Google YouTube: Trying to Put Sand in Amazon and TikTok Product Search? Yep. Yep. Yep.
July 29, 2022
Most people don’t think too much about the impact of Amazon’s ecommerce search. It mostly works and the savvy shopper knows how to spot a third party reseller scam brand. (You do, don’t you?) Here’s a bit of anecdotal context. Amazon product search has chewed into Google search. In the post-Froogle years, Amazon sold online books. Then Amazon started adding products. With the products came reviews. Some reviews were Fiverr-type service generated but a few — the exact percentage like the number of bogus Twitter accounts — is not known.
People around the world use Amazon ecommerce search to find products, get basic information, and some useful, some misinformation about a particular product.
The impact on the Google has been significant. The number kicked around among my slightly dull research team is a decrease of 30 percent in product search in 2021. How does one know that Amazon has done more to cause pain at the Google than many know? Easy. Google took a former Verity wizard (you remember Verity, right?) and used high school reunion type pressure to get that person to indicate that Google product search was going to get a couple of steroid injections, a tummy tuck, and a butt lift. These are digital enhancements, of course. Google is not a humanoid, despite Google management’s insistence on its sentience.
“YouTube and Shopify Just Started Livestream Selling and You Should Too” explains:
YouTube just announced a partnership with Shopify.
Yep, the company that media luminary and business wizard Scott Gallagher touted for several months on a popular podcast featuring insights and school yard humor. (Was Google won over by Guru Gallagher’s blend of insight and George Carlin thinking?)
The article points out:
Social selling is the shopping experience of the future.
The write up adds a bit of color to what seems like a “next big thing.” Spoiler: It’s not.
My reaction to the write up? The most important point should be that Google is racing (possibly out of control) to find a way to stop the loss of product search clicks. Hence, TikTok me too videos with product endorsements. Hence, a deal with a modern version of Yahoo stores. Hence, a tie up to use Shopify as a war horse.
My view: Too late. Amazon, TikTok, and a handful of other product centric ecommerce services are sitting behind their revenue ramparts. Google doesn’t have the weaponry it did before the erosion became noticeable in 2006. Froogle? Froogle? Long gone. But the spirit of Verity is here to claw back the product search traffic. Exciting.
Stephen E Arnold, July 29, 2022
Meta Makes a Show of Measures to Protect Kids
July 29, 2022
A pair of articles reveals a bit of Zuckbook adulting. Isn’t it amazing what some bad press can provoke? First up, The Verge tells us “Instagram Will Start Nudging Teens Away from Content they Continuously Browse Through.” While this move does not specifically protect against harmful content, it is meant to discourage teens from obsessing on one topic by proposing alternatives to explore. Notably, suggestions will exclude something that already has Meta in hot water—content that promotes appearance comparison. Another Instagram effort has its “Take a Break” feature suggesting teens go do something else if they have been perusing Reels “for a while.” (Just how long a while is left unstated.) Writer Emma Roth also tells us:
“Lastly, Instagram is making some adjustments to its existing parental controls. The platform will now let parents send invites to their kids asking to gain access to parental supervision tools, something only teens were previously able to initiate. Parents can also see information on what types of posts or accounts their child reports, as well as gain more control over the time their teen spends on Instagram.”
As much as Instagram has been shown to cause harm to young people, the VR metaverse is already proving to be even worse. Mashable reports, “Meta Expands Parental Controls, Including Virtual Reality Monitoring.” The update lets parents block certain apps, view their kid’s friends list and activity, and require parental approval for purchases. It can also disable a headset feature that otherwise lets kids access blocked content on their PCs. All of this is accompanied by an informative “parent education hub” for guidance on using the parental controls (a feature the kiddos are bound to find very helpful.) Writer Chase DiBeneditto elaborates:
“Following the launch of Meta’s Horizon Worlds — a VR ‘creator space’ for users to connect and build virtual worlds — and it’s new ‘safety-focused’ features, users and researchers alike expressed concern that young users would still be easily exposed to unmoderated hate speech and harassment. Meta later added a ‘garbled voices’ filter to Horizon Worlds that turned the voice chats of VR strangers into unintelligible, friendly sounds, and a ‘personal boundary’ feature to hopefully block harassment by uninvited users. Then in May, Meta announced new locking tools to block specific apps from a user’s Quest headset in response to concerns that teens and children with unsupervised access were being exposed to inappropriate virtual reality spaces.”
Meta has certainly gone to a lot of effort to appear like it is protecting kids as it profits off them. If we are lucky, some of these PR defense tactics will actually do some good.
Cynthia Murrell, July 29, 2022
Microsoft Windows: Does Windows Rhyme with Woes?
July 29, 2022
Security? Weird interfaces? Fixes that terminate with extreme prejudice printers? Did I ask about security? Oh, yes, I did.
I thought about Windows, the apparently abandoned insiders, the cheerleaders, and the haters. Did I mention the pundits? Oh, yes, I did.
I read “Microsoft’s Windows OS Loses 17% of Its Market Share in the Last 10 Years.” If the write up is accurate, the Softies may have some work to do. Why not charge for extras like Notepad, following the lead of BMW and its subscription for heated seats? The MSFT variation might be for search results that match the user’s search statement?
The write up reports:
According to a StockApps.com data presentation, Windows has lost 17% of its market share in the last decade. The site has presented data showing that the OS’s market share has plunged from 90.96% in 2013 to the current 73.72%. That’s a drop of roughly 2% a year. Meanwhile, alternative OS’ have seen their cumulative stock rise in that period. StockApps’ financial expert Edith Reads has been analyzing the trends in that space. She says, “Windows’ stranglehold over the OS market is shrinking because of increased competition. Today, Microsoft is facing competition from developers of alternative OS’. They have developed software that’s appealing to some computer lovers because they’re open source, faster, safer, and simpler to use.”
Yep, Linux is trotted out. Plus there is the Chrome operating system which runs on Google’s browser, which is recycled by Microsoft! Yep, Microsoft is doing the Chrome thing. Internet Explorer died on a long, long journey. Now its is Chrome plus Edge or, as I prefer, Kredge.
What’s the fix? How can a dinobaby residing in rural Kentucky have an answer. When I did some menial work for a Softie-related outfit, no one knew what I was talking about. I remember when I mentioned Kolmogorov and my uncle Vladimir Arnold. I can see the blank faces in the audience now.
Net net: Do I have a suggestion? Heck no. I like MSFT just the way it is. It’s scrumptious. Bring on Windows 12, the second version after the “last” version of Windows was announced in 2015. Consistency? You kidding me?
Stephen E Arnold, July 29, 2022
AI Knowledge Tool Sphere For Wikipedia by Meta
July 29, 2022
Given how much criticism Meta gets for perpetuating misinformation, it is no surprise the company is putting effort into a cutting-edge, open source tool to test the veracity of information online. It is puzzling, though, that the company has no plans to use the tool on Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger, at least not yet. We learn from TechCrunch, “Meta Launches Sphere, an AI Knowledge Tool Based on Open Web Content, Used Initially to Verify Citations on Wikipedia.” The article includes a very brief video illustrating Sphere at work. Reporter Ingrid Lunden also discusses how Wikipedia will use the tool and the relationship between the two companies, so see the write-up for those details. We find this part interesting:
“Meta believes that the ‘white box’ knowledge base that Sphere represents has significantly more data (and by implication more sources to match for verification) than a typical ‘black box’ knowledge sources out there that are based on findings from, for example, proprietary search engines. ‘Because Sphere can access far more public information than today’s standard models, it could provide useful information that they cannot,’ it noted in a blog post.”
Ah, but is bigger really better? Not necessarily. Lunden continues:
“By open sourcing this tool, Meta’s argument is that it’s a more solid foundation for AI training models and other work than any proprietary base. All the same, it concedes the very foundations of the knowledge are potentially shaky, especially in these early days. What if a ‘truth’ is simply not being reported as widely as misinformation is? That’s where Meta wants to focus its future efforts in Sphere. ‘Our next step is to train models to assess the quality of retrieved documents, detect potential contradictions, prioritize more trustworthy sources — and, if no convincing evidence exists, concede that they, like us, can still be stumped,’ it noted.”
That is not ominous at all. Left unmentioned are issues of bias, which tend to be worse the more open a data set is. Will Wikipedia eventually come to regret pairing up with the Zuckbook?
Cynthia Murrell, July 28, 2022
Surprise: NSO Group Pegasus Is in the News Again
July 28, 2022
On July 27, 2022, the winger wonder Pegasus cast a shadow over the desks of the House Intelligence Committee. The flapping of the mythical creatures wings could not be stilled. Gavel pounding, heavy breathing from lobbyists in the gallery, and convoluted statements by elected leaders did not cause the beastie to fly away. Nope. Pegasus with its NSO Group logo branded on its comely haunch was present. Even mythical creatures can leave behind a mess.
And it appears as if the mess is semi-permanent and odiferous.
“We’re Likely Only Seeing the Tip of the Iceberg of Pegasus Spyware Use Against the US” states:
US lawmakers heard testimony from Citizen Lab senior researcher John Scott-Railton; Shane Huntley, who leads Google’s Threat Analysis Group; and Carine Kanimba, whose father was the inspiration for Hotel Rwanda and who was, herself, targeted by Pegasus spyware. This, of course, is the now-infamous malware that its developer, Israel’s NSO Group, claims is only sold to legitimate government agencies — not private companies or individuals. Once installed on a victim’s device, Pegasus can, among other things, secretly snoop on that person’s calls, messages, and other activities, and access their phone’s camera without permission.
I like the Hotel Rawanda reference. Younger elected officials may not know much about intelware, but they definitely know about the motion picture in my opinion. Hutus Tutsis and a big box office. A target of Pegasus. Credibility? Yep.
The hearings continue of July 28, 2022. According to the article:
Schiff called NSO’s software and similar eavesdropping tools “a threat to Americans,” and pointed to news reports from last year about cellphones belonging to US diplomats in Uganda being compromised by Pegasus. It is my belief that we are very likely looking at the tip of the iceberg, and that other US government personnel have had their devices compromised, whether by a nation-state using NSO’s services or tools offered by one of its lesser known but equally potent competitors,” Schiff said.
Google — the go to source for objective information — is allegedly tracking 30 firms “that sell exploits or surveillance capabilities to government-backed groups.
Just 30? Interesting, but, hey, Google knows surveillance cold I suppose.
A handful of observations:
- NSO Group’s Pegasus continues to capture attention like a Kentucky Derby winner which allegedly has banned substances rubbed on its belly. Some of those rub ons have a powerful scent. Even a boozy race track veterinarian can wince when checking a specific thoroughbred’s nether region.
- The knock on effect of NSO Group’s alleged management oversight means that scrutiny of intelware companies is going to spotlight the founders, funders, and stakeholders. I think this is like a deer standing on railroad tracks mesmerized by the bright white light heading down the rails at 60 miles per hour. In the train versus deer competitions in the past, trains hold a decided advantage.
- Individual companies in the specialized software business face an uncertain future.
How uncertain?
Regulations and bans seem to be on the menus in a number of countries. Also, there are a finite number of big dollar contracts for specialized software and smaller firms are going to have to get big fast, sell out to a larger company with multiple lines of law enforcement, defense, and intelligence revenue, or find a way to market without marketing “too well.”
And the “too well”?
Since NSO Group’s spotlight appearances, smaller intelware companies have had to be very careful abut their sales and marketing activities. Why? There are reporters from big time newspapers nosing around for information. There are online podcasts which have guests who talk about what specialized software can do, where the data originate, and how a “food chain” of information providers provide high value information. There are the tireless contributors of Twitter’s #OSINT threads who offer sometimes dumb and less frequently high-value nuggets about specialized services vendors. Finally, there are the marketers at specialized services firms themselves who use email blasts to tout their latest breakthroughs. Other small specialized software vendors prowl the niche law enforcement and intelligence conferences in search of sales leads. In some cases, there are more marketers than there are individuals who can license a data set, an analytics package, or the whole enchilada needed to monitor — how shall I phrase it — comprehensively. These energetic marketers learn that their employer becomes a journalist’s subject of interest.
Net net: When I reflect on the golden years of specialized software and services marketing, testing, and deploying, I have one hypotheses: NSO Group’s visibility has changed the game. There will be losers and a very few big winners. Who could have foreseen specialized software and services working like a bet on the baccarat tables in Monaco? Who anticipated NSO Group-type technology becoming “personal” to the US? I sure did not. The light at the end of the tunnel, once the train clears the deer, is that the discipline of “marketing without marketing too much” may become mainstream in France, Germany, Israel, Switzerland, and the US. I hear that train a-comin’ do you?
Stephen E Arnold, July 28, 2022
Google and Russia: How Many Rubles Does the Online Ad Giant Have Tucked Away?
July 28, 2022
There is something called a special action underway in Eastern Europe. The knock on effects are interesting. I thought about how Google will pay a fine to a country involved in a dust up, operating under sanctions, and functioning without some of the banking services available to more acceptable nation states; for example, Luxembourg, Monaco, and a number of others. This thought was sparked by the allegedly accurate information in “Russia Fines Google $358 Million for Not Removing Banned Info.” The cited article states:
Due to the multiple violations of the same legal requirement, the following fine would be revenue-based, reaching as high as 10% of the firm’s annual turnover. Roskomnadzor clarifies that the massive fine of $358 million was indeed calculated on the basis of the company’s annual business turnover in Russia.
The write up added:
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the sweeping anti-fake news laws enacted in the country, the Russian Google subsidiary, Google LLC, was forced to file for bankruptcy, claiming incapacity to continue business after a series of massive fines and, ultimately, asset confiscation.
Several questions:
- What happens to the Russian YouTube content providers’ money? Will Google “hold” the money and invest it? Who gets the payout?
- Will Google dip into its bag of non – US currencies and pay Russia or will that create an additional legal headache and increased financial costs?
- Will Sergey Brin explore a ride on a Russian rocket once the possibly-improper fine is resolved?
- How many violations can Russian officials identify? What will the price tag be if future violations of Russia’s laws, rules, and regulations are identified and levied?
And those lost advertising dollars? Yikes. That’s not good for Alphabet Google YouTube DeepMind stakeholders? Does DeepMind have a solution? Will Russian YouTube content providers trust DeepMind’s unbiased answer?
Stephen E Arnold, July 28, 2022
Figure This Rights Issue Out? Too Confusing for Me
July 28, 2022
I spotted a post at this Reddit location. I want to believe everything I read on the Internet because the information superhighway is so darned safe, well marked, and a clean, well lighted place. (Thanks, Mr. Hemingway.)
The post about which my attention wobbled is from an entity/persona named Simon Longbottom. The individual says:
I work at Adobe Stock Premium and it has come to my attention that Picrights is using this photo image and we have no record of their license to use this picture.
The picture is referenced in the Reddit post.
Simon says:
I am authorizing everyone reading this to act as an agent of Adobe Stock Premium to get fair compensation for their infringement. You should all be familiar with how to request this payment. I suggest sending them an email demand letter telling them to to take down the photo immediately and pay our standard licensing fee of $1786 for this image to settle our claim. My boss says that you can keep 85% of everything you get from this terrible company that has committed such terrible infraction. They need to learn a real lesson – please help me teach it to them.
Picrights is a professional services firm which collects use fees for rights holders. I am not too familiar with the outfit, and I don’t know if Simon works for Adobe.
The question is, “What’s going on in this post?”
The matter is complicated by the inclusion in the thread of emails for professionals working at Picrights. Those emails might be used by bad actors I suppose.
I like to think of Reddit personas and outfits which walk close to possibly improper behavior as outliers. My assumption may be incorrect.
In my upcoming lecture for a Federal law enforcement group, I am going to comment about what I call “soft fraud.” This single Reddit post raises some interesting questions, and there seems to be little recourse for those caught in a Web of digital fluffery. Reddit seems unwilling or unable to clear up the “entity” issue. The references to Adobe are in need of verification. There may be the ancillary question about the Picrights’ activities.
Perhaps a better question is, “Does anyone care?” Reddit? Adobe? Simon? Picrights? Anyone?
Stephen E Arnold, July 28, 2022
Should Scientific Collaboration Be Easier?
July 28, 2022
One of the Internet’s greatest benefits is that it offers scientists and other smart people the chance to collaborate across the globe. The United Nations and other researchers state that collaboration is essential to solving global warming, biodiversity loss, and curing pandemics. However, The Conversation says it is not that easy in the article, “It’s Getting Harder For Scientists To Collaborate Across Borders-That’s Bad When The World Faces Problems Like Pandemics And Climate Change.”
Collaboration with non-Western countries, such as the tuberculosis research network between South Africa, China, India, Russia, and Brazil led to advancements in basic and applied research. Unfortunately, Earth’s most powerful countries, increases in their nationalism, Russia’s war with Ukraine, and the COVID-19 pandemic have made it difficult for researchers to work together.
Russia has stopped working with all collaboration efforts from the arts to climate science in the Arctic. China has stopped working with the United States on projects involving quantum computing and microelectronics. Russia, China, and other countries have turned science into a tool for international politics.
Stopping international research collaboration is bad:
“But reducing or stopping international research comes with its own risks. It slows down the production of knowledge needed to address long-term global problems and reduces the potential for future scientific collaboration… First, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to an increased openness in global scientific exchange. In particular, there was growth in the number of students from developing and non-Western countries going to universities in the West. This movement formed networks of researchers from many countries. Second, massively collaborative scientific efforts – such as the Human Genome Project – as well as the ever-growing importance of expensive, large research laboratories and instruments have fueled international collaboration. Finally, the digital revolution has made it much easier to communicate and share data across borders. This all resulted in collaborative and fruitful research in many fields including gene technology, climate science and artificial intelligence. While Western countries dominated the scientific landscape of the 20th century, globalization has benefited many non-Western countries.”
The European Union, China, and United States are competing for technological and scientific leadership. The US and European Union explained that the loss of scientific and technological leadership leads to fewer economic opportunities and threatens democracy.
The US does want to limit China’s international influence and scientific progress. The US launched a large anti-espionage effort called the China Initiative to uncover connections US-Chinese links in corporate and academic sectors. Nothing was substantiated, but three US-based scholars were convicted when they failed to disclose Chinese ties. The China Initiative was criticized, then President Biden ended it in 2022.
The US, however, still has trade sanctions on Chinese countries to curtail China’s science and technology industries. The European Union is doing the same. China wants its science, technology, and scholarly industries to serve its interests. All three powers are wary of any collaboration.
Scientists want to work together, but governments and dictators ruin the fun for everyone.
Whitney Grace, July 28, 2022
Facebook Sunset: A Rush to Judgment? Nope. Bus Left Already
July 27, 2022
I read a variation on the Chicken Little story with an infusion of Humpty Dumpty. Sound interesting? Just navigate to “Sunset of the Social Network.” Pretty interesting because this is a Silicon Valley type cheerleading outfit realizing that their outfits don’t match those from the ESPN Cheerleading Championships for 2022. How does one quickly fix a fashion faux pas? Easy. Just claim that social networks are even less trendy than the white pants and red sweaters with Mountain View and Palo Alto logos stitched on the polyester.
So what’s the future? If you haven’t figured it out, the answer is TikTok and recommendations to drive memes, advance fun activities like jumping off roofs, and making wlw videos for middle schoolers. Yep, the future. Why not toss end a couple of references to the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?
The write up says:
Under the social network model, which piggybacked on the rise of smartphones to mold billions of users’ digital experiences, keeping up with your friends’ posts served as the hub for everything you might aim to do online. Now Facebook wants to shape your online life around the algorithmically-sorted preferences of millions of strangers around the globe.
On the surface, this seems to be what Zuckbook is trying to achieve. Irritating the Kardashians was a knock on effect.
The write up points out that digital dinobabies are a bit clumsy when snow falls:
Rivals tried and failed to beat Facebook at the social network game — most notably Google, with multiple forgotten efforts from Orkut to Google+.
I haven’t forgotten Orkut. That misstep illustrated a genetic flaw in Google’s DNA. Not only could Google not solve death, it couldn’t solve Facebook nor, more recently, Amazon’s gobbling a very large chunk of product search. (Presumably an able Verity alum will redress that issue with information gene splicing. Well, that’s the theory.
Here’s the passage I quite liked:
But the era in which social networking served as most users’ primary experience of the internet is moving behind us. That holds for Twitter, Facebook’s chief surviving Western rival, as well. Twitter never found a reliable business model, which opened it up to an acquisition bid by Elon Musk. Whatever the outcome of the legal fight now underway, Twitter’s future is cloudy at best. … The leadership of Meta and Facebook now views the entire machine of Facebook’s social network as a legacy operation.
Yowza. The very thing that helped make Silicon Valley punditry the next big thing has moved on. Apparently the email has not yet reached Medium and Substack yet. It has, in my opinion, reached Buzzfeed’s senior team and is probably in the in box of a number of other information outlets. That’s just a guess on my part, however.
And what’s the future? The answer is revealed:
All this leaves a vacuum in the middle — the space of forums, ad-hoc group formation and small communities that first drove excitement around internet adoption in the pre-Facebook era. Facebook’s sunsetting of its own social network could open a new space for innovation on this turf, where relative newcomers like Discord are already beginning to thrive.
News flash!
That era has already arrived, and it is morphing, innovating, and invigorating interesting new mechanisms of informationization. Want an example? Okay, CSAM on Telegram. I address this disturbing activity in my luncheon talk at the upcoming Federal Law Enforcement Training Center talk. The downturn in Dark Web activity illustrates a trend building over the last six years.
Facebook and the Silicon Valley real news folks now realize something has changed. Too late? For some, yes.
Stephen E Arnold, July 27, 2022
How Secure Is Cyber Security?
July 27, 2022
I have noted that cyber security companies invite me to webinars, briefings, conferences, and telephone calls. The subject of these calls is usually advanced, next-generation, proactive, smart, and intelligent cyber security solutions. The idea is that I will mention these firms in my lectures to law enforcement, crime analysts, and intelligence professionals. I sit through some. One outfit offers weekly seven to 10 minute reports about some new, absolutely horrible cyber threat. Others want me to join a Zoom to watch a series of PowerPoint slides showing how the latest Zero Day will make life miserable for companies without their cloud-based security system.
I then read item after item about a new variant of a RAT, an exploit taking advantage of the Swiss cheese of enterprise software, or some new dump of personal financial data on a Dark Web site selling fulz. It seems to me as if the cyber security sector is better at marketing than delivering cyber security. That’s just my opinion, and I usually don’t make a big deal of the veggie burgers being sold as 100 percent prime sirloin.
I read “Digital Security Giant Entrust Breached by Ransomware Gang.” The article does little to make me feel warm and fuzzy about cyber security systems and their vendors. I learned:
Digital security giant Entrust has confirmed that it suffered a cyber attack where threat actors breached their network and stole data from internal systems.
Who are the customers of this “digital security giant”? The write up reported:
This includes US government agencies, such as the Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security, the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Health & Human Services, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Agriculture, and many more.
Great. How effective are those whiz bang cyber security systems?
Yeah. I think I know the answer. Marketing is easier than delivering cyber security that works.
Stephen E Arnold, July 27, 2022
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
