Good Monday morning. It’s January 27th. This is tech earnings week. Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple  all announce earnings this week so expect some news to filter out during their calls.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,725 words and takes about 7 minutes to read.

Want to chat about something you see here? Here is a contact form.

1. News To Know Now

1. Google has launched a new data set search engine. The special search was in beta and is now a full-fledged Google product that lets people learn to get data from 25 million different data sets. Put any term into the search bar to get a list of databases. I tried random terms from this weekend’s news (Grammys, basketball, influenza) and found more than one hundred data sets for each. Visit: https://datasetsearch.research.google.com/ to search.

2. Byte, a video-sharing app similar to Vine and TikTok, officially launched Friday. Vine was a similar service acquired by Twitter and then killed. Videos are no more than six seconds in length. In an aspirational move, the company categorized the app as “Teen.” 

3. New Jersey’s Attorney General has banned police from using the Clearview facial recognition app. This follows a week of exposes about the company that has reportedly built a database of more than three billion face images. Company executives told one reporter that they scrape websites like Facebook for images despite rules against that behavior. Facebook says it is looking into the claim. Twitter has sent a cease and desist letter.

Clearview smart links
The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It — at NYT
Twitter tells facial-recognition app maker to stop collecting its data — at The Hill
New Jersey cops told to halt all use of controversial facial-recognition technology — at NJ.com
Scraping the Web Is a Powerful Tool. Clearview AI Abused It — at Wired
Class-action lawsuit filed against controversial Clearview AI startup — at ZDNET

2. Fighting Disinformation

The internet is filled with misinformation that people publish without knowing the information is inaccurate. By definition, the people who publish disinformation do so to deceive. Oxford doctoral candidate Samantha Bradshaw has published the results of a study showing how people publishing disinformation use search engine optimization techniques to improve its visibility.

Disinformation is highly virulent in the audiences it targets. Often presented with false or no supporting claims, the messaging is amplified by people whose confirmation bias allows them to ignore the lack of research or supporting information.

Bradshaw received search tactic information from twenty-nine firms she classifies as “junk news” sites. She used the same tools good search marketers use and concluded that growing distrust of mainstream media is pushing readers to fringe and partisan news sources. There is a bigger issue, she posits, around news and digital literacy. But the very tactics all organizations use to improve search visibility and advertise online are also used for propaganda such as denying the effects of climate change or that the Holocaust occurred.

This trend is prevalent on social media. Lawfare noted last week that a pattern existed in tweets about former FBI attorney Lisa Page.  Lawfare worked with BotSentinel to show that more than 28% of the replies to tweets about Page appear to be automated disinformation. The fact that there is a product named BotSentinel to discover disinformation campaigns is indicative of the trend’s prevalence.

Fake or mislabeled images and amplification by others enhances the effect and makes it difficult to fight disinformation. For example, tweets and Facebook posts showing past military action were posted minutes after Iran attacked U.S. bases in Iraq on January 7 with labels claiming the information was new. 

This week is filled with uncertainty. The U.S. Senate is considering whether to remove Donald Trump following his impeachment, there is a scary new virus in China, Brexit occurs on Friday, and the U.S. Embassy in Iraq was reportedly hit by a rocket late Sunday. As news unfolds, please check a second source and read the information with a critical eye — especially if it is news you like.

Disinformation Smart links
Disinformation Optimized — at Internet Policy Review
How to Spot 2020 Election Disinformation — NPR
Is There A Targeted Troll Campaign Against Lisa Page — Lawfare
False and Unverified Information Spreads — BuzzFeed

3. Google Search Updates

On the subject of disinformation, Google and Microsoft mucked around in the search pond last week and both came off looking terrible.

The ugly parade began when some Microsoft Office subscribers noticed that their default search engine was changed to Bing when they used the Google Chrome browser. The culprit? Microsoft’s own guide said this: “Starting with Version 2002 of Office 365 ProPlus, an extension for Microsoft Search in Bing will be installed that makes Bing the default search engine for the Google Chrome web browser.”

Since every user always reads the guide, there was absolutely no confusion and all of the users approved of Microsoft changing their default search settings without permission.

Meanwhile we had previously told you about Google encouraging website owners to ensure their sites published a favicon so that Google could publish the cute little icon next to search results. Everyone thought that was nifty until Google took its own advice and further stripped down the indicator showing ads to match the regular organic results. 

Here is what their gambit looked like. If you’re playing along at home, the first item is the ad.

We would reprint search exec Danny Sullivan’s full statement retracting that move, but it’s long and many digital marketers don’t believe it especially coming from an advertising company currently threatened with additional regulatory actions. Suffice it to say that this treatment will not appear on desktop search.

4. Debugged: The Case for Microdots. What about Encryption?

If you ever toured FBI Headquarters, you probably saw labs that could duplicate typewriter impressions. The federal government was no slouch when printers caught on and got the industry to add microdot technology that identifies the date and time of all printouts as well as a coded serial number on every printer.

Advocacy groups like the Electronics Frontier Foundation (EFF) loathe the use of microdot technology.  And we adore the EFF and its many fights for civil liberties. But as news about the FBI insisting that Apple help unlock the phone of an alleged gunman in Florida, we’re reminded that the government does not have full visibility into mobile devices.

Here’s the BBC’s article about how your printer includes this technology for comparative purposes.

5. Also in the Spotlight: Security

Here is what happened in digital security last week:

• The world’s richest man had his phone hacked (allegedly) by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The prince is also implicated in the death of a journalist who worked for the other rich man’s newspaper.
• The FBI took down a website that was selling data records from previous breaches.
• The Tampa Bay Times was hit with a ransomware attack.
• Political campaigns in the U.S. are getting additional free help to secure their information after multiple reports of campaign hacking.
• Microsoft inadvertently left a tranche of customer service data exposed.
• Experts warned about a Citi financial phishing scheme sent via a convincing looking email.
• The Justice Department lobbied Apple to keep computer backups unencrypted.

Anyone reading all of that might throw their hands in the air, suggest they can’t protect themselves, and stop trying. But don’t. Many of the issues here are fixed by following a few simple rules:

1. Don’t open anything ever from anyone unless you were expecting it. If you receive an unexpected attachment, yes, even at work, confirm first.
2. Have a trusted source of reliable, regular backups.
3. Use password management software (many good ones are free) and don’t reuse passwords. 

6. Great Data: Coronavirus Map

Johns Hopkins University is publishing a coronavirus map that may be the single most informative map I’ve seen. The CAL FIRE maps are usually excellent, but this map has a whole series of important data facts surrounding it on all four sides.

JHU map tracking coronavirus

7. Protip: Stop Google From Tracking Your Location

Google Maps tracks everywhere you go using data from your iPhone or Android phone. It displays the information in a feature called Timeline. Some folks might find it creepy.

When I look at mine, I see an entry from when I recently met a college friend for lunch. I left at 12:03 p.m., drove 10.4 miles, arrived at 12:24 p.m., stayed until 2:07 p.m. then drove 17.6 miles after running an errand before arriving at my desk at 2:54 p.m. All of the data is supported with a map showing the roads I traveled and where we ate.

You know what? That is creepy because it is a part of your Google history.

CNBC shows you how to delete it and stop future tracking.

8. Following Up: Selling Dot Org Domains

Back in December we told you that the entity that sells the dot org domains used by most nonprofit organizations was selling the registry to a venture capitalist. Organizations have been protesting the sale for weeks and won a temporary reprieve when the existing registrar agreed to delay the sale for 30 days to allow an Internet regulatory body to review the terms. 

Read more at Domain News Wire.

9. ICYMI — Top links from the past 30 days

Amazon Tells Shoppers that PayPal’s Honey is a Security Risk – Bloomberg

How to Create a Google Sheets Template – How-To Geek

How to help the victims of Australia’s Wildfires – PBS NewsHour

10. Coffee Break: Target Tori

You may have heard Tori Perrotti’s story. She works for Target and refused to sell a $90 toothbrush for 1 cent because of a signage error. The shopper demanding the extreme discount posted a couple of photos and tried to shame her on Twitter.

Everything backfired on him, and supporters put up a GoFundMe account to send Tori on a vacation. It raised $34,000.

The Boston-area retail manager’s story on NBC Boston.

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Good Monday morning. It’s January 13th. We’re off next Monday in observance of Dr. King’s birthday so we will take this opportunity to share a digital collection of his papers at Stanford.  Among them: Dr. King’s birth certificate, a mushy telegram to Mrs. King on Valentine’s Day ’57, and an early draft of Letter from a Birmingham Jail. 

Today’s Spotlight is 1,784 words and takes about 7 minutes to read.

Want to chat about something you see here? Here is a contact form.

1. News To Know Now

1. The Department of Homeland Security issued a critical announcement last Wednesday about a Firefox vulnerability. Most users receive automatic updates, but some of you have turned that option off. You need to update your browser right now if you’re one of them because Mozilla says this exploit can lead to someone taking over your computer. Here’s a link showing you how to update.

2. “A Cook County judge has ordered Google to turn over Jussie Smollett’s emails, photos, location data and private messages for an entire year.” That is the lede of a stunning Chicago Tribune story published late Wednesday. The order also covers Smollett’s manager and includes “.. drafted and deleted text messages, Google Drive files, Google Voice texts, calls and contacts, search and web browsing history; and location data.” That’s the kind of dossier Big Tech builds on us all. Read Megan Crepeau and Jeremy Gorner’s story here.

3. Microsoft launched Project Artemis, free software that detects a predator grooming a child in an online chat room. The software rates chat histories based on previous predator behavior and can flag suspicious ones to be reviewed by humans. Microsoft has already deployed the software on Xbox and is considering adding it to Skype.

Smart links:
Microsoft announcement,
NBC News coverage,
CyberTipline if you know about a child being sexually exploited online.
You can also call 1-800-THE-LOST.

2. Facebook Starts 2020 Like 2018

The Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal is two years old, but continues to affect the company. A leaked Facebook memo to The New York Times claims that Facebook knew Cambridge’s business model “was pure snake oil.” The executive in charge of advertising wrote that he personally regrets letting CA remain members of the Facebook Marketing Program. The memo claims that “the tools they used didn’t work, and the scale they used them at wasn’t meaningful.” 

We view this Facebook memo with wary eyes. There is a lot of explanation and a definite sense that advertising executive Andrew Bosworth wrote the memo to detail Facebook’s stance rather than as some internal soul-searching update. But there are statements in the document that make it worthy of your attention.

“Facebook got Donald Trump elected because he ran the single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen from any advertiser. Period.” That’s Bosworth’s big reveal, and he provides context by saying that he donated the maximum possible to the 2016 Clinton campaign. Trump’s campaign didn’t create anything unique, but they spent a lot of money hammering fresh content at people. You won’t be surprised to read the Facebook ad guy’s statement that advertisers should spend lots of money.

“The Russians may have used misinformation alongside real partisan messaging in their campaigns, but the primary source of misinformation was economically motivated.” Bosworth’s words ring true here, and we have some proof of that in a story below about donations to Australia wildfire relief that underscores this trend.

“The Russians worked to exploit existing divisions in the American public … people who showed up to those events were real even if the event coordinator was not. Likewise the groups of Americans being fed partisan content was real even if those feeding them were not.” Bosworth ends this section with a complaint that people can’t contextualize big numbers. That’s true, but ten people protesting outside your office would raise a heckuva ruckus and change the conversation for many more. 

This bit of public relations and message control seems very late to be anything other than window dressing for regulators.

Bosworth’s Facebook memo might have also been distraction from the company’s announcement that Facebook users at some unspecified point this summer will get controls that allow them to see fewer political and social issue ads on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook’s social issue ad categories include social and civil rights, crime, economy, education, environment, guns, health, security and foreign policy, and immigration. Our clients in those spaces are not thrilled to be lumped in with political advertising. 

With so many moving parts, controlling the message remains difficult for Facebook. As all of this was going on midweek, a flattering article about Facebook’s 2020 election efforts appeared in Teen Vogue.  Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s Twitter account even tweeted the link. The article was later edited to include a statement that it was “sponsored editorial content” (aka an advertisement) before it was completely removed.

Smart links
Lord of the Rings, 2020, and Stuffed Oreos (Facebook memo) at the NY Times
Memo news coverage at The New York Times
Social Issues advertising categories at Facebook
Teen Vogue and Facebook coverage at Business Insider

3. Google Search Updates

We’ve written about voice search a lot in the past because it’s clearly a new opportunity for every organization. Consider that any change of that magnitude, be it mobile proliferation, multiple home computers, or voice offers the possibility of getting new traffic in the digital equivalent of a land rush.

Google now reports that it has 500 million worldwide Google Assistant users. Some have only tested the function. Others use it constantly for simple search lookups like a calculator or dictionary. Plenty use it to avoid typing. The news is doubly interesting because Google has never revealed the number before. And also because one out of every 15 people on the planet is a lot. Read Search Engine Journal’s coverage. 

Google also offered guidance last week about changing dates on a website’s content. The simple advice from Google’s John Mueller was tweeted as, “If it’s evergreen, then by definition you don’t need to change it. No need to do anything special. Keep your dates, make it great.”

Our advice instead: don’t date evergreen content. Google already knows when they first crawled the content.

4. Debugged: Australian Fire Claims

Disasters bring out rogue charities hiding among those doing the work of the angels, and the Australian fire catastrophe is not different. The Washington Post has a great explanation of how some are using misinformation, like Facebook’s Andrew Bosworth explained above, to drive revenue. .

Misinformation and hoaxes are also a regular occurrence during tragedies. Last week Donald Trump, Jr. and Sean Hannity were among the people spreading a lie that close to 200 people in Australia have charged with arson for creating that country’s fires. That’s not what happened, and Vox does a great job explaining how they twisted the facts to make them fit a political agenda.

The Post on “Hoaxes are using the Australia wildfires …“

Vox on “The viral false claim …”

5. Also in the Spotlight: Amazon & the Honey Extension

Honey is a web browser extension that searches for lower prices at other sites when a user is shopping online. It’s not entirely benevolent and it certainly isn’t unique in the market, but it is the biggest in its class. The extension clearly has commercial upside in PayPal’s estimation because they bought it for FOUR BILLION DOLLARS in November.

Fast forward to this year’s holiday buying season when Amazon stunned some analysts by claiming that the software poses a security risk. 

Amazon doesn’t like PayPal and vice versa, explained at Bloomberg

6. Great Data: Always Updated Wikipedia Articles of the Week

Movies, music, and current events collide when Wikipedia shares its Top 25 articles every week along with a little snarky commentary. It’s another version of trending topics, but from a website that counts everyone as its audience. 

I read it every week. I learn new stuff every week, and the data contextualizes the stories. 

7. Protip: Google Sheets Templates

Our years-old coverage of Google spreadsheet templates still gets dozens of visitors each week. George was going to update it and show people how to create their own spreadsheet template (teach a person to fish …) but thankfully, How To Geek did it instead.

This is simple and there’s no reason why you can’t use Excel & Google Sheets.

8. Following Up: YouTube Kid Rules 

YouTube has been emphatic that its service is not for use by children under the age of 13. If you’re the parent who lets a kid watch YouTube, you’re responsible for what they watch. The FTC still fined the company $170 million and then announced that channel creators could be held accountable in the future.

Well. 

YouTube announced last Monday that it created new rules that are governed by a fascinating assumption: “any viewer of child friendly content is underage.” 

In many ways, society failed the marketplace because that assumption shouldn’t be necessary but since we’re humans, it is, and it’s a GIANT STEP. There are also some new rules about data collection, comments, and related videos, but the operating assumption about underage viewers is the story here.

Read coverage at The Washington Post. 

9. ICYMI — Top links from the past 30 days

How to help victims of Australia’s apocalyptic wildfires at CBS News

No Virginia Gun Confiscation at PolitiFact

You Can Still Get Windows 10 For Free at How To Geek

10. Coffee Break: Popeyes Newsjacks Family Feud

Eve Dubois was proud of her answer in a sudden death round of Family Feud. 

Except Eve was wrong. Virally, funny wrong.

And then an interesting thing happened. Popeyes saw the news coverage and social media virality and stole the spotlight with a timely gift for Eve and her family. We call it newsjacking. You’ll probably call it funny.

CNN has details about Popeye’s mistaken identity.

Good Monday morning. It’s January 6th. Images and stories of the Australian fires are overwhelming. CBS News compiled an excellent list of how you can help.

Today’s Spotlight takes about 4 minutes to read. Want to chat about something you see here? Here is a contact form.

1. News To Know Now

1. Military service branches are banning TikTok because of concerns regarding the company’s Chinese ownership and purported government ties. Nearly all branches have banned the social media app from military-issued devices. Others are requesting that personnel don’t use the service at all. It was less than one year ago that the Army specifically targeted TikTok as a new recruiting source because of its popularity among 16-24 year old Americans.

Smart links
Coverage at The New York Times and Military.com
U.S. Army announcement about increased social media recruiting presence
20 TikTok Statistics Marketers Need To Know at MediaKix

2. Home automation firm Wyze continues to suffer from inaccurate stories about a data breach. An employee left a database unsecured, but there remains no evidence that it was accessed. Financial information was not a part of the database, but the company was riding high after its products were endorsed as a holiday gift compatible with Google Home and Amazon Alexa. Disclosure: I think the Wyze smart light bulb is one of the best home automation products available and yes, my data was exposed too. Update your credentials and you’ll be fine.

Smart links
Wyze announcement about data leak
CNET coverage

3. Kaylen Ward says she is a twenty year old online sex worker. Her announcement that she would send a picture of herself naked to anyone who proved that they donated at least $10 to Australian fire relief generated lots of weekend buzz. She might be juicing the numbers when she claims to have received thousands of messages, but it was big news on multiple social media sites throughout Saturday and got a fresh breath of life Sunday when Instagram reportedly canceled her account. BuzzFeed has the best coverage.

Caveat emptor: There are now fake Kaylen accounts out there because of course there are.

Remember that CBS News article about Australian fire relief options that Spotlight opened with this week? Here is the link again. You’re welcome.

2. Intuit, H & R Block Hid Free Tax Filing Options

Turbo Tax software owner Intuit and preparer H & R Block are the subject of legal and IRS scrutiny after hiding their free tax filing options from consumers. ProPublica has chased this story for months and published multiple scoops about the their work.

At issue is the participation by the companies in Free File, an industry consortium designed to offer free tax filing services to about 70% of Americans. In exchange for this industry group’s consumer outreach, the IRS agreed not to offer tax prep software or e-filing services. The companies used search engine optimization tactics to block search engines from accessing those pages on their websites. They also reportedly used designs that either obfuscated or hid free options from taxpayers who qualified for free filing.

An internal November 2018 IRS report concluded that the agency was not appropriately monitoring the program’s participants. ProPublica published its first expose six months later, accusing the companies of using “deceptive design” and “misleading advertising.” Days later, they published snippets of publicly accessible code showing that the free tax filing options mandated by the IRS were hidden from search results.

Private attorneys and state regulators pounced. There is now a consolidated class action in a San Francisco court as well as actions filed by the City of Los Angeles and several states. The IRS, meanwhile, has announced new free tax filing program requirements that include a prohibition against hiding or cloaking a company’s participation. The IRS has also removed the prohibition against it creating its own e-filing system or tax preparation software.

Federal income tax returns are due in one hundred days.

Smart links
IRS Advisory Council report — November 2018 (PDF)
ProPublica expose — April 2019
Los Angeles announcement — May 2019
IRS announcement — December 2019
ProPublica wrap up article — December 2019

3. Google Search Updates

Google would like you to know that buying a domain from them will not give your website an edge in search engine visibility. Shame on anyone who told you that. even if it seems plausible. 

Google’s Gary Illyes used some poorly-chosen words when he tweeted, “It’s a new year, maybe we can put the voice search optimization fad to sleep finally.” There’s been a lot of industry discussion about this (you can read more at Search Engine Roundtable), but the truth is that the industry still doesn’t know enough about the actual terms and settings in which voice search occurs. Boy, do we have a lot of ideas, but until voice search data is more prevalent, they’re only theories. Don’t buy into the hype even though the day is coming when voice is the primary search channel.

The company also tried clearing up guidance around the way headings are used. As one of our clients remarked after we told him, “So don’t worry about them.”

Which is indeed what Google’s John Mueller effectively said in his webinar last week. But there is a lot of nuance behind Google’s new advice on headings. There is no doubt that they are used by Google to understand the context of the non-heading material. That’s why using appropriate keywords seem to help search rankings so much. 

Search engine optimization is often ridiculously technical (stupidly, ridiculously technical …) and includes scintillating strategies about how a website’s font files are loaded and in what order. But good communication elements such as a clear heading using a keyword can do double duty in creating great content that should be highly visible on search engines.

Why make such a fuss over headings? Because the sentence getting all the attention last week was this: ” … how should I order my H1, H2, H3, headings and what should the content be, that’s something from my point of view isn’t really that relevant.” 

You see, a big and often overlooked part of great search engine optimization is parsing what Mueller meant.

4. Debugged: NO gun confiscation in Virginia

This is not political. This is about facts. 

For two weeks, big conservative sites and meme factories have been publicizing a hoax about Virginia confiscating guns. First, there’s no law even remotely related to that. Second, you probably would have heard about it on the news. Please don’t use memes and social media posts as your news source.

PolitiFact explains the truth at this link

5. Also in the Spotlight: Amazon & UK Health

Lost during the holiday season was news that Amazon and the UK’s National Health Service have signed a contract that will allow Amazon to use NHS data to help provide users with health advice based on symptoms, definitions, and NHS data.

The kicker is that Amazon then can use its experiences to create new products, services, and apps that it will own outright. 

Health spending makes up about 15% of the U.S. economy. Amazon has already disrupted the consumer retail, business computing, and shipping/logistics industries. This is their boldest move in health delivery and won’t be their last.

6. Great Data: Video Numbers to Use

It’s not a stretch to assume that YouTube and Netflix are the biggest online video channels but did you realize that Prime Video is now bigger than Hulu or HBO? Me either. 

57% of Americans now use a streaming service. Check out the infographic.

7. Protip: Stop Google & Amazon from Keeping Recordings of Your Home

Did you get cool gadgets for the holidays? Check in here to learn how you can stop Amazon and Google from keeping the recordings they make of your home.

You can’t always stop them, but you can delete them.

8. Following Up: Invasive Apps at School

We wrote about school monitoring two months ago, describing how K-12 schools use a broad range of technology to monitor kids — not just their work, but bathroom visits and semantic analysis of their messages.

The Washington Post has now published a great piece on how colleges use similar technology based on student phones and beacon technology. 

Colleges gather up to 6,000 data points per student per day.

9. ICYMI — Top links from the past 30 days

You Can Still Get Windows 10 For Free at How-to Geek

Free Netflix & Streaming Content Newsletter at Movie Rewind

Causing a Seizure on Twitter at The Washington Post

10. Coffee Break: Internet Sites 10 Years Ago

Want to see how big sites like CNN or Amazon have changed in the last ten years? The truth is that when a company finds a successful design pattern it can be replicated for years. But when it misses (yes, CNN, you), it really misses.

Check out 10 years ago.