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

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

1. News to Know Now

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

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

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

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

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

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

Tech News

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

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

3. Search Engine Optimization News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Also in the Spotlight — Facebook Shuts Boogaloo Groups

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

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

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

Smartlinks

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

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

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

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

CNBC has the story here.

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

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

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

7. ProTip: 5 Zoom Tools

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

This Fast Company article will improve your Zoom game.

8. Great Data: People’s Choice Paths

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

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

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

It’s brilliant. Have a look here.

Screening Room: Applebee’s Taps Nostalgia

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

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

They’re here. I love them all.

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

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

1. News to Know Now

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

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

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

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

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

3. Search Engine Optimization News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Also in the Spotlight — Facebook Ad Boycott

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

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

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

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

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

5. Following Up: Chrome Extension Malware

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

Worth doing today if you can.

6. Debugging:  Racial Equality Protesters and a Vietnam Memorial

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

Poynter’s Politifact has the truth here.

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

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

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

8. Great Data: The Rapper Whose Music Changes Stocks

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

Your refresher on correlation and causation:

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

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

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

Screening Room: Sprite & the Black American Dream

10. Coffee Break:  The Game in Your Browser Tab

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

Play Title Run for some 70s era nostalgia.

Good Monday morning. It’s June 22nd. Watch Congress this week after dire warnings from the Fed and trade groups that small business recovery is still lagging. Here is Politico’s coverage of potential legislation that would allow businesses with a 50% revenue decrease to seek additional federal loan funds.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,588 words, about a 6 minute read.

1. News to Know Now

Events converge every few months to create multiple big digital marketing stories. Bear with us this week. There is a lot going on. You’re now reading a Spotlight edition that had three different lead stories this week.

a. Twitter labeled content that the president retweeted as “manipulated content” again last week. The president retweeted a faked video of two toddlers that were originally shown running to each other and hugging. The children’s parents are enraged that their children were depicted this way. The White House calls it “clever satire” and has not yet apologized for the doctored video that labels one child as “racist baby” and another as “terrified toddler.” (Mediate)

b. Facebook removed advertising for the president’s reelection campaign that used a symbol to describe the president’s opponents as what the Anti-Defamation League said “is practically identical to that used by the Nazi regime to classify political prisoners in concentration camps.” The campaign has argued that it should be allowed to use the symbol and spent more than one million dollars on those ads before Facebook pulled them. (CNN)
c. Spyware was hidden in more than 100 Google Chrome browser extensions, Reuters reported. The extensions were capable of creating screenshots and relaying passwords and files. I’ve gone through the list of extensions and found the overwhelming majority were used to create multiple simultaneous searches (for example, searching Bing and Google at the same time) or unofficial (non-Adobe) PDF viewers and editors. 

Smartlinks: Reuters, Awake Security, ZDNet, Threat Post

d. Items “shipped from and sold by Amazon” may not adhere to the company’s own standards. A riveting expose at The Markup found Amazon prohibited items including pill presses used to counterfeit drugs, an AR-15 vise block masquerading as a paperweight, and kits used to extract and concentrate other drugs. How? Much of Amazon’s buying processes are automated. Markup’s reporters found nearly 100 listings for products that Amazon’s rules prohibit selling. (The Markup)

e. Amazon is also under internal fire after employees of its Chicago warehouses hung signs advising employees that they would be “honoring the Black community by supporting local Black businesses” with an “authentic” chicken and waffles lunch on Juneteenth, according to CNBC. 

Not to be outdone, Snapchat released a photo filter on Friday that showed the subject in images of chains that could be broken by smiling. No, that is not a joke. Snapchat disabled the filter after a few hours on Friday and as of Sunday evening is still apologizing to people. You can read coverage at The Verge and also read the letter from (not making this up) Snapchat’s Vice President of Diversity. I’m guessing that her weekend was not very restful.

f. Facebook is facing backlash from civil rights groups and brand advertisers over the way in which hate speech and disinformation is moderated on the site.  The groups, including the NAACP, ADL, and Color of Change, are leading a Facebook ad boycott called “Stop Hate for Profit.” Retailer REI and apparel maker The North Face were joined late Sunday by Patagonia, which issued the following announcement on Twitter.

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

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

Tech News
Apple Watch, Fitbit May Help Spot Coronavirus Outbreaks – at Bloomberg
Fujitsu brings hand washing AI to COVID-19 fight — at Reuters UK
Global tide has turned against centralized contact tracing apps – at Quartz
N.Y. 3,000 Workers for Contact Tracing Off to a Slow Start – at NY Times
UK is abandoning contact tracing app for Google and Apple – at MIT Tech

Special Attention
Bloomberg’s acquisition of CityLab pays huge dividends with remarkable data like this set of interactive graphics that would be the top pick any week for our Great Data feature.

Pandemic Travel Patterns Hint at Our Urban Future – read at Bloomberg

3. Search Engine Optimization News

Google has launched its new text fragment link extension. The software allows people to create a direct link to a highlighted sentence or paragraph on a web page. The feature is useful, especially for groups, and has been around in third party apps for years. 

If you’re using Chrome, here’s a link to a fragment on our website and here is a link to Ars Technica coverage.

This is important because Google continues to refine search results. The search engine regularly now goes right to the spot in a video that addresses a searcher’s query. This is a natural progression in that area.

Google may also be facing new search competition. We ordinarily don’t pay a lot of attention to new search companies because of the seemingly insurmountable advantage that Google and Bing have. A new search engine now accepting beta tester applications may change that. Neeva will be private and subscription-based. The concept sounds like a tough sell even for its two co-founders, the former Senior Vice President of Ads and Commerce at Google and the former Vice President of Monetization at YouTube.

Google also jumped into the intersection of search and social last week with a stealth startup called Keen that seems to fuse Pinterest and search with a dash of Instagram. Google is notorious for launching products simply to learn so don’t start investing a lot of time in the community there.

Here is Google’s video explanation of the service:

4. Also in the Spotlight — eBay Executives Did Crazy, Unbelievable Stuff

There is no good headline for this story. Wired gave up with “Allegedly Made Life Hell for Critics” but that’s not descriptive enough. Their subhead is “Surveillance. Harassment. A live cockroach delivery. US attorneys have charged six former eBay workers in association with an outrageous cyber stalking campaign.”

Except workers is a mild phrase for what the Massachusetts US Attorney’s office says involved the company’s Senior Director of Safety and Security and the Director of Global Resiliency. The former CEO and the former Chief Communications Officer are not charged with any crimes, but eBay has confirmed that they had knowledge of the harassment campaign.

It reads like half Beavis and Butthead & half Godfather.

5. Following Up: Zoom & Door Dash

We told you last week that Zoom was ready to release a new encryption upgrade for its video conference product, but would only make it available to paying customers. The company reversed its position and announced Wednesday that all customers would have access to the encryption. (MarketWatch)

We also told you about the acquisition of Grubhub, the third largest U.S. food delivery service. Industry leader Door Dash announced a $400 million funding round that values the company at $16 billion. That’s about the pre-COVID-19 size of Delta Air Lines, Quest Diagnostics or ConAgra Brands (Axios)

6. Debugging: The AP on Soros Conspiracy Theories

Lately I’ve seen a lot of conspiracy theories on social media and even in email regarding billionaire George Soros. He’s alternately been accused of releasing the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and creating protests for racial justice.

It’s not just me. This weekend the Associated Press wrote, “Amplified by a growing number of people on the far right, including some Republican leaders, online posts about Soros have skyrocketed in recent weeks.”

Here’s their article debunking the disinformation.

7. ProTip: Recall Emails in Gmail

You know the feeling when you’ve hit send and have a startling realization that you shouldn’t have yet? Google’s Gmail allows you up to 30 seconds to recall that email, but you have to configure it from the default 5 seconds.

Here’s how, via How-To Geek

8. Great Data: My Favorite Data of All Time

The Pudding entertained me for days with their project about what music is remembered by people in different generations. It’s fascinating and to see the data, you get to go through 10 short clips yourself.

It’s SO MUCH fun!

10. Coffee Break:  Justice in June

This website was born of a list put together by two young women who wanted to help guide people who were asking them how they could be better allies for people of color.

You can select 10, 25 or 45 minute blocks to begin educating yourself on how to be an active ally of the black community. Each activity to read or watch is organized in a calendar with links. 

I think is a great resource for everyone and urge you to have a look. 

Justice in June