1. Good Monday Morning

It’s Sept. 20th. Canada’s national elections are today, a mere 36 days after they were called by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  You are not alone if you think that a five week election campaign season sounds heavenly.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,339 words — about a 5 minute read.

2. News To Know Now

Quoted:”Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression. This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.” — an internal Facebook presentation quoted by The Wall Street Journal in The Facebook Files.

a) By uploading a photograph and clicking one button, users of an unnamed application can create deepfake porn videos featuring that person. MIT Technology Review wrote about the horrific program this week and wisely concealed the company’s name. Calling the service “incredibly easy to use,” the publication later said that the program is no longer available from its creators.

b) MIT Tech also confirmed last week that an American company called Acuvant developed and sold an iPhone hacking tool in 2016. That tool was purchased by American mercenaries and sold by them to the United Arab Emirates for $1.3 million. The Americans then reportedly directed hacking campaigns on behalf of the UAE government.

c) As the COVID-19 pandemic surges for the fourth time in the U.S., Amazon announced that it will open an additional 100 locations after opening more than 250 this year. Amazon plans to hire an additional 125,000 employees, which will bring its total to nearly 1.5 million. The company recently announced that it will pay employee education costs for GED certificates, English language training, or college tuition.

3. Search Engine News — Don’t Share Content With Other Sites If You Want Traffic

There are plenty of ways to appropriately share content between websites, but Google emphatically posted that “If your goal is to reach a broader audience, go for it. If your goal is that only your site ranks for those queries, then syndicating / republishing is a bad idea. Pick your goals & select the work that helps you reach them.” 

And if you’re republishing, please make sure you understand how to have all the sites inform Google that your website is the originator.

We also learned last week that Mozilla is testing Microsoft’s Bing as the default search engine for 1% of its users. Google pays Mozilla more than $400 million annually to be the default search engine. 

Search Pro Corner: Moz’s Peter Meyers analyzed search results and found 9 different ways that Google is rewriting title tags. Separately, SEOWL has published a free tool that compares title tags to SERPs.

4. Spotlight Explainer — The Facebook Files

You will hear about The Facebook Files from now through the company’s future Congressional testimony and long into the antitrust actions it is facing.

What are The Facebook Files?

The Facebook Files are a five-part expose that The Wall Street Journal published every business day last week. 

What was exposed that was so bad?

The worst for many tech watchers was a March 2020 internal presentation about Instagram that read, “We make body issues worse for one in three teen girls.” This was the company’s acknowledgment that it had heard its critics and independently verified their complaints.

The horrific detail was that one Facebook presentation showed that amongteens reporting suicidal thoughts that 13% of British users and 6% of U.S. teens traced those thoughts back to Instagram. 

But that’s not their fault, is it? They don’t control how people feel.

True. But Facebook’s leaders are documented multiple times rejecting their own employee suggestions on ways to make Facebook’s environment less toxic for everyone, not just teenagers. Facebook is under pressure for knowing this issue existed and not implementing recommendations, asking for help, or alerting parents.

Facebook was singled out?

This series is all about Facebook. Their own data shows that the same negative effects are somewhat mitigated by the different forms of content posted on TikTok and Snapchat.

What else was found?

Each day was a new barrage of information. The series kicked off with a statement from a damning Facebook document: “We are not actually doing what we say we do publicly.” The Facebook Files revealed that millions of high profile accounts were shielded from repercussions when they violated the company’s terms and conditions. 

With a focus on reshared material, the company was trying to build higher levels of engagement and refused to stop even when its own employees noted that “misinformation, toxicity, and violent content are inordinately prevalent among reshares.”

Among that information was content posting misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. Facebook’s data showed users saw negative information about vaccines on 41% of comments.

So, it sounds bad, but not criminal except …

Well, it did except that employees also flagged human traffickers in the Middle East, armed groups in Ethiopia, and Mexican drug cartels using Facebook. Remember that most Facebook users are not in the U.S. and have nothing to do with America, but America often protests the loudest.

Facebook’s data shows that last year the company spent 3.2 million hours labeling or removing that sort of information on the site, but 87% of that time was spent on U.S. content. In one case, Apple threatened to remove the Facebook app from its store, and Facebook’s documentation showed that the company was already aware of the issue.

Read the whole series here.

5. Did That Really Happen? — Refugees Receiving Ivermectin

Reports flooded social media that the CDC recommended that arriving refugees receive the human form of ivermectin to treat parasitic infections. Some conservative commentators and anti-vaccine proponents have twisted that to say that the government is secretly treating refugees instead of Americans for COVID-19, despite the FDA warning that ivermectin should not be used to treat COVID-19. You can read the full fact check at The Annenberg Public Policy Center.

6. Following Up — Amazon Bans Hundreds of Companies

We’ve been writing a lot about companies allegedly paying to post fake positive reviews on Amazon. Sean Hollister at The Verge has been covering this for a long time and has been a significant force in exposing the practice. 

Now he has posted news that Amazon has permanently banned 600 Chinese brands and 3,000 seller accounts, including well known names like RavPower and Aukey.

7. Protip — How to Sell Your iPhone

If Apple’s latest product launch day last week excited you, trading in your iPhone can be much easier with this checklist from PC magazine.

8. Screening Room — Daniel Craig & Heineken

9. Science Fiction World — Robot Border Patrols

Remember in that movie (OK, all the movies) where the one person tells the others that there are armed robots guarding the outside of the place? State-owned Israel Aerospace Industries is making that a reality with remote-controlled armed robots that can patrol, track bad guys, and shoot.

Days after that story broke, The New York Times published images and details of an Israeli operation that assassinated Iran’s top nuclear scientist using a remote controlled rifle fired by its operator one thousand miles away.

10. Coffee Break — Animals at the Castle

Baron of Dunsany Randal Plunkett looks as if he wandered off the Game of Thrones set in contemporary clothes. Plunkett says he has offered 1,600 acres of land surrounding his castle to Ireland’s only wildlife hospital to reacclimatize recovering and rescued animals. Already there: otters, fox cubs, and buzzards, oh my.

11. Sign of the Times

1. Good Monday Morning

It’s Sept. 13th. Apple unveils its new devices tomorrow at 1 EDT / 10 PDT. The iPhone 13 is widely expected to be introduced. You can watch here.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,219 words — about a 4 1/2 minute read.

2. News To Know Now

Quoted:”Google has paid these workers at 100 percent of their prior wage, by definition. So it’s not like they can’t afford to pay their workers who choose to work remotely the same that they are used to receiving.” — Prof. Jake Rosenfeld of Washington University after Google said employees choosing to work from home could receive pay cuts of up to 15%.

a) Google is also defending itself in an employment action brought by four employees it terminated. The company says employees have no legal right to protest who the company chooses to work with, reports Business Insider.

b) Grubhub, DoorDash, and Uber Eats are also in court as they fight against caps on restaurant fees imposed by New York City. The food delivery companies say that consumers will pay more if New York’s cap of 23% per order is allowed to remain permanent. The companies are fighting a similar cap in San Francisco.

c) TikTok users on Android devices are now watching that platform’s videos more each month than video giant YouTube. Analytics firm App Annie reported that U.S. users watched 24 hours of TikTok in June versus 22 hours of YouTube. The UK TikTok numbers were even higher, proving that the platform is mainstream.

3. Search Engine News — Google vs. Apple (?) In Search

We’re really watching Apple this week to learn if more news is forthcoming regarding the device maker’s search offering.

Apple potentially launching a search function would be daring. Current estimates are that Google paid Apple more than $10 billion during its last fiscal year to be its default search engine. Those fees could reach $15 billion next year. Coywolf’s Jon Henshaw, a search entrepreneur, describes how Apple can take significant market share from Google by introducing a Neeva-like search experience.

Meanwhile Google has clarified its previous position on content titles that it has been replacing in its results. Google now says that the submitted title will be used to create the content’s ranking, but that the company may still substitute other titles that its algorithms deem superior.

Google Map users may have noticed that the company is now requiring users to opt-in to sharing data if they want to receive turn-by-turn directions. The data from Google Maps goes back into the product, creating an insurmountable lead over competitive mapping services. 

4. Spotlight Explainer — Facebook Research

Data first:

• Fewer than 10% of Facebook users are American. 
• 36% of adults search for news on Facebook
• Lawmakers’ posts get 8% love reactions and 6% anger reactions.
• Misinformation posted on Facebook gets more engagement than true items.
• Bottom line: it’s huge, it’s global, and it’s inconsistent.

What happened with them throwing researchers off the platform?

A trio of NYU researchers have been working with Facebook since last year.They created a browser extension called Ad Observer to understand what political advertising people saw on Facebook and YouTube. Facebook said that their program violated its agreement with the FTC regarding user privacy. The FTC and industry advocates dispute that explanation, but Facebook suspended the researchers and blocked their software. The researchers say that even the White House can’t get straight answers from Facebook research executives about COVID misinformation on the site.

What about other researchers?

Facebook held a call with 47 researchers three days ago. During that call, they told researchers that the company had made a mistake and excluded about half the data from U.S. accounts that researchers had been promised. 

So now what?

Some Facebook research projects have lost months of work. Facebook research executives say that they don’t know what else was missing and that recreating the data sets will take weeks.

What is Facebook doing?

There is no evidence that the company has done anything nefarious. There is no requirement that they agree to work with outsiders, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg made Facebook research a priority after the 2016 election and Cambridge Analytica scandals. 

What’s next?

Look for Facebook to face questions from the House Committee investigating the Jan. 6 domestic terror attack on the U.S. Capitol. Politico reported two weeks ago that thousands of posts made on Facebook about that attack have been removed from the site.

Our take: Facebook’s scope and scale make these data projects the largest of their kind. We tell our clients that the platform is huge, global, and inconsistent just like we told you above, but no one, not even Facebook, is quite sure how to harness the data generated by the 25% of the planet’s population that logs on daily.

5. Did That Really Happen? — US Pilots Did Not Resign En Masse

More than one million people have viewed a video released last Friday that featured a man saying that “his dad just let him know” that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin sent a text to all active military service members demanding they receive a COVID-19 vaccination immediately or face court martial. The video also claimed that twelve F-22 pilots and sixteen B-52 crew members resigned in protest.

Daniel Dale debunks the entire story. None of it happened. There was no text from Defense, there were no mass walk-offs, and military personnel have until Nov. 2 to be vaccinated.

6. Following Up — Criminals Finding Cybersecurity Easy to Defeat

“I was panicking because I had access to something big,” said John Binnins, who claimed credit for the most recent T-Mobile hack. “Their security is awful,” The Wall Street Journal quotes him as saying.

We also learned that REvil, the Russian gang believed responsible for hacking Colonial Pipeline and JBS Foods with ransomware, has established a new online presence after going dark. We told you in July that REvil seemed to have ceased operating. They’re back now and active on the dark web.

7. Protip — Limit Spotify Tracking 

Did you know that music streaming company Spotify tracks your Facebook information (including likes), your location, and other device information? They also know your age, gender, address, and well, lots of stuff. Lifehacker has a primer on how to reduce the amount of private data that you share with Spotify.

8. Screening Room — Pepsi Remakes Grease Scene With Doja Cat

Pespi followed its tradition of bringing the hottest young musical artists to its commercials by airing a new spot last night during the MTV Video Music Awards featuring Doja Cat performing a Grease number.

 9. Science Fiction World — Croatian Restaurant Using Cooking Robots

Five Gamma Chef cooking robots are the stars at Bots & Pots, a restaurant in Zagreb. They can prepare one-pot dishes such as risottos and pastas.  This ain’t your grandpa’s Automat so have a look at some of this unique restaurant’s nuts and bolts offerings.

10. Coffee Break — Retrieving Monday

Yes, you were off last Monday. So were we and (whew) thanks! But now that we’re back, let this pupper show you how I might look on some Spotlight Mondays.

11. Sign of the Times

1. Good Monday Morning

It’s August 30th. Housekeeping: no Spotlight next Monday due to the Labor Day Weekend. Be nice to each other, and wear a mask while you’re out and about.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,350 words — about a 5 minute read.

2. News To Know Now

Quoted:”This is the worst cloud vulnerability you can imagine, This is the central database of Azure, and we were able to get access to any customer database that we wanted.” — Ami Luttwak, CTO of Wiz, describing how Microsoft customer databases for big and small companies were left exposed online. (The Verge)

a) OnlyFans quickly reversed its upcoming ban on sexually explicit content last week. The platform offers more than porn — plenty of musicians, artists, and even fitness teachers use the site, but it is best known for nude imagery, and you won’t be shocked to learn where most of the money came from.

b) TikTok user engagement doesn’t rely on porn, but is pretty darn impressive, according to data in AdAge that cites CreatorIQ. Q2 engagement is 2-3 times — and as much as 5 times — greater than engagement on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

c) Executives from Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and IBM met with President Biden at the White House last Wednesday and agreed to spend tens of billions on cybersecurity initiatives over the next 5 years. That made the end of last week an especially bad time for Microsoft Azure database issues to come to light.

3. Search Engine News — The Week Every Marketer Cursed At Google

Google confirmed last week that it is overwriting title tags using a “new system” that works better than search marketers or its previous method of matching the searcher’s query with words it picks. This is the type of work that Google says its algorithms are better equipped to handle.

We’re not seeing big changes on our clients’ sites or sites that we own as much as some other practices are.

Title tags are the hyperlinked line that appears in Google above the text snippet. Google would previously adjust them if its algorithm detected an opportunity to improve the clickthrough ratio. Now, Google exec Danny Sullivan, a former marketer who is widely credited as the Father of SEO, says that his thinking has evolved and that Google’s software will do a better job.

Sullivan added that he hopes for an opportunity to allow website owners to flag “5 or 10” pages that need exceptions to the new policy. He says that he wants to limit website owner input because “That way people wouldn’t make wholescale (sic) long-term mistakes accidentally.”

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last two weeks watching well known marketers unsuccessfully scream at Google online. Consider: Google’s revenue and head count is more than double that of Coca-Cola, Exxon, or JPMorgan Chase.

There is most definitely more to come on this issue, but for now, the changes are done regardless of who agrees. Everyone will cheer if click rates and conversions increase while Google will have to reverse things as fast as OnlyFans allowed porn back if they don’t.

 4. Spotlight Explainer — Social Engineering

Social engineering occurs when someone attempts to get information from you in a social media setting that helps them access your information or device. You might not be (probably aren’t) the target, but could be an online acquaintance, friend, or relative of a target. 

It’s Often Tied To Ransomware: There are too many instances of simple phishing emails triggering ransomware or other cybersecurity issues. In 2017, top White House officials fell for emails that were purportedly from Jared Kushner and offered a dinner invitation. That same hacker also got Goldman’s CEO to respond to a fake email that was not from Barclays’ Chairman.

About half of all ransomware is triggered by a malicious link in a fake email. Now imagine if a White House official or top bank executive had clicked a link instead of pressing the reply key.

Knowledge Is Power: Imagine a message on LinkedIn or Facebook from a colleague who uses the right jargon or knows in-house slang. Now imagine it’s a former colleague who writes that they’re trying to reach another old co-worker. They know you’ve got to be in touch. 

Or consider the image that I came across on Facebook last week. A cute cartoon of a crying puppy in a halo carried the message, “Honor a Pet Who Is No Longer With You, Who You Miss Dearly. What Was Their Name?”

That post was made on April 25 and has racked up 3.5 million comments and 202,000 shares in four months. Yet it contains your name, whatever info you’ve left open on Facebook, and the answer to a common password challenge question. Even if these people were legitimate, the comments are open for anyone to scrape.

The same holds true for other questions on social media when you reminisce about high school (tag a friend from high school with your best pep cheer), cars and jobs (it’s race time — what was your first car?), and more.

Does This Stuff Work? Yes! It works great. Two years ago we published a report by a Strategic Communications team at NATO in Latvia. Using ONLY public information, they targeted military personnel engaging in exercises and found they could create influence activities for the actual soldiers.

From the report: “Overall, we identified a significant amount of people taking part in the exercise and managed to identify all members of certain units, pinpoint the exact locations of several battalions, gain knowledge of troop movements to and from exercises, and discover the dates of the active phases of the exercise. The level of personal information we found was very detailed and enabled us to instill undesirable behaviour during the exercise.”

How Can You Protect Yourself? The Plymouth (CT) Police Department said it as well as anyone could.

5. Debunked — People Taking Livestock Medicine

It is indeed true that many Americans are ingesting livestock medicine used to protect animals from worms and other parasites. Things have gotten bad enough for the FDA’s official account to tweet to Americans, “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

Even after that, calls to the Texas Poison Control Network for ivermectin poisoning increased more than 50%.

NBC’s Ben Collins and Brandy Zadorzny traced the demand for the deworming medication from the Trump-endorsed “America’s Frontline Doctors” to anti-vaccine and anti-mask groups to physicians actively selling the medication online. Read and watch their work here.

6. Following Up — Amazon To Back Third Party Sellers Up to $1,000

After courts in Texas and California issued differing opinions on whether Amazon is a seller when third parties use the platform, the company announced that it will honor customer claims about third party sellers for up to $1,000. A company release said that the amount would cover “more than 80%” of cases.

 7. Protip — How to Scan A QR Code

Every year or so, QR codes (those funny squares of machine readable stuff) make a splash. Maybe you want to aim your phone at one, but don’t know how to scan the code. We’ve got you covered for apps, iOS, Android, or Google Lens.

Screening Room — Serena Dons Wonder Woman’s Costume

9. Science Fiction World — Elon Musk’s Space Billboard

This is a really bad idea. SpaceX and a Canadian startup are combining to put equipment on an orbiting satellite that will include advertising that “anyone” can purchase. 

10. Coffee Break — How I Experience The Internet

You’ll want to click on each button and message on this site if you want to experience the internet as I do.

11. Sign of The Times