Good Monday morning. It’s October 28th. Google reports earnings later today. Facebook and Apple report on Thursday. Expect lots of tech news this week.

Today’s Spotlight takes about 4 minutes to read. Want to chat about something you see here? You’re looking for the contact form then.

2. News To Know Now

1. Facebook has begun testing a news tab in its app. The news was announced by Campbell Brown, a former CNN anchor and current Facebook exec. Former Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Kornblut is also part of the group. Facebook acknowledged that it will pay some publishers to participate.

2.  UnitedHealth Group has been ordered by New York state regulators to prove that an algorithm they produce is free from racial bias, reports the Wall Street Journal.  A study published in the journal Science claims that white patients were projected to need more care over sicker, non-white patients. At issue is the manner in which the racial bias came from the data since race was excluded from the algorithm.

3. Some of YouTube’s most popular hosts launched a joint effort to raise money to plant trees. The coordinated effort took over YouTube’s trending chart by late Friday. The Team Trees website showed on Sunday that funds had been raised to plant five million of the twenty million trees the organization has set as its goal.

3.  FTC Warning on Stalkerware

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is warning American consumers about “stalkerware”, its term for mobile spyware that monitors another person. Once installed by someone with physical access to your phone, those apps could be run without the person knowing anything was wrong.  The apps then share detailed information about activities like call history, text messages, photos, GPS locations, and browser history.

The FTC alleges that Retina-X developed MobileSpy, which was marketed to monitor employees and children. Another two apps, PhoneSheriff and TeenShield, were marketed to monitor mobile devices used by children. Retina-X sold more than 15,000 subscriptions to all three stalking apps before the company stopped selling them in 2018. All of the apps required that the installer weaken the phone’s security.

The company did not safeguard the data, and it was hacked twice, according to the agency, which cited child and employee privacy laws as well as potential use by domestic abusers.  

Stalkerware is part of a pattern of benign devices and software proving troublesome:

Apple’s iTunes, replaced for Apple computers but still used by millions of Windows users, had a bug that allowed hackers to install ransomware on computers in a new and hard-to-detect way, reports Threatpost. 

New Android malware called Joker infects phones with software that orders premium subscriptions, according to Bleeping Computer. The malware was hidden on 24 Google Play Store apps that were downloaded a half million times. Another type of malware called Cutlet Maker targets ATMs and causes them to “jackpot”–spitting out the machine’s cash.

Even The Vatican’s brand new “smart rosary” (and fitness tracker) had an undetected vulnerability that would allow a hacker to quickly access a user’s Google or Facebook account. Called a brute-force flaw, the vulnerability was detected by a diligent researcher who apparently contacted The Vatican a lot to find the developers.

What we think: You can’t guard against stalkerware being installed on your phone by someone with access to your phone unless you use strong passwords and protections on your phone. Practice safe computing with timely backups, updating all software, and using password managers.

4.  Google Search Updates

You may have heard that Google is using artificial intelligence to sort search results.  They aren’t, but there have been many fantastic headlines saying otherwise. Here is what is happening:

First, it’s not artificial intelligence like you’ll see in a movie. This is a software program that in some instances replaces reliance on a massive database of keyword matching and starts to interpret context. We all sometimes misuse a word or find ourselves picking the best way to express an idea. The new Google software does a better job interpreting natural language. 

The software is called BERT and will be invoked in approximately 10% of search queries. It will change a lot for those of us in the field. But like all of the thousands of changes that Google makes to its algorithms, this should improve the results over time and be transparent to most users.

5. Debugged: $39.95 to Hold Your Baby

Making the rounds again is a story about a hospital charging $39.95 for skin-to-skin contact with a newborn following a C-section delivery. It’s true, but the charge was for an additional nurse because the operating room nurse is otherwise occupied.

Truth or Fiction has details and context.

6. Also in the Spotlight

AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon have launched a joint initiative to update U.S. text messaging systems from SMS to a new, feature-rich RCS that looks more like Facebook Messenger or chat apps. [The Verge]

97% of tweets from U.S. adults that mentioned national politics came from just 10% of users according to  a new study. Sorry, not sorry.  [Pew Research]

7. Great Data: Beautiful Hidden Logic of Cities

Erin Davis has color-coded map data from major cities and found… well, some interesting patterns underlying how each city was laid out.

See her work here.

8. Protip: Free Digital Wellbeing Apps

We share a lot about the digital wellbeing initiative because of its importance in helping us find balance between life and screens. This week Google launched six new free apps as part of the effort, including new ways to queue your phone’s notifications and counters showing you how often you check your phone.

Android Police run down the apps and has download links.

9. Bizarre Bazaar (strange stuff for sale online)

You can’t catch him, he’s the Gingerdead Man. Ready to combine Halloween and the cookie-heavy winter holidays? How about some gingerbread skeleton cookie cutters?

Genuine Fred has them in stock along with Snack-o-Lanterns.

10. Coffee Break:  Pupper Edition

B’gosh, you’re going to lose time on this website that features gifs of the most adorable puppers, doggos, and good bois and girls. There are no votes, comments, or any other distractions.  

You can, however, download your favorites.

Good Monday morning. It’s October 21st. The Washington Nationals face the Houston Astros to start baseball’s World Series on Tuesday night. 

2. News To Know Now

1. Facebook will change the way it counts the number of times someone has seen an organization’s posts. The company says that the change will be less extreme than the change in Q1 and appears to adjust the number of impressions downward. There has been scant information about this news that broke Friday, and we expect more this week. [AdWeek]

2. Facebook has also opened its search channel to advertisers after months of testing. When you search for a page or person on Facebook, you will now see advertising mixed in with the results.

3. A bill that would create personal penalties for corporate executives leading organizations with data privacy problems was introduced by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) last week. Wyden is the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee that will first consider the legislation. [Ars Technica, Congress.gov Legislation Tracking]

3.  Medical Technology on Consumer Devices

Medical technology advances are enabling prolonged lifespans in many developed countries, and consumer devices are now being pressed into service to help medical practitioners help you prevent and fight diseases. 

Mobile phones and wearable devices such as fitness trackers are the tools fueling change. A top-end smartphone tends to lag the power of computer desktops by as little as five years. Mobile usage rates continue skyrocketing across all groups and have caused substantial decreases in other device sales. That means that your smartphone is as powerful as computers from only a few years ago and much more likely to be nearby.

Consider these medical technology advances that seemed aspirational ten years ago:

• Google’s Android Live Transcribe app creates talk-to-text “instant captioning” in seventy different languages, a boon to hearing impaired people.
  
• CPAP machines used by millions to treat sleep apnea now often use a home’s computer network or a device’s bluetooth connection to automatically upload sleep data directly to physicians.
  
• Taking a selfie video with your phone can diagnose high blood pressure based on how software interprets the smartphone’s light interacting with your skin. There are still major kinks to work out, but with 1.1 billion hypertension sufferers worldwide, there is plenty of upside.
  
• Beauty company L’Oreal created a nine millimeter wide sensor that measures UV exposure. The device can store three months of data.
  
• Don’t forget that video conferencing was essentially unavailable in the mobile marketplace until 2012. A recent data analysis of insurance claims shows that consumers are availing themselves of video visits to doctors and clinicians.

Plenty of issues still need to be decided, especially data privacy and securing medical devices that consumers may wear. We told you previously about security researchers who had to prove to Medtronics that they could hack an insulin pump and withhold or overdose insulin into a vulnerable patient.

4.  Google Search Updates

Advertisers can now create a lead form that appears directly in Google’s search results. The information is then sent to the company. It’s part of the ongoing process we’ve been following and sharing with you that allows Google to be a sole distribution point for as many search queries as possible. They describe the process as frictionless, which is a phrase that certain members of the fox family often use when asked to guard a chicken coop.

A substantial part of that initiative is the often-overlooked Google Books project, which just celebrated its fifteenth anniversary. What started out as Page and Brin’s “audacious goal of organizing the world’s information” now includes a digitization project of more than forty million books. Google rolled out a new interface last week and greatly improved the search screens. Google already keeps the results one click away from every search result.

Google continues to be interested in crowd-sourced data and will now allow Apple users to report traffic congestion, crashes, speed traps, and similar information using Google Maps. This information can appear when people search for how to find a business. In online search forums where marketers sometimes speculate about nefarious things, the notion of negative information on maps is a big deal. Let your imagination run wild with tales of chronic traffic slowdowns and undesirable yet fictitious businesses nearby.

Google is also cautioning organizations not to use a separate domain to present your website to mobile users. That’s because they are not always sure what device a search is using and might display mobile-optimized pages to desktop computer users. Our takeaway is that mobile device vs. desktop device optimization is best left to people who study such things.  Need more details? Point the responsible person in your org to this YouTube Q&A with Google analyst John Mueller.

5. Debugged: Flu Vaccine does not cause polio

Things are bad enough when untrained lay people incorrectly insist that flu vaccines cause influenza. They can’t and don’t. Now a stupid meme is making the rounds on Instagram claiming that “over 1,100 people died from reactions to the flu shot” last year. And that it causes polio in children. 

The flu vaccine does not give children polio. Severe allergies do occur at the rate of 1.3 allergic reactions per one million doses. Those reactions caused one person to be hospitalized in the last three years. No one died from the flu shot.

Get more facts here if you need them.

6. Also in the Spotlight

Lyft is offering free or discounted rides to job seekers and to new hires still waiting for their first paycheck. The USO, United Way, and Goodwill are partners. [Lyft]

Pinterest is allowing users to “fine tune” their pin feeds and get recommendations about their secret boards. Head over to this explanation on their site to learn more. [Pinterest]

7. Great Data: An Interactive that Teaches 

MIT has created the Court Algorithm Game (yay, algo games!) that allows users to set standards for whether a judge should jail a defendant. There’s no code involved, promises MIT, which uses an iterative process to take visitors through some of the complexity that a human or software program faces when making this recommendation.

I learned a lot from this tool. That’s why it’s great data.

8. Protip: Your Data After Your Death

You know when you need a digital executor, and yes, I do. But most people don’t. They just need to someone to help memorialize their Facebook timeline and to get their data out of Google.

The funny and smart people at The Next Web take you through how to do the latter in their feature from this weekend, “RIP: How to stop Google from stealing all your data after you die.”

9. Bizarre Bazaar (strange stuff for sale online)

If you write a compelling 50 word answer about why art matters,  British artist Banksy may deign to sell you a clutch for £750 ($968 USD) or a mug for much less. Some items like the clutch are limited editions. Some like the mug are priced around $13-15 to keep the man outfitted in spray paint.

Visit Gross Domestic Product, the homewares brand of Banksy.

10. Coffee Break: Traffic planning simulator

Remember that MIT interactive tool showing you how hard it is to be a judge from three items ago? It’s also really hard to design optimum traffic flow. That’s why Google Maps wants to report about it. 

Go ahead and take a spin on this simulator that lets you change road types, truck behavior, noise levels, and all sorts of variables.

There’s a politeness indicator for drivers changing lanes that I cranked down to zero to mimic the DC Beltway.

Start your engines!

Good Monday morning. It’s Indigenous People’s Day in four states: Alaska, Minnesota, Vermont, and South Dakota. Not only is Columbus Day inappropriate based on what historians now tell us, but it was a recent invention that Congress first approved as a holiday in 1937. It’s still on the federal calendar as a holiday so there is no mail delivery and most federal offices are closed. 

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.

2. News To Know Now

1. Turk Telekom, partially owned by the government, cut access to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms for 48 hours while Turkey first invaded Syria last week according to the Internet Society’s NetBlocks initiative. An even larger Internet blackout began this weekend in Ecuador as large anti-government protests were reported.

2. Instagram has removed the “Following” tab that allowed people to learn which accounts were followed by other people. Instagram also rolled out a new app called Threads that mimics the  Snapchat functionality allowing users to quickly send images and messages to a group of close friends. Color me naive, but that seems a lot like social media’s initial purpose.

3. Color me skeptical, too, after hearing about an Accenture survey that reports half of U.S. consumers will  choose slower ground transportation and have items shipped together “for a lighter carbon footprint.”

Did you miss our annual look at how politicians, law enforcement, and others use government data mining to manage people and resources–even to fight crime?

We’ve pulled it all together for you in one easy-to-read report.

3.  Facebook Update: Won’t Fact Check Politicians

Facebook will not fact check ads placed by political campaigns according to Sir Nick Clegg, a Facebook senior executive and former deputy British Prime Minister. Clegg has specifically said that Facebook has no intention of intervening “when politicians speak.”

The move immediately inspired an advertisement from Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) announcing that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had endorsed Donald Trump’s reelection bid. That’s not true, of course, but it’s a smart ad placement from Warren whose social media advertising is among the best of the Democratic presidential hopefuls. 

Anyone can sort and view ads placed on Facebook at the company’s Ad Archive.

Facebook has realized for years that the ads are a bigger problem than local news stories. That’s confirmed by a recent Nieman Lab analysis that looked at 300,000 local stories and found that 40% werre related to sports or obituaries. Emergency information accounted for another 28%. 

That does not mean that news articles on Facebook are accurate.  It means that the ads are especially inaccurate, and that stories from trusted local media sources address community needs and do well with consumer engagement. Have a look at one of the report’s top line graphs below and click through to get more.

Facebook’s hope for cryptocurrency will undoubtedly be tested by politicians when Zuckerberg testifies before the House Financial Services Committee about its Libra product on October 23. We’ll be watching this product closely this week after PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, and Square all canceled their involvement with the new product last week.

And Facebook’s biggest problem likely remains the antitrust review conducted by a coalition of state AG offices. The Washington Post reported last week that “roughly 40 states” are participating in the review of Facebook’s advertising and consumer data practices.

4.  Google Search Updates

Google is also facing antitrust and other government reviews, but has the enviable position of market share. Analytics provider StatCounter reported that for the 12 months ending in September, Google accounted for about 88% of U.S. search and about 93% of worldwide search.

We told you two weeks that Google had recently updated its core algorithm, a much larger update than the daily tweaks and adjustments the company makes. UK firm Sistrix is already reporting that some of the sites seeing traffic increases include tabloid the Daily Mail, Brighton paper The Argus, and Country Life magazine.  That doesn’t mean that this was only an update to improve media site visibility although we’ve written often about Google’s focus on EAT (Expertise-Authority-Trust) as a quality indicator. 

5. Debugged: Greta Thunberg was not with George Soros

Images of climate activist Greta Thunberg supposedly posing with philanthropist George Soros are doctored, according to a FactCheck.org analysis. Conspiracy theory sites like “The Gateway Pundit” have tried to link the 16-year-old with the nearly 90-year-old billionaire.

Thunberg was pictured with fellow climate activist Al Gore, and the picture is ten months old.

6. Also in the Spotlight

European privacy laws continue to be aggressively interpreted. Europe’s top court has ruled that pre-checked consent boxes for tracking website users via cookies are not valid. TechCrunch has more.

Grammarly, the software that tells you to stop using passive voice among other things, received a $90 million investment in a second funding round that values the company at more than $1 billion, Venture Beat reports.

A University of Mexico archaeologist using a free map made with light detection and ranging technology has discovered the ruins of 27 previously unknown Maya ceremonial centers. Some even contain a type of construction archaeologists hadn’t seen before. This is easily our favorite story this week and you can read it in full in The New York Times.

7. Great Data: Using Great Presentation

Video is underused as a reporting media. And a little goes a long way, but this 150 second animation of the growth of different social media networks since 2003 is worth your time for the way it shares data.  Have a look below.

8. Protip: Google’s Digital Wellbeing Tools

We’ve written a lot of words about technology’s effect on reading comprehension, attention span, and linguistic changes. The overwhelming effect is on interpersonal engagement, though, and Google is introducing requirements for digital wellbeing tools to be used on all Android devices.

See what they look like and how to use them.

9. Bizarre Bazaar (strange stuff for sale online)

Shaun Dakin spotted this great use of an Instagram profile page to link to other social media channels, and of course, to the Amazon page selling this calendar of Harslo the Balancing Hound. 

Seems that Harslo has built up an audience of 107,000 Instagram followers, almost that many on Facebook, and some great media hits for balancing stuff on his head.

He’s a cute doggo.