Checklist of Shady Digital Marketing Tactics
April 13, 2021
I think the author of “The Problem With Digital Marketing” wanted to make a positive contribution to the art and science of paying to get attention. The write up identifies four categories of marketing wizards which may cast a shadow over the well intentioned efforts of companies desperate for revenue.
The four buckets of bad things are:
- Gunning for a quick payoff
- Thinking about money now
- Shady search engine optimization methods
- Unprofessional behavior or what I call MBA ethical practices.
These four groups of activities are interesting for three reasons. First, the mixture of big things like the lack of an ethical command center and tiny thinks like using Dark Patterns to snooker a Web site visitor into spending money when the user thought he/she was NOT making a purchase are jarring.
The lack of the ethics thing opens the door to many activities not included in the three other buckets; for example, apps which are designed to snag a user’s financial information or the use of email to lure the recipient into divulging access credentials.
Items one and two are essentially the fabric of anyone who has bills to pay, a habit to feed, or a keen desire to ride to the bank in a new Bronco with an M1 MacBook under his/her arm.
Item three is actually the focal point of the write up. If an entity is not in the Google and easily findable by those with a limited vocabulary, that entity does not exist. The same need for findability applies to tweet things, Facebook craziness, and even the hopelessly weird Microsoft LinkedIn.
Distorting relevance, using assorted tricks like buying backlinks from clueless Web site owners, and dabbling in the sale of endorsements from YouTube influencers are probably not helpful to someone looking for an objective results list in response to a query.
So what do I make of this write up?
First, it makes clear that SEO is the way to go.
Second, the use of Dark Patterns or closely allied methods work and often work quite well.
Third, payoffs come when ethics are kicked into the trash surrounding the youth soccer field and email (phishing), apps (vectors of malware), and rhetorical tricks are used. The problem with digital content is a combination of tricks and bad content.
What works is buying Google online ads or becoming famous on YouTube or TikTok. Twitter is a minnow compared to the Google thing.
Stephen E Arnold, April 12, 2021
Scrutinizing Technology Wild Stallions: Regulators Care
April 13, 2021
Does government regulation bring some adulting to technology companies running wild? Yes, if the information in the weird orange newspaper is accurate. “Chinese Tech Groups Scrap IPOs at Record Pace after Ant Listing Pulled” reports [Note: You may be asked to pay to read the orange one’s write up. Sorry. You will have to subscribe]:
Companies cancel plans to sell shares on Shanghai’s Star Market as regulatory scrutiny rises.
Will this tactic work in the longer term? Nope, but it does suggest that some controls are applied to frisky tech horses.
It is possible that these stallions will work at dude ranches, happily carrying semi-authentic cow pokes to the faux cook out. But that’s a long shot.
Here’s a more practical response in my opinion:
- Look elsewhere. That’s the greener pastures approach. What type of controls can one expect in London or a more exotic location in the EU
- Pivot. There are plenty of doctors and dentists who are eager to invest in a whiz bang high tech stallion. With some lawyering, there are opportunities for private deals.
- Look for Softbank-type outfits, get some cash, and leave it to the wizards in the lead funding outfit to find a buyer.
The MBAs and legal eagles can find other options as well.
The main point is that regulation often spurs innovation in the financial sector. How about an NFT for Chinese high tech companies? How about some regulation in the US of FAANGs?
No. Okay.
Stephen E Arnold, April 13, 2021
Software Development: Big Is the One True Way
April 13, 2021
I read an essay called “Everyone Is Still Terrible At Creating Software At Scale.” I am often skeptical about categorical affirmatives. Sometimes a sweeping statement captures an essential truth. This essay in Marginally Interesting has illuminated software development in a useful way.
I found this passage thought provoking:
I’ve seen a few e-commerce companies from the inside, and while their systems are marvel of technologies able to handle thousands of transactions per second, it does not feel like this, but things like the app and the website are very deeply entangled with the rest. Even if you wanted, you couldn’t create a completely new app or website.
After I read this, I thought about rotational velocity. I also thought about the idea of how easy it is to break something. Users want a software component to work and be usable. Software often appears fluid. What’s clear is that outages at big vendors and security lapses are seemingly the stuff of daily headlines. Big outfits deliver one thing; users get another.
Here’s another statement I circled:
My recommendation is to look at structures and ask yourself, how hard is it for any one “unit” in your “system” to get stuff done. Everything that cuts across areas of responsibility adds complexity.
Complexity is an interesting idea. Does Google “change” how the Page Rank method is implemented, or is Google in the software wrapper business? Can Microsoft plug security gaps when those gaps are the fabric of core Azure and Windows 10 processes? Can Facebook actually change feedback loops which feed its content processes? Is it possible for an outfit like Honda to change how it makes automobiles? In theory, a Honda-type operation can change, but the enemies are time, Tesla-like disruptions, Covid, and money.
Like the big ship which managed to get stuck in the Suez Canal, altering a method once underway is tricky.
The essay ends with this observation:
Unless you take care everyone has different understanding of the problem, and there is no focus on information gathering and constructive creativity.
But big is the way, right?
Stephen E Arnold, April 14, 2021
A Test to Determine Googliness
April 12, 2021
I read “After Working at Google, I’ll Never Let Myself Love a Job Again.” I immediately thought of the statement, “You’ll Never Work in This Town Again.” Did the icon Harvey Weinstein say this? I can’t recall.
Okay, no loving a job. The real news “opinion” piece explains a harrowing, first-person account of harassment. Did I harass Mr. Weinstein with my use of the word “icon”? Yikes.
To learn about the mom-and-pop online ad agency’s approach to personnel management, read the real news “opinion” article.
Here’s what I gleaned from the write up:
1. Be a compliant engineer who stays within the bright white lines of behavior at the Google. What if the interactions are virtual? No matter. Bright white lines, real or imagined, are the markers.
2. Don’t pick a mentor who wants to keep his / her job, bonus, stock options, and invitations to select company events. (Once some events required a ski weekend. Whoooie! Fun.) Mentors who value something other than “relationships” may provide a re-introduction to the Maslow – Google hierarchy of needs.
3. Keep quiet and avoid the human resources people management wizard. After a sales call at SHRM or something like that, I knew that modern HR was a casualty of MBA think; for example, employees are at fault. Unproductive employees are self identified. Modern organizations don’t want flawed and profit-sucking humanoids. Maybe I have the human resource function wrong, but I too can have an opinion.
4. Life at the Googleplex does not dispense “Also Participated” badges like a really trendy private middle school.
These observations lend themselves to items on my “Checklist for Being Googley”; to wit:
- Be smart enough to be compliant and “cooperative”
- Work alone when possible delivering “good enough” outputs
- Operate without official or unofficial visits to personnel professionals
- Welcome inter-personal interactions warmly, enthusiastically, and without documenting such encounters
- Do “what it takes” to join a hot team, get a promotion, and enter the private domains of the truly elite
- Eschew interviews, book deals, and opportunities to contribute to a “real news” channel.
If you can tick off each of these items, you are ready to do a run through the Google Labs Aptitude Test. Rumored to have been retired, copies of these tests of Google grade knowledge are still available. Just search Google.com. Oh, strike that. This link returns the questions, not the attractive green of the original hard copy with the really hard questions like:
What’s broken with Unix? How would you Fix it?
Beyond Search had a copy but boxer Max ate it years ago. Yes, he passed the exam.
Stephen E Arnold, April 12, 2021
Shaping Data Is Indeed a Thing and Necessary
April 12, 2021
I gave a lecture at Microsoft Research many years ago. I brought up the topic of Kolmogorov’s complexity idea and making fast and slow smart software sort of work. (Remember that Microsoft bought Fast Search & Transfer which danced around making automated indexing really super wonderful like herring worked over by a big time cook.) My recollection of the Microsoft group’s reaction was, “What is this person talking about?” There you go.
If you are curious about the link between a Russian math person once dumb enough to hire one of my relatives to do some grunt work, check out the 2019 essay “Are Deep Neural Networks Dramatically Overfitted?” Spoiler: You betcha.
The essay explains that mathy tests signal when a dataset is just right. No more nor no less data are needed. Thus, if the data are “just right,” the outputs will be on the money, accurate, and close enough for horse shoes.
The write up states:
The number of parameters is not correlated with model overfitting in the field of deep learning, suggesting that parameter counting cannot indicate the true complexity of deep neural networks.
Simplifying: “Oh, oh.”
Then there is a work around. The write up points out:
The lottery ticket hypothesis states that a randomly initialized, dense, feed-forward network contains a pool of subnetworks and among them only a subset are “winning tickets” which can achieve the optimal performance when trained in isolation. The idea is motivated by network pruning techniques — removing unnecessary weights (i.e. tiny weights that are almost negligible) without harming the model performance. Although the final network size can be reduced dramatically, it is hard to train such a pruned network architecture successfully from scratch.
Simplifying again: “Yep, close enough for most applications.”
What’s the fix? Keep the data small.
Doesn’t that create other issues? Sure does. For example, what about real time streaming data which diverge from the data used to train smart software. You know the “change” thing when historical data no longer apply. Smart software is possible as long as the aperture is small and the data shaped.
There you go. Outputs are good enough but may be “blind” in some ways.
Stephen E Arnold, April 12, 2021
Want to Change Employee Behavior? What Not to Do
April 12, 2021
I read “The One System That Changes Employee Behavior.” Interesting but disconnected from good old reality. I assume that the breezy recommendations comprise the one system a manager with an MBA and a back ground in the disconnected world of high school science club decision making are perfect for thumbtypers.
Wrong. Behavior change in a commercial enterprise is induced by hooking compensation (tangible or intangible) to specific outcomes. Another way to think about change is to think about this statement, “Do this and you get a raise and a promotion.”
Let’s look at the four recommendations that comprise the “one system that changes employee behavior.” Here are what I call “thumbtyper” suggestions. My observations appear in italics after these bullets of high powered wisdom:
1. Define corporate values.
Okay, that’s something for a first year business class. Get those values down to a snappy phrase like “Do no evil.” One can also look to outfits like Credit Suisse. That outfit’s executives are in a tizzy because of its financial sinkhole related to the ethical paragons at Archegos. To understand corporate values, talk to the former McKinsey wizards who engineered success at a large pharmaceutical firm.
2. Define pinpointed behaviors aligned with values.
Many interesting examples of this alignment thing can be located. Examples include the fascinating tale of a Google attorney who was philandering to the Big Zuck who wanted to eat meat of animals he killed. Did he wear a PETA cap whist satisfying his culinary goals? Alignment of privacy and Facebook revenue are almost as interesting. I do like the word “pinpointed”, however. Precision is required for advertisers to buy click as well as for inducing pregnancy and killing a plump French bulldog tied to a door knob on University Avenue. As you ponder the canine metaphor, define value for attendees at a virtual venture funded entrepreneur-to-be conference.
3. Change your behaviors.
Ho, ho, ho. Try that with this senior manager at a high tech firm in the cradle of ethical behavior. The behavior requiring change is described in “Prostitute Convicted in Google Exec’s Overdose Death Charged.” Yep, intervention works great. On the other hand, step back and watch how behaviors evolve once a secret is exposed. Current examples fall readily to hand; for example, explanations about data loss from social media outfits.
4. Facilitate change in others.
This is an interesting idea. Let’s take the example of Uber. Travis Kalanick, who needed to grow up, did indeed alter others. Some of his methods are documented in the BBC article “Uber: The Scandals That Drove Travis Kalanick Out.” A more mundane example may lurk in one’s own mind. How often did someone tell you, gentle reader, do your homework? Works everytime for those under the age of 13, doesn’t it?
My thought is that these ideas do not comprise a system.
What works is incentives. Pay for specific actions. When the action is delivered in a satisfactory way, provide more payoffs. Magic. The somewhat shallow “one system” ain’t gonna do it. Cash is more reliable a motivator.
Stephen E Arnold, April 12, 2021
Apple: Two Cores Inside One Juicy Delight
April 12, 2021
I am not sure whom to believe. Tim Apple, the spokesperson for security and privacy, or a “senior Apple engineer named Eric Friedman. Mr. Friedman has insight into Apple’s actual app review process. The orange newspaper’s story “Apple Engineer Likened App Store Security to Butter Knife in a Gunfight” stated:
Apple’s process of reviewing new apps for the App Store to “more like the pretty lady who greets you . . . at the Hawaiian airport than the drug-sniffing dog”. He added that Apple was ill-equipped to “deflect sophisticated attackers”.
The real world approach is different from the super diligent method cultivated in the apple orchard.
The issue is important because some people like little old me have purchased super duper Apple app store apps. A go round with video recording apps produced mostly failure. Did I care? A little. Did Apple care? Ho ho ho.
But the game outfit Epic (maker of Fortnite) does care and apparently has the cash to take the nemesis of Facebook and Intel to court. I circled in apple red marker this statement in the write up:
Apple acknowledged various forms of malware on the App Store, but cited data from 2018 showing that the iPhone platform “accounted for just 0.85% of malware infections,” whereas Android accounted for 47.2 per cent of infections and Windows and PC accounted for 35.8 per cent.
That’s outstanding. Why are any malware centric apps in the Apple app store? Microsoft points to 1,000 engineers working tirelessly to keep the Azure crowd on its toes. Microsoft unfortunately is not able to make its product secure. Neither is Google. And, it seems, Apple drops the basket of Belle de Boskoops in the space ship’s Fraud Engineering Algorithms and Risk (Fear) office too.
I am not sure if these comments in the write up are Johnny Appleseed approved or faux Crimson Delights:
According to Epic, the chief of meditation app Headspace referred to “egregious theft” on the App Store, with copycat apps repeatedly springing up after allegedly stealing its intellectual property. “Shockingly, Apple [is] approving these apps, and when the users buy the apps they are left with nothing but some scammy chat rooms in the background,” he wrote to Apple, according to Epic.
Interesting. One big Apple with two different cores. Which is the real one? Worth watching.
Stephen E Arnold, April 12, 2021
PS. Here in Kentucky, the catchphrase phrase is “don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.” But plastic butter knife? No. No. No. Pack the correct equipment shown in the table below:
| Crocodile Dundee knife possibly based on a Kentucky model used by Davy Crockett down yonder from Harrod’s Creek |  |
| Plastic butter knife with silver Mylar wrap |  |
| Kentucky weapon for a real gun fight |  |
Observation: Knives won’t work when one confronts a Fort Knox tank.
Microsoft: Bob Security Captures Headlines
April 9, 2021
Sleeper code. Yep, malware injected into thousands of servers could wake up and create some interesting challenges for the JEDI contractors with Microsoft T Shirts. Here’s my design suggestion for the security experts’ team:
Do you remember the tag line for Bob, a stellar graphical interface for Microsoft Windows? No. Let me highlight one of the zippier marketing statements:
Hard working, easy going software everyone will use.
Who knew that the “everyone” would include bad actors. Plus there are two other security related items to entice cyber professionals.
First, “Windows 10 Hacked Again at Pwn2Own, Chrome, Zoom Also Fall” includes this statement:
The first to demo a successful Windows 10 exploit on Wednesday and earn $40,000 was Palo Alto Networks’ Tao Yan who used a Race Condition bug to escalate to SYSTEM privileges from a normal user on a fully patched Windows 10 machine. Windows 10 was hacked a second time using an undocumented integer overflow weakness to escalate permissions up to NT Authority\SYSTEM by a researcher known as z3r09. This also brought them $40,000 after escalating privileges from a regular (non-privileged) user. Microsoft’s OS was hacked a third time during day one of Pwn2Own by Team Viettel, who escalated a regular user’s privileges to SYSTEM using another previously unknown integer overflow bug.
The statements suggest that either the OS is deliberately flawed in order to allow certain parties unfettered access to user computers or that Microsoft is focusing on moving Paint to the outstanding Microsoft online store.
Second, I spotted “Hackers Scraped Data from 500 Million LinkedIn Users about Two Thirds of the Platform’s Userbase and Posted It for Sale Online.” (Editor’s note: Data is plural, but let’s not get distracted, shall we?) The article reports:
The data includes account IDs, full names, email addresses, phone numbers, workplace information, genders, and links to other social media accounts.
Useful to some I assume.
Net net: I wonder if a Bob baseball cap is available in the Microsoft store?
I would wear one with pride during my upcoming National Cyber Crime Conference lecture.
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2021
An Exploration of Search Code
April 9, 2021
Software engineer Bard de Geode posts an exercise in search coding on his blog—“Building a Full-Text Search Engine in 150 Lines of Python Code.” He has pared down the thousands and thousands of lines of code found in proprietary search systems to the essentials. Of course, those platforms have many more bells and whistles, but this gives one an idea of the basic components. Navigate to the write-up for the technical details and code snippets that I do not pretend to follow completely. The headings de Geode walks us through include Data, Data preparation, Indexing, Analysis, Indexing the corpus, Searching, Relevancy, Term frequency, and Inverse document frequency. He concludes:
“You can find all the code on Github, and I’ve provided a utility function that will download the Wikipedia abstracts and build an index. Install the requirements, run it in your Python console of choice and have fun messing with the data structures and searching. Now, obviously this is a project to illustrate the concepts of search and how it can be so fast (even with ranking, I can search and rank 6.27m documents on my laptop with a ‘slow’ language like Python) and not production grade software. It runs entirely in memory on my laptop, whereas libraries like Lucene utilize hyper-efficient data structures and even optimize disk seeks, and software like Elasticsearch and Solr scale Lucene to hundreds if not thousands of machines. That doesn’t mean that we can’t think about fun expansions on this basic functionality though; for example, we assume that every field in the document has the same contribution to relevancy, whereas a query term match in the title should probably be weighted more strongly than a match in the description. Another fun project could be to expand the query parsing; there’s no reason why either all or just one term need to match.”
Fore more information, de Geode recommends curious readers navigate to MonkeyLearn’s post “What is TF-IDF?” and to an explanation of “Term Frequency and Weighting” posted by Stanford’s NLP Group. Happy coding.
Cynthia Murrell, April 9, 2021
Facebook Security: Fodder for Testimony?
April 9, 2021
Who knows if this is true? “533 Million Facebook Users’ Phone Numbers Leaked on Hacker Forum.” The write up states:
The mobile phone numbers and other personal information for approximately 533 million Facebook users worldwide has been leaked on a popular hacker forum for free. The stolen data first surfaced on a hacking community in June 2020 when a member began selling the Facebook data to other members.
If true, the revelation is a nice complement to a series of outstanding achievements by the centralized, big tech, really smart managers at super important companies. Examples include:
- Twitter’s senior manager spoofing elected officials
- Microsoft’s Exchange Server misstep when Windows Defender was on the job sort of
- Amazon’s brilliant Twitter campaign about workers’ inexplicable need to take breaks
- Google’s staunch defense of employees who grouse with assurances of continued employment.
Now Mr. Zuckerberg’s digital nation and its outstanding security.
How did this happen? The write up asserts:
According to Alon Gal, CTO of cybercrime intelligence firm Hudson Rock, it is believed that threat actors exploited in 2019 a now-patched vulnerability in Facebook’s “Add Friend” feature that allowed them to gain access to member’s phone numbers.
I envision Mr. Zuckerberg answering this question under oath in an upcoming Congressional hearing:
Senator X: Mr. Zuckerberg, what the heck happened? I have a teen age grand daughter. Are you protecting her?
Mr. Zuckerberg: Senator, thank you for that question. At Facebook, we take every possible precaution to guard our user’s identify. I will look into this matter and provide a report written by an Amazon PR person whom we just hired, and assign the former head of Microsoft security also a new hire to investigate this matter. Early reports suggest that the 1,000 criminals attacking Microsoft were supplemented with an additional 2,000 bad actors to breach our highly secure system.
Plus, the loss of data affected a mere 533 million users. Trivial. It is old news too.
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2021
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