1. Good Monday Morning

It’s November 15th. Austrians who have not received their COVID-19 vaccine entered a 10 day lockdown a few hours ago. There is also a partial lockdown in Holland, and the German government is considering at least a partial lockdown there.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,310 words — about a 5 minute read.

2. News To Know Now

Quoted:” People with disabilities deserve equal access to all areas of community life, including the private transportation services provided by companies like Uber.”— Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clark after the Department of Justice filed suit against Uber. DOJ says that the company’s practice of charging waiting time for passengers with disabilities violates the Americans with Disabilities Act. 

a) Elon Musk asked his Twitter followers to vote on whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock. The world’s wealthiest man then sold nearly $7 billion worth of stock, but the financial press quickly pointed out that Musk had already filed an SEC document two months earlier with a plan to sell the stock last week. Musk’s net worth is estimated at $270 billion and has grown 10-fold in only two years.

b) Google lost an appeal of an EU antitrust case after a European court upheld a $2.8 billion penalty against the company. The penalty was assessed in 2017 after European regulators said that the company’s search results favored its own shopping results over rivals’. EU Competition Commissioner Margreth Vestager has overseen $10 billion in fines assessed to Google parent Alphabet.

c) Microsoft is getting a little meta. The company continued its partnership with Facebook parent Meta and said that its Microsoft Teams collaborative platform will integrate with Meta’s Workplace. Teams will also soon integrate with the Meta Portal camera. (The Verge)

3. Search Engine News — Google My Business Changes Names, Company Will Test “Index Now”

Google Business Profile is the new name for Google My Business. The program has been integrated into Maps and Search for years, and now Google says that it wants you to manage profile information from those programs instead of a separate interface. There are also new phone features that allow you to know which phone calls came from Google search visitors.

Google also will test a new search protocol called “Index Now” that rolled out last month from Microsoft and Yandex, according to Search Engine Journal. The protocol notifies a search engine that the content on a website page has changed and should be indexed. Most search engines proactively index all publicly accessible websites, but doing so only to pages that are flagged as updated can save a huge amount of global bandwidth and energy.

4. Spotlight Explainer — Facebook Political Ad Limits

Facebook announced that it will limit the way that an advertiser can target audiences that would see a political or social advocacy ad. The new restrictions begin on January 19, 2022. 

A Facebook political ad posted after that will not be able to target keywords or affinities relating to “health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation.” Here’s part of the example set Facebook used to demonstrate what will be blocked.

• Health causes (e.g., “Lung cancer awareness,” “World Diabetes Day,” “Chemotherapy”)
• Sexual orientation (e.g., “same-sex marriage” and “LGBT culture”)
• Religious practices and groups (e.g., “Catholic Church” and “Jewish holidays”)
• Political beliefs, social issues, causes, organizations, and figures

You don’t sound happy, George. What’s wrong with this?

There is a lot here that will hurt the advocacy groups that you care most about. Regardless of what side of the political spectrum you favor, your charities will have more difficulty finding its audience.

Here is one very simplistic example. Advertisers can’t target a Latino audience directly, but they can target fans of Univision and the 600 Spanish-language newspapers in the U.S. Then they can target people who are most like the people who responded. That’s only about a 2 on a 10 point scale of creative audience development.

Seems like they are trying to stop abuse.

They sure are, and that’s great, but a professional ad agency can target every one of those types of audiences that are shown in the example. We do this regularly for clients. For example, race and ethnicity related designations were halted last year, but it’s easy to develop an audience of Latinos in Louisiana or Sikhs in Chicago. It’s less efficient and therefore more costly for the charity.

So it’s window dressing?

Pretty much. It’s a hurdle that keeps nonprofessionals out of the market. Remember that Facebook political ads were previously cut off entirely. And Facebook has previously wrestled with its advertisers who ran employment or financial ads with age, gender, or race limitations so they very publicly removed for ads of that type. But professional advertisers already knew that it was illegal to advertise a job to people of specific ages or races. 

But this will protect me and my friends from being targeted.

Not really. It’s like we say about computer security. You’re trying to make it difficult for someone to guess that your bank password is password123 and drain your life savings, but most of us wouldn’t be able to stop a true hacker who targets us specifically. That’s why people with cool jobs have restrictive IT departments.

Will I see fewer ads?

Nope. In fact, advertisers can upload a customer list and then ask Facebook to find as many as 20 million Americans most like the people on that list. What you’ll probably see are ads that aren’t as finely targeted, but you’ll still see just as many.

5. Did That Really Happen? — The Plane Tantrum Video is Fake

Despite more than 60 million views on different social media platforms, the video purportedly showing an airline passenger arguing with a flight attendant regarding a passenger’s vaccination status is a hoax. There are indeed plenty of videos showing people behaving horribly. The Public Freakout subreddit has many, but in this case, CNN’s expert fact checker Daniel Dale explains what makes the airline video fake.

6. Following Up — Rivian & Zillow

We told you in October about the filing that showed Amazon owned 20% of EV maker Rivian and that the company was seeking an $80 billion valuation during its IPO. Rivian bounced all the way to $86 billion. Amazon added more stock, bringing its stake to 22% while Ford increased its stake to 12%. Rivian’s market cap is now roughly the size of General Motors’ although the company remains unprofitable and with very little revenue.

We also told you last week about Zillow trying to flip houses via its Zestimate algorithm. What was originally a $300 million loss ballooned to $500 million as Zillow announced last week that it had sold 2,000 of more than 17,000 homes it had contracted for. The company laid off 25% of its staff and said that it expects to lose between 5% and 7% on each house it owns.

7. Protip — Instagram Secrets

Ready to recover deleted posts or stop people from adding you to groups on Instagram? Lifehacker has you covered with these 12 best Instagram settings.

8. Screening Room – No, You’re Crying

9. Science Fiction World — Drag Race In Air Cars

Technically they’re called Alauda Mk3 Speeders although these look more like drones than the speeder Luke flew around the Ewok home planet. Still these puppies topped 90 mph in a short sprint in the Australian desert.

10. Coffee Break — Pet Portraits Matched With Fine Art

Remember when the pandemic first hit and Google’s Culture app let you snap a selfie and matched you to the closest art found in more than 200 museums? They’ve done it again… this time for pictures of your pet. Get the details here.

11. Sign of the Times

1. Good Monday Morning

It’s November 8th. Thursday is Veteran’s Day, and we have veteran Spotlighters covered with this huge list of free meals for you from Military.com.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,316 words — about a 5 minute read.

2. News To Know Now

Quoted:“Fake reviews and other forms of deceptive endorsements cheat consumers and undercut honest businesses. Advertisers will pay a price if they engage in these deceptive practices.” — Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection after the agency notified hundreds of the world’s biggest brands that they were improperly posting testimonials and reviews online.

a)  The FTC also said that it will send almost $60 million to more than 140,000 Amazon drivers for tips the company illegally withheld between 2016 and 2019. Driver payments will average $422 each. One Amazon Flex driver is due more than $28,000. (FTC announcement)

b)  Real estate data company Zillow will lay off 25% of its employees after posting more than $380 million in losses in just three months. The company had begun purchasing homes based on its “Zestimate” of their value. And then suddenly the market became “unpredictable” in the words of CEO Rich Barton. The company still owns more than 7,000 homes worth nearly $3 billion. The Zestimate for my house is $75,000 more than the already inflated tax assessment value, but I missed out on that deal. (Bloomberg)


c) Snapchat has launched “Run for Office Mini”, a program to encourage its users to run for public office. The company says that Snapchat reaches 90% of 13-24 year olds in the U.S. and that only 6% of state legislators are under the age of 35. The company curates information on 75,000 upcoming elections and has partnered with a dozen candidate recruitment and training programs. JFK was elected to Congress before he turned 30, a 31 year old Bill Clinton was elected governor, and 12 members of the House of Representatives are under the age of 35. (Snap announcement)

3. Search Engine News — Google Shows How to Improve Job Posting Pages

Google published a recommendation last week that shows organizations how to more effectively recruit online. A company post shows that data contained in the rich markup description field is reproduced online. Google officially recommended including information about the job qualifications, skills, and benefits in that field.

It’s really important to note that this is the rich markup description field, not the meta description field.  Confused about the difference?  It’s hard enough to hire employees today. Make sure you use every option available to you. Talk with your web people or us, and we can help.

Google also said that the same core vital statistics it uses to assess visitor experience on mobile visits to a website will also apply to visits using desktop computers beginning in February.

4. Spotlight Explainer —  AI Healthcare Is A Thing

There are many good and positive things that result from AI Healthcare. This summer Deep Mind announced that it would release the structure of every protein found in twenty species, including humans. That came six months after the AI-based organization solved a 50 year old biology problem and then released all of the code to the public.

But there are problems with AI healthcare too. Privacy experts remain very concerned that computers enter a state of constant surveillance from which many things can be inferred. Carebots are a great  example of the intersection between healthcare and automation. They’re especially found in underserved communities revolving around care for older people or people with disabilities. A mix of cameras, wearable trackers, and risk models threaten privacy and autonomy. 

More information is coming to light about programs like NarxCare, a software product from a data company that manages state prescription databases. The system mixes their data with external data including how many pharmacies a patient has patronized and how far they travel for appointments. This is mixed with prescription data to form “Overdose Risk Scores” that impact patients and physicians in unintended ways. 

As Wired wrote earlier this year, “Nearly all Americans have the equivalent of a secret credit score that rates the risk of prescribing controlled substances to them. And doctors have authorities looking over their shoulders as they weigh their own responses to those scores.” 

You won’t be surprised to learn that the scores are unregulated, can’t be appealed, and adversely affect patients and physicians. Researchers point out the system’s flaws including skewed interpretations for women, non-whites, patients with complex medical histories that include multiple conditions, and even pet owners.

A study published in Nature earlier this year claims that algorithms can account for 43% of knee pain reported by some patients vs. 9% of a traditional assessment by radiologists, which is better, but also leaves much to be desired when outside forces regulate the patient or physician.

The NarxCare risk scores will soon have company. Google parent Alphabet recently signed a deal with HCA to create algorithms based on patient records. One troubling part of that announcement is that they could guide physician decisions. There are also new algorithms that predict schizophrenia and new features on smartphones and watches that detect arrhythmias, cognitive decline, or even depression.

One big issue with all of these is that many people are victims of a fallacy called false precision that provides an unrealistic sense of precision. This occurs because answers are provided without qualifying that the methods used to calculate the precise number rely on imprecise methods.

4. Spotlight Explainer —  AI Healthcare Is A Thing

There are many good and positive things that result from AI Healthcare. This summer Deep Mind announced that it would release the structure of every protein found in twenty species, including humans. That came six months after the AI-based organization solved a 50 year old biology problem and then released all of the code to the public.

But there are problems with AI healthcare too. Privacy experts remain very concerned that computers enter a state of constant surveillance from which many things can be inferred. Carebots are a great  example of the intersection between healthcare and automation. They’re especially found in underserved communities revolving around care for older people or people with disabilities. A mix of cameras, wearable trackers, and risk models threaten privacy and autonomy. 

More information is also coming to light about programs like NarxCare, a software product from a data company that manages state prescription databases. The system mixes their data with external data including how many pharmacies a patient has patronized and how far they travel for appointments. This is mixed with prescription data to form “Overdose Risk Scores” that impact patients and physicians in unintended ways. 

As Wired wrote earlier this year, “Nearly all Americans have the equivalent of a secret credit score that rates the risk of prescribing controlled substances to them. And doctors have authorities looking over their shoulders as they weigh their own responses to those scores.” 

You won’t be surprised to learn that the scores are unregulated, can’t be appealed, and adversely affect patients and physicians. Researchers point out the system’s flaws including skewed interpretations for women, non-whites, patients with complex medical histories that include multiple conditions, and even pet owners.

A study published in Nature earlier this year claims that algorithms can account for 43% of knee pain reported by some patients vs. 9% of a traditional assessment by radiologists, which is better, but also leaves much to be desired when outside forces regulate the patient or physician.

The NarxCare risk scores will soon have company. Google parent Alphabet recently signed a deal with HCA to create algorithms based on patient records from more than 2,000 facilities in 21 states. The troubling part of that announcement is that they could guide physician decisions. There are also new AI healthcare algorithms that predict schizophrenia and new features on smartphones and watches that detect arrhythmias, cognitive decline, or even depression.

One big issue with all of these is that many people are victims of a fallacy called false precision that provides an unrealistic sense of precision. This occurs because answers are provided without qualifying that the methods used to calculate the precise number rely on imprecise methods.

5. Did That Really Happen? — Did Train Passengers in Philadelphia Watch A Rape?

In a world quick to outrage, the idea that passengers did not intervene when a man raped a woman on a Philadelphia train outraged nearly everyone. Except now the prosecutor says that things didn’t happen quite the way they were initially portrayed. Catch up with the latest here.

6. Following Up — Developers Using AI Code Help More

There’s a bit of another misunderstanding echoing around news feeds regarding how much AI help is being used by software developers. The issue developed after Open AI said that 30% of the recent projects on GitHub were using software called Copilot to help write code. 

That’s true, but parse the sentence as “thirty percent of the projects used at least some help from this software”, not that 30% of software is now written by AI. It’s still pretty cool though and a lot easier than using a search engine to find the same information.

7. Protip — What Emojis May Mean in Other Countries

The good folks at the Rest of the World have some digital translation help that it’s worth your time to peruse if you spend any time communicating with people outside your own country.

8. Screening Room — Christmas With a Twist

9. Science Fiction World — McDonald’s, IBM & AI

IBM has purchased McDonald’s AI unit (everyone has AI departments) and will partner with the restaurant chain to automate the drive through experience, which is code for replacing employees. There is no word on whether the new robot overlords can fix the ice cream machines.

10. Coffee Break — Timelines & Stats About Your Age

You’re Getting Old is a fun website that shows you all sorts of statistics based on your age, including how many breaths you’ve taken, days you’ve aged, news, and a lot more. 

11. Sign of the Times

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