How Fragile Is Twitter?
August 25, 2022
The question is, “How fragile is Twitter?” I am not a tweeter. I think we have a script which posts items from this blog, but I am not sure. Twitter is more of a left and right coast thing. Those who love it find that it can deliver “followers” and one hopes personal satisfaction, fame, and fortune.
The datasphere is rippling with Twitter news. I glanced at Techmeme today (August 25, 2022 at about 6 30 am) and spotted many, many Twitter stories.
There was the former DARPA technology security wizard. This individual offered assertions about Twitter’s management and technology ineptitude. The Washington Post is excited about the individual’s forthcoming testimony before the adepts on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mark your calendar and warm up the TV. The event takes place on September 13, 2022. For the breathless explanation of how a critique of the tweeter thing becomes a Senate hearing in a few short weeks, read “Twitter Whistleblower To Testify In Congress About Security Failures.”
Twitter’s senior manager takes a different position. The tweeter is up to snuff.
Elon Musk is excited because the to and fro about Twitter may be helpful to his brilliant business maneuvering to bring the Musky scent of excellence to short messages mostly unrestrained by someone with a sense of propriety. “Twitter Lied To Elon Musk About Bots – Peiter Zatko, Ex Security Chief” explains
Following the publication of Zatko’s revelations on different news outlets, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk took to his Twitter profile to comment about the issue. Musk tweeted a screenshot of The Washington Post covering the whistleblower’s revelation, accompanied by another tweet of an image, with the phrase “give a little whistle”.
My reaction to the Twitter thing has two parts. The first part is the craziness that Twitter has engendered in its service, its management trajectory, and its PR magnetism. Twitter has zero impact on me personally or professionally, and it is remarkable that so much weirdness surrounds a text messaging service in which the content is publicly available.
The second part of my reaction is the sense that some of the journalists, pundits, and wizards who have achieved Twitter fame may be in for some life realignment. These people will either surge even higher in the Twitter Hall of Fame or end up hoping their TikTok videos deliver what has been lost.
As I reflect on the coterie of Twitter addicts users and the fascinating management history of the company, I come back to the question, “How fragile is Twitter?”
One can argue that it survived with a part time boss, technical failures which involved a very happy beluga icon, and appearing at the bottom of high-tech social media company revenue disappointments. Thus, Twitter is robust, a survivor, a resilient digital creature.
On the other hand, Twitter is engaged in a legal spat with the mercurial Mr. Musk. Twitter is in the news because it loses executives who allege silly technical policies. Twitter is getting love from the tweeters who depend on the service for fame and sales leads. The internal cohesion of a wild and crazy high tech outfit like Google makes Twitter look like a stack of objects stacked by inebriated college students.
I don’t have a dog’s musk gland in the Twitter fight. What I can say is, “Twitter. Interesting.”
Stephen E Arnold, August 25, 2022
Quality Defined: Just Two Ways?
August 25, 2022
I am not sure what to make of “The Two Types of Quality.” A number of years ago I was in Osaka and Tokyo to deliver several lectures about commercial databases. The topic had to be narrowed, so I focused on the differences between a commercially successful database like those produced by the Courier Journal & the Louisville Times, the Petroleum Institute, and ERIC, among a handful of other must-have professional-operated databases. I explained that database quality could be defined by technical requirements; for example, timeliness of record updating, assigning a specific number of index terms from a subject matter expert developed and maintained controlled vocabulary (term) list, accurate spelling, abstracts conforming to the database publishers’ editorial guidelines, etc. The other type of quality was determined by the user; for example, was the information provided by the database timely, accurate, and in line with the scope of the database. Neither definition of quality was particularly good. I made this point in my lectures. Quality is like any abstract noun. Context defines it. Today quality means, as I was told after a lecture in Germany, “good enough.” I thought the serious young person was joking. He was not. This professional, who worked for an important European Union department, embraced “good enough” as the definition of quality.
The cited essay explains that there are two types of quality. The first is “purely functional.” I think that’s close to my definition of quality for old-fashioned databases. There were expensive to produce, difficult to index in a useful, systematic way even with our human plus smart software systems, and quite difficult to explain to a person unfamiliar with the difference between looking up something using Google and looking up a chemical structure in Chemical Abstracts. When I was working full time, I had a tough time explaining that Google was neither comprehensive nor focused on consistency. Google wanted to sell ads. Popularity determined quality, but that’s not what “quality” means to a person researching a case in a commercial database of legal information.
The second is “quality that fascinates.” I must admit that this is related to my notion of context, but I am not sure that “fascination” is exactly what I mean by context. A ball of string can fascinate the cat owner as well as the cat. Is this quality? Not in my book.
Several observations:
- Quality cannot be defined. I do believe that a company, its products, and an individual can produce objects or services that serve a purpose and do not anger the user. Well, maybe not anger. How about annoy, frustrate, stress, or force a product or service change. It is also my perception that quality is becoming a lost art like chipping stone arrowheads.
- The word “quality” can be defined in terms of cost cutting. I use products and services that are not without big flaws. Whether it is getting Microsoft Windows to print or preventing a Tesla from exploding into flames, short cuts seem to create issues. These folks are not angels in my opinion.
- The marketers, many of those whom I met were former journalists or art history majors, explain quality and other abstract terms in a way which obfuscates the verifiable behavior of a product or service. These folks are mendacious in my opinion.
Net net: Quality now means good enough.
That’s why nothing seems to work: Airport luggage handling, medical treatments of a president, electric vehicles, contacting a local government agency about a deer killed by a rolling smoke pickup truck driver, etc.
Quality products and services exist. Is it possible to find these using Bing, Google, or Yandex?
Nope.
Stephen E Arnold, August 25, 2022
Deep Fakes: Alarming Predictions Made Real
August 25, 2022
Here is one disturbing way deep fakes can provide bad actors with a new money-making opportunity. Reporting on a growing, Google-play enabled problem, Rest of World tells us “Mexican Scam Loan Apps Will Edit Your Face onto X-Rated Photos and Send Them to Your Family.” Yes, at least one victim had such faked images sent to her contacts, including her minor daughter, along with the claim she had turned to prostitution to pay off her loan. In their odious efforts to collect more funds than they lent in the first place, these outfits will also dox victims and harass with ceaseless threatening phone calls. Reporter Erika Lilian Contreras writes:
“Rest of World identified 94 loan apps listed as possibly related to doxxing activities across various Mexican cyber police departments; 35 of these are available on Google’s Play store, the app store on Android devices, which account for 80.87% of mobile internet traffic in Mexico. According to victims, government officials, digital rights activists, and platforms, gaps in Mexican law allow these lenders to continue to push scams on app stores and leave victims with no clear avenue to restitution or justice. Consumer education and criminal investigations that come after a crime has occurred are the only ways to currently combat this new type of digital financial fraud, but none of these efforts has stopped the apps from appearing in app stores, according to digital security experts who spoke to Rest of World.”
Mexico’s financial services regulators say it is not their problem since these loan apps are not registered financial institutions. This leaves the national and local cybersecurity agents who, so far, have been unable to keep the problem from growing. Bad actors know a good opportunity when they see one. The article notes:
“While the Mexican government can do little and the tech companies platforming scam loan apps won’t take responsibility, the onus has fallen onto civil society. … However, most activism is limited to educating Mexicans about the risks posed by scam loan apps.”
It would be nice if Google would supply even an ounce of prevention here as it finally did in India. That, however, was only after the Reserve Bank of India forcefully drew about 600 scam-credit apps to its attention.
We wonder: where will deep fake technology be weaponized next? We think we know one knock on effect: Open source intelligence will be eroded or poisoned.
Cynthia Murrell, August 25, 2022
Amazon Leaps into Slow Motion Action
August 25, 2022
As Amazon continues its valiant struggle against fake reviews, it still insists social media is to blame. Now, though, instead of chiding social media itself, the company is going after those who use Facebook and other platforms to generate false reviews for profit. DigitalTrends reports, “Amazon Sues 10,000 Facebook Groups over Fake Reviews.” That is a lot of defendants. Writer Trevor Mogg tells us:
“‘These groups are set up to recruit individuals willing to post incentivized and misleading reviews on Amazon’s stores in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Japan,’ the company said in a post on its website. It added: ‘The fraudsters behind such groups solicit fake reviews for hundreds of products available for sale on Amazon, including car stereos and camera tripods.’ One of the Facebook groups mentioned in Amazon’s lawsuit is called Amazon Product Review. It had more than 43,000 members when Facebook-owned Meta kicked it off its platform earlier this year. Amazon said that the group’s administrators tried to hide their activity and evade detection by slightly altering the spelling of words in phrases designed to alert A.I.-powered software that searches for fake reviews. Amazon said it has more than 12,000 employees globally working to protect its shopping site from fraud and abuse, including fake reviews. Another Amazon-employed team is tasked with identifying fake review schemes on social media platforms that include Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.”
We are told Meta has removed about half the groups Amazon has brought to its attention and is investigating others. The sleuths have kept millions of suspicious reviews away from customers, we learn, and the company expects this more proactive step to stop many more and hold scammers accountable. Great! Now, what about the gig work sites which list people ready to create fake reviews?
Cynthia Murrell, August 25, 2022
Popping Up a Level: Meta-Apps Are Becoming a Thing
August 24, 2022
A long time ago, I heard the word viewshed in a meeting in Crystal City. I liked it. Others did not. One interesting person chimed in and said, “Let’s pop up a level.” Then I heard “level up” as a way to rise above the fray or the mind numbing weirdness of many business meetings. More recently a person at a law enforcement conference use the phrase “meta-view.” The idea is that one needs to take a content object — say, a Facebook post — and think about the content in a broader way.
Each of these ideas suggest what a cranky Dr. Daphne Swartz called “getting lost in the weeds.” Dr. Swartz loved detail but she valued the ability to get untangled from weeds.
I read “AnyMind Adds TikTok Shop, Yahoo Japan Shopping to Shop Management Platform.” The write up explains that a software application “allows online sellers to manage shops on different ecommerce platforms from a single base.”
Yep, this is a meta-app, and I think these will play an important part in how people interact with the datasphere. The idea is simplification. Like WeChat, some users value convenience and having certain routine tasks pushed into the background. Online merchants want to sell and collect money. Fooling around with housekeeping chores is akin to cleaning toilets at summer camp. Wow, fun.
The article points out:
AnyMind launched AnyX in April with a goal of combining management, optimization, and tracking across the growing number of ecommerce channels in the region. It also offers services such as analytics, conversational commerce, digital marketing, and logistics.
Several observations:
Today’s online giants may find themselves reduced to an icon in a meta-app
Successful meta-apps may be similar to TikTok-style videos, and no amount of quasi-alleged monopolistic behavior can stop the train unless the quasi alleged monopolies buy the meta-app outfits
An integration with a China-linked outfit like TikTok makes clear that national boundaries and maybe common sense are less important than making life into a giant customized convenience store in Osaka.
Net net: Worth watching this viewshed, level up, and meta app idea.
Stephen E Arnold, August 24, 2022
Meta: What Does the Modern MySpace Do?
August 24, 2022
Frankly I don’t know what the Zuck and his team of wizards can do. I read “Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022.” The link leads to a study summary, a page of general info, and a summary of the Pew methodology.
One finding from the survey mavens at Pew Research caught my attention. If the methodology was on the money and the data processed in a way that kept the butcher’s thumb off the weighing pan, here’s a thrilling statement:
the share of teens who say they use Facebook, a dominant social media platform among teens in the Center’s 2014-15 survey, has plummeted from 71% then to 32% today.
In the span of 72 months, the Zuckbook watched teens who are considered a part of the future of the datasphere shift to short form videos. The write up included one of those charts colored in such a way to make legibility a bit of a joke. Here’s a screenshot with the bold blue line heading south. Note that despite the legibility, the other lines are heading up. YouTube is a floating dot at the top of the chart because, well, YouTube. Quasi-monopoly. Most popular online service in the “Stans.”
Should YouTube be worried? Not yet. The write up reports:
About three-quarters of teens visit YouTube at least daily, including 19% who report using the site or app almost constantly.
For more Pew data, follow the links in the cited article.
There’s not much analysis of the whys and wherefores, but the data are clear. The allegedly Chinese linked outfit TikTok has access to useful data from young people. What could a crafty person do with these data? Wait until one cluster identified as susceptible individuals and then approach or attempt to influence them.
Stephen E Arnold, August 24, 2022
Google Outages: The Logic of a Quasi Monopoly
August 24, 2022
I read “Google Search Goes Down Around the World, Chaos Ensues.” In today’s world, I am not certain that a quasi monopoly’s technical shortcomings cause chaos. Anger, frustration, and confusion, yes. Chaos already exists in a number of high profile activities; for example, air plane luggage handling, medicines which don’t work as advertised on cable TV, and self driving vehicles. The write up states about one outage:
Google Search went down in dozens of countries. Other Google services, like Google Maps, were affected too.
Then:
The outage followed an “electrical incident” earlier in the day at a Google data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, according to local media and SFGate. The incident critically injured three electricians around midday Iowa time. One person was flown to a nearby hospital and the other two were transported by ambulance.
Now here is the sentence which made the logic of quasi monopolies clear to me and probably no one else in the world, including the 150,000 or so Googlers laboring in the vineyards of truth and advertising revenue:
A Google spokesperson, however, told CNET that the two incidents were unrelated.
Er, one company is the glue that connects the two events. Thus, in my opinion, the one company has failed twice and the events are related: Corporate DNA does not infuse just the Mountain View folks. Everyone has the chemical magic if not the technical skills to demonstrate that technical debt is now too burdensome to address in an effective way. Focus, right?
Stephen E Arnold, August 24, 2022
A 2022 Real Time Classification Taxonomy
August 24, 2022
More than a decade ago, a semi clueless government entity in the European Union asked me to think about real time information flows. We looked around for technical papers, journal articles, and online information from investment banks and government agencies shooting stuff into space. (How about that real time communication from a satellite launched in 2009? Ho ho ho.)
I dug around in my paper files and found this early version of my research team’s approach to the subject of real time online information.
The team identified six principal types of real time information. I suppose today, these six categories are dinobaby eggs.
As evidence, I submit “Why You’re Probably Thinking About Real-Time Systems in the Wrong Way,” which illustrates how out-of-date our research has become. The article explains that there are three types of real time; to wit:
Hardware based real time systems, for example, high precision automated robotic assembly lines
Micro Batch real time systems; for example, ecommerce systems
Event driven real time systems; for example, embedded artificial intelligence systems
I am not sure how to fit our analysis into the three part categorization in the article.
What’s interesting is that the lack of understanding about real time, what’s needed to make them low latency, and affordable persists.
I will end with one question, “Do you think about real time in real time?”
Yes, ah, well, good for you!
Stephen E Arnold, August 24, 2022
Yandex: Has Russia Embraced the Chinese Approach to Social Media and Online?
August 23, 2022
The answer to the question “Has Russia Embraced the Chinese Approach to Technology?” is, “Seems like it.”
Like China, Russia has come to understand the power and threat online services represent to the entities holding nation state power. Technology companies which follow different rules than “regular” countries have to be brought under control or killed outright. Russia is into control.
Vkontakte top dog is the scion of Mr. Putin’s top dog. If you are into Russian names, the boss of Vkontakte is Vladimir Kirienko. Mr. Putin’s confidante and senior administrator is Sergei Kirienko. But a tame CEO is not enough. Threats have to be put in a cage and made subject to a higher power, not people with mobile phones.
Vkontakte is a semi-Facebook, just in Russian. It has about 100 million users. The company’s properties include Mail.ru, the social network Odnoklassniki, and a food delivery outfit. According to “Yandex Reaches Binding Deal to Divest News Service, Homepage to VK”:
Yandex said it is pursuing a “strategic exit from its media businesses” with the sale of Yandex.News, Yandex.ru and the Yandex.Zen blogging tool to VK. The Yandex.ru domain will be renamed dzen.ru under VK’s control and further development. Yandex’s main page — with search, mail and non-media tools — will be renamed ya.ru.
What happens to Yandex email addresses? In addition to being read and analyzed by the watch dogs, the future of Yandex mail is fuzzy.
The key take away for me is that China and Russia recognize the threat social media and online information pose. If these nation states’ concerns are valid, will countries with uncontrolled social media operating without meaningful oversight and regulation tear themselves apart?
China’s and Russia’s strategic military thinkers could be anticipating this result. Which view is correct? Social media is the Zucker’s view of bringing people together or the opposite?
Interesting question to consider.
Stephen E Arnold, August 23, 2022
Google: Redefines Quality. And What about Ads?
August 23, 2022
When I was working on The Google Legacy (Infonortics, 2004), I gathered information about Google’s method for determining quality. Prior to 2006, Google defined “quality” in a way different from the approach taken at professional indexing and commercial database companies. Professional organizations relied on subject matter experts’ views. Some firms — for example, the Courier Journal & Louisville Times, Predicasts, Engineering Index, the American Petroleum Institute, among others — were old fashioned. Commercial database firms with positive cash flows would hire specialists to provide ideas and suggestions for improving content selection and indexing. At the Courier Journal, we relied on Betty Eddison and a number of other professionals. We also hired honest-to-goodness people with advanced degrees to work on the content we produced.
Google pops up with jibber jabber about voting, a concept floated by an IBM Almaden researcher, and the notion of links and their value. As Google evolved, I collected a list of what amount4ed to 140 or so factors which were used by Google to determine the quality of content. At one time, Dr. Liz Liddy used my compilation as illustrative material for her classes in information science.
By 2006, Google shifted quality from its mysterious and somewhat orthogonal factors to what I call “ad quality.” The concept gained steam when Google acquired Applied Semantics and worked hard to relax a user’s query, match the query to a stack of ads to which the query would relate, and display these as “personalized” and targeted messages. Quality, therefore, became an automated process for working through ad revenue.
Since 2006, Google has been focused on ad revenue. My personal view is that Google has one stream of revenue: Ad revenue. Its other ventures have not demonstrated to me that the company can match its first “me too” innovation. If you don’t remember what that was, think about the Yahoo settlement related to the “inspiration” Google obtained from the GoTo.com and Overture “pay to play” system. The idea was that those with Web pages would pay to get their message in front of a service’s users.
Where is Google quality now? Is it anchored in editorial policies, old fashioned ideas like precision and recall? Is the Google using controlled vocabulary lists designed to allow precise queries? Is Google adding classification codes to disambiguate terms like terminal as in “computer terminal” or “airport terminal”?
“Google’s Planned Search Changes Could Upend the Internet” reveals:
Google is trying to improve the quality of search results and reduce the number of misleading sites, misinformation, and clickbait users are subjected to.
I want to point out that the lack of precision and recall in Google’s approach is the firm’s notion that new Web sites are more important than older Web sites, traffic is more important than factual accuracy, and ad revenue goals are the strong force in the Google datasphere.
Thus, after a certain outfit headed by a search engine optimization crazed advanced the SEO “revolution”, the Google is, according the article:
As part of the change, the company will roll out its “helpful content update” to identify content that is primarily written to rank well in search engines and lower its rank. Sullivan says the update seems to especially benefit searches related to tech, online education, shopping, arts, and entertainment. The company is also working to improve access to high-quality reviews, ones that provide helpful, in-depth information.
Does this suggest that Google will focus on high-value content, explicit editorial policies, and professional indexing by subject matter experts?
Nope.
It means quicker depletion of the ad inventory and an effort to cope with the fact that those in middle school and high school use TikTok for information.
Google is officially a dinobaby just one not very good at anything other than selling ads and steering its coal fired steam boat away from the rapids in today’s data flows. For serious information research Google is too consumer oriented. Search based applications are what some researchers prefer. The content in these systems comes from specialized crawls and collections.
The quality list? Old fashioned and antiquated. How much of Google fits in that category? SAIL on, steam boat. Chug chug chug. PR PR PR. Toot toot.
But what about traffic to sites affected by Google’s content rigor?
Just buy ads, of course.
Stephen E Arnold, August 23, 2022
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
