It’s October 24th. The World Series starts Friday and wraps up as late as November 5 after owners locked players out during a late winter labor dispute last year.
Today’s Spotlight is 654 words — about 3 minutes to read.
News To Know Now
Quoted:“What I consider offensive, you might be considering a joke. So it’s really important for us to not make a call for you. At the end of the day, you’re in the driver’s seat.“
— Instagram product designer Francesco Fugo to Vox. About half of people who get a message about bullying or harmful language they typed revise their comments.
Driving the news: Those Q3 tech earning calls this week will likely create a tsunami of poor economic news.
Three Important Stories
1) The FTC is looking into online behavior of funeral homes. The agency says that fewer than 40% provide pricing information online although they are required to do so in person.
2) Meta confirmed that it will sell Giphy after losing an appeal to a UK regulatory agency.
That’s important because: Meta reportedly fears similar orders in the U.S. that could affect Instagram or WhatsApp.
3) Google announced improvements to help people customize and stop specific categories from being advertised to them. Google also says that it has made it easier to completely disable ad personalization.
Trends & Spends
Spotlight Explainer — Amazon Costs Growing
Amazon costs have led to a series of initiatives as the company slashes expenses to appease Wall Street: Fabric.com (purchased in 2018), Amazon Care (started in 2019), and dozens of underperforming stores have all been closed in recent weeks. Its logistics aren’t immune from cost-cutting. Amazon closed all but one U.S. call center last month, and dozens of warehouses were delayed, closed or canceled.
Engadget recently obtained internal documents showing $8 billion in employee attrition costs against $33 billion in net profit last year, an impossibly high number even for a firm with $60 billion cash on hand.
What’s next: Amazon reports Q3 earnings after the bell Thursday. Analysts are expecting earnings to be the best so far this year, but still low compared to previous years. We’re expecting to hear more about fulfillment center automation, retail store technology as cashiers are replaced, and its integration plans for One Medical and Roomba.
Did That Really Happen? — Bear In The Car
The story of a bear trapped in a North Carolina car is being repurposed by scammers. The story gets reactions when reposted with local but false information, but comments are disabled. Eventually, scammers replace the story with scam offers seemingly backed by locals.
Following Up — TikTok Adult Content
Last week, we wrote about TikTok expansion. Now the company says it will allow creators to livestream adult-themed content beginning November 23, but what that really means is unclear. The TikTok site guidelines prohibit pornography, nudity, and explicit content.
Protip — Take the Google Phishing Quiz
Identify 8 different scenarios of legitimate and malicious emails. Discover the hidden traps and pitfalls Google engineers have set for you and pick up some great tips along the way.
Screening Room — WhatsApp Tries Pigeons
Science Fiction World — Predicting Mortality by Gait
Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a predictive model that uses only six minutes of walking data to predict five year mortality probabilities. The model’s results are comparable to those using traditional risk factors, says one researcher.
It’s October 17th. In many areas, voting has begun ahead of Election Day, 22 days away. Your local representative’s travels, votes, and fundraising are listed on ProPublica’s great new website.
Today’s Spotlight is 791 words — about 3 minutes to read.
News To Know Now
Quoted:“It’s likely the material viewed by Molly… affected her mental health in a negative way and contributed to her death in a more than minimal way. It would not be safe to leave suicide as a conclusion — she died from an act of self harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content.”
— British coroner Andrew Walker reversing a decision about a 14-year-old English girl’s suicide. Walker said that algorithms helped Molly find information about suicide and continually sent her content reinforcing her depression.
Driving the news: During Q3 earnings calls over the next ten days, tech companies will announce a litany of cost-cutting measures.
Three Important Stories
1) A Dutch court ruled that a Florida software company violated the human rights of a remote employee it fired after he refused to activate his video camera.
2) 87% of US teens own an iPhone, and 31% own an Apple Watch, reports Piper Sandler in its semi-annual survey of US teens.
Oops: A crash-detection algorithm in Apple devices is alerting emergency services when people are on fast roller coasters that experience sudden changes in altitude.
3) In its third week fighting ransomware, hospital chain CommonSpirit Health has postponed some care because of disruptions. The company operates 140 hospitals and 2,000 healthcare sites.
Trends & Spends
Spotlight Explainer — TikTok Expansion Plans
TikTok is not a social network. American users watch 80 minutes of videos on the site each day. The service does exceptionally well with younger Americans: only YouTube gets more visits from American teens.
“TikTok plays a different role in my life. It’s replacing television,” says global business head Blake Chandlee.
But it’s more than just TV. TikTok expansion is changing other categories:
Search and News: We told you last week that Google’s execs acknowledge losing ground in search to TikTok. Pew Research confirmed that 33% of TikTok teen visitors use the site for news.
Music: David Guetta, Coldplay, and BTS have all premiered music clips on the site. One artist told the BBC that she’ll post a snippet of a track that she’ll only finish if it is successful. There was news last week that TikTok parent ByteDance is in talks with music labels about going global with its music streaming service.
ECommerce: The company is hiring now to build fulfillment centers in the U.S., Axios scooped last week.
The bad news: U.S. regulators are under constant pressure to deal with a Chinese-owned company that has developed robust data profiles of tens of millions of Americans. The company says it “processes” its data here in the U.S., but nine employees dispute that, according to BuzzFeed.
Our take: Small or large organization, understanding TikTok culture now is key to working with or marketing to younger audiences.
Did That Really Happen? — Vaccines Safe for Premature Babies
On Instagram, an anti-vaccine post falsely claims that premature babies are more likely to develop complications from vaccinations. Details
Following Up — AI Art In Microsoft Office
DALL-E’s AI art function is coming to Microsoft’s Office suite in a new app called Microsoft Designer. Refresh yourself on how you can be a Dali from our Spotlight Explainer three weeks ago.
Protip — Curated Lists in Google Maps
Google Maps can help you remember places you want to visit, whether on vacation, at restaurants, or for your bucket list. Lifehacker shows you how to make and store lists, share them with friends, or even publish them.
Screening Room — Meta Quest Pro for Work
With an investment reportedly in the billions, expect to see more ads from Meta touting why you should look forward to working in virtual reality.
Science Fiction World — Exoskeletons Improving
Stanford researchers have created an exoskeleton for legs that allows people with limited mobility to walk 9 percent faster with 17 percent less energy.
In Singapore, a robotic device can catch people who fall, so elderly people can exercise and those in physical therapy can benefit.
Haikubox is a device that you install in your yard that identifies birds by the sounds they make. Like a doorbell camera, it saves the information for you to listen to later.
TikTok Expansion is issue #438 of Spotlight. Get it free in your email each Monday.
It’s October 10th. Today is Mental Health Awareness Day, and I would like you to be aware of the new national Lifeline service. Call or text 988 to be connected with someone who can speak with you if you are experiencing emotional distress. Please know that if you’re reading this that I want you to be alive.
Today’s Spotlight is 1,434 words — about 5 minutes to read.
News To Know Now
Quoted:“We are concerned about recent increases in makeshift efforts by individuals attempting to weaponize commercially available robots… For this technology to be broadly accepted throughout society, the public needs to know they can trust it. And that means we need policy that prohibits bad actors from misusing it.”
— Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter to Axios commenting on the company’s pledge not to support weaponizing the company’s robots.
Driving the news: Uncertainty throughout the U.S. and Europe as investment markets remain jittery, prices and interest rates remain high, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine intensifies as the smaller nation escalates its defense and bombs a critical bridge linking Russia to the Crimean peninsula it invaded and annexed eight years ago.
Three Important Stories
1) TikTok parent ByteDance told employees that its losses have more than tripled to $7 billion as it attempts to scale to meet hypergrowth. The Wall Street Journal reports that ByteDance’s revenue grew to more than $61 billion and the amount of cash on hand tops $42 billion. Cash hoards are common in Big Tech with Microsoft, Alphabet, and Apple all holding more than $100 billion in cash. ByteDance’s balance would rank 8th overall between Pfizer and Anthem if it were a publicly traded American company.
Our take: We keep saying this, but it bears repeating: TikTok is here. It’s not a social media company, it’s a video platform and entertainment company. Think of it more like Netflix meets YouTube than as Facebook. And increasingly, people use TikTok for news and search. That’s what Google VP Prabhakar Ranghavan said at a conference in July. His statements were corroborated by a September Pew Research study that showed 33% of TikTok users now say they “regularly get their news on the app.”
2) Facebook may be laying off 12,000 employees according to a report in Saturday’s Economic Times. That represents about 15% of the company’s workforce and reflects instructions sent across the firm to its directors. Meta had previously announced that it would slow hiring.
3) Microsoft-owned LinkedIn and researchers from top universities conducted social experiments on users over five years. The researchers have published the findings in Science and say that LinkedIn varied the strength of personal connections the site recommended to its users. The strength of those recommendations was then used to determine whether users were more likely to obtain employment through close relationships vs. weaker, more distant ones.
Trends & Spends
Spotlight Explainer — Online Disclosures
The FTC has sought to increase transparency on online platforms for more than twenty years. It’s an area that many websites know exist, but the rules are nebulous and enforcement is often inconsistent. But just like a traffic court judge doesn’t care how fast the other vehicles were traveling when you show up to defend a speeding ticket, the U.S. government says that online posters must disclose any commercial relationships that exist with organizations that they publicize.
The agency is back to studying the issue and inviting public comment because more explicit rules are definitely needed. Coincidentally (okay, probably not coincidentally), the SEC last week announced that reality tv star Kim Kardashian had agreed to pay a $1.26 million penalty for promoting a cryptocurrency security without using the proper online disclosures.
Kardashian’s Missed Disclosure A crypto company named EthereumMax paid Kim Kardashian $250,000 to promote one of its cryptocurrency securities. The SEC fined her $1 million plus her fee and interest. The specific issue relates to her touting a specific security instead of promoting the company as other celebrities often do. As the ex-wife of one billionaire and the sister of a second, Kardashian’s touting of a specific investment was troubling.
Why The SEC and Not the FTC The SEC was the agency with the specific rules in this case. By using the hashtag #ad in her video announcement, Kardashian had apparently done enough to comply with the FTC’s antiquated rules, but not the SEC’s. MSNBC shared a five year old SEC rule that states in part, “Any celebrity or other individual who promotes a virtual token or coin that is a security must disclose the nature, scope, and amount of compensation received in exchange for the promotion.”
FTC Invited Comments The FTC first published its “How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising” in 2000 and revised the document in 2013. The agency invited public comments this year and closed that process in July although you can read the submissions online.
TikTokers Not Disclosing Include Platform’s 2nd Biggest Account A Vox expose this summer quotes Charli D’Amelio’s video extolling flavored water and tea company Muse without disclosing that she had signed a marketing agreement with them the year before. That’s big business for D’Amelio who has 140 million followers on TikTok although the issues exist throughout the spectrum of influencer audience size.
The FTC requires disclosure in advertising, but TikTok and other new media stars are grappling with rules written before TikTok was created and Instagram was part of Meta. That hasn’t stopped some jurisdictions like the EU from chasing TikTok and others. Both the EU and the FTC are reportedly considering using rules to shield children from disclosed advertising.
Your assignment: Get familiar with the latest official FTC word from 2019 in the pamphlet, “Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers”. If your firm is compensating someone and they talk about your product online in a promotional way, then online disclosure rules likely apply whether they have an audience of 14 people or 14 million people.
Did That Really Happen? — Bruce Willis Did Not Sell His Likeness for Deepfake Purposes
The article sounded plausible when it broke last week. Ailing and now retired actor Bruce Willis had reportedly sold his likeness for use in deep fakes. Then it turned out that not only had Willis done no such thing, but that the company that supposedly bought them said, “currently no regulatory framework allows people to sell rights for their identity.”
Following Up — Now We Have AI Videos from Text Prompts
If the rush to AI art that we wrote about two weeks ago seems like a land rush to you too, you won’t be surprised that Meta has announced that it’s built a tool called “Make-A-Video” that creates videos from text. You’re not getting a new version of Citizen Kane. Think instead of the GIFs that are ubiquitous on its properties.
Protip — Free Open Source Alternatives to Popular SaaS Products
Maybe you don’t need all the features in Evernote or 1Password, but still want something with similar but less robust features. Head here and start searching for free software that might give you what you’re looking for.
Screening Room — Oura Ring
NBA star Chris Paul and Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn are among the athletes touting Oura’s new personal tracking ring in this spot. I’m old enough to remember when these trackers were watch replacements.
Science Fiction World — Diagnosing COVID from a Cough’s Sounds
Pfizer (yes, that one) finalized a sale to buy Australia’s ResApp last week. The final price is about $116 million American and gives the pharma giant ownership of a mobile app that analyzes the sound of a cough to diagnose respiratory illnesses including “asthma, pneumonia, bronchiolitis, croup and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.”
I never thought that I would enjoy hearing the instruction “cough into your phone”, but it sounds much more pleasant than a big Q-Tip up the nose.
Coffee Break — The Top Southern Things on Airbnb Listings
I might have guessed plantations and alligators were on the list, but dolphins and Elvis? Have a stroll through this data driven look at the most popular elements in Airbnb listings in Southern states.
