Social Media Fantasy Land? Hello, Hello?

April 5, 2018

We noted Facebook’s minor correction. That Cambridge Analytica – GSR 50 million person data glitch; it is now 87 million. Minor stuff. “Facebook Says Cambridge Analytica May Have Had Data on 87 Million People” states:

The 87 million number is the maximum amount of people that could have impacted, according to Facebook’s calculations. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a call with reporters on Wednesday that it got to that number by looking at the maximum number of friends its users had at the time.

Okay, just a minor mistake. Keep in mind that Facebook has 2.3 billion or so “users.” A mere 87 million is not even 10 percent of this select group of well informed, online savvy Facebookers.

I like the “maximum” too. Because Facebook has apparently generated this figure, I know it is rock solid. Why would Facebook obfuscate? I can’t think of a single reason. Perhaps investigators will come up with at least one or two hypotheses?

In this context of revising a 50 million figure to an 87 million figure, we think some analysts are working hard to make social media vendors into really great outfits. In “Using Artificial Intelligence to Investigate Illegal Wildlife Trade on Social Media” I learned:

“Methods from artificial intelligence are being developed and used to investigate the supply chain of the illegal wildlife trade in an innovative and novel way, stresses the importance of such novel methods to identify relevant data on the illegal wildlife trade from social media platforms.”

This movement has become quite far reaching to stop the hunting of elephants and rhinos for their ivory. We spotted a snow leopard jacket for sale on eBay.

ebay snow leopard from kabul

The coat was manufactured in Kabul. Those filters are working really well too.

Even Google is working to preserve animals. The well managed company and ZSL recently teamed up to also help pinpoint poaching hopefully before it happens and definitely after it occurs.

With Facebook revising numbers and Google using its smart software to help minimize poaching, Silicon Valley touchstones are doing excellent work.

“Management excellence in action,” opined one of the Beyond Search researchers. From people to animals, online is setting a new standard in governance infused with smart software.

Stephen E Arnold, April 5, 2018

Comments

One Response to “Social Media Fantasy Land? Hello, Hello?”

  1. Humans Do Not Cut and Paste 80 Million User Profiles and Draw Link Diagrams by Hand : Stephen E. Arnold @ Beyond Search on May 9th, 2018 5:15 am

    […] Slurped by Bots.” The disclosure appeared in Facebook’s own post announcing its new, post-Cambridge-Analytica-hullabaloo data policies. Writer Shaun Nichols […]

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