TikTok: Can One Monetize Human Smuggling?
June 6, 2022
Selling or renting people for illegal purposes remains an area of interest to government officials. Disruptions like Russia’s special action in Ukraine have contributed to the flow of product. I read “Inside the Risky World of Migrant TikTok” and learned:
migrant TikTok[is] an ecosystem of content by and for migrants often repurposed to advertise and promote perilous, sometimes deadly journeys across closed European borders.
The write up added:
experts pointed to migrant TikTok as a new entry point for young people into the world of irregular migration. The absence of reliable information means that social media has long played a role in helping people share advice, with Facebook groups and other private channels acting as informal hubs for knowledge: how to travel, whom to contact. But with the rise of apps like TikTok where posts are public, compounded by recommender algorithms that repeatedly suggest similar content, virality [sic] has given this information greater reach among people who aren’t actively searching for it.
The article includes an interesting observation about the smart software in use at Zuckbook and TikTok; to wit:
Social media companies like TikTok and Meta increasingly employ AI systems to moderate content at scale. But since these AI systems are context-blind, digital rights activists say they can end up missing, for example, a key word in dialect. That keyword may continue to feed similar content onto a user’s timeline.
The European Union is poking into this subject and regulations may emerge:
New EU legislation attempts to mandate the monitoring of online smuggling networks and even algorithm transparency, while agencies like Frontex and Europol have tried to use data scraping to inform predictive analysis models for what routes illegal migrants might use. So far, it’s resulted in a tug of war that leaves the content largely up and available.
The write up points to a word like haraga (?????) or harraga when converted to Kentucky speak’s colloquial “those who burn at the borders.” (Klassy Kentucky, of course.)
I was curious about the estimable Google. The link to search YouTube’s version of TikTok is at this link. Now enter the term “haraga”. Here’s the result I saw using my “we track you, Beyond Search person:
Yep, looks like the type of content discussed in the cited article.
What about the spelling harraga:
To sum up, the focus on TikTok is good. TikTok is gnawing into the viewing habits of people younger than I. Facebook and Google want to check the China-affiliated super app. The Google’s filtering system may need some tweaking to cope with the migration information findable to some degree on YouTube.
Several observations:
- More attention should be directed at TikTok and other short video platforms as well
- Smart software has not been turned to filter certain content some European border control professionals might like
- The EU regulatory moves warrant watching. Now there’s a story for the big US media to explore.
- Where there is traffic, there will be ads.
Net net: The content related possibly illegal trans border activity is one more example about the growing influence of TikTok. The flip side is that Zuckbook and Google may find themselves “following.” I do not give this a “like.”
Stephen E Arnold, June 6, 2022
Follina, Follina, Making Microsofties Cry
June 6, 2022
I read “China-Backed Hackers Are Exploiting Unpatched Microsoft Zero-Day.” According to the estimable Yahoo News outfit:
China-backed hackers are exploiting an unpatched Microsoft Office zero-day vulnerability, known as “Follina”, to execute malicious code remotely on Windows systems…. The flaw, which affects 41 Microsoft products including Windows 11 and Office 365, works without elevated privileges, bypasses Windows Defender detection, and does not need macro code to be enabled to execute binaries or scripts.
Ah, ha, Windows 11. The trusted protection thing? Yeah, well. The write up added some helpful time information:
The Follina zero-day was initially reported to Microsoft on April 12, after Word documents – which pretended to be from Russia’s Sputnik news agency offering recipients a radio interview – were found abusing the flaw in the wild. However, Shadow Chaser Group’s crazyman, the researcher who first reported the zero-day, said Microsoft initially tagged the flaw as not a “security-related issue”. The tech giant later informed the researcher that the “issue has been fixed,” but a patch does not appear to be available.
Bob Dylan’s song makes this latest security issue easy to remember:
Follina, Follina
Girl, you’re on my mind
I’m a-sittin down thinkin of you
I just can’t keep from crying
Big sobs, not sniffles.
Stephen E Arnold, June 6, 2022
Can Kyndryl Drill IBM and Strike Gold? But Who Drilled Whom?
June 6, 2022
I found it amusing that Big Blue found itself on the wrong side of what I call a deal poaching allegation. The details of the BMC and IBM services for AT&T is interesting. However, a knock on effect of that $1.6 billion dollar settlement has put the estimable IBM spin out Kyndryl in the spotlight. I thought the name “Kyndryl” was one of those pharma products tailored to old people who watched cable news talking heads. Was I wrong? Absolutely. Kyndryl is IBM’s managed services business. The idea for that was that big companies did not want to deal with full time equivalents who kept an organization’s servers chugging along. Let IBM do it was a good business until the sharpies at Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, among others, figured out how to package the cloud to chew into Big Blue’s revenues.
Gulp down a Wal-DRYL and check out “Kyndryl Shares Swoon on Fear It Faces Huge Liability in Lawsuit Against IBM.” The article explains:
Spun out of IBM (ticker: IBM) last year, Kyndryl (KD) is basically IBM’s old managed IT services business. It is a gigantic company with around $18 billion in sales and a workforce of about 90,000 people. But Kyndryl is shrinking at the top line, pays no dividend, and is having trouble finding a constituency among investors. The stock is down more than 50% since the spinoff was completed in November. And now the two companies find themselves on the opposite sides of a legal mess that poses considerable risks for Kyndryl.
What I find interesting is that the incident strikes me as one part of IBM is fighting another part of IBM. Where does the customer fit into this crashing of brilliantly managed entities? I know. Let’s ask Watson. No, let’s check out M-Dryl. Seems less financially risky.
Stephen E Arnold, June 6, 2022
Alphabet Google and the Caste Bias Cook Out
June 3, 2022
The headline in the Bezosish Washington Post caught my attention. Here it is: “Google’s Plan to Talk about Caste Bias Led to Division and Rancor.” First off, I had zero idea what caste bias means, connotes, denotes, whatever.
Why not check with the Delphic Oracle of Advertising aka Google? The Alphabet search system provides this page of results to the query “caste bias”:
Look no ads. Gee, I wonder why? Okay, not particularly helpful info.
I tried the query “caste bias Google” on Mr. Pichai’s answer machine and received this result:
Again no ads? What? Why? How?
Are there no airlines advertising flights to a premier vacation destination? What about hotels located in sunny Mumbai? No car rental agencies? (Yeah, renting a car in Delhi is probably not a good idea for someone from Tulsa, Oklahoma.) And the references to “casteist” baffled me. (I would have spelled casteist as castist, but what do I know?)
Let’s try Swisscows.com “caste bias Google”:
Nice results, but I still have zero idea about caste bias.
I knew about the International Dalit Solidarity Network. I navigated the IDSN site. Now we’re cooking with street trash and tree branches in the gutter next to a sidewalk where some unfortunate people sleep in Bengaluru:
“Caste discrimination” means if one is born to a high caste, that caste rank is inherited. If one is born to a low caste, well, someone has to sweep the train stations and clean the facilities, right? (I am paraphrasing, thank you.)
Now back to the Bezoish article cited above. I can now put this passage in the context of Discrimination World, an employment theme park, in my opinion:
Soundararajan [born low caste] appealed directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who comes from an upper-caste family in India, to allow her presentation to go forward. But the talk was canceled, leading some employees to conclude that Google was willfully ignoring caste bias. Tanuja Gupta, a senior manager at Google News who invited Soundararajan to speak, resigned over the incident, according to a copy of her goodbye email posted internally Wednesday [June 1, 2022] and viewed by The Washington Post. India’s engineers have thrived in Silicon Valley. So has its caste system. [Emphasis added.]
Does this strike you as slightly anti” Land of the Free and Home of the Brave””? The article makes it pretty clear that a low caste person appealing to a high caste person for permission to speak. That permission was denied. No revealing attire at Discrimination World. Then another person who judging by that entity’s name might be Indian, quits in protest.
Then the killer: Google hires Indian professionals and those professionals find themselves working in a version of India’s own Discrimination World theme park. And, it seems, that theme park has rules. Remember when Disney opened a theme park in France and would not serve wine? Yeah, that cultural export thing works really well. But Disney’s management wizards relented. Alphabet is spelling out confusion in my opinion.
Putting this in the context of Google’s approach to regulating what one can say and not say about Snorkel wearing smart software people, the company has a knack for sending signals about equality. Googlers are not sitting around the digital camp fire singing Joan Baez’s Kumbaya.
Googlers send signals about caste behavior described by the International Dalit Solidarity Network this way:
Untouchables’ – known in South Asia as Dalits – are often forcibly assigned the most dirty, menial and hazardous jobs, [emphasis added] and many are subjected to forced and bonded labour. Due to exclusion practiced by both state and non-state actors, they have limited access to resources, services and development, keeping most Dalits in severe poverty. They are often de facto excluded from decision making and meaningful participation in public and civil life.
Several observations:
- Is the alleged caste behavior crashing into some of the precepts of life in the US?
- Is Google’s management reacting like a cow stunned by a slaughter house’s captive bolt pistols?
- Should the bias allegations raised by Dr. Timnit Gebru be viewed in the context of management behaviors AND algorithmic functions focused on speed and efficiency for ad-related purposes be revisited? (Maybe academics without financial ties to Google, experts from the Netherlands, and maybe a couple of European Union lawyers? US regulators and Congressional representatives would be able to review the findings after the data are gathered?)
- In the alleged Google caste system, where do engineers from certain schools rank? What about females from “good” schools versus females from “less good” schools? What about other criteria designed to separate the herd into tidy buckets? None of this 60 percent threshold methodology. Let’s have nice tidy buckets, shall we? No Drs. Gebru and Mitchell gnawing at Dr. Jeff Dean’s snorkeling outfit.
I wonder what will be roasted in the Googley fire pit in celebration of Father’s Day? Goat pete and makka rotis? Zero sacred cow burgers.
Stephen E Arnold, June 3, 2022
One Click Fires: An Amazon Drone Delivers
June 3, 2022
I read another one of those “aren’t big tech outfits more important than the government” stories. “When Amazon Drones Crashed, the Company Told the FAA to Go Fly a Kite” reports:
Amazon’s Prime Air autonomous drone delivery program has tried to put off federal investigations into some of its drone crashes by claiming that the company has the authority to investigate its own crashes, according to federal documents obtained through a public records request. The company has also been slow to turn over data related to crashes, the documents show.
The FAA does has an interesting track record. Boeing 737 Max, anyone?
The write up states:
At least eight Amazon drones crashed during testing in the past year, Insider previously reported, including one that sparked a 20-acre brush fire in eastern Oregon last June after the drone’s motors failed.
Fire?
I found this statement fascinating, the Boeing DNA, I suppose:
Prime Air VP David Carbon, a former Boeing executive, has spent the past two years pushing the division to complete testing needed to obtain regulatory approval for its autonomous drones. But changing goals, frequent delays, and a shifting culture has led to low morale, employee burnout, and an attrition rate as high as 70% on the company’s test team, Insider previously reported. Some employees have left amid concerns about Prime Air’s safety culture…
Governments just don’t get it. Certain big tech companies operate on a higher plane or is it plain?
Stephen E Arnold, June 3, 2022
Google and Assertions of Control: Google, Too Much Control? Never
June 3, 2022
Technically Google does not own the Internet, but we know the search engine giant controls it. Google wants to keep the status quo in its favor, but Vox via Recode explains that a new antitrust bill could ruin it: “How Much Longer Can Google Own The Internet?” US lawmakers led by Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah introduced the Competition Transparency in Digital Advertising Act. The bill is bipartisan and bicameral and it would prevent any company that has more than $20 billion in digital ad revenue from owning multiple parts of the advertising network. This bill would primarily target Meta and Google.
Google would be forced to choose between the roles of buyer, seller, and running the ad exchange between the pair. Google owns all three and denies allegations that it manipulates the market to its advantage. Lee claims Google’s control forces American consumers and businesses to pay monopoly taxes. Google retaliated by saying the bill is aiming at the wrong target and comes at the wrong time.
This would not be the only antitrust bill Google and other Big Tech companies are facing. Google, however, is in the biggest trouble. Google is facing two anti-competitive lawsuits filed by state attorneys general in all fifty states except Alabama and US territories DC, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Thirty-seven more state attorneys general filed another lawsuit about the Google Play mobile app store, seventeen attorneys general are suing about the content in Lee’s bill, and cases are coming from Epic Games and Match Group about Google’s app store. The US Department of Justice probably will file more lawsuits along with other countries. Two antitrust bills are likely to be ratified by the end of summer:
“It’s too early to say how likely it is that Lee’s bill will go anywhere. But we do know that two bipartisan antitrust bills are very close to becoming law, likely by the end of the summer. Both of them would forbid Google from giving its own products preference on the platforms it owns and operates: The Open App Markets Act would force the Google Play app store to follow certain rules, while the American Innovation and Choice Online Act bans self-preferencing on platforms that Big Tech companies own and operate. Google wouldn’t be allowed to give its own products prominent placement in Google search results, for instance, unless those products organically earned that spot.”
Over the past decade, Google has grown its market dominance and its minuscule competition attempted to prevail upon the US government that it was forming a monopoly and harming competition. Monopolies are not illegal in the United States, except when competition and consumers are hurt.
One of the DOJ lawsuits investigates Google’s exclusionary agreements with Apple and Mozilla. Google paid these companies to make Google the default search engine on their browsers. Apple and Mozilla extremely benefit from the exclusionary agreement with Google.
Users are forced to use Google as the default search engine and are not given a choice for anything else. Default search engines can be changed in a browser’s settings, but most users do not know how to find the option. Google counters that no one is forced to use their search engine.
The Google Play store lawsuit argues that even though Google allows alternatives for its app store, the company does not make it easy to find alternatives. The search engine giant claims that it allows for more app openness than other companies like Apple and its commission rate is about the same.
The ad revenue lawsuit claims to be harmful to consumers, because if Google controls the ad platform then it can charge businesses whatever they want. Businesses retain a smaller net profit and consumers are forced to pay higher prices.
Amazon is the only other company that controls as much ad space as Google. Amazon controls retail and Google controls search. Both Tech Giants own the Internet, although Google owns more.
Whitney Grace, June 3, 2022
Smart Software and Lawyers: Just Keep the Billing Up
June 3, 2022
In a webinar for the Innovation in Law Studies Alliance, a pair of academics at the intersection of law and technology shared their thoughts on the role of expert systems in the legal sector. Ivar Timmer is a professor of Legal Management & Technology at the University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam and Tomer Libal is a professor of Computer Science at the American University of Paris. Legal Insider summarizes their discussion in, “Guest Post: Expert Systems Are Here, Let’s Welcome them to the Legal World.” The article specifies the difference between expert systems, a type of AI that has been around since the 1960s, and machine learning: The former is based on the knowledge and experience of experts while the latter is based on data. Writers María Jesús González-Espejo and Ebru Metin then explain why expert systems would be good for the legal field:
“Because most legal professionals have more work than they can afford, they lack time. Much of this work is routine, with little added value. Another reason that makes them interesting is the phenomenon of hyper-regulation. It is impossible to assimilate so many rules. Neither the citizen nor the professional is capable of keeping up to date, understanding and applying a legal system that has become an unreachable jungle. Expert systems can do it, if we teach them to understand the rules, they can guide us, teach us to apply them and even make the most lawful decisions and they will do all this, in an explainable way, because we will have been the ones who told them how to do it. In addition, expert systems can help us improve the quality of standards by requiring representation according to computer-executable logic, which helps clarify and simplify natural language, as well as identify and remove unwanted ambiguities and inaccuracies. Another reason is that our sector is essentially based on legal knowledge which is in the head by a few people. Knowledge of the regulations, of the jurisprudence, of the opinion of the public administrations and of the doctrine.”
Other advantages include information consistency and immediate response times. Also, with expert systems, legal professionals can modeled legal knowledge without having to rely on computer scientists. The article does not mention a key point we observed—expert systems are cheaper than human lawyers while providing new opportunities for billing, too. The write-up goes on to examine which areas of the law might benefit most from expert systems and makes some predictions for the future, so curious readers can navigate there for those details.
Cynthia Murrell, June 3, 2022
A Balloon Fetish?
June 2, 2022
Years ago as I drove down and up the 101 I noted the big hanger. I thought, “Hindenberg?” A couple of years later, the Google inflated the Loon balloons. I loved the name and the idea that balloons could remain in a semi stationary location providing Internet access to those in need. Maybe Sri Lanka or a storm-devastated island? Yeah.
I was interested in “Largest Airship Built in United States Since 1930s to Take Shape Soon Inside Akron Airdock.” The write up reported:
“LTA is standing on the shoulders of its predecessors here at the airdock,” said Alan Weston, the company’s chief executive officer. LTA – as in Lighter Than Air – was founded in California by billionaire Google co-founder Sergey Brin. “Because of their efforts, we are going to be able to build airships that are faster, that are safer, more environmentally friendly and have greater capabilities than any airship built before.”
Yep, another balloon and a big one.
The dollar stores in the rust belt are reporting shortages of helium. Is there a connection? Who knows.
What I do know:
- A certain Xoogler has an interest in balloons
- Previous balloon projects did not remain aloft
- A display of dozens of these big balloons would make a heck of a kids’ birthday party unicorn display just on a Google-like scale.
The big floater is an ideal advertising platform, right?
Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2022
A Harvard Class in Tweets
June 2, 2022
In my first semester of college (certainly not a Harvard because I am a dull normal Rust Belt kid), I figured out that I could boil down an entire 15 week semester into a small stack of 5×8 notecards. Studying to the final was a breeze; there simply wasn’t much to the professors lectures. Let’s see. I was a freshman in 1962, which means that college courses have not changed too much. Instead of notecards I created (and sold to some varsity athletes if I reveal my revenue secrets), “A Harvard Economist Summarizes His Class on Monopolies in 54 Tweets” states:
He began by outlining the four main sections of the class—(1) government policy towards monopolies, (2) competition policy in practice, (3) the increase in industry concentration, (4) the digital giants—and then went on to extrapolate on each issue in a series of 54 tweets.
Next up? Maybe TikToks.
Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2022
NFT Fakery? No! Impossible!
June 2, 2022
It is smart to never believe everything you watch or read on the Internet, especially when it comes to non-fungible tokens (NFTs). If you were not aware, NFTS are digital pieces of property with a value determined by their scarcity and creator. Weird ape portrait NFTs went viral when they made their creator a billionaire. We believed the ape NFTs had drifted into meme history, when a news story about an ever weirder dating app surfaced. Buzzfeed explains the details in, “The Bored Ape Dating That Shut Down Because No Women Signed Up Was Just a Prank, Folks.”
The Twitter user @y4kxyz tweeted that the dating app for owners of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs was shut down because of the disproportional amount of men to women who signed up. It perpetuated the idea that NFTs are only valued by stereotypical lonely males and it was funny. The entire dating app was a joke, but it appeared real enough that some news outlets ran the story:
“Sadly, it isn’t true. It was all a joke. The app never existed in the first place, so it couldn’t have been shut down because there were no women. It was a funny prank — a good joke, a great one, even. The confirmation bias that NFTs are for sad men is strong enough that this tricked a few news outlets into reporting it as if it were real.”
The Buzzfeed article author believed the NFT dating app was a fake and contacted the creator for information. A few months passed, then the joke story about the app shutting down went viral. The dating app creator and the author spoke with the former more or less confirming the entire thing was a prank.
NFT fans were not the only targets. The others were people with a “right-clicker mentality,” referring to how Windows users can simply right click on an image to save a copy.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club dating app was not a bad prank. No one was hurt. It did not start a social justice warrior war. It did not break the Internet and one rioted in the street.
Whitney Grace, June 2, 2022
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