Facebook Wants to Do Better
April 4, 2018
The company seems to be unable to cook up ways to do better. If “Do You Think Facebook Is Good for the World?” is accurate, Facebook wants its “users” to provide the company with ideas. Mr. Zuckerberg wants to “fix Facebook.” What did Alexis de Tocqueville say about voting in a “democracy”? Was it the triumph of the average? Perhaps Facebook will share the results of its survey.
Stephen E Arnold, April 4, 2018
Cambridge Analytica: The April 3, 2018, DarkCyber Report Is Now Available
April 3, 2018
DarkCyber for April 3, 2018, is now available. The new program can be viewed at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress and on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/262710424.
This week’s program focuses on the Facebook, GSR, Cambridge Analytica data controversy. The 12 minute video addresses the role of GSR and the Cambridge professor who developed a personality profile app. The DarkCyber program outlines how raw social data is converted into actionable, psychographic “triggers.” By connecting individuals, groups, and super-groups with “hot buttons” and contentious political issues, behaviors can be influenced, often in an almost undetectable way.
The DarkCyber research team has assembled information from open source coverage of Cambridge Analytica and has created a generalized “workflow” for the Facebook-type data set. The outputs of the workflow are “triggers” which can be converted into shaped messages which are intended to influence behaviors of individuals, groiups, and super-groups.
The program explains how psychographic analyses differ from the more well known demographic analyses of Facebook data. The link analysis or social graph approach is illustrated in such a way that anyone can grasp the potential of this data outputs. The program includes a recommendation for software which anyone with basic programming skills can use to generate “graphs” of relationships, centers of influence, and individuals who are likely to take cues from these centers of influence.
DarkCyber’s next special feature focuses on the Grayshift GrayKey iPhone unlocking product. The air date will appear in Beyond Search.
Kenny Toth, April 3, 2018
Facebook WhatsApp Seems to Be Humming Along
April 1, 2018
If anyone still had doubts that Facebook’s 2014 purchase of WhatsApp was a wise deal, this news should put them to rest. In an article at the U.K.’s Express, cryptically titled “WhatsApp Announces Huge News and Its Rivals Will Not Be Happy,” it is revealed that the messaging app now has 1.5 billion active monthly users, and transmits an astounding 60 billion messages per day. Writer David Snelling shares some more relevant facts:
“Facebook bought WhatsApp back in 2014 for $19 billion (£13.4billion) and that investment appears to have been worth every penny. Along with WhatsApp’s success, Zuckerberg also revealed that Facebook-owned Instagram is now the most popular Story-sharing product in the world. According to TechCrunch, Instagram Stories now has around 300 million daily active users, that’s compared to some 178 million who opt for rival service Snapchat. The news of these huge numbers comes as WhatsApp recently revealed another record. The messaging firm said it saw 75 billion messages sent across the service on New Year’s Eve. That number eclipses any other day in WhatsApp’s history with the previous record of 65 million on New Year’s Eve 2016 well and truly smashed. WhatsApp says that of the 75 billion messages sent, 13 billion were photos and five billion included videos.”
Now after what seems a long time when measured in Internet moments, a WhatsApp user can change the “number” to which an account is attached. We wonder how many new accounts were triggered by frustrated users who had to sign up again and again.
No fooling.
Cynthia Murrell, April 1, 2018
What Has Cambridge Analytica Done to Crowdsourcing As a Way to Identify Fake News?
March 29, 2018
The battle to counteract fake news is hitting a strange, new chapter. Where, once, the falsification of news was the source of much ridicule and scrutiny, now it’s the solution to the problem. Social media titans are suggesting solutions, but the public isn’t so sure, as we discovered in a recent Slate story, “A Surprising New Study Shows That Facebook’s Ridiculed Plan to Rate The Media Could Actually Work.”
According to the story:
“In at least one plausible interpretation of the survey results, the respondents distinguished the credible outlets from the sketchy ones with near-perfect accuracy. Nineteen of the 20 mainstream news outlets in the sample were trusted more by both Democrats and Republicans than any of the other 40 outlets were trusted by respondents of either party.”
According to the Neiman Lab Facebook’s ratings system has a flaw built into the system. It seems like a great idea to rate the trustworthiness of news sources, but the fact that the system will be crowdsourced pretty much ensures that nobody will trust the results. In a world filled with hackers and bots that can funnel millions of votes toward crowdsourced content, it’s going to be hard to trust the trustworthiness of Facebook’s venture. Certainly, they will have filters in place to try to prevent such corruption, but the public will likely always be a little weary.
Beyond Search wonders if the information about this initiative is itself either fake news or an example of how some individuals issue a report in order to shape perception. Isn’t this the core method of the GSR Cambridge Analytica matter?
Patrick Roland, March 29, 2018
The Country of Facebook Rebuffs England
March 27, 2018
I read “Facebook’s Zuckerberg Will Not Answer UK Lawmakers’ Questions over Data Scandal.” The main idea of the “real” news story struck me as:
Zuckerberg will instead send his Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer or Chief Product Officer Chris Cox to appear before parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee.
Several observations:
- The lawmakers in England are likely to interpret the refusal of Facebook’s president as a slap in the face.
- Facebook may face increasing friction from lawmakers and, possibly, from government agents with regard to some of Facebook’s activities in England
- Increased attention from British entities may increase Facebook’s costs in the form of regulatory compliance and tax scrutiny.
England has demonstrated that it can take immediate and direct action in certain matters of state. Facebook’s decision to ignore a request from the country may spark additional actions.
England can arrest, detain, and deport individuals. Planning a jaunt to London to catch a play may evolve into a risky proposition for individuals identified as of particular interest to England.
Serious business in the view of the addled goose.
Stephen E Arnold, March 27, 2018
Facebook and Its Advertising: In Newspapers No Less
March 26, 2018
Google is allegedly earmarking millions to help dead tree publications survive the digital winter. Will the money help? Probably not.
I noted what struck me as an interesting move. The BBC’s write up “Facebook Boss Apologizes in UK and US Newspaper Ads” reveals to non newspaper readers the company’s fascinating mea culpa white out.
I learned:
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has taken out full-page adverts in several UK and US Sunday newspapers to apologies for the firm’s recent data privacy scandal.
Let’s recap the view of some dead tree senior managers.
- Digital media recycles our content and does not pay producers of “real news”
- Facebook and Google have replaced traditional newspapers and magazines as the gatekeepers of what’s right and what’s wrong, saying, “Hey, that’s our job.”
- Digital giants are indifferent to the downstream impacts of their nifty technologies.
Now Facebook is using the dead tree channels to explain:
“This was a breach of trust, and I am sorry.”
I assume that some at Facebook see the matter as off the table.
Ironic? Nope, just implement the “it’s easier to apologize than ask permission” method.
My question, “Has Facebook bought some Adwords or hired Cambridge Analytica-type outfits to make this apology more efficacious?”
Stephen E Arnold, March 26, 2018
CNN Facebook Put Down: CNN. Imagine!
March 24, 2018
I noted this article on the CNN Web site: “Mark Zuckerberg Is Not Comfortable with the Enormous Influence He Has Over the World.” I associate this type of take down with the gentleman who ran a charity in the US, loved cricket, and took a very, very dim view of Americans. He once told me, “Kentucky has a great deal about which to be modest.”
CNN appears to be suggesting that Mr. Zuckerberg is a little big man.
I noted this statement in the write up:
“Any company that can influence a US presidential election without being aware that it is doing so is demonstrably too powerful,” Roger McNamee, Zuckerberg’s former mentor and a venture capitalist, told CNN by email.
The write up offered this assessment:
Brian Wieser, an analyst who tracks Facebook for Pivotal Research Group, says the real issue plaguing the company may not be whether it’s too powerful so much as whether it became powerful too fast. “It looks like a problem that has emerged is that they may have become big and powerful too quickly, without ensuring their foundations were solid enough to withstand the growth they have had,” Wieser told CNN.
I wish CNN has asked Mr. Zuckerberg how he was going to cause the next recession?
Stephen E Arnold, March 24, 2018
Silicon Valley Management Method: Has Broflow Replaced Workflow?
March 23, 2018
In early March, we noted a story about Silicon Valley and evil. “How Silicon Valley Went from ‘Don’t Be Evil’ to Doing Evil” reported about the “bro” culture and a casual approach to customer privacy. There was a nod to fake news too. We noted this statement:
“[A] handful of companies or concentrated in one or two regions. The great progress in the 1980s and 1990s took place in a highly competitive, and dispersed, environment not one dominated by firms that control 80 or 90 percent of key markets. Not surprisingly, the rise of the oligarchs coincides with a general decline in business startups, including in tech.”
Today we noted “Here is How Google Handles Right to Be Forgotten Requests.” We found this passage suggestive:
Witness statements submitted by Google “legal specialist” Stephanie Caro (who admitted: “I am not by training a lawyer”) for both trials explained: “The process of dealing with each delisting request is not automated – it involves individual consideration of each request and involves human judgment. Without such an individual assessment, the procedure put in place by Google would be open to substantial abuse, with the prospect of individuals, or indeed businesses, seeking to suppress search results for illegitimate reasons.”
No smart software needed it seems. And the vaunted technical company’s workflow with regard to removal requests? Possibly “casual” or “disorganized.”
When considered against the backdrop of Facebook-Cambridge Analytics, process seems less important than other tasks.
Perhaps some management expert will assign the term “bro-flow” to the organizational procedures implemented by some high profile technology firms?
Stephen E Arnold, March 23, 2018
Patrick Roland, March 9, 2018
Open Source Panda Simplifies Data Analysis
March 20, 2018
An article at Quartz draws our attention to a potential alternative to Excel—the open source Pandas—in, “Meet the Man Behind the Most Important Tool in Data Science.” Writer Dan Kopf profiles Panda’s developer, Wes McKinny, who launched the Python tool in 2009. In 2012, Pandas’ popularity took off. Now, Kopf tells us:
Millions of people around the world use Pandas. In October 2017 alone, Stack Overflow, a website for programmers, recorded 5 million visits to questions about Pandas from more than 1 million unique visitors. Data scientists at Google, Facebook, JP Morgan, and virtually other major company that analyze data uses Pandas. Most people haven’t heard of it, but for many people who do heavy data analysis—a rapidly growing group these days—life wouldn’t be the same without it. (Pandas is open source, so it’s free to use.) So what does Pandas do that is so valuable? I asked McKinney how he explains it to non-programmer friends. ‘I tell them that it enables people to analyze and work with data who are not expert computer scientists,’ he says. ‘You still have to write code, but it’s making the code intuitive and accessible. It helps people move beyond just using Excel for data analysis.’
McKinney is inspired to improve data science tools because he likes to “empower people to solve problems.” In fact, Pandas sprung from his frustration at the limitations of available tools when he first came to embrace Python. See the article to follow the developer from his time as a high school athlete to his current, full-time work on Pandas and other open source projects, as well as more on Pandas itself.
Cynthia Murrell, March 20, 2018
Quote to Note: CNBC on Facebook Management
March 19, 2018
Talking head TV does not capture my attention. I did spot an interesting write up this morning. Its title? “Facebook Is Facing Its Biggest Test Ever — and Its Lack of Leadership Could Sink the Company.” Tucked in the analysis is a quote to note. Here’s the passage which I highlighted in high intensity yellow:
There’s no outside attacker bringing Facebook down. It’s a circular firing squad that stems from the company’s fundamental business model of collecting data from users, and using that data to sell targeted ads.
The phrase which is quite nifty is “a circular firing squad.”
The Facebook – Cambridge Analytic dust up is interesting. Our take on the use of academics, industrial strength intelligence analysis methods, and manipulating viewpoints will be featured in the April 3, 2018, DarkCyber video news program.
Until then, enjoy the “circular firing squad” trope. Oh, and a happy honk to the author, editior, producer who okayed this phrase. Nifty.
Stephen E Arnold, March 19, 2018
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
