Facebook: A New York City-Sized PR Problem
July 20, 2018
I read “Once nimble Facebook Trips Over Calls to Control Content.” If you are looking for this write up online, the story’s headline was changed to “What Stays on Facebook and What Goes? The Social Network Cannot Answer.” You may be able to locate the online version at this link. (No promises.) The dead tree version is on Page A1 of the July 20, 2018, edition which comes out on Thursday night. Got the timeline square?
I wanted to highlight a handful of comments in the “real” news story. Here we go with direct statements from the NYT article in red:
- The print version headline uses the phrase “once nimble.” Here in Harrod’s Creek that means stumbling bobolyne. In Manhattan, the phrase may mean something like “advertise more in the New York Times.” I am, of course, speculating.
- I marked in weird greenish yellow this statement: “Facebook still seems paralyzed over how to respond.” So much for nimble.
- Another: “Comically tripped up”. Yep, a clown’s smile on the front page of the NYT.
- My favorite: The context for being a bit out of his depth. Whatever does “yet lucidity remai9ned elusive.” Does this mean stupid, duplicitous, or something else?
- I thought Silicon Valley wunderkind were sharp as tacks. In the NYT, I read “Facebook executives’ tortured musings.” Not Saturday Night Live deep thoughts, just musings and tortured ones at that.
- How does Facebook perceive “real” journalism? Well, not the way the NYT does. I circled this phrase about Alex Jones, a luminary with some avid believers one mine drainage ditch down the road a piece which is Kentucky talk for “some”: “Just being false doesn’t violate community standards” and “Infowars was a publisher with a ‘different point of view.’”
- This is a nifty sequence crafted to recycle another “real” journalist’s scoop interview with Mark Zuckerberg: “what Facebook would or would not allow on its site became even more confusing.” So, a possible paralyzed clown who lacks lucidity is confusing.
- The “bizarre idea” word pair makes sure I understand what the NYT believes in a lack of clear thinking.
But these brief rhetorical flourishes set up this statement:
A Facebook spokeswoman [who is not identified] explained that it would be possible, theoretically, to deny the Holocaust without triggering Facebook’s hate-speech clause.
Those pesky algorithms are at work. But the failure to identify the person at Facebook who offered this information is not identified. Why not?
Here’s another longer statement from the NYT write up:
And what exactly constitutes imminent violence is a shifting line, the company said— it is still ‘iterating on’ its policy, and the rules may change.
I don’t want to be too dumb, but I would like to know who at the company offered the statement. A company, to my knowledge, cannot talk unless one considers firing a question at Amazon’s Alexa.
I put an exclamation point on this statement in the NYT article:
All of this fails a basic test: It’s not even coherent. It is a hodge podge of declarations and exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions.
Net net: Facebook has a public relations problem with the New York Times. Because of the influence of the “real” newspaper and its “real” journalists, Facebook has a PR problem of magnitude. Perhaps the point of the story is to create an opportunity for a NYT ad sales professional to explain the benefits of a full page ad across the print and online versions of the New York Times?
Stephen E Arnold, July 20, 2018
Journalists: Smart Software Is Learning How to Be a Real Journalist
July 15, 2018
I read “Why Bots Taking Over (Some) Journalism Could Be a Good Thing.” I love optimists who lack a good understanding of how numerical recipes work. The notion of “artificial intelligence” is just cool like something out of science fiction like “Ralph 124C 41+” except for the wrong headed predictions. In my 50 year work career, technologies are not revolutions. Technologies appear, die, reform, and then interact, often in surprising ways. Then one day, a clever person identifies a “paradigm shift” or “a big thing.”
The problem with smart software which seems obvious to me boils down to:
- The selection of numerical recipes to use
- The threshold settings or the Bayesian best guesses that inform the system
- The order in which the processes are implemented within the system.
There are other issues, but these provide a reasonable checklist. What does on under the kimono is quite important.
The write up states:
If robots can take over the grunt work, which in many cases they can, then that has the potential to lower media organizations’ costs and enable them to spend a greater proportion of their advertising income on more serious material. That’s terrible news for anybody whose current job is to trawl Twitter for slightly smutty tweets by reality TV show contestants, but great news for organizations funding the likes of Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who broke the Facebook / Cambridge Analytica scandal. Isn’t it?
Good question. I also learned:
Technology can help with a lot of basic reporting. For example, the UK Press Association’s Radar project (Reporters And Data And Robots) aims to automate a lot of local news reporting by pulling information from government agencies, local authorities and the police. It’ll still be overseen by “skilled human journalists”, at least for the foreseeable future, but the actual writing will be automated: it uses a technology called Natural Language Generation, or NLG for short. Think Siri, Alexa or the recent Google Duplex demos that mimic human speech, but dedicated to writing rather than speaking.
I recall reading this idea to steal:
In fact, human reporters will continue to play a vital role in the process, and Rogers doesn’t see this changing anytime soon. It’s humans that make the decision on which datasets to analyze. Humans also “define” the story templates – for example, by deciding that if a certain variable in one region is above a particular threshold, then that’s a strong indicator that the data will make a good news story.
Now back to the points in the checklist. In the mad rush to reduce costs, provide more and better news, and create opportunities to cover certain stories more effectively, who is questioning the prioritization of content from an available stream, the selection of items from the stream, and the evaluation of the data pulled from the stream for automatic story generation?
My thought is that it will be the developers who are deciding what to do in one of those whiteboard meetings lubricated with latte and fizzy water.
The business models which once sustained “real” journalism focused on media battles, yellow journalism, interesting advertising deals, and the localized monopolies. (I once worked for such an outfit.)
With technology concentration a natural consequence of online information services, I would not get too excited about the NLG and NLP (natural language generation and natural language processing services). These capabilities for smart software will arrive. But I think the functionality will arrive in dribs and drabs. One day an MBA or electrical engineer turned business school professor will explain what happened.
What’s lost? Typing, hanging out in the newspaper lunch room, gossip, and hitting the bar a block from the office. Judgment? Did I leave out judgment. Probably not important. What’s important that I almost forgot? Getting rid of staff, health coverage, pensions, vacations, and sick leave. Software doesn’t get sick even though it may arrive in a questionable condition.
Stephen E Arnold, July 15, 2018
Amazon Factoid: Home Speaker Department
July 9, 2018
Short honk: I read “What Cracking Open a Sonos One Tells Us aboiut the Sonos IPO.” In the write up was an interesting to me item of information. Here is what I noted:
Even though both [Sonos and Echo Plus] of these products are different in pretty much every decision that was made surrounding the hardware, they use the same backend Alexa service (where most of the IP is) from Amazon.
Interesting. Amazon’s approach allows it to generate revenue from a customer (maybe partner?) and from its own product line.
This appears to be a double dipping approach of value. What happens if Amazon decides to raise its prices for a customer (partner)? I suppose the Sonos-type outfit can hightail it to IBM’s, Google’s, or Microsoft’s cloud.
That may pose costs, timing challenges, and technical hoops. The time required by a Sonos-type outfit might be enough to allow Amazon to shave a few seconds off its lap time.
With Google slashing prices for its home gizmos, the home data ecosystem may become more interesting in the months ahead.
Stephen E Arnold, July 9, 2018
Digital Assistants Working Hard to Be More Human
July 8, 2018
Whether you use Alexa, or Siri, or Cortana, or a host of other AI-infused digital assistants, the producers of that technology have something in common: they want those electronic personalities to be more human. Interesting moves are being made in this world to make that happen, according to a recent Inquirer story, “Microsoft Snaps Up Semantic to Make Cortana Seem a Bit Less Robotic.”
According to one Microsoft exec:
“Combining Semantic Machines’ technology with Microsoft’s own AI advances, we aim to deliver powerful, natural and more productive user experiences that will take conversational computing to a new level.”
The story continued:
“Google, of course, has Duplex which can make natural sounding voice calls on your behalf. It has also suggested it is looking into the idea of giving Assistant a back story.”
However, this comes with a consequence. As Wired pointed out, as these assistants get more comfortable with inflection and reading our voices, the opportunity for manipulation becomes eerily more present. These near-human tools are not to that point yet, but we don’t doubt that it’ll arrive soon. Who wants to type when one can talk, think a human is on the other end of the connection, and be so much more efficient.
Patrick Roland, July 10, 2018
Calendars Are Now Search… If One Is Busy and Eschews Print Schedulers
July 3, 2018
You might not think it, but your doctor’s appointments and dinner parties are a big deal to search companies. With the rise of digital assistants like Siri and Alexa, your datebook is the next big horizon to conquer. The ways in which this will unfold might surprise you, according to a recent Japan Today story, “Google’s ‘Reserve’ Tool Winning Converts and Taking Search to the Next Level.”
According to the story:
“[S]even software firms that supply schedule data to Google described the volume as significant, with as much as 75 percent of bookings representing new customers. Consumers like the convenience. Business owners say the tool is putting their names in front of more potential clients.”
It is no coincidence that several experts are touting the ability of digital assistants to help with travel planning. In a weird way, voice search can now do a lot of the work of a travel agent, in terms of eyeing your schedule, finding deals, and even purchasing flight tickets. From getting reservations to booking flights to making sure someone is picking up junior from soccer practice, there is a revolution happening in search and how it relates to daily life. Search and scheduling: A wonderful way to fill one’s day with useful activities.
Patrick Roland, July 3, 2018
IBM Demo: Debating Watson
June 29, 2018
IBM once again displays its AI chops—SFGate reports, “IBM Computer Proves Formidable Against 2 Human Debaters.” The project, dubbed Project Debater, shows off the tech’s improvements in mimicking human-like speech and reasoning. At a recent demonstration, neither the AI nor the two humans knew the topics beforehand: space exploration and telemedicine. According to one of the human participants, the AI held its own pretty well, even if it did rely too much on blanket statements. Writer Matt O’brien says this about IBM’s approach:
“Rather than just scanning a giant trove of data in search of factoids, IBM’s latest project taps into several more complex branches of AI. Search engine algorithms used by Google and Microsoft’s Bing use similar technology to digest and summarize written content and compose new paragraphs. Voice assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa rely on listening comprehension to answer questions posed by people. Google recently demonstrated an eerily human-like voice assistant that can call hair salons or restaurants to make appointments…But IBM says it’s breaking new ground by creating a system that tackles deeper human practices of rhetoric and analysis, and how they’re used to discuss big questions whose answers aren’t always clear. ‘If you think of the rules of debate, they’re far more open-ended than the rules of a board game,’ said Ranit Aharonov, who manages the debater project.
The demo did not declare any “winner” in the debate, but researchers were able to draw some (perhaps obvious) conclusions: While the software was better at recalling specific facts and statistics to bolster its arguments, humans brought more linguistic flair and the power of personal experience to the field. As for potential applications of this technology, IBM’s VP of research suggests it could be used by human workers to better inform their decisions. Lawyers, specifically, were mentioned.
Keep in mind. Demo.
Cynthia Murrell, June 29, 2018
SoundHound Is Ready to Compete
June 22, 2018
What began as a music-identification tool is now a platform for building one’s own voice assistant application. Business Insider reports, “This 13-Year-Old Startup Just Got $100 Million and Is Valued at Over $1 Billion—Now It’s Taking on Amazon, Google, and Apple.” Writer Kif Leswing notes this recent funding round is led by Chinese firm Tencent, with other notable contributors like Hyundai, Daimler, and Europe’s Orange. We learn:
“SoundHound did not disclose its valuation following this round, but a person familiar with the company says it’s worth over $1 billion, making it a unicorn. It’s going to use those funds to go up against some of the biggest names in technology, including Apple, Amazon, and Google. SoundHound CEO Keyvan Mohajer tells us that he’s not afraid of those 800-pound gorillas, though. ‘We said, don’t be afraid,’ said Mohajer. ‘I always tell my team members, think of your competitors are variables in a complex set of equations.’”
That’s one way to look at it. Mohajer figures his company has one important advantage over those huge players—a less obtrusive integration into clients’ businesses. By creating, and branding, their own voice assistants, companies retain more control over their image and keep customers focused on them throughout the user experience.
Leswing notes that much of SoundHound’s funding has come from strategic partners, as opposed to financial firms. This is because, he reports, Mohajer is gathering allies in his face-off against the likes of Amazon. Mohajer declares he had to turn investors away for this funding round, so there does seem to be abundant interest in Houndify. Should Alexa be worried?
Cynthia Murrell, June 22, 2018
Google: A Good Digital Neighbor
June 20, 2018
Amazon’s retail and technology power daily grows. The only way to compete with Amazon is to have products, power, money, and exposure. Other companies have the money and products, while Google has the power and exposure. With their powers combined, Amazon might start to quack…just a little. Engadget reports on, “Google Plans To Boost Amazon Competitors In Search Shopping Ads.”
Target, Home Depot, Walmart, Costco, Ulta and other retailers are allowing Google to index their catalogs and will appear in search results. Instead of getting an ad fee, Google will get a cut from the sale. The immediate concern is that this will pollute organic search results, but Google will separate the targeted sale searches in a sidebar
Google is selling this package as an anti-Amazon tool:
“The report claims that Google is selling its new anti-Amazon tools on the basis that it is utterly dominant in the search world. Not to mention that, as voice becomes a more important component of people’s lives, Google’s reach here will help beat back Alexa. The project’s genesis was reportedly down to the company noticing that people were image searching products, or asking where they could buy an item. And it wasn’t small numbers of folks, either, but tens of million of people, a big enough market to make anyone excited.”
The brick and mortar retailers can steal back some of their customers by embedding their results in Google searches. According to the research, most searches start with Google, but they end up on Amazon. Google has seen a modest 30 percent increase retailer sales in another shopping project, Google Express, and those results could increase with this new endeavor. Google anti-Amazon sales kit is made for the changing world, where shopping is easier with your voice or from a computer.
Amazon has a reasonable position in the retail market, which could be seen as a positive or a negative, depending on one’s point of view. Google is just trying to be a good digital neighbor. Fences, digital fences.
Whitney Grace, June 20, 2018
DarkCyber, May 29, 2018, Now Available
May 29, 2018
Stephen E Arnold’s DarkCyber video news program for Tuesday, May 29, 2018, is now available.
This week’s story line up is:
- The “personality” of a good Web hacker
- Why lists are replacing free Dark Web search services
- Where to find a directory of OSINT software
- A new Dark Web index from a commercial vendor.
You can find this week’s program at either www.arnoldit.com/wordpress or on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/272088088.
On June 5, 2018, Stephen will be giving two lectures at the Telestrategies ISS conference in Prague. The audiences will consist of intelligence, law enforcement, and security professionals from Europe. A handful of attendees from other countries will be among the attendees.
On Tuesday, June 5, 2018, Stephen will reveal one finding from our analysis of Amazon’s law enforcement, war fighting, and intelligence services initiative.
Because his books have been reused (in several cases without permission) by other analysts, the information about Amazon is available via online or in person presentations.
The DarkCyber team has prepared short video highlighting one research finding. He will include some of the DarkCyber research information in his Prague lectures.
The Amazon-centric video will be available on Tuesday, June 5, 2018. After viewing the video, if you want the details of his for fee lecture, write him at darkcyber333@yandex dot com. Please, put “Amazon” in the subject line.
Several on the DarkCyber team believe that most people will dismiss Stephen’s analysis of Amazon. The reason is that people buy T shirts, books, and videos from the company. However, the DarkCyber research team has identified facts which suggest a major new revenue play from the one time bookseller.
Just as Stephen’s analyses of Google in 2006 altered how some Wall Street professionals viewed Google, his work on Amazon is equally significant. Remember those rumors about Alexa recording what it “hears”? Now think of Amazon’s services/products as pieces in a mosaic.
The picture is fascinating and it has significant financial implications as well.
Enjoy today’s program at this link.
Kenny Toth, May 29, 2018
One View of the Amazon Game Plan
May 27, 2018
I read “Invisible Asymptotes.” Job One for me was trying to match the meaning of “asymptote” with the research my DarkCyber team has conducted into one slice of Amazon’s business roll outs in the last three years.
As you know, an “asymptote” is a mathy way of saying “you can’t get from here to there.” According to Wolfram Mathword:
An asymptote is a line or curve that approaches a given curve arbitrarily closely.
Here’s a diagram. No equations, I promise.
This diagram suggests a business angle to the “asymptote” reference: No matter what you do, it requires effort and a commitment to “quality”. The good news is that although one can quantify time, one cannot quantify “quality” or “perfection.” Okay, gerbil, run in that Ferris wheel gizmo in your cage.
The write up points out:
We focus so much on product-market fit, but once companies have achieved some semblance of it, most should spend much more time on the problem of product-market unfit.
I am not exactly sure what “unfit” means. The author provides a hint:
For me, in strategic planning, the question in building my forecast was to flush out what I call the invisible asymptote: a ceiling that our growth curve would bump its head against if we continued down our current path.
Okay, the idea seems to be that if Amazon enters a new market, the “invisible asymptote” is what slows growth or stops it completely. (Is this the Amazon phone’s and the slowing sales of Alexa in the face of competition from the Google Home device?)
The reason Amazon cannot grow ever larger is because of an “invisible asymptote”; that is, a factor which prevents Amazon from becoming a company that Vanderbilt, JP Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller would have wished they had.
The write up does not discuss Amazon’s semi-new entrance into the law enforcement and intelligence market. That’s a push I am exploring in my lecture at the Telestrategies ISS conference in early June.
The focus shifts to a more mundane and increasingly problematic aspect of Amazon’s business: Shipping fees. Fiat, law, and the costs of fuel are just a few of the challenges Amazon faces. I am not sure these are “invisible”, but let’s trudge forward.
Twitter becomes that foundation for social media. I noted this passage:
No company owes it to others to allow people to build direct competitors to their own product.
If Amazon wants to make law enforcement and intelligence services into a major revenue stream, I think the first evidence of this intent will be cutting off the vendors using Amazon’s infrastructure to serve their clients now. (Keep in mind that most of the specialist vendors in the LE and intel space use Amazon as plumbing. To cite one example, Marinus, the anti human trafficking group, follows this approach.
The author brings up Snapchat and other social media companies. I find this example important. Amazon’s facial recognition capabilities hit out radar when my team was assembling “CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access”, written in 2014 and published in 2015.
We did not include Amazon in my review of LE and intel tools because I had only references in some Amazon conference videos, a few patent applications which were particularly vague about applications in the Background and Claims sections of the documents, and chatter at meetings I attended.
The American Civil Liberties Union has made a bit of noise about Amazon’s facial recognition system. Recognition is spelled “rekognition”, presumably to make it easy to locate in the wonky world of Bing and Google search. The reason is that Amazon’s facial recognition system can identify individuals and cross tabulate that piece of information with other data available to the Amazon system.
Instant bubblegum card.
The write up “Invisible Asymptote” talks about social content and social rich media without offering any comment about the importance of these types of data to Amazon’s intelligence services or its marketplace.
The conclusion of the 10,000 word essay is more “invisible asymptote”. Is this Amazon’s the secret sauce:
Lastly, though I hesitate to share this, it is possible to avoid invisible asymptotes through sheer genius of product intuition.
Here’s a diagram from the essay which looks quite a bit like the self help diagram I included at the top of this Beyond Search post:
Several observations:
- The write up makes clear that if anyone thinks Amazon’s platform is neutral, think again.
- Strategists at Amazon are not able to “see” and “explain” the nuts and bolts of the “we may be a monopoly but” approach of the Big Dog of the Amazon
- The long, long essay does not stray very far from selling stuff to consumers who love free shipping.
Taken as a group of three perceptions, what does this say about Amazon?
For me, I think companies using Amazon’s plumbing will want to do a bit of strategizing using “What if” questions to spark discussion.
For companies behind or beneath the curve, there will be a ceiling, and it will not be easy to break through.
Amazon, on the other hand, may have break through and then replace the old ceiling with a nifty new one made of sterner stuff.
For information about our lectures about Amazon’s Next Big Thing: Intelligence Services, write me at benkent2020@yahoo.com. Put Amazon Streaming Marketplace in the subject line, please.
We now offer for fee webinars and on site consulting sessions. On June 5, 2015, coincident with my two lectures in Prague before an audience of LE and intel professionals, I will release a nine minute DarkCyber video exploring some of the inventions Amazon disclosed in an April document not widely reported in the media. Watch this blog for a link.
Stephen E Arnold, May 27, 2018
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