Good Monday morning. It’s December 16th. The Rise of Skywalker, Disney’s final installment in the Star Wars Skywalker Trilogy, premieres Friday. Analysts expect that this will be Disney’s seventh film in 2019 to generate at least one billion dollars in revenue.

Today’s Spotlight takes about 4 minutes to read. Want to chat about something you see here? Press your email reply button or click the silver “Write George” button below.

1. News To Know Now

1. New Orleans and Pensacola were hit by ransomware attacks. New Orleans officials said that emergency services were not affected but that all city employees were required to log off their computers. City officials expect lingering issues to continue disrupting services this week. Pensacola didn’t fare as well and experienced disruptions in sanitation, energy, and city management. New Orleans joins Atlanta and Baltimore as major city governments disrupted by ransomware attacks since 2018.

Smart links:   Nola.com’s latest coverage, Bleeding Computer’s tech analysis

2. Security troubles also plagued Amazon’s Ring camera this week. People in four states have reported that their Ring device has been used by an outside person who has called them names or interacted with their children. Ring said this weekend that consumers are using login ids and passwords they have used on other systems and that their system has not been compromised.

Our take: Anyone using smart home technology should understand that the system will be compromised at some point, even if only by a house guest who mistakenly accesses the wrong information. Use strong passwords, a password management system, and two factor authentication on everything possible to minimize your exposure.

3. Project Maven is an advanced drone image recognition system that Google withdrew from last year after pressure from its employees. Bloomberg reported Friday that defense contractor Palantir has been awarded the contract to resume the project. 

2. Internet Censorship

The Palantir-Google difference over Project Maven is at the heart of an inflection point technology companies are wrestling with. Working on projects your organization’s ethics support is an easy call. The dilemma companies face today is whether their scientists will work on projects used by governments to do ethically questionable things. 

Palantir’s Peter Thiel likens it to the same dilemma organizations faced when deciding whether to work on atomic weapons. Speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum, Thiel said today’s technologists lack the perspective previous generations had during the 1960s and 1970s when the concept of a military-industrial complex took hold in the public’s awareness.

As the internet becomes required for more activities, governments are finding new ways to practice internet censorship. A new Chinese law requires every person establishing mobile phone service to submit to a facial scan. Critics have argued that facial recognition has played a large role in China’s handling of monthslong protests in Hong Kong.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin signed a bill last Monday requiring that all internet-capable devices, including televisions, have pre-installed Russian apps. The law takes effect next summer and will require companies such as Apple and Samsung to comply. Refusing means being shut out from sales in the world’s ninth most populous country.

India uses spot internet outages to control information in areas with political unrest. Prime Minister Narendra Modi cut Internet access this summer to an area where seven million people live. His actions are not unique. An excellent overview at Ozy describes 196 internet shutdowns in 2018. Here’s a map they created showing countries (in red) that have experienced internet censorship.

3. Google Search Update

The biggest commitment Google has made to idea diversity is reflected in the latest version of its search quality evaluator guidelines released this month. These guidelines are used by specially trained employees who provide a human check on how the search engine’s algorithms rank websites.

Make no mistake: search is automated. Evaluators don’t even overrule the algorithms. Instead their ratings are used to refine the algorithms that create search results.

Google now includes political affiliations when describing its users having different ages, genders, races, and religions. Evaluators are constantly cautioned to rate sites in as neutral a manner as possible while being wary of allowing age, gender, or political affiliation to bias their reports.

Smart links: Search Engine Land coverage, Search Evaluator Guidelines (168 page PDF)

4. Debugged: That Was Not a Paid Celebrity Breakup

Consumers can now buy celebrity video shoutouts online at prices ranging from $25 to $1,000. Former Sugar Ray frontman and TV host Mark McGrath made headlines when a video he made appeared to be paid for by a woman breaking up with her boyfriend.

It was a hoax done by someone to jump start his Twitter account. That failed too.

5. Also in the Spotlight: DNA Database Sold

DNA kits purportedly showing a person’s heritage are always hot items during gift giving holidays. You may want to hold off uploading your results elsewhere though after industry site GEDmatch was sold to Verogen, a DNA analysis company that works with law enforcement.

How: GEDmatch is a third-party service that people voluntarily use to find relatives. Disclosure: I’m a user of the free service, and it does work. Smart police officials have begun using DNA obtained in criminal investigations to find relatives too, a process that GEDmatch users can opt out of. California police found the Golden State Killer in 2018 by matching DNA on the site and using genealogy to identify possible suspects.

Then: GEDmatch quickly created a process to allow people to opt out of sharing their DNA with law enforcement, which seemed like the best solution. Then a state judge forced GEDmatch last month to comply with a warrant allowing police to find people related to a serial rapist whose DNA police had. 

What’s next: GEDmatch is convenient because more than one million people participate by uploading their DNA results but there’s no reason why a judge couldn’t issue warrants to the major companies selling DNA kits.

Food for thought: Maybe being able to identify a serial rapist or murderer using DNA and genealogy is a good thing.

6. Great Data: Big Media Owners

Great data provides context. Recode heeded that axiom with their most recent infographic about media and communications ownership. Giants like Google and Facebook are tucked neatly to the side to show how relatively tiny Lionsgate compares with giants like AT&T, Verizon, and Disney. Each company’s major assets are shown so that users can understand that MGM owns the Epix cable network and the James Bond film franchise.

The color-coding, scale, and notes make this great.

7. Protip: Send Websites & Docs Between Desktop & Android

Google Chrome has a new feature that allows you to share a clipboard between your devices. You can send a website page from your phone to your computer or vice versa without emailing them. It’s really a timesaver.

The Next Web has the step-by-step details.

8. Bizarre Bazaar: LED Bow Ties and Suspenders

With New Year’s Eve barreling towards us far too fast, who else needs a snazzy LED bow tie and suspender set?  They even blink if you’re so inclined.

Seven colors to choose from too

9. ICYMI — Top links from the past 30 days

Animated bar chart showing social media use by age – at Visual Capitalist

Step-by-step instructions on protecting fitness tracker data – at Wired

When Baltimore’s mayor repeated a hoax about white vans – at CNN

10. Coffee Break:  Canada’s Worst Artichoke Dip

From the oldie but goodies file, this is a two minute video segment on holiday potluck sharing on Canada’s Global News. Seems one of the broadcasters isn’t a fan of cooking and botched an artichoke dip recipe. Thanks to the glory that is live television, you get to laugh too.

Oh, Leslie, what did you put in there?

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Good Monday morning. It’s December 9th. The Fed’s Open Market Committee meets for two days starting tomorrow. The entire financial world seems to expect interest rates to remain unchanged. 

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

1. News To Know Now

1. Uber faces more scrutiny after an internal report released Thursday detailed nearly 6,000 incidents of sexual assault or misconduct for 2017-2018. The company is betting big that transparency and education will help it address the issue. Meanwhile Match Group, which owns 45 dating sites including Tinder, OK Cupid, and Plenty of Fish, acknowledged that it does not verify user information against a sex offender registry. 

Smart links: Uber safety report, ProPublica dating app investigation

2. Domain registration fees for dot org names are expected to climb next year for the first time in sixteen years. The companies that sell organizations those domains pay a capped $9.05 wholesale price, but the registry has been purchased by a venture capitalist. Various government agencies and NGOs report that they lack any authority to get involved with the deal. 

Our take: Expect but don’t worry about a price increase. Even if the price doubled, it’s probably not worth renewing all your domains now.

3. We told you this summerabout Samsung warning consumers about viruses on smart TVs. We even give you a link to check your TV and caught some flack from very cool tech friends who insisted that we move along because there was nothing to see here. Then the FBI’s Oregon office issued a news release last week that said an unsecured television can provide a path for hackers to reach your router. The bottom line is that this is still a long shot, but it’s possible. Aren’t you glad you’re a Spotlight reader?

Smart links:Our July 1 issue, FBI: Securing Smart TVs

2. TikTok Explained

Think of video app TikTok as a child of YouTube and Snapchat. Users can post video stories of up to one minute — a relative eternity in video. Arising from the roots of karaoke, lip syncing, and stupid human tricks, TikTok is enjoying its doubling phase when user growth each quarter makes year-over-year comparisons worthless.

TikTok has 800 million active monthly users. About 60% of those are in China. Another 26 million are in the U.S., and sixty percent of those users are between the ages of 16 and 24. The market share of the teen-to-24 group is remarkable. There are 43 million U.S. residents in that age bracket, and more than 15 million of them use TikTok.

You have probably heard about Congressional hearings where TikTok’s Chinese ownership and its perceived security threat make for great headlines. We have no knowledge that would suggest Chinese mind control is possible or that the Chinese government doesn’t already have ridiculously robust data about all Americans since it’s available all over the dark web. There are certainly more serious digital sercurity issues.

The app is fast-moving, often seeing memes and fads rise and dissipate within days. Users are spending a very long average of five minutes per session on the app and open the app multiple times per day. You’re not wrong if you think that sounds like your mother’s Candy Crush fix. U.S. General Manager Vanessa Pappas spent a big chunk of her career as a YouTube exec where she was also blessed with an app that has ubiquitous reach and great engagement. TikTok claims U.S. users spend a total of 46 minutes on the app each day.

Advertisers are rushing to reach this audience of young, addicted community members. Bytedance, TikTok’s parent company, booked more than $7 billion in revenue for the first half of 2019. The company had been using a traditional advertising model but is quickly moving to a self-service advertising platform like Google, Facebook, and other digital platforms use. The catch for now is that most advertisers — most adults, for that matter — still don’t have the understanding of the platform that would allow it to spend money wisely.

Congress aside, the waters are still choppy for TikTok. News came last week that a group of parents have filed a class action suit against the company regarding its data practices with minors. We also learned that moderator guidelines for the site instruct staff and contractors to restrict amplifying videos made by overweight, disabled, or LGBTQ contributors. Meanwhile growth at the company is creating an acute need for technical staff. The company has recently hired more than two dozen staffers from nearby Facebook and is reportedly paying salaries of 20% more.

Learn more:The leaked pitch deck at AdAge, revenues at CNBC, hiring at NBC, moderation guidelines screen out disabled, overweight people at Netzpolitik.

3. Google Search Updates

• Continuing its quest to have searchers stay on Google’s search results pages instead of visit websites, Google is asking shippers to supply them with a feed of logistics data. Google can currently understand which carrier used which tracking number. Now it wants to give you the tracking information without sending you to the company. As a consumer, you won’t care. As a business leader, you may be starting to feel horror at the amount of non-Google information that Google is attempting to become the provider for.
  
  
• Song lyrics are a popular fact-based item that has gotten Google in trouble before. Now lyrics site Genius is suing the search engine for allegedly taking the company’s transcriptions. Genius apparently seeded its song lyrics in a way that allows them to tell when they’ve been copied. Neither Genius nor Google own the song lyrics. This is a messy harbinger of the fights to come between search and organizations over what can appear in search results.

4. Debugged: The White Van Myth

CNN seemed incredulous when Baltimore Mayor Jack Young warned Monday that people should not park near a white van and should keep their phones handy in case they were abducted. The tip wasn’t from the FBI or the Baltimore police but the mayor said he saw it “all over Facebook.”

Here’s the debunking, if you really needed a fact check.

5. Also in the Spotlight: Don’t Romanticize Plantations

The Knot, Brides, and Pinterest are telling couples planning weddings that they will remove references to plantations on their websites. They also now prohibit content that romanticizes plantations. The sites are also working to remove existing content from appearing in search engines.

BuzzFeed broke the story early last week.

6. Great Data: Who Wrote Shakespeare?

Literature professors have long told people that Shakespeare likely had a collaborator of some sort. A Czech data scientist has written an algorithm that suggests a playwright named John Fletcher was that man. The algorithm is able to identify each author’s style and credits Fletcher with writing nearly half of Henry VIII.

MIT Technology Review has details.

7. Protip: Protect Your Health & Fitness Data

If you’re ready for a new fitness app or gadget during the holidays or hope to make some great resolutions this new year, then you’ll want to pay attention to how much of your health and fitness data is being shared.

Wired has step-by-step directions for each major platform.

8. Bizarre Bazaar: Fried Chicken Log

Oh, KFC, why you wanna hurt me like this? 

The food chain is selling an Enviro-Log made from recycled material that smells like fried chicken. It’s available for $18.99 (yes, really) exclusively at Walmart (insert your own joke here).

The copy cautions that the smell may attract bears or hungry neighbors.

9. ICYMI — Top links from the past 30 days

See how your web browser shares information about you — at Robin Linus

The funniest things photographed by street mapping cars — at Street View Fun

Learn how locals are fighting climate change — at Moms Clean Air Force

10. Coffee Break: That Pizza Commercial

Twenty-one years ago, Mikhail Gorbachev made a commercial for Pizza Hut. There were only eight leaders of the Soviet Union, including Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushchev, and the one who made this pizza commercial.

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Good Monday morning. It’s December 2nd. The UN’s Convention on Climate Change begins today in Madrid. Visit Moms Clean Air Force’s state directory pages to learn about ways you can help restore Earth’s equilibrium.  We’ve been proud to work with them for more than eight years.

Today’s Spotlight takes about 5 minutes to read. Want to chat about something you see here? Here is a contact form.

1. News To Know Now

1. NYC tells FedEx to get their delivery robots ‘off our streets’ reads the New York Post’s headline. The article has video of the Roxos bot in SoHo. Apparently it can’t be on the sidewalk and it’s not street legal. But FedEx says it has “stair-climbing wheels” which suggests to me that our robot overlords will not be deterred if we hide in the guest room. Completely unrelated but interesting is news that Walmart’s Jet subsidiary is halting grocery delivery in New York City. Maybe the FedEx bots were blocking the streets.

2. Threatpost reports that more than 100,000 scam domains have names that look like trusted retail names and have registered https certificates in those fraudulent names. Please make sure that you are using the correct website this holiday season.

3. Ransomware incidents are also increasing, reports Bleeding Computer citing a confidential report in the Netherlands. Three types of ransomware have infected 1,800 businesses, including a New Mexico school district and a cloud computer company servicing 110 nursing homes. This is an issue that sounds far-fetched until it happens to your organization.

2. The Truth About Influencers

Marketers have long used celebrities in advertising, but lately seem to have conflated celebrity with notoriety. The idea of being famous for being famous isn’t new but monetizing that noteworthiness for advertising has brought society to the profession of social media influencer. 

There are social media celebrities with millions of subscribers following their video or other channels. This is about the next level down, the people who have tens of thousands of likes, followers, or other vanity metrics and relatively few subscribers. Influencers use the platform’s notoriety, especially Instagram, Snapchat, or Twitter, to blast their followers with a commercial.

The engagement metrics for the messages they promote are poor. Learning that a brand scrapped its influencer program after failing to achieve its goals is now common. And the sad truth is that most influencers sell their promotions using the same vanity metrics of impressions and followers that by themselves create no profit.

Those vanity metrics are also often inflated, making them even more suspect. Data from Google’s Avinash Kaushik tells a cautionary tale of average prices ranging from $200 to $4,000 for a single Instagram post from “micro influencers” who have 10,000 to 50,000 followers. Avinash also discloses rates for fake Instagram followers that are only $16 per thousand.

Paying a higher $50 rate will get you bots that share and amplify your messages. This combination of inflated follower counts and declining engagement combine to make influencer campaigns problematic for any advertising efforts.

Disclosure is also a problem. The FTC has chased this issue for more than a decade and continues posting rules for compliance that extend to anyone promoting a product or service online. The FTC has also made selling likes and similar engagement illegal although its quiet on how it plans to enforce those rules. 

Brand managers claim that there’s too much money in digital advertising for big brands to do anything more than accept losses on low quality influencers to ensure that they don’t miss out on the next trend. That’s passionate consumer thinking, not data-driven analysis, and a big part of the problem. 

Instagram is luring real celebrities instead of influencers by offsetting video production costs of up to $250,000 for multiple posts by a celebrity. Bloomberg found and confirmed the presence of these contracts. The IGTV deal requires that stars do not post about politics, elections, or social issues.

Our take remains as simple and unchanged from when George first placed an online ad in the pre-Google days: be diligent in tracking all the data and only continue advertising that is proven profitable. We’ve gone into large and small organizations where the first way we’ve provided value is to show that current ads are costing more than they’re bringing in.  And if you’ve hired influencers already then be extra-diligent about breaking out all their costs and assigning revenue to them.

3. Google Search Updates

• Google now allows its My Business service customers to provide custom lists of what they offer customers. For example, a plumber can specify what appliances they work on or an exterminator can specify if they exterminate rodents. Search Engine Journal has more.
  
• Google is also testing a small blue arrow icon next to titles in search results. As those search results begin including more maps, videos, and other content, the user interface will undoubtedly be changed often. Search Engine Roundtable has screenshots.

4. Debugged: Bride Keeping Donated Wedding Costs Isn’t Real

The alleged bride wrote that after reflection and tear-filled conversations with close family members, she has decided to cancel her wedding. The good news is that the $30,000 donated for the ceremony won’t be spent in vain but used for a honeymoon-ish trip in the future.

Yeah, not really though. 

It was a ruse designed to build traffic to a website.

5. Also in the Spotlight: Sacha Baron Cohen

The comedian behind Borat, Ali G, and Who is America made headlines for castigating Facebook and other online platforms in a speech at the Anti-Defamation League in New York on November 20. 

Cambridge-educated Sacha Baron-Cohen spoke after being presented with the ADL’s international leadership award. He described Facebook as “the greatest propaganda machine in history,” said that the company would have allowed Hitler to run propaganda, and quoted a headline, “Just Think What Goebbels Could Have Done with Facebook.”

The speech is thoughtful, passionate, and a withering criticism of Facebook, YouTube, Google, and Twitter.

Read the remarks or watch the video here.

6. Great Data: Social Media Use by Generation and Location

Now that you’ve read or watched Cohen’s rebuke, let’s set the context with this data-packed infographic showing how social media influences society using brand discovery, product research, and yes, influencer marketing. I learn something more every time I look at this. Consider: 73% of Boomers used Facebook in the last month, but only 28% of them used Instagram. That makes my head hurt.

Visualizing Social Media Use

7. Protip: Your Tattletale Web Browser

When you realize how much information your web browser shares with the world, you will never again wonder how multibillion dollar ad companies posing as tech companies know everything about you. Go ahead and click. It’s safe, and you should know these things.

Signed into Spotify? I don’t even use Spotify any more!

8. Bizarre Bazaar (strange stuff for sale online)

With snow on the ground in much of the country, this is the perfect time to tell you about Animal Tracks, the sandals that make animal prints in snow, sand, or dirt. 

The T-Rex might be pushing it, but see what happens with the wolf.

9. ICYMI – Top links from the past 30 days

100,000 Stars – an awesome visualization

Animated charts showing best selling musicians – on Youtube

Record calls with your smartphone – at Wired

10. Coffee Break:  Street View Fun

There really is a website for everything. This one features the greatest images caught by those Google cars that traverse every road adding to the company’s street view feature in Google Maps. 

Check out the daily photo, the best month, or the top 100 of all time.

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