Algorithms Can Be Interesting
September 8, 2018
Navigate to “As Germans Seek News, YouTube Delivers Far-Right Tirades” and consider the consequences of information shaping. I have highlighted a handful of statements from the write up to prime your critical thinking pump. Here goes.
I circled this statement in true blue:
…[a Berlin-based digital researcher] scraped YouTube databases for information on every Chemnitz-related video published this year. He found that the platform’s recommendation system consistently directed people toward extremist videos on the riots — then on to far-right videos on other subjects.
I noted:
[The researcher] found that the platform’s recommendation system consistently directed people toward extremist videos on the riots — then on to far-right videos on other subjects.
The write up said:
A YouTube spokeswoman declined to comment on the accusations, saying the recommendation system intended to “give people video suggestions that leave them satisfied.”
The newspaper story revealed:
Zeynep Tufekci, a prominent social media researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has written that these findings suggest that YouTube could become “one of the most powerful radicalizing instruments of the 21st century.”
With additional exploration, the story asserts a possible mathematical idiosyncrasy:
… The YouTube recommendations bunched them all together, sending users through a vast, closed system composed heavily of misinformation and hate.
You may want to read the original write up and consider the implications of interesting numerical recipes’ behavior.
The Organization Of The Dark Web
September 7, 2018
The Internet is a sprawling, unorganized digital expanse, while the Dark Web is smaller, underground, unorganized trailer court. Because it is smaller, it is easier to create a Dark Web map. The Recorded Future took on the endeavor and described the Dark Web’s structure in: “Dark Networks: Social Network Analysis Of Dark Web Communities.”
While the Dark Web is considerably smaller than the Internet it is quite big and there is a huge amount of data that cannot be classified. Using social network analysis, Recorded Future found three distinct Dark Web communities:
“We found three distinct communities of actors in dark web and special-access sites: low-tier underground forums, higher-tier dark web forums, and dark web markets. These three clusters line up with our expert intuition of the dark web, appearing almost as if no other sensible organization is possible in retrospect. Additionally we found notable cross-posting between low-tier and higher-tier forums. The results of this research are directly reflected in Recorded Future’s product and ontology. This new categorization helps security teams obtain targeted, relevant dark web intelligence, facilitates their understanding of threats, and opens a window into the methods, tactics, and motivations of threat actors.”
The next part of the article explains how Recorded Future collected its data and discovered patterns between the three tiers. From the gathered data, they made visualizations of the connections between the tiers. The visualizations yielded more information about the communities, including that the low-tier underground forums are free, open access, and house the novices. The higher-tier Dark Web forums are restricted through a vetting process, sites are hosted on Tor, and experienced criminals and Dark Web markets are generally open, because they are selling services.
The Dark Web has various levels and interconnections between the three tiers. There are restricted communities that overlap with each other and there is a huge commerce section. It sounds like the regular Internet, except it deals in illegal services and goods. Google, along with In-Q-Tel, was an early investor in Recorded Future.
Whitney Grace, September 7, 2018
Four Chrome Extensions for More Efficient Searches
September 7, 2018
Education resource site Educational Technology and Mobile Learning suggests four extensions for the (Google-owned) Chrome browser to better find relevant content in the brief write-up, “4 Tools to Effectively Search the Web.” The write-up specifies:
“In today’s post we are sharing with you four practical Chrome extensions that will enable you to search the web in more efficient and effective ways. More specifically, using these extensions you will be able to easily access and search for scholarly articles, find similar web pages to the page you are currently browsing, initiate a Google search using images, and many more.”
At the top of the list is the Google Scholar extension, which speeds up access to scholarly articles found through Google Scholar search. The next suggestion is TinEye Reverse Image Search, which returns not similar images, but exact matches (complete with potentially valuable context and metadata). Then there are Google Similar Pages and Google’s Search by Image, each of which does what one would imagine. These tools certainly could be helpful for those who use Chrome.
Cynthia Murrell, September 5, 2018
Does Google Have an Edge in B2B?
September 3, 2018
Amazon is the undisputed king of eCommerce, but that doesn’t mean they have a corner on every market. When it comes to business-to-business transactions the waters are a little more murky. We learned just how competitive this arena has become from a recent Search Engine Watch story, “B2B Audiences Find Business Content Most Often Through Search.”
According to the story:
“Clutch’s survey of 384 consumers of online business content found that 87% of respondents frequently encounter business content using search engines, slightly more than the 85% who find business content through social media and 75% who encounter content most frequently on company websites.”
The story alludes to the fact that most of this work is done via Google or other B2B engines. This leaves Amazon high and dry, so they have tried to do something about it recently by behaving more like a B2B platform, offering customers invoicing options that allow them to wait 30 days for payment. However, sellers are furious. This, obviously, means people who were normally paid immediately will now have to wait a month and that’s a big change for many. We suspect that Amazon will iron out this wrinkle, but if not, they could get further behind in this realm.
But Amazon does offer search for what many people seek: Products.
Patrick Roland, September 3, 2018
Google: Online to Brick and Mortar Cross Correlation
August 31, 2018
Our research suggests that Amazon may have a slight edge in the cross correlation of user data. Google, whether pulling a me too or simply going its own way, has decided to link online and brick and mortar data.
The effort was revealed in “Google and MasterCard Cut a Secret Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales.” Amazon has access to some data which makes it possible for those with appropriate system access to perform analyses of Amazon customers’ buying behavior.
According to the write up:
For the past year, select Google advertisers have had access to a potent new tool to track whether the ads they ran online led to a sale at a physical store in the U.S. That insight came thanks in part to a stockpile of MasterCard transactions that Google paid for. But most of the two billion MasterCard holders aren’t aware of this behind-the-scenes tracking. That’s because the companies never told the public about the arrangement.
To be fair, I am not sure any of the financial services and broker dealer firms provide much output about the data in their possession, who has access to these data, and what use cases are applicable to these data.
From my vantage point in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, Google can find its own use cases for Mastercard data.
One question: Does Mastercard pay Amazon to process its data, or does Amazon pay Mastercard?
Google, if the information in the real news article is accurate, is paying for data.
I will address Amazon’s real time streaming data marketplace in my upcoming lecture in Washington, DC. If the information in the US government document I cite in my talk in correct, Google has to shift into high gear with regard to cross correlation of shopper data.
Stephen E Arnold, August 31, 2018
Google: Smart Software or Human Intervention
August 31, 2018
I mentioned in the interview that Robert Steele conducted with me the possibility of human intervention in Google search and information outputs. You can find the original interview here. I spotted an interesting factoid. The article “Google Maps Mistakenly Shows McCain Senate Office Building.” I went to grade school in Washington, DC, and later worked for years in the city. I thought that the misnamed building was named something else. But I am often wrong.
The point is that “a search for Russell Senate Office Building directed users to the same building. The error was fixed later Wednesday…. Google said in a statement Wednesday that it empowers people to contribute local knowledge to its maps, “but we recognize that there may be occasional inaccuracies or premature changes suggested by users.”
It was not clear how the error occurred.
I assume that Google’s smart software misnamed the Russell edifice for Senator McCain, and then smart software recognized the error and remediated it.
But if that assumption is incorrect, the change suggests that Google engineers can make direct changes to outputs generated by the Google system.
Worth noting.
Stephen E Arnold, August 30, 2018
High School Science Club Management Methods: August 30, 2018
August 30, 2018
Years ago, I learned that Google was worried about government regulation. President Trump seems to be making moves in that direction. But my topic today is high school science club management methods or HSSCMM.
The first example is news about a group of Facebook staff who are concerned about the intolerant liberal culture within Facebook. Okay, Facebook is about friends and people who share interests or likes. The notion of a political faction within an online company is one more example of a potential weakness in HSSCM. The idea that an employee worked for a company, had a job description, and received money strikes me as inoperative. The problem is that the needs of the Science Club are not the needs of the people on the football team or the field hockey team. Will the lunchroom have tables for the Science Club folks and other tables for the sports? In my high school, the Science Club was different from the band and the student council. Snort, snort, we said, when asked to coordinate with the booster club to celebrate a big win. Snort, snort.
The second example the story “14 Powerful Human-Rights Groups Write to Google Demanding It Kill Plans to Launch a China Search Engine.” The issue for Google and China is revenue. How will the HSSCM address a group of human rights organizations. I assume that these entities can issue news releases, pump out Twitter messages, and update their Facebook pages. If that sounds like the recipe for information warfare, I am not suggesting such an aggressive approach. What’s important to me is that Google will have to dip into its management methods to deal with this mini protest.
The question is, “Are high school science club management methods up to these two challenges?
My view is, “Sure, really smart people can find clever solutions.”
On the other hand, the very management methods which made Facebook and Google the business home runs each is will have to innovate. Business school curricula may not cover how to manage revolts from unexpected sources.
Stephen E Arnold, August 30, 2018
Phi Beta Iota Interviews Stephen E Arnold about Shaped Web Search Results
August 29, 2018
Robert David Steele, publisher of the Phi Beta Iota blog, interviewed Stephen E Arnold about allegations related to Google search results. The interview reveals that some Web search systems make it possible to modify search results to return specific information. The example Stephen gives comes from the FirstGov.gov US government search system powered in the early 2000s by Fast Search & Transfer.
Steele highlighted this statement from the interview:
“There is not enough money available to start over at Google. After two decades of fixing, tweaking, and enhancing, Google search is sort of chugging along. I think it is complex and swathed like a digital mummy in layers of code.”
You can read the full text of the interview titled “Robert Steele: An Interview with Stephen E. Arnold on Google and Google Search — How the Digital Mummy Might Manipulate Search.”
The three monographs Stephen wrote about Google are no longer in print. However, he does have fair copies (pre publication drafts) of the manuscripts. If you are interested in these reports, write benkent2020 at yahoo dot com.
Kenny Toth, August 29, 2018
The Google: A Synonym for Punching Bag
August 28, 2018
Here in Harrod’s Creek, we love the Google. We do have to run some queries across a number of search and retrieval systems to locate the information we seek. For example, Bing, Qwant, and even Exalead Search have been helpful this week as we prepare the lectures for an upcoming conference in Washington, DC, in a few days.
We wanted to point out two stories which seem critical of the GOOG. We have no idea if these are accurate or if the stories are confections created to — wait for it — get on the first page of Google results. Ah, the irony.
The first story is from a UK newspaper which usually adopts a less contentious approach to Google and other US online services. The story which caught our attention was “Trump News: President Claims Google Is Rigging Search Results to Make Him Look Bad.”
We learned:
“Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake New Media,” he [President Trump] wrote on Twitter. “In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal?”
Reporting Twitter messages has become a vital part of “real” journalism. Beyond Search is not convinced that the contentious discussion about Foundem, French tax returns, and similar allegations are 100 percent accurate.
We think it is interesting that Google, like Amazon, has become an issue for a US president.
The second story was “The Boss of ‘Fortnite’ Spent Days Attacking Google for Scoring ‘Cheap PR Points’ by Exposing a Flaw in the Game’s Security.” We learned from that “real” news plus MBA type analysis:
Responding to people on Twitter, Sweeney [boss of Fortnite] spent the weekend and Monday pointing out that Google was irresponsible in how quickly it revealed the flaw.
The security flaw business is an interesting one. In some locations, revealing a flaw is good news. In others, pointing out vulnerabilities in code triggers an anti-fiesta.
Several observations:
- Twitter plays a part in getting the message out.
- High profile individuals are alleging behaviors which present information retouched, shaded, or enhanced in some way
- The theme in both “real” news stories is that Google is not what it seems.
Flash back to the halcyon days of 2001 before the push to monetize Google. People who knew about Google loved the firm.
Times appear to have changed. Except in Harrod’s Creek, of course.
Stephen E Arnold, August 28, 2018
Silicon Politics: Makes Sense on a Small Scale
August 28, 2018
The current incarnation of Silicon Valley has always prided itself on making products that make the world a better place. While tech companies rarely get political, this is changing and it’s making life a little more complicated for them and us. We discovered just how wide ranging this issue was going with a recent IT Pro Today story, “Google’s Brin Cops to Plan to Reclaim Lost Decade in China.”
According to the story:
“Sergey Brin — the very executive most closely associated with the decision in 2010 to pull out of China. It was a widely lauded move by Google managers, led by Brin, who argued that they’d rather leave than subject their search tool to China’s stringent rules that filter out politically sensitive results, such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.”
Why the shift? Easy. With Apple being one of the few tech businesses thriving in China and also becoming the first trillion-dollar company, Google wants in on the action—revenue lost over 10 years may be a factor. Perhaps the only factor?
Patrick Roland, August 27, 2018
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