't really matter all that much.

$title is displayed at the top of the meta box.

$callback is the function that actually renders the meta box. We'll outline this in step 2.

$page is where you want the meta box to be displayed. This should be a string with 'post' or 'page' or 'some_custom_post_type'.

$context is where you want the meta box displayed. 'normal' puts it below the post editor. 'side' moves the meta box to editing screen's right sidebar (by the categories and tags, etc). 'advanced' also put the box in the same column as the post editor, but further down.

$priority tells wordpress where to place the meta box in the context. 'high', 'default' or 'low' puts the box closer to the top, in its normal position, or towards the bottom respectively. Since all meta boxes are drag-able, $priority is not a huge deal.

Finally $callback_args lets you pass data to your $callback function in the form of an array. We're not going to use this here, but it could be useful for passing some data to the meta box. Say, if your plugin had several options that influenced what was displayed in the meta box. You could pass those options values through the $callback_args array.

So, our add_meta_box call will look like this:

1	<?php add_meta_box( 'my-meta-box-id', 'My First Meta Box', 'cd_meta_box_cb', 'post', 'normal', 'high' ); ?>

We can't just pop this into our plugin file alone. Doing so will result in the white screen of death, and PHP fatal error: call to undefined function. Why? Because we called add_meta_box function before WordPress was loaded. So we need to use a WordPress hook, which is part of the plugin api. Basically, functions get hooked into a given WordPress action or filter hook, then those functions are fired when that hook loads. By wrapping our add_meta_box call in a function, then hooking that function into the add_meta_boxes action hook, we avoid the fatal error.

Our code to add the meta box to our post screen would look like this:

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<?php add_action( 'add_meta_boxes', 'cd_meta_box_add' ); function cd_meta_box_add() {     add_meta_box( 'my-meta-box-id', 'My First Meta Box', 'cd_meta_box_cb', 'post', 'normal', 'high' ); } ?>

Step 2 Rendering the Meta Box

The above code is enough to add the meta box, but now we have to render the thing and actually add fields. This is just an HTML form code mixed in with a bit of PHP to display the saved data. We don't need to include the form tags as WordPress does that for us.

Remember the string we passed as the $callback in add_meta_box? We're now going to create a function with the same name. This function will take care of all the display inside the meta box.

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<?php function cd_meta_box_cb() {     echo 'What you put here, show\'s up in the meta box';   } ?>

We're going to add several fields to our meta box: a text input, a drop down menu, and a check-box. Let's start with the text input.

Adding the Text Input

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<?php function cd_meta_box_cb() {     ?>     <label for="my_meta_box_text">Text Label</label>     <input type="text" name="my_meta_box_text" id="my_meta_box_text" />     <?php    } ?>

But what about actually displaying the data? Well, as you'll see in step 3, we'll store this data in the wp_postmeta table using the update_post_meta function. That function has two sister functions called get_post_meta and get_post_custom, which grab data from wp_postmeta. get_post_meta only grabs data from one key, while get_post_custom grabs all of it. Because we're only really using one field at this point, let's use get_post_meta.

Also note that the add_meta_box function passes one variable to our callback: $post, which is a post object.

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<?php function cd_meta_box_cb( $post ) { $values = get_post_custom( $post->ID ); $text = isset( $values['my_meta_box_text'] ) ? esc_attr( $values['my_meta_box_text'][0] ) : ”; $selected = isset( $values['my_meta_box_select'] ) ? esc_attr( $values['my_meta_box_select'][0] ) : ”; $check = isset( $values['my_meta_box_check'] ) ? esc_attr( $values['my_meta_box_check'][0] ) : ”;     ?> <p>     <label for="my_meta_box_text">Text Label</label>     <input type="text" name="my_meta_box_text" id="my_meta_box_text" value="<?php echo $text; ?>" />         </p>     <?php        } ?>

Adding The Drop Down

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<?php    function cd_meta_box_cb( $post ) { $values = get_post_custom( $post->ID ); $text = isset( $values['my_meta_box_text'] ) ? esc_attr( $values['my_meta_box_text'][0] ) : ”; $selected = isset( $values['my_meta_box_select'] ) ? esc_attr( $values['my_meta_box_select'][0] ) : ”; $check = isset( $values['my_meta_box_check'] ) ? esc_attr( $values['my_meta_box_check'][0] ) : ”;     ?>     <p>         <label for="my_meta_box_text">Text Label</label>         <input type="text" name="my_meta_box_text" id="my_meta_box_text" value="<?php echo $text; ?>" />     </p>          <p>         <label for="my_meta_box_select">Color</label>         <select name="my_meta_box_select" id="my_meta_box_select">             <option value="red" <?php selected( $selected, 'red' ); ?>>Red</option>             <option value="blue" <?php selected( $selected, 'blue' ); ?>>Blue</option>         </select>     </p>     <?php    } ?>

With the addition of a second field, we changed or get_post_meta call to get_post_custom, which returns an associative array of all the post's custom keys and values. We then just access our fields via their names. The ternary statements keep our code from throwing PHP warnings (undefined indices and such). We'll cover the esc_attr function in step three.

In the drop down, we're going to use one of WordPress's most handy functions: selected. This compares the first value, the data we saved, with the second, the <option>'s value attribute. If they're the same, the function will echo selected="selected", which makes that value display on the drop down. Pretty sweet, and it saves us from writing a bunch of if or ternary statements. You can also use the selected() function with radio buttons.

Adding the Check-box

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&lt?php function cd_meta_box_cb() {     // $post is already set, and contains an object: the WordPress post     global $post;     $values = get_post_custom( $post->ID );     $text = isset( $values['my_meta_box_text'] ) ? $values['my_meta_box_text'] : '';     $selected = isset( $values['my_meta_box_select'] ) ? esc_attr( $values['my_meta_box_select'] ) : '';     $check = isset( $values['my_meta_box_check'] ) ? esc_attr( $values['my_meta_box_check'] ) : '';          // We'll use this nonce field later on when saving.     wp_nonce_field( 'my_meta_box_nonce', 'meta_box_nonce' );     ?>     <p>         <label for="my_meta_box_text">Text Label</label>         <input type="text" name="my_meta_box_text" id="my_meta_box_text" value="<?php echo $text; ?>" />     </p>          <p>         <label for="my_meta_box_select">Color</label>         <select name="my_meta_box_select" id="my_meta_box_select">             <option value="red" <?php selected( $selected, 'red' ); ?>>Red</option>             <option value="blue" <?php selected( $selected, 'blue' ); ?>>Blue</option>         </select>     </p>          <p>         <input type="checkbox" id="my_meta_box_check" name="my_meta_box_check" <?php checked( $check, 'on' ); ?> />         <label for="my_meta_box_check">Do not check this</label>     </p>     <?php    } ?>

Again WordPress provides the handy function checked(). It works just like selected() comparing the first value (our saved data) to the second and echoing out checked="checked" if they're the same.

wp_nonce_field adds two hidden fields to our meta box. One of them is a nonce. These are random strings of numbers that are valid on per user per blog basis for 24 hours. Nonces are a way of verifying intention, and they make sure that WordPress doesn't do anything unless the request came from a very specific place. In other words, we don't want to accidentally update our data by somehow running our save function (see step 3) in another location other than the save_post hook, so we check to make sure the nonce is valid before doing anything.

Step 3 Saving the Data

The number one rule when putting anything into your database or on your site isdon't trust the user. Even if that user is you.

To save our data, we're going to rely on another WordPress hook: save_post. This works just like our action hook above:

1	<?php add_action( 'save_post', 'cd_meta_box_save' ); ?>

The cd_meta_box_save function will receive one argument, the post id, and take care of cleaning and saving all of our data. The save_post hook fires after the update or save draft button has been hit. So we have access to all the $_POST data, which includes our meta box fields, within our saving function. Before we can do anything, however, we have to do three things: check if the post is auto saving, verify the nonce value we created earlier, and check to make sure the current user can actually edit the post.

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<?php add_action( 'save_post', 'cd_meta_box_save' ); function cd_meta_box_save( $post_id ) {     // Bail if we're doing an auto save     if( defined( 'DOING_AUTOSAVE' ) && DOING_AUTOSAVE ) return;          // if our nonce isn't there, or we can't verify it, bail     if( !isset( $_POST['meta_box_nonce'] ) || !wp_verify_nonce( $_POST['meta_box_nonce'], 'my_meta_box_nonce' ) ) return;          // if our current user can't edit this post, bail     if( !current_user_can( 'edit_post' ) ) return; } ?>

Now the fun stuff: actually saving our data. The number one rule when putting anything into your database or on your site is don't trust the user. Even if that user is you. To that end, before we save any data, we want to make sure there's nothing malicious in there. Fortunately WordPress provides a bunch of functions for data validation.

You already saw esc_attr() above (step 2). This one encodes ' " and < > into HTML entities. Why use this? So users couldn't type a <script> into your meta box. If you'd like to allow certain HTML tags in, but strip others, wp_kses can do that. It takes two arguments, the first of which is the string you'd like to check and the second is an associative array of allowed tags. WordPress provides many more data validation tools, just don't be afraid to use them.

We're going to use the update_post_meta function to date care of saving our data. It takes three arguments: a post ID, the meta key, and the value.

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<?php add_action( 'save_post', 'cd_meta_box_save' ); function cd_meta_box_save( $post_id ) {     // Bail if we're doing an auto save     if( defined( 'DOING_AUTOSAVE' ) && DOING_AUTOSAVE ) return;          // if our nonce isn't there, or we can't verify it, bail     if( !isset( $_POST['meta_box_nonce'] ) || !wp_verify_nonce( $_POST['meta_box_nonce'], 'my_meta_box_nonce' ) ) return;          // if our current user can't edit this post, bail     if( !current_user_can( 'edit_post' ) ) return;          // now we can actually save the data     $allowed = array(         'a' => array( // on allow a tags             'href' => array() // and those anchors can only have href attribute         )     );          // Make sure your data is set before trying to save it     if( isset( $_POST['my_meta_box_text'] ) )         update_post_meta( $post_id, 'my_meta_box_text', wp_kses( $_POST['my_meta_box_text'], $allowed ) );              if( isset( $_POST['my_meta_box_select'] ) )         update_post_meta( $post_id, 'my_meta_box_select', esc_attr( $_POST['my_meta_box_select'] ) );              // This is purely my personal preference for saving check-boxes     $chk = isset( $_POST['my_meta_box_check'] ) && $_POST['my_meta_box_select'] ? 'on' : 'off';     update_post_meta( $post_id, 'my_meta_box_check', $chk ); } ?>

Wrap Up

That's it! You should have a fully working meta box. Other examples you may find around the web loop through a bunch of fields without really cleaning the data. This is the wrong approach. Always use the built in data validation functions; different fields/values may require different data validation.

To use these custom fields on the front end of your site, use the get_post_meta or get_post_customfunctions (see step 2).

General Catalyst-backed Octane will make you a bot

Bots are hot. Ever since Facebook introduced chatbots at F8 last spring, they’ve been integrated into brand pages for customer service, e-commerce and fun.

But, how do you make a bot? Many businesses don’t have developers that are adept at creating them.

Enter Octane, a newly-formed startup launched by media personality Ben Parr, serial entrepreneur Matt Schlicht and Omegle founder Leif K-Brooks. The team has already built up a following in the bots community after creating a popular Facebook group and a digital magazine.

Their business is like web design platforms Wix or Weebly, but for chatbots. It’s a paint-by-numbers for bot creation that’s so easy, I could do it. (I did it! I programmed the Katie Roof bot to respond with “raise the roof” as my greeting. Sorry but not sorry).

Phil Libin, co-founder of Evernote and partner at General Catalyst, talked about why they led a $1.5 million funding round in Octane. Bots are a “very natural way to interact with technology,” he said, voicing optimism about the founders because he’s “impressed with the community they’ve already already managed to build.”

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With an impactful client list that already includes 50 Cent and Aerosmith, the Octane team hopes to double down on its Facebook business, eventually expanding to SMS, iMessage, Slack and websites.

“We believe this is something that everyone’s going to need, not just top enterprises,” said Schlicht.

Believing that bots are more than just a gimmick, Parr says “this actually saves you time. This actually makes you money.” It’s a “very clearly a win for every business that uses it.”

Controversial crime reporting app Vigilante banned from App Store

A controversial crime-reporting app called Vigilante has been justifiably been kicked out of the App Store for an app that encouraged, well – vigilantism – and led to the potential for violent responses and racial profiling. The app had only been live for a week in New York before getting the boot, after promising a tool that opened up the 911 system, bringing near real-time reports of criminal activity to its digital display.

The app didn’t just encourage you to avoid the problematic area – a solution that alone would have been questionable, due its similarity with the unfortunate series of apps that have launched over the years, promising to help you avoid “sketchy” or “poor” neighborhoods. These apps can reinforce assumptions people make about race and income level contributing to crime, and have been called out repeatedly for their racial and classist undertones.

In addition to this issue, Vigilante actively encouraged its users to get involved when they received a crime report. A quote on its launch blog post even suggested that “average and ordinary” citizens should approach the crime problem “as a group” and see what they can do.

Therefore, the app could easily be turned into a tool that could encourage users to intimidate and harass innocent people, because they happened to be in an area where the crime was reported, and matched some sort of profile in the end user’s mind of what a criminal should look like.

We’ve already seen the issue of rampant racial profiling in the neighborhood app Nextdoor, which recently had to roll out a new system to clamp down on the issue, by forcing users to enter in physical descriptions – like clothing, hair color, shoes, etc. – if they choose to include the race of the person in their report. Meanwhile, the same sort of profiling takes place on closed Facebook neighborhood groups, largely unchecked.

In a report from The Guardian, Sam Gregory, program director of Witness, an organization trains and supports activists to document human rights violations, cautioned about the app’s framing. “Vigilantism is a very different idea to being an ethical witness to what’s happening,” he said.

Apple doesn’t typically comment on app removals, but it’s fair to say that the app was likely removed because of the clause in Apple’s App Developer Review Guidelines which bans apps that encourage or risk physical harm.

The developer of the app, a company called Sp0n, said it’s working with Apple to resolve the issue and still plans on shipping a version of the app on Android.

Microsoft Teams, its new Slack rival, is launching today as part of Office 365

Microsoft is holding a big event today to unveil what many expect will be its new Slack competitor. Ahead of that, it has posted a unlisted video on YouTube that spills some of the beans. The product will officially be called Microsoft Teams, it will be a part of Office 365, and it is part of the company’s big push to create a new generation of enterprise products that appeal, in Microsoft’s own words, to people from “different cultures and generations.”

From the video, embedded below, it looks like Microsoft is launching Teams with several features right out of the box. First, for those of you who might already use Slack and Hipchat, it’s notable that Teams looks like it will include the ability to have threaded comments, where you can reply inline in a conversation — a feature that Slack, for one, has said for a long time now that it has been working on but has yet to include.

It will also include video chat services, along with expected integration with Microsoft’s services. What’s less clear is how it will integrate with other products. An open letter to Microsoft published today by Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of Slack, weighs heavily on the open source aspect, an area where Microsoft has not been known to excel in enterprise software in the past.

Slack’s team collaboration platform has been a runaway, surprise success in the market, tapping into a need for people to chat with each other on a platform where they can also call in all kinds of other apps that they might use to get their work done, or to distract each other, by way of shortcuts using slash commands. The company last week reported that it now has 1.25 million paying users — you pay for added features and more storage of your messages — although from a closer look it appears that growth may be slowing right now, which points to an opportunity for others to move in on space that Slack has come to own in terms of mindshare.

Like Facebook’s Workplace, another Slack and Hipchat competitor that launched recently, Microsoft Teams is going live with a number of key customers already signed on, some of whom are featured in the video. They include Accenture with 400,000 employees and Hendrick Motorsports, the racing company.

We’ll be live at the event and updating from there. For a preview, see the video below:

Waterloo wows with demo of first working Hyperloop air levitation system

The University of Waterloo has a team dedicated to making a real, working pod system for the ambitious Hyperloop transportation system envisioned by Tesla founder Elon Musk. The so-called ‘Waterloop,’ (bonus points for puns) got a test run yesterday, making the team the first to demonstrate a functioning, pneumatic levitation system on a test track using nothing but air to gloat their test objects.

The @waterloo_hyper team shows the world's first functional pneumatic hyperloop levitation system! #WaterloopLevitates#UWaterloo#cdnpsepic.twitter.com/u9CCiOh0rM

— University Waterloo (@UWaterloo) November 2, 2016

It was a scaled down test, and still a far cry from a pod capable of actually transporting humans, but it’s a sign that the 120-strong team of engineering students is on the right track (hope someone is conferring bonus points on me for puns, too). Successfully using air to levitate a car-like object on a track is a big achievement (even when propelled by team members as in the demo above) and one that could lead to decreased cost and friction. This could make it a lot easier for future production Hyperloop systems to achieve the ambitious high speeds they’re aiming for.

Waterloo’s Waterloop team is still in the running among 22 teams competing in a SpaceX-run competition designed to bring out the best in Hyperloop pod design. Said competition is currently set for January 2017, and will take place at SpaceX HQ in Hawthorne, California. Between now and then, the Waterloo team has a lot to get done, and will now focus on their own test track facility at Kitchener’s Lot 41 innovation center in Canada.

Waterloop is funding its project in part via Kickstarter, and while it’s achieved its goal, there’s still time to contribute if you’re looking to help propel Hyperloop transportation research forward.

Glide’s Apple Watch band has two cameras

Remember Samsung’s original Galaxy Gear watch? It’s all right if you say don’t. It was big – in the sense of being physically large, due in part to the inclusion of a camera in the bezel/strap. The company was clearly looking to jam all of the functionality possible into the device and came out the other side with an extremely large product.

That’s likely a big part of why the functionality hasn’t been considered standard in subsequent devices. That and the fact that he world still needed convincing that the smartwatch was a viable space. Built-in photos and videos just seemed like overkill.

Now video messaging service Glide, of all companies, is bringing that functionality to Apple watch with CMRA, a band that has not one, but two cameras built in. Because if you’re going to go for it, go for it, right?

The purpose behind a pair of cameras is to the offer the same front- and rear-facing functionality you get on a smartphone. After all, Glide is a video messaging service, so selfie video is of the utmost importance here. The cameras are two- and eight-megapixels, respectively and are capable of doing both stills and video.

The band also brings some added firepower to the fight, with a bonus battery that can do 100 photos or 30 minutes of video on a charge. CMRA goes up for pre-order today, priced at $149, which includes a dock that’ll charge the watch and band all at the same time.

Turner’s streaming service for film geeks, FilmStruck, goes live

FilmStruck, a new streaming service aimed at film geeks developed by Turner Classic Movies, has now launched. Announced earlier this year for a mid-October arrival, the service belatedly debuted with a collection of hundreds of classic, indie, foreign, and cult film, as promised. The company also announced the pricing for its new Netflix-like competitor: a somewhat costly, comparatively speaking, starting at $7 per month.

An expanded version of the service for $10.99 will include the base collection of hundreds of movies as well as the Criterion Channel, which represents the largest collection of Criterion films available for streaming with its 1,200 titles. Those films will be exiting Hulu on November 11, where they have previously been hosted. This collection includes studio classics and contemporary films, along with their special features like filmmaker profiles, masterclasses, and curated series by guests.

This top subscription tier is also available as an annual subscription for $99.00.

It’s worth noting that FilmStruck’s entry-level pricing only a dollar less than Netflix’s cheapest “Basic” plan. Though reasonable as a standalone fee, when you take into consideration that many people today are already paying for Netflix, HBO NOW, and/or Hulu, and possibly have access to Prime Video through their Amazon Prime annual subscription, FilmStruck could have limited appeal.

Then again, that may be what it’s after. The service is largely designed to cater to those who mainly watch movies – something that many of the streaming services, and especially Netflix, don’t have as much of these days. In fact, a report from this March by AllFlicks found that the number of Netflix movies in its catalog had dropped by 33 percent over the course of two years. Of course, these days Netflix is investing in its own original content, including movies, but not enough to bring those numbers back up.

On FilmStruck, there are plenty of movies to watch, if you prefer a certain sort of genre that doesn’t include today’s hit blockbusters. Instead, you can browse titles like “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Mad Max,” “Metropolis,” “Moulin Rouge,” “My Life as a Dog,” “Paths of Glory,” “The Player,” “Seven Samurai,” “A Room With A View,” “Blood Simple,” “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” “Stardust Memories,” “Breathless,” and many others.

Participating studios include Janus Films, Flicker Alley, Icarus Films, Kino, Milestone, Zeitgeist, Film Movement, Global Lens, First Run Features, Oscilloscope Laboratories, Shout Factory, as well as major studios MGM and Warner Bros.

The service is available now, free for the first 14 days during a trial period. The movies can be streamed across desktop, mobile, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV (4th gen.) and soon, Chromecast and Roku.

Facebook slaps down Admiral’s plan to use social media posts to price car insurance premiums

UK insurance firm Admiral had intended to launch an app this week offering discounted car insurance premiums to first time drivers based on an algorithmic assessment of their Facebook posts.

All drivers would have had to do is sign in with their Facebook login to grant permission to the company to scan their Facebook posts in order to get a potential discount on their car insurance premiums.

However the experiment has fallen foul of Facebook’s platform policy, which puts strict limits on how developers on the platform can use the information users share with them.

Clause 3.15 of the policy also specifically prohibits use of data obtained from Facebook to

…make decisions about eligibility, including whether to approve or reject an application or how much interest to charge on a loan.

In an interview with The Guardian about the opt-in firstcarquote app, project lead Dan Mines described it as “a test”, saying: “We are doing our best to build a product that allows young people to identify themselves as safe drivers… This is innovative, it is the first time anyone has done this.”

The algorithms that Admiral had developed for the app apparently aimed to glean personality traits from users’ Facebook posts by analyzing how posts were written — with individuals who scored well for qualities such as conscientiousness and organization more likely to be offered discounts vs those who came across as overconfident/less well organized, as judged by their Facebook postings.

Photos were not intended to be used to assess drivers — the analysis was purely based on text updates to Facebook.

“Our analysis is not based on any one specific model, but rather on thousands of different combinations of likes, words and phrases and is constantly changing with new evidence that we obtain from the data,” Yossi Borenstein, the principal data scientist on the project, told the paper. “As such our calculations reflect how drivers generally behave on social media, and how predictive that is, as opposed to fixed assumptions about what a safe driver may look like.”

Giving a more specific example of how Admiral’s app would be assessing a Facebook user’s attitude behind the wheel, The Guardian suggested overuse of exclamation marks in Facebook posts might count against a first time driver, while posting lists and writing in short, concrete sentences containing specific detail would be seen as a plus.

Admiral said no price rises would be incurred as a result of using the app but discounts of up to £350 were set to be offered — although the company was also not ruling out expanding the project in future to loop in additional social media services and, potentially, to also increase premiums for some drivers.

“The future is unknown,” said Mines. “We don’t know if people are prepared to share their data. If we find people aren’t sharing their data, then we won’t ever get to consider that [expanding firstcarquote].”

As it turns out, the app’s future is unknown as Facebook is not prepared to share user data with Admiral for this eligibility assessment use-case. Which, if the team had read Facebook’s platform policy, should have been immediately clear.

Presumably Admiral has been working on the app for multiple months at the very least. Yet again, any Facebook platform developer should be aware that all apps are subject to final review by the company before they can go live to ensure compliance with its platform policy. Even “test” apps.

Admiral now says the firstcarquote launch has been delayed — noting on the website that: “We were really hoping to have our sparkling new product ready for you, but there’s a hitch: we still have to sort a few final details.”

It also touts other use cases for the app — such as being able to see what some other new drivers have paid for car insurance and some details of the cars they drive. Although that’s a far cry from offering first time drivers discounts based on how many exclamations marks they typically deploy in their Facebook posts.

We tried to contact the company with questions but at the time of writing Admiral had not responded, and its press office had professed itself too busy to speak — with an outside PR firm being engaged to fence queries. We’ll update this story with any response.

In a statement provided to TechCrunch a Facebook spokesperson confirmed Admiral will only be able to use Facebook accounts for login and identity verification — so not for scanning post data. The company further suggests the insurer intends to rework the app to create an alternative data source to assess drivers’ eligibility.

The Facebook spokesperson said:

We have clear guidelines that prevent information being obtained from Facebook from being used to make decisions about eligibility.

We have made sure anyone using this app is protected by our guidelines and that no Facebook user data is used to assess their eligibility. Facebook accounts will only be used for login and verification purposes.

Our understanding is that Admiral will then ask users who sign up to answer questions which will be used to assess their eligibility.

It’s worth noting that Facebook has itself patented using social graph for assessing eligibility of creditworthiness, as the Atlantic reported last year.

US patent 9,100,400, granted to Facebook in August 2015, includes a specific method for authenticating an individual for access to information or service “based on that individual’s social network” — with one of the examples given using the scenario of a service provider being a lender who assesses an individual’s creditworthiness based on the average credit rating of the people the individual is connected to on their social network…

In a fourth embodiment of the invention, the service provider is a lender. When an individual applies for a loan, the lender examines the credit ratings of members of the individual’s social network who are connected to the individual through authorized nodes. If the average credit rating of these members is at least a minimum credit score, the lender continues to process the loan application. Otherwise, the loan application is rejected.

It’s unclear whether Facebook intends or intended to launch any such creditworthiness assessment service itself — we asked and it did not respond. But many patents are filed defensively and/or speculatively. And, as the Atlantic notes, using a person’s social graph to assess creditworthiness would run huge risks of attracting discrimination lawsuits. So the patent does not really read like a serious product proposal on Facebook’s part.

Beyond that, if Facebook’s platform were to become implicated in weighty external assessments of individuals, with the potential to have seriously negative impacts on their lives, the company would risk discouraging users from sharing the sort of personal data its ad-targeting business model relies on. Which is surely part of the reason it’s denying Admiral the ability to scan Facebook posts to assess driving proficiency.

Facebook is already negatively implicated in state surveillance activity as a honeypot of data utilized by intelligence and law enforcement agencies. And on privacy grounds, given its own business model relies on profiling users for ad targeting. But stepping into offering formal assessments of individuals’ creditworthiness, for example, would feel like a massive pivot for the social media giant — although the temptation for it to try to unlock more ‘worth’ from the mountain of data it sits on is only set to grow, given AI’s rising star and growing appetite for data.

In a blog post welcoming Facebook blocking Admiral from scanning users’ posts, digital rights organization the Open Rights Group points out the underlying biases that can make any such algorithmic assessments problematic.

“There are significant risks in allowing the financial or insurance industry to base assessments on our social media activity,” writes Jim Killock. “We might be penalised for our posts or denied benefits and discounts because we don’t share enough or have interests that mark us out as different and somehow unreliable. Whether intentional or not, algorithms could perpetuate social biases that are based on race, gender, religion or sexuality. Without knowing the criteria for such decisions, how can we appeal against them?”

“Insurers and financial companies who are beginning to use social media data need engage in a public discussion about the ethics of these practices, which allow a very intense examination of factors that are entirely non-financial,” he adds.

Facebook’s data is rich, but often ambiguous, may lack context and presents many risks. It is not clear to us that social media information is an appropriate tool for financial decision making.

Asked for his view on the risks of Facebook itself using its platform to sell assessments on the fitness of its users for accessing other products/services, such as financial products, Killock also told TechCrunch: “Rules on profiling and use of data have to ensure that people are not disadvantaged, unfairly judged, or discriminated against. Facebook’s data is rich, but often ambiguous, may lack context and presents many risks. It is not clear to us that social media information is an appropriate tool for financial decision making.”

Also blogging about Admiral’s attempt to turn Facebook data into premium-affecting personality assessments, law professor Paul Bernal voices similar concerns about what he dubs the “very significant” risks of such a system being discriminatory.

“Algorithmic analysis, despite the best intentions of those creating the algorithms, are not neutral, but embed the biases and prejudices of those creating and using them,” he writes. “A very graphic example of this was unearthed recently, when the first international beauty contest judged by algorithms managed to produce remarkably prejudiced results – almost all of the winners were white, despite there being no conscious mention of skin colour in the algorithms.”

Bernal also argues that the sort of linguistic analysis Admiral’s app was apparently intending would have “very likely” favored Facebook users in command of “what might be seen as ‘educated’ language – and make any kind of regional, ethnic or otherwise ‘non-standard’ use of language put its user at a disadvantage”.

“The biases concerned could be racial, ethnic, cultural, regional, sexual, sexual-orientation, class-based – but they will be present, and they will almost certainly be unfair,” he adds.

Bernal goes on to suggest that Facebook users develop “survival tactics” as a short term fix for defeating any assessments being made of them based on their social graphs and footprints — urging especially young people (who are perhaps currently most at risk of being harmfully judged by their social media activity) to “keep the more creative sides of your social life off Facebook”.

He also calls for a push by regulators towards developing a framework for algorithmic accountability to control the autonomous technologies being increasingly deployed to control us.

“Algorithms need to be monitored and tested, their impact assessed, and those who create and use them to be held accountable for that impact,” he adds. “Insurance is just one example – but it is a pertinent one, where the impact is obvious. We need to be very careful here, and not walk blindly into something that has distinct problems.”

Algorithmic accountability was also flagged as a concern by a UK science and technology parliamentary committee last month, in a report considering the “host of social, ethical and legal questions” that arise from growing use of autonomous technologies, and given how quickly machine learning algorithms are being deployed to wrangle insights from data-sets.

The committee recommended the government establishes a standing Commission on Artificial Intelligence aimed at “identifying principles to govern the development and application of AI”, and to provide advice and encourage public dialogue about automation technologies.

While, in the US, a recent White House report also considered the risk of biases embedded in AI.

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Tools that help startups scale effectively

When it comes to the strength of the tech industry, the sector can sometimes obsess about funding (who has raised what) or talent (who has gone where). This summer, Tech City UK and Stripe worked together to research other indicators to evaluate the underlying strength of tech and its ability to benefit other sectors of the economy.

The joint survey identified the startup stack, a set of around 200 cloud-based tools helping to transform every sector. Indeed, 89 percent of respondents said these tools had made starting and scaling a business easier, and 85 percent said they had made it cheaper. Even more striking was that 70 percent believe some startups wouldn’t exist in their form today without the stack of tools underpinning their business.

According to CB Insights, it used to cost $5 million to launch a startup; now it costs less than $5,000, thanks to open-source software and cloud-based tools (e.g. AWS). Also, it used to take startups twice as long to reach 100 million users and to expand internationally. The evolution of the startup stack has driven much of this change by providing the flexibility for startups to focus on refining and scaling the core product, rather than being sucked into dealing with peripheral, historically resource-intensive business functions.

Startups trust other startups with handling some of the most fundamental parts of their businesses.

Startups no longer want to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the basic building blocks of their business: less than 10 percent of startups surveyed built their own payment infrastructure; less than 12 percent invested in building their own CRM system; and less than 13 percent built their own servers. Respondents estimate that early-stage startups are typically using between 6-15 startup stack tools.

Startups for startups

Interestingly, these popular startup tools are new startups themselves: More than half of the tools named in the survey were founded after 2006, and a quarter of them were only launched in the last five years, including recruitment platform Greenhouse and business dashboard provider Geckoboard.

Startups trust other startups with handling some of the most fundamental parts of their businesses, and today’s tools are nimble innovators themselves that share a similar mentality with other startups. This is consistent with what we see at Stripe, with the vast majority of startups using Stripe’s platform to power their payments and experiment with new business models. This is in stark contrast to how more established businesses could think about their payments stack, although they are attempting to catch up by adopting more of these tools.

The unfinished stack

The stack is not yet complete. According to the survey, startups could grow faster if there were more tools in legal & compliance and cybersecurity. Dealing with overwhelming paperwork and mundane admin tasks can be solved by tools doing things as simple as providing e-signatures. For example, DocuSign was the only legal & compliance tool people mentioned in the survey.

According to CB Insights, legal tech companies raised just $739 million in aggregate funding since 2011. Compare that to the recruitment and HR tech space, which is already much better funded, raising a total of $2.4 billion in funding and growing at a rate of 62 percent across 2015. We’ve seen more activity in this space recently with VC-backed companies like Onfido and Darktrace bringing sophisticated background checking and security technology to the internet economy.

For the many, not the few

The steam engine became the universal source of power in the industrial revolution, and in today’s digital revolution, the startup stack is emerging as the steam engine for our age. But, coming at a much lower cost and being available globally via the cloud, the democratization potential of this is much stronger. Industrial revolutions have tended to benefit the few at the expense of the many. With the startup stack, maybe this latest revolution will be a lot more distributive than previous ones.

Microsoft strives to give computers common sense with Concept Graph

Today, Microsoft Research is publicly releasing its effort to tackle just one of the problems plaguing natural language understanding — knowledge. The company believes that background knowledge is one of the key separators between the way humans and machines understand language.

Probase, a knowledge database Microsoft has been working on for quite some time, is serving as the base for a new public tool called Microsoft Concept Graph. Probase brings 5.4 million concepts to the table, beating other knowledge databases like Cyc, which offers 120,000 concepts.

Microsoft Research’s distribution of concepts in the Concept Graph.

The goal of all the connected information is to support text analysis by mixing interpretations with probabilities — this is very similar to the way humans use rapid process of elimination to accomplish the same task.

For example, if I were to say “the man ran from the stranger with the knife,” you would most likely interpret that to mean that the man is running from an armed stranger. But of course the sentence could also mean that you grabbed the knife from the stranger and are now running away. However, running implies fear and knives are associated with fear so the simplest, most direct, interpretation prevails — even though it may not be accurate.

Microsoft’s Concept Tagging Model builds on this to map text categorically with the same probabilistic idea. Continuing the example, the knife could also be referring to a utensil or a weapon, but in context, it is most likely to be a weapon and not a 17th century butter knife stolen from a museum.

Utensils and weapons are both relatively common categories, but museum artifacts is a bit long tail. By sheer size, Microsoft’s model considers both the highly probable and the exceedingly unlikely to account for attributes, sub-contexts and relationships.

The version released today can rank categorical relevance for any text entry. Microsoft’s basic-level conceptualization will be provided to preferentially rank efficient and appropriate categories alongside other measures like MI, PMI, PMIk and Typicality.

Future versions will be able to account for what they call “single instance conceptualization with context,” which would essentially mean that “stranger” and “knife” could be connected to denote meaning. Even farther out, the team hopes to solve “short text conceptualization,” even further broadening the scope of applications within search, advertising and AI.

Featured Image: Daniel Grizelj/Getty Images

Cross River Bank gets unconventional validation with a $28M VC round

In a rare move, Battery Ventures,Andreessen Horowitz and Ribbit Capital, investors in a number of Silicon Valley’s fintech startups, have backed the bank enabling many of their investments to lurch forward. Cross River Bank, the obscure financial institution that seemingly everyone in fintech has heard of but doesn’t really know, originated more than $2.4 billion in loans for companies like Affirm, Lending Club, and Upstart in 2015 alone.

Today’s $28 million round is set to strengthen CRB’s capital base and support new business lines for companies reliant on the bank for loan underwriting. This investment round closes amid ongoing concerns from regulators that the financial instruments of Silicon Valley could spread contagion to the fragile banking system.

The bank’s value proposition to marketplace lenders is access to payment rails and wire systems — the idea being that instead of jumping through financial hurdles, startups can instead focus on customer acquisition and growth. Cross River collects fees between 0.02 percent and 0.05 percent from loans across its entire portfolio. With the new capital, the bank wants to grow its asset base to between $260 and $300 million over the next 12-24 months.

Gilles Gade, CEO of Cross River, told me that his bank is considered tier-one capital — regulator speak for “deemed unlikely to become insolvent.” Gade added that Cross River keeps twice as much capital on hand as is required by regulators. “Regulators expect us to be a lot more than a pass through.”

Cross River also sees itself as having a responsibility to maintain an active role in its companies. The bank takes an on-book financial stake in every loan it originates. Amounting to roughly 10 percent, the stake is enough to show commitment without tipping the scales of risk, Gade explained.

Maintaining such high exposure in a single industry could be seen as brash, but Gade really does believe that fintech is here to stay. He explained that the economy is now dependent on fintech and, like it or not, people have come to expect it.

Scott Tobin, a partner at Battery Ventures, pointed out that the deal creates a lot of synergies. “They already hold the keys to our clientele,” said Tobin, who will be joining the Cross River Bank board of directors.

While this could be construed as a conflict of interest, Tobin believes it is in line with Battery’s history of investing in fintech.

One of the benefits of Cross River Bank being a highly regulated financial entity is that its investors had easy and transparent access to layers of financial diligence materials. Tobin said that Battery’s due diligence process began almost a year ago and Ribbit Capital and Andreessen Horowitz joined shortly after.

Featured Image: Ben Miners/Getty Images