1. Good Monday Morning

On Thursday, Earth Day 2021 will be celebrated. The campaign “Restore our Earth” encourages many community initiatives, including cleanups, tree plantings, and reducing plastics in our environment. 
Today’s Spotlight is 1,084 words — about a 4 minute read.

2. News To Know Now

Quoted: “I think every Black person in the country has had the experience of being in a photo and the picture turns up either way lighter or way darker. Lighting is one of the primary factors when it comes to the quality of an image. So the fact that law enforcement is relying, to some degree … on really subpar images is problematic.” — attorney Eric Williams, a member of the ACLU of Michigan’s attorney committee, to MIT Tech Review

a) New research published by the University of Southern California found that Facebook’s targeting system discriminates against people based on their gender and racial background. Their study shows that advertisements following traditional stereotypes such as lumberjacks are targeted to skewed audiences even when the advertiser wants to address a broad and racially diverse audience. The researchers also studied LinkedIn employment advertising and found that it was not skewed the same way. (PDF)

b) Google is said to be blocking advertisers seeking videos and channels on YouTube using racial justice keywords including Black Lives Matter while allowing advertisers to use terms regarding white supremacy, according to a story in The Markup. In response to inquiries about the discrepancy, Google blocked the white supremacy terms as well.

c) According to Facebook, its independent oversight board will expand its powers to hear users on the content they want removed from the company’s platforms. Before, people could appeal to the oversight board only for content they wanted restored. (Wall Street Journal)

3. COVID-19 Tech News

Data — Daily Average (7 day trailing)

US Deaths — 750
US Hospitalizations — 45,643
US fully vaccinated — 25.4%
Source

Great Trackers

Overview — Johns Hopkins
Vaccine Distribution — Washington Post
Vaccine Finder — CDC Project
Risk Calculator — Brown

New York Times tracker that allows you to customize a daily email with multiple cities and towns that you’re monitoring: Click here to configure.

Coronavirus & Tech News

Apple, Google Block NHS COVID App Over Privacy – The Guardian

Facial Recognition Beats COVID Mask Challenge – BBC

4. Search Engine News

Google has acknowledged that it will be harder for user-generated content product reviews to rank well based on its new product ranking guidelines. We told you about those changes last week. When Google search exec John Mueller was questioned on Twitter by a user, he went on to say that “Keeping the quality of a UGC site high is hard, I don’t have a simple solution.”

Google and Bing also agreed last week that discontinued products should include a “no index” flag. Bing’s Fabrice Canel told Barry Schwartz that websites offering similar products should include the no-index flag on discontinued versions because “it is a stronger signal” for the crawlers to determine which pages should be ranked lower or not at all.

5. In The Spotlight — Delivery Bot Testing

Deliveries are changing. Chick-fil-A and Dominos are conducting tests in the US while Panasonic is testing in Japan. People can also pick up their orders from “Click and Collect” merchants. eMarketer reports that seven big retailers accounted for more than 60% of click and collect revenue in 2020.

Houston-area customers buying pizza from a Domino’s store will have the option of receiving a delivery from the company’s delivery bot, called R2. Customers can track the bot during delivery and enter the PIN on the touch screen of the pick-up bot to receive their order.

In Japan, Panasonic has begun testing autonomous delivery bots on public roads. The bots will deliver prescription drugs to patients from a pharmacy in Fujisawa City.

Plenty of humans are still getting their own packages. In what was undoubtedly influenced by the pandemic, Walmart alone sold $15 billion worth of products that were picked up by the customer at the store. Other companies with at least $1 billion Click and Collect sales include The Home Depot, Best Buy, Target, Lowe’s and Macy’s.

6. Debunked — Mass Shootings Under Trump

The latest bit of misinformation making the rounds online insists that there were no mass shootings in the U.S. during the Trump administration. The Gun Violence Archive has details on 1,100 mass shootings that occurred in the first three years of the Trump administration. That includes the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history on October 1, 2017, when a gunman fired into a music festival crowd, killing 61 people and injuring 867. 

7. Following Up — Facebook Data Scraping

We wrote two weeks ago about data scraped from Facebook appearing on the dark web and in Clearview AI’s facial recognition database. Facebook has countered with a post that tried very hard to disclaim responsibility, saying in part:

1. LinkedIn and Clubhouse have had their own issues.
2. That’s how search engines are built too.
3. Scraping data violates our terms of service.
4. There are more than 100 employees on the team that monitors this.
5. We’ll never be able to fully prevent all scraping.

In short, it was a horrible post that ended with a section on how to use their privacy controls for your account. Sounds like it was your fault after all. (Facebook post)

8. Protip — Google Chrome’s Helpful New Stuff

A new version of the Google Chrome browser includes the ability to create a link to specific text on a webpage, a new two page PDF preview and toolbar, and the ability to mute all notifications if you’re sharing your screen. (Google announcement)

Screening Room –  Mutombo Blocks It!

10. Science Fiction World — Identifying Precancerous Polyps

Medtronic has rolled out GI Genius, an AI medical system that it trained by having the software review thirteen million colonoscopy videos and physician notes. The system is now cleared in the U.S. and Europe to detect precancerous polyps following a colonoscopy. (Wired)

12. Sign of the Times – Spring BBQs

Good Monday morning. It’s November 2nd. We’ve got information for you below about a great new free tool from First Draft that shows disinformation in social media posts, ads, and elsewhere online. This week promises to be unlike any we’ve ever faced so please practice self-care and don’t believe everything that you read or hear.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,121 words — about a 4 minute read.

1. News to Know Now

a.   Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Twitter all announced earnings Thursday following another round of testimony on Capitol Hill. No one in that group is hurting. Amazon’s profit soared to over $6 billion for the quarter and Facebook added more advertisers despite an advertising boycott that included dozens of brands. (AdAge)

Wow moment: Amazon has saved one billion dollars in travel expenses so far this year. 

b. Twitter continues labeling disinformation. The company started last week by flagging a dishonest tweet by President Donald Trump that claimed that there were problems and discrepancies with mailed-in ballots throughout the country. That is not true. Twitter announced last week that it will use headers and images on its site this week to show accurate voting information. (New York Times)

c. Facebook has told New York University researchers that they may not use information downloaded by the team using software that it built to access its political ads library. Facebook says its rules prohibit third party software from downloading the contents. (CNN)

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Great Trackers
Johns Hopkins Dashboard or Animations
COVID-19 Forecast Hub
Google County Level Mobility Reports
Long-Term Care COVID Tracker

COVID-19 Tech News

Eight In-Store Innovations for the COVID-19 Era – Econsultancy
MIT: AI Identifies Asymptomatic COVID-19 Carriers – Venture Beat
Older People, Republicans Share Inaccurate COVID News – Nieman Lab
Post election, Vaccine is Biggest Disinformation Threat – CNBC
SF Stops Google-affiliated Testing After Results Take 10 Days – SF Gate
The Challenges of Contact Tracing as U.S. Battles COVID-19 – Pew 

3. Search Engine News

Google continues remaking Google My Business listings into a profit center by selling upgraded proafiles and the “Google Guaranteed Badge” for a $50 monthly fee. The process includes background checks for customer-facing employees, insurance verification, and appropriate license checks. Working directly with small businesses allows Google to build direct relationships with organizations that typically use a third party when interacting with the company. 

What we think: The $600 annual fee is inexpensive, but still a budget-sized item that was previously free. We’ll be advising customers that we’ll monitor performance on Google My Business since it is now effectively paid advertising.

4. In the Spotlight — Machine Learning

Let’s stop using the term AI as a synonym for machine learning. Machine learning uses a lot of data to create software that is capable of determining whether new input fits that pattern. Image recognition and malware scanning are two common applications of machine learning.

We’ve told you in the past about GPT-3, which is a deep learning model that can create human-sounding text when prompted. Above, in the COVID resources section, we link to a fascinating article about an MIT research team that used 200,000 audio samples of people coughing, including some who were infected with COVID-19, to train their model. That is a level of audio analysis that is beyond human limits.

The world is racing to train machine learning algorithms to handle all sorts of analysis that was previously thought impossible. Being human, there are good and bad applications for this technology.

A machine learning algorithm that was trained on nude imagery is being used as an automated chatbot to create deepfake nudes of ordinary people. The user uploads an image of a clothed woman, and the algorithm removes the clothing while building a credible-looking nude image of the woman.

More than 104,000 women had their images faked in this way by midsummer. Research by technology firm Sensity found that over 60% of those images were subjects known to the individual while another 15% were celebrities. Sensity also reported that a limited number of images appeared to feature children. The images carry a watermark from the software that can be removed by purchasing higher levels of access.

This level of technology is commonplace. Microsoft has a new program for software developers called Lobe that automates machine learning of images so that anyone can create a training model by uploading labeled images to the software. I’ve reviewed the initial videos and anyone can easily be taught to train the model.

On Thursday, Google announced URL2Video, a software tool that converts a website page into a 12 second video. Google says that it is now working on generating audio for the video created from a web URL as well as voice-overs.

Our take: For more than forty years technologists spent much of their time making information digitally accessible. The next phase — telling stories about that information — is here. When consumers first began using automobiles, they needed to understand how to repair them and spent much of their time maintaining them. Many of today’s sophisticated automobiles can’t be repaired without a mechanic’s specialized equipment. 

5.  Debunked: The First Draft Dashboard

First Draft has published a must-use online dashboard dealing with election misinformation. They’re a trusted source funded by Google, Facebook, and multiple tech companies who are heavily invested in cleaning up misinformation and disinformation appearing online.

At this link you’ll find ads, identified misinformation, Twitter feeds, and reliable news and information. I can’t stress enough how much you need to bookmark this website for this week.

First Draft News Dashboard

6. Following Up: Self-Driving Data

We’ve told you that Alphabet’s Waymo unit has introduced self-driving taxis in Phoenix. This week Waymo released public road testing data from January 2019 through September 2020.

The results were way better than human driving results.

7. Protip: Changing Messenger Themes

Facebook’s new Messenger interface comes with some nifty themes including Pride, Love, and Tie-Dye, as well as different emojis and colors. 

The Next Web shows you how to put your spin on Messenger chat.

Screening Room: Vipps

9. Coffee Break:  MIT’s Nightmare Machine

A little more machine learning for you before you go to face this first week in November. MIT has created a website that shows scary images one of its algorithms creates. You get to click through some of them and help train the model on whether you think it’s a scary picture.

I was going to show you this last week, but I was distracted when the U.S. government decided to sue Google.

Have fun. Click over to Haunted Places on the same site for more.