Spotlight

News You Need to Know Now

Good Monday morning. It’s May 7th. Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers this Sunday, including the mothers in heart and spirit who never ad the opportunity to raise a child.

Highlights

• • F8, Facebook’s big annual show, happened this week. There is plenty of news including the new dating function everyone is talking about.

• • Google introduced dot app–a place for mobile app downloads. They bought the rights to the entire top-level domain three years ago for only $25 million.

• • Twitter left a password file unprotected. Any password used there may have been compromised. If you’re still using the same password for multiple services, you need to stop. And if you’re using them on Twitter and another service, you need to change both.

Facebook Starts Advertiser ID Program

Facebook’s promise to track individuals purchasing political ads became real Friday afternoon when the first requests were sent to advertisers. This is part of my personal application. Here’s the process:

• An application with a physical mailing address.
• A copy of a driver’s license or passport including size and color requirements for the image.
• A portion of your Social Security Number (like a credit application)
• A letter with a code is sent to the address on the license to be entered in Facebook.
• Only after all that matches are you cleared to run ads.
• Whoever pays for the ads also has to be identified.
• That identity will be be published for anyone to see, as will the ads that are run.

There are holes in this program. U.S. agencies could work for another country. Applicants can lie. But by making the information public, Facebook transfers a big part of political ads verification to the Internet. The wisdom of crowds won’t find everything improper, but you can be certain that people on the other side of an issue or political race will be motivated to look.

That’s the other promise Facebook made. These political ads are also defined as issue ads. Those can be anything from health care to gun violence prevention to the environment and everything in between.

“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants,” wrote Judge Louis Brandeis in 1914. This type of advertising transparency has never been available before–and still isn’t required for broadcast ads.

EU’s Privacy Wars

Rigid data privacy laws in the EU take effect at the end of this month. They’re included in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and cover the privacy rights of all citizens of EU countries regardless of where a company is located.

This is why you’ve seen more notices on websites in the last month than you probably have in previous months combined. Any organization storing information, even an email address, from an EU citizen is subject to the regulation. 

Google is warning its advertising partners, those who place and those who publish ads, about the issue. 

Does a Main Street retailer need to address this? Well, maybe. You should check with your attorney. At the very least, your organization should have a great privacy policy that it abides by. Talk with your attorney.

Spotlighted

We often tell you about voice being the new frontier of search. AudioBurst agrees and has an audio search engine for podcast and radio broadcasts. 

Facebook’s dating service will require a separate profile according to reporting at Recode. There will be a separate messaging app and a mix of automated suggestions and the ability to match others manually. And Facebook says that it will allow all users to clear their history on the platform. This is potentially the biggest program they announced.

Great Data

Understanding probability is a critical part of deciphering your organization’s online performance.

This fantastic website helps people understand that through a live experiment with your own birthday. If you had a fun statistics professor, you may have already participated in the birthday paradox. This website is still worth your time in how it educates users in a technical subject.

Featured image of political symbols: Larisa

Spotlight

News You Need to Know Now

Good morning. It’s Monday, April 23rd.  Alphabet, Google’s parent company, declares earnings after the market closes this afternoon. Analysts expect to learn more about the value of the company’s investment in Uber and several other investments including Credit Karma and Auction.com. Meanwhile, Facebook reports Wednesday afternoon. Expect lots of news about both companies.

Today’s Spotlight takes about 4 minutes to read.

Highlights

• Facebook privacy is still making news. We have lots of coverage on web privacy for you this week.
• Changes to Google Search, Maps, and Chat are done or in the works.
• We have a must-see video showing how easily people can manipulate video, a must-read article about a data broker, and a can’t-miss series about regretful Internet execs.

Facebook to Ask About Privacy Choices 

The company announced this week that all users regardless of where they live will be asked how they will allow Facebook to use their data. “We’ll ask everyone to make choices about ads based on data from partners [and whether you want to continue sharing] political, religious, and relationship information on your profile,” the company promised in a statement.

Facebook faces a gauntlet that includes declining approval ratings, tough privacy laws from the EU that start in May, and a lingering malaise expressed by analysts that next quarter’s ad revenues will slip.

The video below is not from Facebook. It was created by comedian Jordan Peele and published on Buzzfeed this week to show how easily videos can be altered. Israeli technologist Aviv Ovadya spoke for a world skeptical about video and audio proof by asking, “What happens when anyone can make it appear as if anything has happened…”

This video has NSFW language AND it’s by an Obama supporter. But it also shows how easy it is to have software originally used by people to fake porn creating hoax videos. Stick with it in a private space. It’s only 73 seconds and shows how any of us can be taken in by a good fake.

More Privacy

We told you weeks ago about analytics firm Palantir and their secret program with the New Orleans Police Department. Bloomberg followed up on The Verge’s original reporting with “Palantir Knows Everything About You“. Police programs in New Orleans, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are studied as is a JPMorgan finance program.

Big quote from a JPMorgan cyber security exec in this must-read article: “Nefarious ideas became trivial to implement; everyone’s a suspect, so we monitored everything. It was a pretty terrible feeling.”

Regretful Execs

New York magazine has been running a series called “The Internet Apologizes“.

We’ve written about Facebook’s first President and a former Google ethicist making startling comments about these world-changing organizations. Last week we shared news from Jaron Lanier’s TED talk that included this line about Facebook and Google, “I can’t call these things social networks anymore. I call them behavior modification empires.” If you’ve lost a geek like Lanier, you’re tech-cred is crashing.

That’s the “techlash” that Axios was first among mainstream media to start calling out last year. Now New York’s Internet Apologizes series demands your attention. Look for a longer piece by Lanier. There’s also former Reddit exec Dan McComas saying,” …my time at Reddit made the world a worse place.”

There’s also early Facebook investor Roger McNamee who says, “You have created a persuasion engine unlike any created in history.”

It’s big stuff. Many people who built what exists online today are expressing remorse.

Spotlighted – the Google Edition

• Problems ahead for Google. A study claims that Android apps in the Google Play store may improperly be collecting data from kids under the age of 13. WaPo article with the news
• Ghttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/04/16/thousands-of-android-apps-may-be-illegally-tracking-children-study-finds/?utm_term=.375897d82d6f&wpisrc=nl_tech&wpmm=1oogle announced it made another “broad core change” to its search rankings this month. That’s two in five weeks. If you’re seeing traffic fluctuating at your org’s website, look at the details. Or call us. We’re pretty good at that.
• Google is also removing many items from its “autocomplete” function. That’s the part of its software that tries guessing what you want to search for as you type. Spam, adult content phrases, and other non-family friendly phrases are all getting axed.
• Google is also said to be introducing map directions that include landmarks. What a great idea. “Turn right at the Burger King” is a lot easier to deal with then “Turn right in 600 feet”.
• And finally, you know those text/SMS messages that have been with us forever? A report in The Verge focuses on Google convincing carriers selling Android phones to revamp texting.

Spotlight

News You Need to Know Now

Good morning. It’s Monday, April 16th. This is Spotlight #250. Tax Day is Tuesday. You think you have a busy season? The IRS is expecting 32 million tax returns between this week and last week. More than 85% are expected to be filed electronically. 

Today’s Spotlight takes about 3 minutes to read. 

Highlights

Facebook Testimony Week is over. The company was never held to account the way industry insiders expected. We have some fresh data for you from some polling we did.

Uber and YouTube are also in trouble (again) over privacy issues.

Gmail users should see a new version soon that includes Confidential Mode.

Facebook Users Say ‘Legal But Unethical’

After hearing and reading a lot of Facebook news, we asked its users to comment on their perceptions of the issue. There isn’t enough data for us to give high quality percentages on answers, but its fair to say that the people we asked overwhelmingly thought that Facebook operated within the law. To paraphrase Dickens, they also think the law is an ass and that their personal info is being handled in an unethical way.

We cared most about reader answer to this complex question:  Briefly describe the Cambridge Analytica / Facebook scandal.

Many correctly noted that the data policy had changed over time. Many also correctly said that Cambridge took advantage of their Facebook app agreement. 

But there was a lot of focus on the fact that Cambridge is not a U.S. company and a huge percentage that said Facebook sold the data or allowed access to it without user permission. Many of those believed that the 2016 presidential election was influenced, giving credence to the intelligence community theory about Russian government involvement.

Almost all of the Facebook data was obtained when users gave apps, websites, or social media sites like Facebook permission to mine their data. And that’s the issue: people freely volunteered everything. Canceling your account now doesn’t mean that the company has to remove your data unless that’s in their agreement.

Have a look at this Facebook permission screen from an app this weekend.

Facebook Data Agreements

Most of us think that this agreement is how data is captured. And a lot of it is captured that way. This is not an official Monopoly app, and it’s not played on a phone, but on Facebook itself. The company will tell you that they want your birthday to give you in-game rewards on your special day and that they want your friends list so that you can invite them to play. 

But it’s not just game apps looking for data.

To the right is a screen from an official ESPN app Note the images above. The app is using social proof to show me that 33 of my friends have already done this.

And this app wants even more information. In addition to my public profile, Disney-owned ESPN explicitly says that they want a list of all the things I like on Facebook–not just those that are sports-related. And they want my email address.

The moment that I agree to that, I’ve become the entity giving away my data. It’s not ESPN’s fault. It’s certainly not Facebook’s fault. If I don’t want this information out, then I don’t have to get my sports news from the ESPN app.

Technology scientist Jaron Lanier, one of the fathers of Virtual Reality and a prodigy who entered college at the age of 13 said last week in a  well-received TED Talk,

“We cannot have a society in which, if two people wish to communicate, the only way that can happen is if it’s financed by a third person who wishes to manipulate them.” 

But we do have that society. And hopefully with a little more light on the issue, you can make informed choices that best fit your desires.

Spotlighted

Facebook isn’t alone in the hot seat. Uber has agreed to an FTC data privacy audit proposal after it failed to disclose a breach in a timely manner. And a coalition of 20 consumer groups has accused YouTube of violating federal law regulating data collection from children under the age of 13. The groups are asking the FTC to intervene. YouTube has countered by saying that the site’s rules require that users be at least 13 years old to access the site.

Google’s Gmail desktop app is getting a big makeover, including a cool new font and the ability to block others from copying or forwarding your email. Google is also introducing the same kind of suggested replies that are currently featured on its Android app.

Google also switched search results delivered on mobile devices to one long continuous page with a “Show More Results” button instead of reloading the page. That’s the same kind of design that sites like Pinterest and Facebook use.

Great Data

Conveying information in a memorable, visual way is something that we all strive to accomplish. Italian designer Emanuele Abrate did that in a great way by showing the logos of famous companies with the font name replacing the company name.

Here’s YouTube. See the rest of the display called “Logofonts”