1. Good Monday Morning

It’s November 1st. Election Day is tomorrow with statewide elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania and plenty of municipal races and referendums across the country. This is one of Silver Beacon’s peak seasons. For the week that ended Friday, two of our clients made Facebook’s list of biggest social advocacy advertisers. Both reached the top 150 in spending. In one northern state, a client reached 70% of the eligible voter aged population and generated clicks from 12% of them. 

Not sure what’s on your ballot? We love Ballotpedia, a nonpartisan site that will show you a sample ballot and official info about each candidate and question. 

Today’s Spotlight is 1,611 words — about a 6 minute read.

2. News To Know Now

Quoted:“This recent activity is another indicator that Russia is trying to gain long-term, systematic access to a variety of points in the technology supply chain.” — Tom Burt, Microsoft VP of Customer Security and Trust after the company revealed that they tracked tens of thousands of attacks on more than 600 organizations between July and mid-October.

a) Amazon owns 20% of electric vehicle maker Rivian, according to an SEC filing that it made Friday. We wrote two years ago that Amazon had placed a $10 billion order with the company to acquire 100,000 electric powered trucks over 10 years. Rivian filed this summer to go public and is seeking an $80 billion valuation.

b) Amazon’s Alexa Smart Properties system is being integrated into hospitals and senior living communities, the company confirmed last week to The Verge. Approved callers can directly contact residents and staff can make notifications of changes to meals or medications without having to wear protective equipment or rely on papers left for the resident.


c) Conservative activists blasted British insurer John Lewis for the “Let Life Happen” ad we showed you two weeks ago featuring a young boy in makeup and a dress dancing around his house while inadvertently breaking things. UK regulatory officials late last week said that the ad is potentially misleading about the types of damage covered, and the company has pulled the spot from all media. 

3. Search Engine News — Quality Content Explanations & Welcome News for Parents

As bad news about social media’s effect on children continues to make headlines, Google quickly darted into the fray and announced that a parent or guardian can now request that an image of their child be removed from Google Search. 

Google’s Danny Sullivan, one of the originators of the search engine optimization concept, announced the change last week. He also reminded parents that this would only remove the image from Google, not the website on which the hosted image appears. As Danny pointed out, there are now processes to remove different content from Google, including some private information placed with an intention to harm or intimate photos posted without your consent.

We also had an interesting revelation from Google last week that elaborated about the company’s meaning when it talks about “the quality of the content.” Search Engine Journal transcribed search exec John Mueller’s weekly webinar, during which he said, ” … we don’t mean just the text of your articles. It’s really the quality of your overall website. And that includes everything from the layout to the design … how you have things presented on your pages, how you integrate images, how you work with speed.”

4. Spotlight Explainer — The No BS Tech Quarterly Earnings Explanations

Reporting around earnings calls has an annoying chaotic tone that is due in large part to very different levels of financial literacy. Many non financial people expect topical events to impact individual stocks more than they do because the investing community has already accounted for the chance of those events. Meanwhile, most business press is written from a much longer time perspective and already considers future metrics.

Your short headline for the Q3 tech earnings calls last week is that big tech is doing just fine.

Facebook revenue was $29 billion instead of $29

Most of the Facebook financial news was dominated by the corporate name change and a 2% revenue miss. Financial folks are also staggered that Facebook bought $14 billion worth of its own stock last quarter and announced plans for another $50 billion. This can artificially inflate the earnings-per-share metric, but the bottom line is that Facebook generated $322 million in daily revenue last quarter instead of $327 million. The other knock on Facebook was that its growth rate slowed because the company has about 3 billion monthly active users, and the planet only has so many people. 

Bottom line for Facebook: The stock went up because Wall Street had already accounted for negative attention paid to its business practices. Regulatory proceedings take a notoriously long time. 

Google continues diversifying

Google’s cloud business is only the third largest, but its quarterly revenue was $5 billion, a welcome sign for Alphabet. The company blasted through quarterly revenue and profit expectations, generating about $19 billion in profit for the quarter. Google ads, Android, and YouTube are pillars of Alphabet’s profit growth. A fourth pillar like Google Cloud is a big deal.

Bottom line for Google: They are big, getting much bigger, and like Facebook, are playing a long game with regulatory action that could take years to impact the company.

Amazon got helped by the pandemic and is now back to Earth.

Amazon missed financial expectations for profit and revenue while also saying that this quarter’s growth rate would decline. The company announced earlier this month that it would hire 150,000 holiday season workers. That’s 50% more than last year and equivalent to the population of Charleston, SC. Amazon hired 50,000 regular workers last year and is hiring 40,000 more now. Sum all the big numbers, and Amazon will have brought on 450,000 employees since the pandemic began. The company is understandably concerned about how shipping delays will hurt its performance this year.

Bottom line for Amazon: The company will hire more seasonal workers this year than its entire workforce size in 2014. Its net income was $11 billion in 2019 and more than $21 billion last year. Don’t shed a tear.

Apple is really, really worried about shipping delays.

After setting various records for its financial results, Apple reported quarterly profit of just over $20 billion, about even with Google. And like Google, services represent a growing percentage of profit, but at heart, Apple remains a device company with nearly 50% of its revenue coming the iPhone. Apple has also acknowledged that supply chain delays could decrease holiday sales and continue to drive its costs up.

Bottom line for Apple: Their devices remain highly sought after. Any bumps here are temporary. And their services revenue shows strong growth at the App Store, AppleCare, and AppleTV.

5. Did That Really Happen? — Do NOT Change Your Voice Mail If Lost

Experts say that viral posts suggesting that lost or stranded people change their voicemail greetings to include their location are wrong. Do not try to do this.

Nearly every large mobile company said that you would need to use a mobile signal to connect to their servers to change your greeting. Instead, call someone for help. Or, as more than one first responder department suggested, text them for help because that requires a fraction of the battery power. Snopes has more info.

6. Following Up — Whole Foods Delivery & the latest on Facebook Misinfo

We previously told you that Amazon’s Whole Foods would begin charging $9.95 for each delivery. The moment that started last week, Retail Wire reports that Walmart launched a one day campaign that read, 

“You may have heard that starting today, one grocery delivery service will start charging its customers $9.95 for every single delivery… That’s why, today only, Walmart is announcing that new customers who sign up for Walmart+, the membership that helps them save more time and money, will get $9.95 back. Because customers deserve a grocery delivery service that won’t leave a Whole in their wallet for delivery fees — whoops, typo.”

Among the most devastating of The Facebook Papers stories released last week was an internal document demonstrating that Mark Zuckerberg was personally aware of a method to reduce coronavirus-related misinformation by up to 38% according to his employees, but “wouldn’t launch if there was a material trade-off with [engagement].”

The reporting consortium with access to The Facebook Papers has generated dozens of stories with more to come. Here is a spreadsheet with links to them all.

7. Protip — Use Apple Wallet for Your Vaccination Card

iOS 15 contains a nifty feature for people with Apple devices. Caveat: your vaccine provider must have given you a QR code or downloadable file of your vaccine record. Read more at CNET.

8. Screening Room — A Dino at the UN

9. Science Fiction World — Amsterdam’s Automated Roboats

We told you earlier this year that MIT was testing an automated small ferry in Amsterdam’s canals. The Roboats now seat up to five passengers. There are two of them with more coming, including units for trash pickup to help ease road congestion. See them in action. 

10. Coffee Break — Classic TV vs. Classic Literature

Two contestants on a game show each gave a surprising answer to a question that suggests they have been more focused on classic TV instead of classic literature.

11. Sign of the Times

1. Good Monday Morning

It’s Oct. 25th. Halloween is Sunday. The American Academy of Pediatrics has a guide to Halloween & COVID-19. Parents will want to also have a look at their general Halloween Guide. Both offer great advice although neither comments about sneaking that full-size Snickers out of your kid’s bag.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,442 words — about a 5 minute read.

2. News To Know Now

Quoted:”We need to steel ourselves for more bad headlines in the coming days, I’m afraid.” — Nick Clegg, Facebook VP of Global Affairs (and former UK Deputy Prime Minister) quoted exclusively by Axios yesterday. 

a) A reporter erroneously branded as a “hacker” by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson and at least one of his sources do not yet have resolution on a state investigation of their activity and continue to face personal legal costs.

St. Louis Post Dispatch writer Josh Renaud and a University of Missouri professor who was one of his sources are being investigated at Parson’s direction. Renaud’s story disclosed that anyone viewing the public source code on state pages could see the social security numbers of school personnel. The command is available to any person using a web browser.

The newspaper notified the state and gave them time to correct the error before publishing the information. Parson’s reelection campaign ran an attack ad about the incident four days ago, days after the governor publicly ordered the investigation of the two men. (KCUR)

b) Also on Thursday, the Federal Trade Commission released a public report criticizing consumer privacy practices of internet service providers AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and others. The report (PDF) says that the companies are “at least as intrusive” as advertising platforms, group consumers into sensitive economic, religious, and sexual orientation categories, collect unnecessary customer data, and share real-time location data with third parties. FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan called the breadth and granularity of the data collection “staggering.”


c) Reddit advertising revenues are expected to jump this year from $161 million to $305 million and reach $522 million in 2023, according to projections by eMarketer. The 16-year-old social news company with 40 million monthly average users is valued at $10 billion. Those are big numbers for a company that the public often overlooks.

3. Search Engine News — Image Search Ranking Changed & WordPress Takes On SEO

Responding to a growing chorus of voices demanding that companies accept responsibility for algorithm choices, Google recently changed its image search results to be more racially diverse, reports Bloomberg. Organizations have criticized Google’s image search algorithms since at least 2016. Critics point out that phrases related to skin, hairstyles, and even families and professionals do not accurately portray diverse races.

We’ve also learned that WordPress is planning to take on more responsibility to cope with Google’s new Core Vital Statistics ranking. A blunt internal proposal was reported by Search Engine Journal and acknowledged that the company was falling behind other platforms in reaching speed metrics that Google requires. About one-third of the world’s websites use WordPress. The company also has a 60% marketshare in sites using a content management system, far ahead of competitors like Drupal, Joomla, and Wix.

4. Spotlight Explainer — The Facebook Papers

The what? Didn’t we just do this with the former employee’s testimony to Congress?

Sort of. You’re thinking about The Facebook Files. That was the name of a series that The Wall Street Journal published earlier this month thanks to documents given to them by whistleblower Frances Haugen after she filed an SEC complaint about the company.

These are The Facebook Papers — a much bigger set of documents that were being investigated by a collaborative group of several dozen media companies. They were related to Haugen’s initial disclosure. Oh, and there’s also a second whistleblower now.

So what’s the scoop this time?

We don’t have all the details yet. Today was to be the day that the consortium members published their pieces at the same time. Instead, there was an argument or misunderstanding among the members on Friday night, and The New York Times led with its first piece. Others have followed, but only covering what the Times already disclosed. And then Axios quoted Facebook exec Nick Clegg, who warned Facebook employees this weekend that more exposes were coming.

So what do we know as of late Sunday?

We know that Facebook’s algorithms recommended conspiracy and misinformation groups to its own researchers, including pages about QAnon, when that group’s beliefs were allowed on the site. 

We also learned that a Facebook researcher reported on November 9 that up to 10 percent of all US political comment views alleged there had been election fraud and that there was “also a fringe of incitement to violence.”

Misinformation and toxic content reaches far beyond the U.S. Specifically cited and new to this reporting is polarizing speech among Facebook’s 340 million users in India and corroboration of missteps in Myanmar.

One anecdote from The Facebook Papers sure to get more attention was the company’s decision to exempt Breitbart News from Facebook rules about false news reports. When questioned by an employee, Facebook executive Joel Kaplan reportedly responded, “Do you want to start a fight with Steve Bannon?”

Do you want to say something about the law of big numbers?

Yep. We humans don’t know how to tackle these issues. We don’t have another organization on our planet that is used by so many people. Consider those 340 million Facebook users among India’s 1.3 billion people. If Facebook reacted appropriately to 99.9% of content others posted on its site, that means that 340,000 people there would still be exposed to problematic content.

Anything else?

Look for Facebook to continue pointing out that it’s a platform and inviting anyone else to write platform rules and accept responsibility. Facebook will continue arguing that it doesn’t post videos of murders or hate-filled language based on race or gender. The company is closing in on 3 billion monthly active users. 

5. Did That Really Happen? — What Let’s Go Brandon Really Means

While NBC Sports reporter Kelli Stavast interviewed winning NASCAR driver Brandon Brown at Talladega earlier this month, the crowd began chanting profanity about Pres. Joe Biden. Stavast told Brown she was having trouble hearing because the crowd was apparently chanting, “Let’s Go, Brandon,” which they clearly weren’t.

Since then, it’s become a staple of Republicans and conservative media. Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) used it during a speech on the House floor on Thursday, and the phrase has been endorsed by Ted Cruz and now Fox pundits.

Here’s the story and video.

6. Following Up — Just Go Tech Coming To Fridges

We’ve written before about Amazon’s smart Go technology that allows shoppers to place items in their smart cart and leave when they’re done because the item was scanned and charged. Ars Technica has news that Amazon has spent $100 million developing a smart refrigerator that will track food stored inside and make ordering replacements easy.  You can read about the fridge, but there is no function yet for determining which leftovers have gone bad.

7. Protip — Uninstall Cortana from Windows 10

We showed you last week how to upgrade to Windows 11. If you didn’t, we still have good news: you can uninstall Microsoft assistant Cortana from Windows 10. 

8. Screening Room — John Oliver’s Car Commercial

The comedian recently made an offer to car dealers: record a script his writers created instead of one of the copy and paste jobs from national firms, and they could have it free. Heads up: there is some NSFW audio after the commercial.

9. Science Fiction World — The Orb & Worldcoin

Sam Altman’s resume is pretty good. He’s the former CEO of YCombinator, the startup accelerator that’s launched 3,000 companies including Stripe, DoorDash, Instacart, and Dropbox. And he’s the current CEO of OpenAI, the organization that created the GPT-3 language model.

Now he wants to create a universal basic income for the planet using a cryptocurrency called Worldcoin. Every person on Earth would get free Worldcoin if they consent to have their irises scanned.

It’s an audacious plan, but if you’re older than your mid-30s, consider that people didn’t always have online grocery delivery, easy file transfers between computers, and all the other things done by the companies he helped shepherd into our culture. Here’s a profile on the initiative that is already being tested in multiple countries.

10. Coffee Break — 13 Traditions That Were Really Marketing

I love this slideshow covering traditions and stories like Paul Bunyan (c. 1916 to sell lumber), green bean casserole (Campbell Soup in 1955 to sell soup), and the Pledge of Allegiance (written by a socialist minister in 1892 for his magazine and to help sell…flags). Read the stories here.

11. Sign of the Times

1. Good Monday Morning

It’s Oct. 18th. The Olympic flame is scheduled to be lighted today at 4 a.m. The flame will make its way to Beijing where the Winter Games start February 4. You can watch the ceremony at the official Olympics site.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,504 words — about a 5 minute read.

2. News To Know Now

Quoted:”Facebook puts users in a near-impossible position by telling them they can’t post about dangerous groups and individuals, but then refusing to publicly identify who it considers dangerous.” — Brennan Center for Justice executive Faiza Patel, to The Intercept when it published the full contents of Facebook’s Dangerous Individuals and Organization’s List.

a) Amazon’s private brand program used proprietary sales and returns information to copy successful products, according to a Reuters expose.The copied products were then reportedly shown in favored positions during customer searches. Called the Solimo Project, the program now offers dozens of private label Amazon products in multiple countries. Amazon testified to Congress two years ago that they do not use this data or favor their products in search. Then-CEO Jeff Bezos confirmed that behavior was prohibited in Congressional testimony last year.

b) Amazon’s very bad week continued when word came of a nearly $200 million class action suit filed by delivery drivers in the UK. The argument is familiar — contractor vs. employee -—and the lead firm for the plaintiff won a similar case in the UK against Uber earlier this year.

Still more Amazon: Corporate and technology employees at Amazon will be permitted to work remotely indefinitely as long as they can reasonably commute to their physical office as needed. Others on permanent work from home status include Square, PwC, and Salesforce. Fast Company cites research that claims nearly half of workers would work an additional 10 hours per week or accept reduced benefits to be allowed to worked remotely.


c) Even before U.S. government experts reported shock this weekend at Chinese advances in hypersonic missile technology, the Air Force’s former Chief Software Officer told The Financial Times that the U.S. would be unable to compete with Chinese cyber technology in 15-20 years. His claim was countered by Army CIO Raj Iyer, who also conceded that the Chinese government excels in “the actual use of AI.”

Separately, LinkedIn announced that compliance requirements and a “more challenging” operating environment led the company to close its site in China. The company was under fire from members  whose profiles it had blocked to appease Chinese government demands.

3. Search Engine News — Google Updates Title Link and Heading Guidance

Two months after Google began arbitrarily changing the titles of webpages in its search engine results, Google has updated its best practice guidance on writing what it now calls “title links.” The company has renamed this element because the “title tag” name used for decades is part of a broad international coalition that Google doesn’t control so technically the company is telling you how to handle your title tags so that it doesn’t change the information when it publishes its own title links.

Bah.

Here is what to know:

• Don’t repeat yourself or use boilerplate (best locksmith in Atlanta, best locksmith in North Atlanta, etc.).
• Branding should come first. This is a big change for SEO watchers, but Google specifically suggests concise branding appear first although it acknowledges beginning or end is acceptable.
• Don’t use words like “video” unless there is actually a video on the page.
• Keep things short.

Google says that it uses these sources to automatically create title links: the main visual and heading elements, prominent content especially when it is styled larger, anchor text on the page, text within links that point to the page.

One interesting comment: Google credits its machine learning software with the automation of this function and says that it can detect when a page’s content doesn’t match its title tag.

An example: A piece written for a 2021 policy that still has a 2020 title tag.

Later in the week, Google search exec John Mueller also suggested using product or brand names on headings within the document. It was here that he suggested that “Widget-color” might be acceptable provided that the content under that heading addressed the widget and the color.

4. Spotlight Explainer — AI Hiring

What exactly do you mean by “AI Hiring?”

Artificial intelligence has become a buzzy catchall for what is most accurately described as machine learning. That’s the process of giving a computer many (millions or more) examples so that the software can assess whether something new is a good match. 

Consider labeling pictures of flowers for that software. After uploading hundreds of thousands of flower images, you upload an unlabeled image and ask the software if it’s a flower. That’s a simplistic view of resume sorting. 

And just like a website’s automated help function can help you track a package or request a refund, an AI hiring chatbot can also make interview appointments or answer an applicant’s questions.

So how widespread is AI hiring or screening?

75% according to a Harvard and Accenture study (PDF).

Does it save money?

Yes, the original screening by computer versus person is always going to save money initially, but the real question to ask is which one does it better in the long run and do you honestly save money or do employee hours get replaced with something less productive. 

One of that study’s key findings is that the software training has caused huge pools of qualified applicants to be overlooked. Harvard calls them “hidden workers” and suggests that up to 27 million Americans could be negatively affected. And it’s not a homogenous group either: it’s a big mix that includes military veterans, caregivers, and immigrants.

How does AI hiring hide people?

Remember that the software only does what you tell it. Unorthodox breaks in an employment history are a big culprit. So are a lack of traditional qualifications. Screening with a rigid set of rules and using negative instead of affirmative filtering also creates problems.

What’s the problem with applicants who have a disability?

MIT Technology Review summarized a disability policy analyst’s experience with a game by software maker Pymetrics that tests nine soft skills. Like all good technology, the game asked if the applicant wanted to use a modified version for color blindness, ADHD, or dyslexia. It’s a benign request that ultimately forces someone with a disability to choose between disclosing their condition or facing a test that discriminates against them.

Resume writing for AI hiring screens.

Use simple, short, declarative sentences, but keep a regular resume for human readers. Remember to test your resume with an inexpensive automated tool like VMock.

Here are 7 more tips to help you land that job.

5. Did That Really Happen? — Conspiracy Theories Come from the IRS

There are multiple memes and posts all over social media falsely complaining that the IRS is monitoring all bank transactions over $600. What actually happened is that accounts with transaction levels under $600 in a calendar year or that contain a balance under $600 will now be exempt from bank reporting of interest paid. The IRS is not monitoring transactions at the individual bank account level.

6. Following Up — A New GPT-3 Challenge from Megatron

We’ve written a lot about OpenAI’s GPT-3 model that uses 175 billion parameters to create functions like auto-completing sentences and even new sentence creation among other things. You may remember that some executives didn’t want to release GPT-3 at first because it was far beyond the state-of-the-art.

Now Microsoft and Nvidia have collaborated on a 530 billion parameter model that they called Megatron-Turing Natural Language Generation Model. You’re a better person than I am if you think that people will call it anything other than Megatron. I can only marvel at how many resumes it must have read.

7. Protip — How to Install Windows 11–Even Without The Update

The latest version of Windows is officially available. This step-by-step explainer walks you through upgrading your machine. 

8. Screening Room — John Lewis

9. Science Fiction World — Peach Pickin’ Robots

Georgia produces close to 400 million peaches with a farm gate value of about $70 million each year. This report shows that you may know about harvesting robots, but tree pruning and thinning robots are here too.

10. Coffee Break — Nightcafe

We’ve thought a lot about AI and words today. Let’s think about AI & images. I’ve been playing with, erm, testing a free website called Nightcafe that uses machine learning to generate low resolution images from plain text.

For my text command of “a desk in a home office with a computer, microphone, camera, and coffee cup in view”, the program returned this image. I remind you that this image was (a) free and (b) created from 16 words of text. You can use Nightcafe once you sign up for a free account.

11. Sign of The Times