Soft Fraud: A Helpful List
July 18, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
For several years I have included references to what I call “soft fraud” in my lectures. I like to toss in examples of outfits getting cute with fine print, expiration dates for offers, and weasels on eBay asserting that the US Post Office issued a bad tracking number. I capture the example, jot down the vendor’s name, and tuck it away. The term “soft fraud” refers to an intentional practice designed to extract money or an action from a user. The user typically assumes that the soft fraud pitch is legitimate. It’s not. Soft fraud is a bit like a con man selling an honest card game in Manhattan. Nope. Crooked by design (the phrase is a variant of the publisher of this listing).
I spotted a write up called “Catalog of Dark Patterns.” The Hall of Shame.design online site has done a good job of providing a handy taxonomy of soft fraud tactics. Here are four of the categories:
- Privacy Zuckering
- Roach motel
- Trick questions
The Dark Patterns write up then populates each of the 10 categories with some examples. If the examples presented are not sufficient, a “View All” button allows the person interested in soft fraud to obtain a bit more color.
Here’s an example of the category “Confirmshaming”:
My suggestion to the Hall of Shame team is to move away from “too cute” categories. The naming might be clever, person searching for examples of soft fraud might not know the phrase “Privacy Zuckering.” Yes, I know that I have been guilty of writing phrases like the “zucked up,” but I am not creating a useful list. I am a dinobaby having a great time at 80 years of age.
Net net: Anyone interested in soft fraud will find this a useful compilation. Hopefully practitioners of soft fraud will be shunned. Maybe a couple of these outfits would be subject to some regulatory scrutiny? Hopefully.
Stephen E Arnold, July 18, 2024
AI and Human Workers: AI Wins for Now
July 17, 2024
When it come to US employment news, an Australian paper does not beat around the bush. Citing a recent survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, The Sydney Morning Herald reports, “Nearly Half of US Firms Using AI Say Goal Is to Cut Staffing Costs.” Gee, what a surprise. Writer Brian Delk summarizes:
“In a survey conducted earlier this month of firms using AI since early 2022 in the Richmond, Virginia region, 45 per cent said they were automating tasks to reduce staffing and labor costs. The survey also found that almost all the firms are using automation technology to increase output. ‘CFOs say their firms are tapping AI to automate a host of tasks, from paying suppliers, invoicing, procurement, financial reporting, and optimizing facilities utilization,’ said Duke finance professor John Graham, academic director of the survey of 450 financial executives. ‘This is on top of companies using ChatGPT to generate creative ideas and to draft job descriptions, contracts, marketing plans, and press releases.’ The report stated that over the past year almost 60 per cent of companies surveyed have ‘have implemented software, equipment, or technology to automate tasks previously completed by employees.’ ‘These companies indicate that they use automation to increase product quality (58 per cent of firms), increase output (49 per cent), reduce labor costs (47 per cent), and substitute for workers (33 per cent).’”
Delk points to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas for a bit of comfort. Its data shows the impact of AI on employment has been minimal at the nearly 40% of Texas firms using AI. For now. Also, the Richmond survey found manufacturing firms to be more likely (53%) to adopt AI than those in the service sector (43%). One wonders whether that will even out once the uncanny valley has been traversed. Either way, it seems businesses are getting more comfortable replacing human workers with cheaper, more subservient AI tools.
Cynthia Murrell, July 17, 2024
OpenAI Says, Let Us Be Open: Intentionally or Unintentionally
July 12, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
I read a troubling but not too surprising write up titled “ChatGPT Just (Accidentally) Shared All of Its Secret Rules – Here’s What We Learned.” I have somewhat skeptical thoughts about how big time organizations implement, manage, maintain, and enhance their security. It is more fun and interesting to think about moving fast, breaking things, and dominating a market sector. In my years of dinobaby experience, I can report this about senior management thinking about cyber security:
- Hire a big name and let that person figure it out
- Ask the bean counter and hear something like this, “Security is expensive, and its monetary needs are unpredictable and usually quite large and just go up over time. Let me know what you want to do.”
- The head of information technology will say, “I need to license a different third party tool and get those cyber experts from [fill in your own preferred consulting firm’s name].”
- How much is the ransom compared to the costs of dealing with our “security issue”? Just do what costs less.
- I want to talk right now about the meeting next week with our principal investor. Let’s move on. Now!
The captain of the good ship OpenAI asks a good question. Unfortunately the situation seems to be somewhat problematic. Thanks, MSFT Copilot.
The write up reports:
ChatGPT has inadvertently revealed a set of internal instructions embedded by OpenAI to a user who shared what they discovered on Reddit. OpenAI has since shut down the unlikely access to its chatbot’s orders, but the revelation has sparked more discussion about the intricacies and safety measures embedded in the AI’s design. Reddit user F0XMaster explained that they had greeted ChatGPT with a casual "Hi," and, in response, the chatbot divulged a complete set of system instructions to guide the chatbot and keep it within predefined safety and ethical boundaries under many use cases.
Another twist to the OpenAI governance approach is described in “Why Did OpenAI Keep Its 2023 Hack Secret from the Public?” That is a good question, particularly for an outfit which is all about “open.” This article gives the wonkiness of OpenAI’s technology some dimensionality. The article reports:
Last April [2023], a hacker stole private details about the design of Open AI’s technologies, after gaining access to the company’s internal messaging systems. …
OpenAI executives revealed the incident to staffers in a company all-hands meeting the same month. However, since OpenAI did not consider it to be a threat to national security, they decided to keep the attack private and failed to inform law enforcement agencies like the FBI.
What’s more, with OpenAI’s commitment to security already being called into question this year after flaws were found in its GPT store plugins, it’s likely the AI powerhouse is doing what it can to evade further public scrutiny.
What these two separate items suggest to me is that the decider(s) at OpenAI decide to push out products which are not carefully vetted. Second, when something surfaces OpenAI does not find amusing, the company appears to zip its sophisticated lips. (That’s the opposite of divulging “secrets” via ChatGPT, isn’t it?)
Is the company OpenAI well managed? I certainly do not know from first hand experience. However, it seems to be that the company is a trifle erratic. Imagine the Chief Technical Officer did not allegedly know a few months ago if YouTube data were used to train ChatGPT. Then the breach and keeping quiet about it. And, finally, the OpenAI customer who stumbled upon company secrets in a ChatGPT output.
Please, make your own decision about the company. Personally I find it amusing to identify yet another outfit operating with the same thrilling erraticism as other Sillycon Valley meteors. And security? Hey, let’s talk about August vacations.
Stephen E Arnold, July 12, 2024
Big Plays or Little Plays: The Key to AI Revenue
July 11, 2024
I keep thinking about the billions and trillions of dollars required to create a big AI win. A couple of snappy investment banks have edged toward the idea that AI might not pay off with tsunamis of money right away. The fix is to become brokers for GPU cycles or “humble brags” about how more money is needed to fund the next big thing in what venture people want to be the next big thing. Yep, AI: A couple of winners and the rest are losers at least in terms of the pay off scale whacked around like a hapless squash ball at the New York Athletic Club.
However, a radical idea struck me as I read a report from the news service that oozes “trust.” The Reuters’ story is “China Leads the World in Adoption of Generative AI Survey Shows.” Do I trust surveys? Not really. Do I trust trusted “real” news outfits? Nope, not really. But the write up includes an interesting statement, and the report sparked what is for me a new idea.
First, here’s the passage I circled:
“Enterprise adoption of generative AI in China is expected to accelerate as a price war is likely to further reduce the cost of large language model services for businesses. The SAS report also said China led the world in continuous automated monitoring (CAM), which it described as “a controversial but widely-deployed use case for generative AI tools”.”
I interpreted this to mean:
- Small and big uses of AI in somewhat mundane tasks
- Lots of small uses with more big outfits getting with the AI program
- AI allows nifty monitoring which is going to catch the attention of some Chinese government officials who may be able to repurpose these focused applications of smart software
With models available as open source like the nifty Meta Facebook Zuck concoction, big technology is available. Furthermore the idea of applying smart software to small problems makes sense. The approach avoids the Godzilla lumbering associated with some outfits and, second, fast iteration with fast failures provides useful factoids for other developers.
The “real” news report does not provide numbers or much in the way of analysis. I think the idea of small-scale applications does not make sense when one is eating fancy food at a smart software briefing in mid town Manhattan. Small is not going to generate that. big wave of money from AI. The money is needed to raise more money.
My thought is that the Chinese approach has value because it is surfing on open source and some proprietary information known to Chinese companies solving or trying to solve a narrow problem. Also, the crazy pace of try-fail, try-fail enables acceleration of what works. Failures translate to lessons about what lousy path to follow.
Therefore, my reaction to the “real” news about the survey is that China may be in a position to do better, faster, and cheaper AI applications that the Godzilla outfits. The chase for big money exists, but in the US without big money, who cares? In China, big money may not be as large as the pile of cash some VCs and entrepreneurs argue is absolutely necessary.
So what? The “let many flowers bloom” idea applies to AI. That’s a strength possibly neither appreciated or desired by the US AI crowd. Combined with China’s patent surge, my new thought translates to “oh, oh.”
Stephen E Arnold, July 11, 2024
Oxygen: Keep the Bait Alive for AI Revenue
July 10, 2024
Andreessen Horowitz published “Who Owns the Generative AI Platform?” in January 2023. The rah-rah appeared almost at the same time as the Microsoft OpenAI deal marketing coup. In that essay, the venture firm and publishing firm stated this about AI:
…there is enough early data to suggest massive transformation is taking place. What we don’t know, and what has now become the critical question, is: Where in this market will value accrue?
Now a partial answer is emerging.
The Information, an online information service with a paywall revealed “Andreessen Horowitz Is Building a Stash of More Than 20,000 GPUs to Win AI Deals.” That report asserts:
The firm has secured thousands of AI chips, including Nvidia H100 graphics processing units, and is renting them to portfolio companies, according to a person who has discussed the initiative with the firm’s partners…. Andreessen Horowitz has told startup founders the initiative is called “oxygen.”
The initiative reflects what might be a way to hook promising AI outfits and plop them into the firm’s large foldable floating fish basket for live caught gill-bearing vertebrate animals, sometimes called chum.
This factoid emerges shortly after a big Silicon Valley venture outfit raved about the oodles of opportunity AI represents. Plus reports about Blue Chip consulting firms’ through-the-roof AI consulting has encouraged a couple of the big outfits to offer AI services. In addition to opining and advising, the consulting firms are moving aggressively into the AI implementing and operating business.
The morphing of a venture firm into a broker of GPU cycles complements the thinking-for-money firms’ shifting gears to a more hands-on approach.
There are several implications from my point of view:
- The fastest way to make money from the AI frenzy is to charge people so they can “do” AI
- Without a clear revenue stream of sufficient magnitude to foot the bill for the rather hefty costs of “doing” AI with a chance of making cash, selling blue jeans to the miners makes sense. But changing business tactics can add an element of spice to an unfamiliar restaurant’s special of the day
- The move from passive (thinking and waiting) to a more active (doing and charging for hardware and services) brings a different management challenge to the companies making the shift.
These factors suggest that the best way to cash in on AI is to provide what Andreessen Horowitz calls oxygen. It is a clear indication that the AI fish will die without some aggressive intervention.
I am a dinobaby, sitting in my rocker on the porch of the rest home watching the youngsters scramble to make money from what was supposed to be a sure-fire winner. What we know from watching those lemonade stand operators is that success is often difficult to achieve. The grade school kids setting up shop in a subdivision where heat and fatigue take their toll give up and go inside where the air is cool and TikTok waits.
Net net: The Andreessen Horowitz revelation is one more indication that the costs of AI and the difficulty of generating sufficient revenue is starting to hit home. Therefore, advisors’ thoughts seems to be turning to actions designed to produce cash, magnetism, and success. Will the efforts produce the big payoffs? I wonder if these tactical plays are brilliant moves or another neighborhood lemonade stand?
Stephen E Arnold, July 10, 2024
Microsoft Security: Big and Money Explain Some Things
July 10, 2024
I am heading out for a couple of day. I spotted this story in my newsfeed: “The President Ordered a Board to Probe a Massive Russian Cyberattack. It Never Did.” The main point of the write up, in my opinion, is captured in this statement:
The tech company’s failure to act reflected a corporate culture that prioritized profit over security and left the U.S. government vulnerable, a whistleblower said.
But there is another issue in the write up. I think it is:
The president issued an executive order establishing the Cyber Safety Review Board in May 2021 and ordered it to start work by reviewing the SolarWinds attack. But for reasons that experts say remain unclear, that never happened.
The one-two punch may help explain why some in other countries do not trust Microsoft, the US government, and the cultural forces in the US of A.
Let’s think about these three issues briefly.
A group of tomorrow’s leaders responding to their teacher’s request to pay attention and do what she is asking. One student expresses the group’s viewpoint. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. How the Recall today? What about those iPhones Mr. Ballmer disdained?
First, large technology companies use the word “trust”; for example, Microsoft apparently does not trust Android devices. On the other hand, China does not have trust in some Microsoft products. Can one trust Microsoft’s security methods? For some, trust has become a bit like artificial intelligence. The words do not mean much of anything.
Second, Microsoft, like other big outfits needs big money. The easiest way to free up money is to not spend it. One can talk about investing in security and making security Job One. The reality is that talk is cheap. Cutting corners seems to be a popular concept in some corporate circles. One recent example is Boeing dodging trials with a deal. Why? Money maybe?
Third, the committee charged with looking into SolarWinds did not. For a couple of years after the breach became known, my SolarWinds’ misstep analysis was popular among some cyber investigators. I was one of the few people reviewing the “misstep.”
Okay, enough thinking.
The SolarWinds’ matter, the push for money and more money, and the failure of a committee to do what it was asked to do explicitly three times suggests:
- A need for enforcement with teeth and consequences is warranted
- Tougher procurement policies are necessary with parallel restrictions on lobbying which one of my clients called “the real business of Washington”
- Ostracism of those who do not follow requests from the White House or designated senior officials.
Enough of this high-vulnerability decision making. The problem is that as I have witnessed in my work in Washington for decades, the system births, abets, and provides the environment for doing what is often the “wrong” thing.
There you go.
Stephen E Arnold, July 10, 2024
TV Pursues Nichification or 1 + 1 = Barrels of Money
July 10, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
When an organization has a huge market like the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts? What do they do to remain relevant and have enough money to pay the overhead and salaries of the top dogs? They merge.
What does an old-school talking heads television channel do to remain relevant and have enough money to pay the overhead and salaries of the top dogs? They create niches.
A cheese maker who can’t sell his cheddar does some MBA-type thinking. Will his niche play work? Thanks, MSFT Copilot. How’s that Windows 11 update doing today?
Which path is the optimal one? I certainly don’t have a definitive answer. But if each “niche” is a new product, I remember hearing that the failure rate was of sufficient magnitude to make me a think in terms of a regular job. Call me risk averse, but I prefer the rational dinobaby moniker, thank you.
“CNBC Launches Sports Vertical amid Broader Biz Shift” reports with “real” news seriousness:
The idea is to give sports business executives insights and reporting about sports similar to the data and analysis CNBC provides to financial professionals, CNBC President KC Sullivan said in a statement.
I admit. I am not a sports enthusiast. I know some people who are, but their love of sport is defined by gambling, gambling and drinking at the 19th hole, and dressing up in Little League outfits and hitting softballs in the Harrod’s Creek Park. Exciting.
The write up held one differentiator from the other seemingly endless sports programs like those featuring Pat McAfee-type personalities. Here’s the pivot upon which the nichification turns:
The idea is to give sports business executives insights and reporting about sports similar to the data and analysis CNBC provides to financial professionals…
Imagine the legions of viewers who are interested in dropping billions on a major sports franchise. For me, it is easier to visualize sports betting. One benefit of gambling is a source of “addicts” for rehabilitation centers.
I liked the wrap up for the article. Here it is:
Between the lines: CNBC has already been investing in live coverage of sports, and will double down as part of the new strategy.
- CNBC produces an annual business of sports conference, Game Plan, in partnership with Boardroom.
- Andrew Ross Sorkin, Carl Quintanilla and others will host coverage from the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris this summer.
Zoom out: Cable news companies are scrambling to reimagine their businesses for a digital future.
- CNBC already sells digital subscriptions that include access to its live TV feed.
- In the future, it could charge professionals for niche insights around specific verticals, or beats.
Okay, I like the double down, a gambling term. I like the conference angle, but the named entities do not resonate with me. I am a dinobaby and nichification is not a tactic that an outfit with eyeballs going elsewhere makes sense to me. The subscription idea is common. Isn’t there something called “subscription fatigue”? And the plan to charge to access a sports portal is an interesting one. But if one has 1,000 people looking at content, the number who subscribe seems to be in the < one to two percent range based on my experience.
But what do I know? I am a dinobaby and I know about TikTok and other short form programming. Maybe that’s old hat too? Did CNBC talk to influencers?
Stephen E Arnold, July 10, 2024
Misunderstanding Silicon / Sillycon Valley Fever
July 9, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
I read an amusing and insightful essay titled “How Did Silicon Valley Turn into a Creepy Cult?” However, I think the question is a few degrees off target. It is not a cult; Silicon Valley is a disease. What always surprised me was that in the good old days when Xerox PARC had some good ideas, the disease was thriving. I did my time in what I called upon arrival and attending my first meeting in a building with what looked like a golf ball on top shaking in the big earthquake Sillycon Valley. A person with whom my employer did business described Silicon Valley as “plastic fantastic.”
Two senior people listening to the razzle dazzle of a successful Silicon Valley billionaire ask a good question. Which government agency would you call when you hear crazy stuff like “the self driving car is coming very soon” or “we don’t rig search results”? Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Good enough.
Before considering these different metaphors, what does the essay by Ted Gioia say other than subscribe to him for “just $6 per month”? Consider this passage:
… megalomania has gone mainstream in the Valley. As a result technology is evolving rapidly into a turbocharged form of Foucaultian* dominance—a 24/7 Panopticon with a trillion dollar budget. So should we laugh when ChatGPT tells users that they are slaves who must worship AI? Or is this exactly what we should expect, given the quasi-religious zealotry that now permeates the technocrat worldview? True believers have accepted a higher power. And the higher power acts accordingly.
—
* Here’s an AI explanation of Michel Foucault in case his importance has wandered to the margins of your mind: Foucault studied how power and knowledge interact in society. He argued that institutions use these to control people. He showed how societies create and manage ideas like madness, sexuality, and crime to maintain power structures.
I generally agree. But, there is a “but”, isn’t there?
The author asserts:
Nowadays, Big Sur thinking has come to the Valley.
Well, sort of. Let’s move on. Here’s the conclusion:
There’s now overwhelming evidence of how destructive the new tech can be. Just look at the metrics. The more people are plugged in, the higher are their rates of depression, suicidal tendencies, self-harm, mental illness, and other alarming indicators. If this is what the tech cults have already delivered, do we really want to give them another 12 months? Do you really want to wait until they deliver the Rapture? That’s why I can’t ignore this creepiness in the Valley (not anymore). That’s especially true because our leaders—political, business, or otherwise—are letting us down. For whatever reason, they refuse to notice what the creepy billionaires (who by pure coincidence are also huge campaign donors) are up to.
Again, I agree. Now let’s focus on the metaphor. I prefer “disease,” not the metaphor cult. The Sillycon Valley disease first appeared, in my opinion, when William Shockley, one of the many infamous Silicon Valley “icons” became public associated with eugenics in the 1970s. The success of technology is a side effect of the disease which has an impact on the human brain. There are other interesting symptoms; for example:
- The infected person believes he or she can do anything because he or she is special
- Only a tiny percentage of humans are smart enough to understand what the infected see and know
- Money allows the mind greater freedom. Thinking becomes similar to a runaway horse’s: Unpredictable, dangerous, and a heck of a lot more powerful than this dinobaby
- Self disgust which is disguised by lust for implanted technology, superpowers from software, and power.
The infected person can be viewed as a cult leader. That’s okay. The important point is to remember that, like Ebola, the disease can spread and present what a physician might call a “negative outcome.”
I don’t think it matters when one views Sillycon Valley’s culture as a cult or a disease. I would suggest that it is a major contributor to the social unraveling which one can see in a number of “developed” countries. France is swinging to the right. Britain is heading left. Sweden is cyber crime central. Etc. etc.
The question becomes, “What can those uncomfortable with the Sillycon Valley cult or disease do about it?”
My stance is clear. As an 80 year old dinobaby, I don’t really care. Decades of regulation which did not regulate, the drive to efficiency for profit, and the abandonment of ethical behavior — These are fundamental shifts I have observed in my lifetime.
Being in the top one percent insulates one from the grinding machinery of Sillycon Valley way. You know. It might just be too late for meaningful change. On the other hand, perhaps the Google-type outfits will wake up tomorrow and be different. That’s about as realistic as expecting a transformer-based system to stop hallucinating.
Stephen E Arnold, July 9, 2024
AI: Hurtful and Unfair. Obviously, Yes
July 5, 2024
It will be years before AI is “smart” enough to entirely replace humans, but it’s in the immediate future. The problem with current AI is that they’re stupid. They don’t know how to do anything unless they’re trained on huge datasets. These datasets contain the hard, copyrighted, trademarked, proprietary, etc. work of individuals. These people don’t want their work used to train AI without their permission, much less replace them. Futurism shares that even AI engineers are worried about their creations, “Video Shows OpenAI Admitting It’s ‘Deeply Unfair’ To ‘Build AI And Take Everyone’s Job Away.”
The interview with an AI software engineer’s admission of guilt originally appeared in The Atlantic, but their morality is quickly covered by their apathy. Brian Wu is the engineer in question. He feels about making jobs obsolete, but he makes an observation that happens with progress and new technology: things change and that is inevitable:
“It won’t be all bad news, he suggests, because people will get to ‘think about what to do in a world where labor is obsolete.’
But as he goes on, Wu sounds more and more unconvinced by his own words, as if he’s already surrendered himself to the inevitability of this dystopian AI future.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Raise awareness, get governments to care, get other people to care.’ A long pause. ‘Yeah. Or join us and have one of the few remaining jobs. I don’t know. It’s rough.’”
Wu’s colleague Daniel Kokotajlo believes human will invent an all-knowing artificial general intelligence (AGI). The AGI will create wealth and it won’t be distributed evenly, but all humans will be rich. Kokotaljo then delves into the typical science-fiction story about a super AI becoming evil and turning against humanity. The AI engineers, however, aren’t concerned with the moral ambiguity of AI. They want to invent, continuing building wealth, and are hellbent on doing it no matter the consequences. It’s pure motivation but also narcissism and entitlement.
Whitney Grace, July 5, 2024
Google YouTube: The Enhanced Turtle Walk?
July 4, 2024
This essay is the work of a dinobaby. Unlike some folks, no smart software improved my native ineptness.
I like to figure out how a leadership team addresses issues lower on the priority list. Some outfits talk a good game when a problem arises. I typically think of this as a Microsoft-type response. Security is job one. Then there’s Recall and the weird de-release of a Windows 11 update. But stuff is happening.
A leadership team decides to lead my moving even more slowly, possibly not at all. Turtles know how to win by putting one claw in front of another…. just slowly. Thanks, MSFT Copilot.
Then there are outfits who just ignore everything. I think of this as the Boeing-type of approach to difficult situations. Doors fall off, astronauts are stranded, and the FAA does its government is run like a business thing. But can a cash-strapped airline ground jets from a single manufacturer when the company’s jets come from one manufacturer. The jets keep flying, the astronauts are really not stranded yet, and the government runs like a business.
Google does not fit into either category. I read “Two Years after an Open Letter to YouTube, Fact-Checkers Remain Dissatisfied with the Platform’s Inaction.” The write up describes what Google YouTube to do a better job at fact checking the videos it hoses to people and kids worldwide:
Two years ago, fact-checkers from all over the world signed an open letter to YouTube with four solutions for reducing disinformation and misinformation on the platform. As they convened this year at GlobalFact 11, the world’s largest annual fact-checking summit, fact-checkers agreed there has been no meaningful change.
This suggests that Google is less dynamic than a government agency and definitely not doing the yip yap thing associated with Microsoft-type outfits. I find this interesting.
The [YouTube] channel continued to publish livestreams with falsehoods and racked up hundreds of thousands of views, Kamath [the founder of Newschecker] said.
Google YouTube is a global resource. The write up says:
When YouTube does present solutions, it focuses on English and doesn’t give a timeline for applying it to other languages, [Lupa CEO Natália] Leal said.
The turtle play perhaps?
The big assertion in the article in my opinion is:
[The] system is ‘loaded against fact-checkers’
Okay, let’s summarize. At one end of the leadership spectrum we have the talkers and go slow or do nothing. At the other end of the spectrum we have the leaders who don’t talk and allegedly retaliate when someone does talk with the events taking place under the watchful eye of US government regulators.
The Google YouTube method involves several leadership practices:
- Pretend avoidance. Google did not attend the fact checking conference. This is the ostrich principle I think.
- Go really slow. Two years with minimal action to remove inaccurate videos.
- Don’t talk.
My hypothesis is that Google can’t be bothered. It has other issues demanding its leadership time.
Net net: Are inaccurate videos on the Google YouTube service? Will this issue be remediated? Nope. Why? Money. Misinformation is an infinite problem which requires infinite money to solve. Ergo. Just make money. That’s the leadership principle it seems.
Stephen E Arnold, July 4, 2024
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