Good Monday morning. It’s July 20th. Workers around the world plan to walk off their jobs today in the Strike for Black Lives. Organizers ask workers to leave and for all people to kneel or pause for eight minutes and forty-six seconds of silence at noon local time.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,385 words, about a 5 minute read.

1. News to Know Now

a. Twitter was hacked the old fashioned way last week according to investigative reporting by Motherboard. Criminals were able to pay a Twitter employee to provide access to Twitter internal software that allowed them to change the email addresses associated with famous account holders. The crooks were then able to tweet out get rich quick schemes from verified accounts owned by Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and even corporate accounts at Uber and Amazon. There was no flashy or new technology, merely an employee who provided internal access to crooks. Read the rest of the story here.

b. Google’s Project Loon is now actively providing internet connectivity to Kenya. The project includes 35 balloons that are similar to floating cell towers with 200 times the reach. Quartz has more details here.

c. T-Mobile, fresh from acquiring tens of millions of former Sprint customers, announced that it would provide free software that blocks robocalls and spam texts. The company announced other changes like free identity theft protection, free telephone number changes each year, and scam shield software that replaces your outgoing phone number with a proxy (fake) number. Read their announcement here.

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Great Trackers
Johns Hopkins — the gold standard
Florida data — Unofficial, but great data and presentation
NEW: Event Risk Assessment – from Georgia Tech
NEW: School Reopening Plan Tracker from Johns Hopkins

Tech News
Amazon Dash Cart to Allow Cashierless Checkout In Stores – TechCrunch
Facebook to Launch Section Debunking Coronavirus Myths – CNBC
Snap Out Of Doomscrolling – New York Times
Stuck in Lockdown Rut – Wired UK
Surveillance Company Palantir Signs NHS Contract in UK – TNW

CountryTime Has Whimsical (But Real) Bailout Program

Our favorite COVID-19 marketing this week comes from the folks at Kraft subsidiary County Time who announced “The Littlest Bailout” that will provide up to one thousand $100 awards to kids and parents who operate a lemonade stand. This promotion is so on brand that we think it should win awards even before award season. Check out their video below.

3. Search Engine Optimization News

Another COVID-19 change is coming to Google search results regarding business hours. You probably remember that Google encouraged businesses to update their listings on Google My Business to let searchers know if and when they’re open. With the pandemic reaching new heights and localities perhaps initiating lockdowns again, Google will now display the date when the business hours were last changed. Search Engine Journal put together the story from Twitter.

The auto retail industry usually doesn’t do well online, and search is no exception. Local search company Whitespark examined data in 200 top markets in North America and reported that most listings were sparse. Among their findings:

• One-third have not claimed their listing at all.
• More than 60% have never made a post on Google.
• More than 90% don’t have a free link for appointments
• And nearly 25% don’t even have a link to their website.
• Staying with our theme of availability, 13% don’t have any hours listed.

Please don’t be like these companies. We can help you set up this free Google program for your organization. You can write directly to me by clicking reply now.

4. Also in the Spotlight — Facebook Fact Checks Under Fire

Facebook fact checks are receiving new criticism from politicians and advocates. Last week, a group of four Democratic senators detailed their complaints in a letter to Facebook. They believe a loophole exists that allows opinion pieces to escape fact checks, including a widely publicized essay criticizing climate change studies.

Facebook fact checks have been under criticism since before the company’s botched handling of disinformation prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, and things may not have improved much since then. Using a third party contractor force to provide fact checks, Facebook faces shortages of resources and delays. One analysis earlier this year showed that there were only seven people doing Facebook fact checks in all of Australia.

Critics such as journalist Judd Legum have attacked the choice of Facebook fact check companies, specifically citing Tucker Carlson-founded Daily Caller as a Facebook contractor. Legum published multiple examples online including the Daily Caller citing information as fake that accurately said President Donald Trump told rallygoers that the coronavirus was “a hoax.” 

Hyperpartisan sites masquerading as local news sites are compounding the disinformation crisis. Some are benign and show a slight left or right bias. Others are unapologetic partisans. The Nieman Lab at Harvard identified 450 sites funded by politicians, political operatives, and PACs that appear to be organized into twelve networks owned by five corporate entities. 

As Facebook relaunches its news initiative, these sites pose a serious issue for an underresourced part of the company with a large impact on national and global affairs.

Smartlinks

Australia Has 17 Million Facebook Users and Seven Facebook Fact Checkers — BuzzFeed
Hundreds of hyperpartisan sites are masquerading as local news (map) — Nieman Lab
Elizabeth Warren Wants Answers on Facebook Fact Checks Loophole — Recode
The Daily Caller uses status as Facebook fact-checker to boost Trump — Popular Info

5. Following Up: TurboTax and H & R Block Used “Unfair and Abusive Practices”

We’ve told you several times over the last year about growing discontent at the IRS and among consumer advocates regarding the free E-file Tax program’s administration at large for-profit companies including Intuit and H & R Block.

Now the New York Department of Financial Services found that the companies “undermined the [Free File] Program by creating and marketing their own ‘free’ products that directly competed with the Program, with the purpose of upselling customers to pay for their services.”

Read more at ProPublica, which broke the story and continues to provide great coverage.

6. Debugging: Sorry, Pepys Didn’t Write That

The meme marveling at serendipity claims that diarist Samuel Pepys wrote in 1665 that “the taverns are full of gadabouts making merry this eve. And though I may press my face against the window … a dram in exchange for the pox is an ill bargain indeed.”

Now, look, we’ve probably had similar literature reading lists in high school. We’ve slogged through Pepys, and we want some credit for doing that, darn it, so here’s a meme with some vintage looking guy and this quote.

Except he never wrote it. Here’s the Snopes story.

7. ProTip: 15 Best Mac Apps to Make Everyday Life Easier

Wired put together a nice list of free and inexpensive products to add to your Mac. Many are also available in Windows version so this is worth your time to check out. If you have Linux, I dunno, smarty-pants, go build your own apps.

Here’s the full list with links and descriptions. 

8. Great Data: One Million vs. One Billion

Nearly everyone has trouble conceptualizing one million of anything. Forget conceptualizing one billion by yourself. I often tell students or clients that one million seconds is equal to 12 days and that one billion seconds is about 32 years. 

See? It’s nearly impossible. 

YouTuber Tom Scott decided to try the visualization a different way. He starts by walking the distance that one million bills would take when horizontally stacked. Then he travels the distance for one billion bills. 

You won’t conceptualize better, but you’ll understand the scale better. Click below to watch.

Screening Room: Choptober at Lowes Foods

10. Coffee Break: Peacock’s Terms of Service

We told you last week about Peacock, the new streaming service from NBC. They’re following the whimsical rather than inspirational path too and embedded a cake recipe and an FAQ about peacock tails in their terms and conditions. 

Check out the screen shots on Twitter because we wouldn’t ask you to read the actual terms no matter how jokes are hidden in them.

Good Monday morning. It’s July 13th. The streaming wars get busier on Wednesday when NBC’s Peacock launches with free and paid versions. To stay on top of Netflix and Amazon streaming, sign up for Sue’s free Movie Rewind newsletter. 

Today’s Spotlight is 1,378 words, about a 5 minute read.

1. News to Know Now

a. The new California privacy regulations are now being enforced. For-profit entities that have any California customers are required to comply if their total annual revenue exceeds $25 million or if they buy, sell, or share data from 50,000 records (California individuals or devices). And yes, that’s why all the new and updated cookie notices.Talk with us if you need more info.

b. Uber’s $2.6 billion acquisition of food delivery rival Postmates is the second time that the U.S. food delivery market has shrunk in the last 30 days. Uber and Grub Hub were in talks until GH was acquired by Just Eat Takeaway, Europe’s biggest delivery company. Uber is also testing a new grocery delivery service in several countries including Brazil and Canada. In an even more direct threat to Amazon, Walmart announced that it will offer a Prime-like membership program that offers similar pricing and includes grocery delivery.

c. Facebook’s civil rights auditors criticized the company’s performance in a widely-published report. Among the biggest issues was the lack of an infrastructure to specifically address civil rights issues as well as the company’s decision to leave in place multiple posts by President Donald Trump that encouraged voter suppression and that included hate speech and threats of violence. Some issues, such as new advertiser blocks on using race to advertise for credit, jobs, or housing were credited as new successes. You can read the whole report here.

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Great Trackers
Johns Hopkins — the gold standard
Florida data — Unofficial, but great data and presentation

NEW:  COVID-19 Exit Strategy – non partisan tracking of state progress
NEW: COVID Risk Levels – county-level map from Harvard

Tech News

Anti-mask Facebook Groups Rife with Dangerous Misinformation – MMFA
Five Google Trends Charts Showing COVID-19 Impact – Search Engine Watch
Many Americans See Exaggeration, Conspiracy in COVID-19 News – Pew
U.S. Interest in Coronavirus Waning – Statista

Heads-up, Teachers, Doctors, and Nurses:  Here is a Lifehacker piece published Friday explaining how to cut 25% from your AT&T Wireless bill. Those professions were added to a discount program AT&T already offers to first responders, military members, and veterans.

3. Search Engine Optimization News

You are going to hear the phrase “Web Vitals” a lot over the next year as marketers focus on what Google now says are “essential metrics for a healthy site.” The grouping and placement within the Google Search Console are a new flashing neon sign that Google will be focusing more on user experience. That’s previously been defined as mobile accessibility and website speed.

The definition includes whether the display “shifts” as items are loaded and two speed metrics calculated when a page first appears and the time at which visitors can interact with the page. 

The times are blazing fast. Google says that a good load speed is 2.5 seconds and that a website needs improvement at more than 4 seconds. The time to interact with a site or not have it shift is measured in tenth of a second increments. At 0.3 seconds, a website’s performance is considered poor for the latter two metrics.

Google just published a beta version of a new WordPress plugin called “Visual Stories” that allows websites to create very fast social media-like stories on their website. (Techspeak explanation: tappable stories using AMP. Use video at 24 fps or horizontal images at 828×1792. You can download the plugin at GitHub and send your creatives to get story building tools at this AMP page.)

Google also announced that the Shopping tab pages in search results will now consist primarily of free listings instead of the paid-only listings that replaced the original free listings back in 2012. We can help retailers get their products listed there and optimized so that you can compete against national giants.

There are also great new predictive analytics tools that Google is making available free within Google Analytics. We’ve been upgrading and testing the new models available and will publish the results soon.

Remember: search success in 2020 is not about ranking. Success is how many times people interested in your product or service are influenced to visit your website via search. 

4. Also in the Spotlight — Facebook Shuts Boogaloo Groups

You may have heard of the far-right boogaloo groups that take their name from a nearly forty year old break dancing movie and sometimes wear goofy Hawaiian shirts while carrying guns.

The group isn’t funny or nice. The Southern Poverty Law Center traces the movement back to 2012 and describes them as a subculture within the antigovernment Patriot movement. Like the so-called anti-fascist movement, there is no central organization or movement leader. 

The SPLC traces the arrests of at least seven adherents for weapons and conspiracy charges in Nevada, Texas, Colorado, and Ohio to the movement. Online groups in Virginia and Michigan called for members to rally around President Donald Trump’s message to liberate those states and Minnesota. Several weeks after the most recent post by SPLC, Facebook acted and removed hundreds of individual accounts, pages, and groups that were found to be espousing the movement’s calls for Civil War that are rooted in far right extremism and white nationalism.

Smartlinks

The Boogaloo Started as a Racist Meme — SPLC Hatewatch
‘Boogaloo’ Believers Think a Civil War Is Coming — The Trace and The Informant (both newsletters are excellent labors of love)
Facebook Removes Hundreds for Promoting Violence — The Washington Post

5. Following Up: Amazon Third Party Sellers Must Disclose Name & Address

We’ve written about how items “sold and shipped from Amazon” may not adhere to the company’s own policies for sale such as pill presses that can counterfeit drugs and weapons accessories.

The company informed third party sellers last week that they will be required to disclose their business name and address on their Amazon profiles in the future.

CNBC has the story here.

6. Debugging:  “E-Verify’s SSNLock is Nothing of the Sort”

We view Brian Krebs as the best security journalist working today. In this must-read article, he eviscerates the Department of Homeland Security’s my-Everify website. Along the way, he explains a bit about credit freeze limitations and knowledge based authentication (what’s your mother’s maiden name-style questions).

Read along with his journey. It’s a fast, informative story.

7. ProTip: 5 Zoom Tools

You might know that you can press-and-hold your space bar to temporarily talk with a muted mic during a Zoom conference, but did you know that you could make annotations on someone else’s document or how to queue external callers in a waiting room?

This Fast Company article will improve your Zoom game.

8. Great Data: People’s Choice Paths

Montgomery County, Maryland, officials say that they want to help improve public safety by focusing on the way people actually travel on foot. 

Their description:  We’ve all seen and used pathways in our travels that are not sidewalks, are not trails, and may not even be official. Called “People’s Choice” paths, “desire lines”, “goat trails”, and many other names, these shortcuts help pedestrians get where we need to go as directly as possible.

To get the story straight from residents, they’ve built a web portal using maps and are asking for information about walking shortcuts people use to be drawn on those maps.

It’s brilliant. Have a look here.

Screening Room: Applebee’s Taps Nostalgia

10. Coffee Break: Sydmar Lodge Care Home & Classic Rock Albums

A nursing home near London has been on lockdown for four months. Their residents and caregivers have handled the isolation well and recreated a baker’s dozen famous album covers from acts like The Clash, Elvis, Madonna, and Taylor Swift. 

They’re here. I love them all.

Good Monday morning. It’s June 29th. Baseball resumes on Wednesday as training camps reopen for three weeks before a shortened 2020 season starts. One big issue: training camps are in the COVID-19 hotbeds of Florida and Arizona.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,148 words, about a 4 minute read.

1. News to Know Now

a. Three Republican senators have introduced legislation that would force tech companies to create a special backdoor for law enforcement agencies into encrypted communications. This would allow police operating under a warrant to decipher any information without needing the tech company’s support. (Gizmodo)

b. The Facebook ad boycott keeps growing, and we analyze it below for you, but you should also know that Facebook has overturned decisions made by independent fact checkers regarding climate change. After industry lobbyists contacted the company, Facebook agreed to publish the false data as “opinion” and without a fact check despite the presence of inaccurate information. (E & E News)
c. Amazon purchased self-driving startup Zoox on Friday for $1.2 billion. That’s quite a discount for a company valued two years ago at more than $3 billion. The company’s goal is a self-driving taxi service. New parent company Amazon is also known to deliver many packages. (Ars Technica)

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Great Trackers
Johns Hopkins — the gold standard
Florida data — Unofficial, but the best I’ve seen for any state.
New York Times Vaccine Tracker — meticulously sourced
Info is Beautiful COVID datapack –> this data viz site gets it right

Tech News
Coronavirus Has Ushered In the Airport of the Future – Popular Mechanics
How the Virus Won – The New York Times
Millions of Americans Depend on Closed Libraries for Internet. – The Markup
Norway halts coronavirus app over privacy concerns – MIT Tech Review
Vaccine Makers Turn to Microchip Tech to Beat Glass Shortages – Wired

3. Search Engine Optimization News

Let’s confirm two things we thought we knew about search.

Smart use of anchor text is confirmed to be a search ranking signal for Google. You’ve seen plenty of underlined phrases like “Click Here” that point to a link. That is anchor text that Google’s John Mueller confirms can help your website’s SEO. He also cautions about reasonableness — which is the watchword for all search tactics. Your search marketers just said “duh,” but we maintain a library of these official statements. Then when we recommend something, we can share with a client when it was confirmed by Google and Bing. (Search Engine Journal)

Takeaway: use descriptive anchor text that helps the search engine understand the link.

Reasonableness also shows up in Mueller’s tweets this week about how stock photos affect search. Using stock to illustrate your team or something not directly relevant is a bad idea, but there is no penalty for using an image that appears on other websites. The image likely won’t rank well, but unless you’re competing directly on image search, using stock photography carries no penalty. Just make it accurate. (SEJ)

Takeaway: using stock photography won’t hurt you in Google’s algorithms, but don’t show your CEO as a 17-year-old buff beach bum unless you happen to work for a 17-year-old.

This week we also received news about the biggest subjects in social media and in advertising during May. 

Facebook says that in May 2020 more people were looking for bentonite for use as a beauty supplement, bodyweight exercise, cycling shorts, frozen food, vermouth, and virtual art. 

Wordstream reports that the eight industries with the best search advertising performance during the pandemic are: apparel, beauty and personal care, hobbies, arts, computers, gifts, health, and real estate (!). The hardest hit industries so far are internet, family, and travel. 

4. Also in the Spotlight — Facebook Ad Boycott

We told you last week about the Facebook ad boycott started by human rights groups seeking equality that include the Anti-Defamation League and NAACP. At this time last week, socially conscious brands like Patagonia and The North Face had joined the boycott. 

Much bigger brands are now joining the movement. The first in was $50 billion Unilever whose brands include Vaseline, Lipton, Dove, and Hellman’s. They were followed by Coca-Cola, Verizon, and Honda. Starbucks announced Sunday that they too are joining. Some brands included YouTube and other social media in their boycott announcement, and some are boycotting beyond July.

The big news wasn’t just the boycott, but its timing. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg livestreamed some corrective actions Facebook would make, but Coke, Pepsi, and Starbucks all joined the boycott after hearing Facebook’s plans.

“Stop Hate For Profit,” the coalition heading the boycott, is looking for permanent infrastructure changes, independent audits, and refunds for brands whose advertisements appeared next to hate speech that was later removed. There are more actions that are on the group’s list, and they’re worth your time to read.

Takeaway: This is nowhere near over. There are still massive advertisers who will undoubtedly make announcements today and tomorrow. We think that  small and medium sized brands can join in the Facebook ad boycott without fear of recrimination.

5. Following Up: Chrome Extension Malware

We told you last week about malware hiding in more than one hundred extensions in the Chrome Web Store. I reviewed the affected files and reported that most were extensions to manipulate search or convert document types. Lifehacker has done a step-by-step overview so that you can see if you downloaded one.

Worth doing today if you can.

6. Debugging:  Racial Equality Protesters and a Vietnam Memorial

Fact checkers were alarmed last week when a years-old story about vandalism at a Vietnam Memorial in California incorrectly identified the damage as new and inaccurately attributed it to racial equality protesters. The hoax story gained traction and was shared thousands of times.

Poynter’s Politifact has the truth here.

7. ProTip: Get Safari-Level Privacy in Chrome and Firefox

Apple announced new privacy features for the company’s flagship Safari browser that include password checks, privacy reports, and limits for websites using your browsing data.

Here is how to emulate those privacy features on Chrome and Firefox using extensions.

8. Great Data: The Rapper Whose Music Changes Stocks

In the data too good to be true department is this story about the theory of rapper Lil Yachty’s music releases being a harbinger of stock market declines.

Your refresher on correlation and causation:

Correlation means that two things seemingly have a relationship or connection. The classic humorous (and non-math) example of correlation is that an area’s murder rate increases when its ice cream sales increase. You know what’s coming, right? Yep, ice cream sales and violent crime rates increase with warm air temperatures.

Causation means that one of the variables is the result of the other. Most of us have been burned by causation vs. correlation issues at least once in our career. I just had flashbacks to my experience a couple of decades ago.

Lil Yachty’s music releases don’t affect the stock market, but it’s a cute read.

Screening Room: Sprite & the Black American Dream

10. Coffee Break:  The Game in Your Browser Tab

Megabytes and gigabytes?  Kids, we used to have to code without personal storage. That’s what makes this game so amazing. It’s a little time waster to capture the flag, but the entire experience occurs in a title bar. 

Play Title Run for some 70s era nostalgia.