Cambridge Analytica and Fellow Travelers
March 26, 2018
I read Medium’s “Russian Analyst: Cambridge Analytica, Palantir and Quid Helped Trump Win 2016 Election.” Three points straight away:
- The write up may be a nifty piece of disinformation
- The ultimate source of the “factoids” in the write up may be a foreign country with interests orthogonal to those of the US
- The story I saw is dated July 2017, but dates – like other metadata – can be fluid unless in a specialized system which prevents after the fact tampering.
Against this background of what may be hefty problems, let me highlight several of the points in the write up I found interesting.
More than one analytics provider. The linkage of Cambridge Analytica, Palantir Technologies, and Quid is not a surprise. Multiple tools, each selected for its particular utility, are a best practice in some intelligence analytics operations.
A Russian source. The data in the write up appear to arrive via a blog by a Russian familiar with the vendors, the 2016 election, and how analytic tools can yield actionable information.
Attributing “insights.” Palantir allegedly output data which suggested that Mr. Trump could win “swing” states. Quid’s output suggested, “Focus on the Midwest.” Cambridge Analytica suggested, “Use Twitter and Facebook.”
If you are okay with the source and have an interest in what might be applications of each of the identified companies’ systems, definitely read the article.
On April 3, 2018, my April 3, 2018, DarkCyber video program focuses on my research team’s reconstruction of a possible workflow. And, yes, the video accommodates inputs from multiple sources. We will announce the location of the Cambridge Analytica, GSR, and Facebook “reconstruction” in Beyond Search.
Stephen E Arnold, March 26, 2018
Algorithm Positions Microsoft on Top of Global Tech Field
March 23, 2018
This is quite a surprise. Reporting the results of their own analysis, Reuters announces, “Microsoft Tops Thomson Reuters Top 100 Global Tech Leaders List.” The write-up tells us that, in second and third place, were:
… Chipmaker Intel and network gear maker Cisco Systems. The list, which aims to identify the industry’s top financially successful and organizationally sound organizations, features US tech giants such as Apple, Alphabet, International Business Machines and Texas Instruments, among its top 10. Microchip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, German business software giant SAP and Dublin-based consultant Accenture round out the top 10. The remaining 90 companies are not ranked, but the list also includes the world’s largest online retailer Amazon and social media giant Facebook.
The results are based on a 28-factor algorithm that measures performance across eight benchmarks: financial, management and investor confidence, risk and resilience, legal compliance, innovation, people and social responsibility, environmental impact, and reputation. The assessment tracks patent activity for technological innovation and sentiment in news and selected social media as the reflection of a company’s public reputation. The set of tech companies is restricted to those that have at least $1 billion in annual revenue.
That is an interesting combination of factors; I’d like to see that Venn diagram. Some trends emerged from the report. For example, 45 of those 100 companies are based in the US (but 47 in North America); 38 are headquartered in Asia, 14 in Europe, and one in Australia.
Cynthia Murrell, March 23, 2018
Twitter: Designed for Interesting Messaging
March 15, 2018
Fake news is getting harder to control and social media networks makes it harder to weed out the truth from the lies. Engadget shares how, “Twitter’s Fake News Problem Is Getting Worse” and how tragedy exacerbates the problem. For example, when a crazed shooter opened fired at a high school in Parkland, Florida, social media, including Twitter, helped spread fake news. The fake news misidentified the gunman, the number of gunmen, how a comedian was one of the shooters when it was just a meme, and misidentified missing people.
The problem is getting worse with doctored news stories, reporters being accused of false claims, and then misinformed readers reposting the information again and again. The most ironic thing is that this is what social media, especially Twitter was designed for:
“It’s just further evidence that Twitter’s fake-news problem is getting worse. After all, Twitter’s very nature is to spread information at lightning speed with little to no oversight. And ironically, it is this quality that brought Twitter to prominence in the first place. One of Twitter’s defining moments was when Janis Krum tweeted about U.S. Airways Flight 1549 landing in the Hudson River on January 15th, 2009 — he was the first to have reported it, and the tweet soon went viral. “It changed everything,” Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey told CNBC in 2013. “Suddenly the world turned its attention because we were the source of news — and it wasn’t us, it was this person in the boat using the service.” Twitter was no longer just a place for discussing what you had for lunch. It became a place where you could get news from real people experiencing events first-hand, which was often faster than mainstream news.”
Using Twitter and other social media networks as news aggregators has brought a fresh perspective to Internet social interactions. Fake news is easily generated and shared not only by bots, but by Internet trolls and then multiplied by people who do not think critically about content.
Here’s a Beyond Search tip: Refrain from reposting anything you are unsure about, but most people do not have the filters nor the skills to distinguish fact from fiction. For many, their beliefs make the facts. Twitter and similar tools become easy to use amplifiers.
Twitter and other social networks do have a responsibility to curb the false news. In the past, old-fashioned newspapers were ideally held accountable and reporters strove to fact check all their articles. Whatever happened to the fact checking department? (Tip: Library reference desks might be an oasis for some fact checkers.) Maybe we need to create a tool that runs everything through Wikipedia first which seems to be the easy way for Google to wriggle off the hook for certain types of content.
Whitney Grace, March 15, 2018
Google Accused of Censorship
March 13, 2018
Google, Facebook, and other social media and news outlets are concerned with fake news. They have taken preliminary measures to curb false, but Live Mint says, “Google Is Filtering News For The Wrong Reason.” Google, like other news outlets and social media platforms, is a business. While it delivers products and services, its entire goal is to turn a profit. Anything that affects the bottom line, such as false information, is deemed inappropriate.
Google deemed the Russian government-owned news Web sites RT and Sputnik as false information generators, so the search engine giant has reworked its ranking algorithm. The new ranking algorithm pushes RT and Sputnik way down in news searches. Live Mint explained that this made RT and Sputnik victims, but Google does not want to ban these Web sites. Instead, Google has other ideas:
Schmidt’s words are a riff on an April post by Google vice president of engineering Ben Gomes, who teased changes to how Google searches for news. New instructions targeted “deceptive web pages” that look like news but seek to “manipulate users” with conspiracy theories, hoaxes, and inaccurate information. ‘We’ve adjusted our signals to help surface more authoritative pages and demote low-quality content,’ Gomes wrote.
The author makes a poignant argument about why it is bad for businesses to alter their services, such as a news aggregator, to avoid bad press and increase regulation on them. He also argues that false information Web sites are harmful, but it is not Google’s responsibility to censor them.
It is a good point, but when people take everything printed on the Internet as fact someone has to take the moral argument to promote the truth.
Whitney Grace, March 13, 2018
Social Media: Toxic for Children
March 7, 2018
Social media is a well-known grounds for toxic thought and behavior for adults. Shaming, bad mouthing, spreading rumors, and even more damaging acts have been attributed to Twitter, Facebook and the like. As bad as we know this world is, our children are experiencing just as nasty of an environment, one study suggests. We learned more in a recent Independent article, “Two in Five Children Made Anxious Every Week, When Using The Internet, Research Says.”
According to the story:
“Almost half of young people said that in the last year they had experienced someone being mean to them over the internet – or they had been excluded online, new research has revealed.
“Meanwhile, eight per cent of schoolchildren surveyed said these negative experiences happened to them all or most of the time, according to the poll.”
Sadly, this has become an unavoidable part of adolescence. It is impossible to shield children from this kind of behavior, but the Independent story doesn’t really offer a solution. Some experts have an interesting one: stay online. Much like standing up to a schoolyard bully in past years, this psychologist says children should not ignore or block a bully, but push back. Stand up for themselves and hopefully others will too, which will drive the bully off. It’s a bold thought for a problem that is dominating young minds today.
Patrick Roland, March 7, 2018
Facebook Begins Censoring Content for Good and Ill
March 5, 2018
Facebook has been under a lot of scrutinies for fake news and propaganda lately. While the company has acknowledged its mistakes, the course it is taking to fix these problems should alarm people. We learned more on the social media giant’s censorship from a recent story in the Intercept, “Facebook Says It Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the U.S. and Israeli Governments.
According to the story:
Facebook has been on a censorship rampage against Palestinian activists who protest the decades-long, illegal Israeli occupation, all directed and determined by Israeli officials. Indeed, Israeli officials have been publicly boasting about how obedient Facebook is when it comes to Israeli censorship orders.
Shortly after news broke earlier this month of the agreement between the Israeli government and Facebook, Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Tel Aviv had submitted 158 requests to the social media giant over the previous four months asking it to remove content it deemed “incitement.” She said Facebook had granted 95 percent of the requests.
This is a no-win situation for Facebook. By trying to keep questionable content off the net, it opens the door for censoring its users. A slippery slope, to be sure. If we were to guess, Facebook will make a few more missteps before correcting things appropriately.
Patrick Roland, March 5, 2018
Facebook and Twitter: Battle Platforms
February 16, 2018
Social media is, according to an analysis by Lt. Col Jarred Prier (USAF), is a component of information warfare. “Commanding the Trend: Social Media As Information Warfare” explains how various actions can function as a lever for action and ideas. Highly recommended. The analysis suggests that social media is more than a way to find a companion and keep up with the kids.
Stephen E Arnold, February 16, 2018
EU Considers Making Platforms Pay for News Content
February 13, 2018
European journalists are sick of giant internet companies profiting from their labor without recompense, we learn from Yahoo News’ article, “Net Giants ‘Must Pay for News’ From Which They Make Billions.” The declaration from nine press agencies comes in support of a proposed EU directive that would require companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter to pay for the articles that bring so much ad revenue to their platforms. The write-up shares part of the agencies’ plea:
Facebook has become the biggest media in the world,” the agencies said in a plea published in the French daily Le Monde. “Yet neither Facebook nor Google have a newsroom… They do not have journalists in Syria risking their lives, nor a bureau in Zimbabwe investigating Mugabe’s departure, nor editors to check and verify information sent in by reporters on the ground. Access to free information is supposedly one of the great victories of the internet. But it is a myth,” the agencies argued. “At the end of the chain, informing the public costs a lot of money.
News, the declaration added, is the second reason after catching up on family and friends for people to log onto Facebook, which tripled its profits to $10 billion (€8.5 billion) last year. Yet it is the giants of the net who are reaping vast profits “from other people’s work” by soaking up between 60 and 70 percent of advertising revenue, with Google’s jumping by a fifth in a year. Meanwhile, ad revenue for news media fell nine percent in France alone last year, “a disaster for the industry”.
Indeed it is. And, we are reminded, a robust press is crucial for democracy itself. Some attempts have been made in France, Germany, and Spain to obtain compensation from these companies, but the limited results were disappointing. The press agencies suggest granting journalists “related rights” copyrights and assure a concerned Parliament that citizens will still be able to access information for free online. The only difference, they insist, would be that an appropriate chunk of that ad revenue will go to the people who actually researched and created the content. That sounds reasonable to this writer.
Cynthia Murrell, February 13, 2018
The Future of Social Media is Old School
February 8, 2018
Before social media, the only way to express yourself online was via a mostly anonymous series of blogs and sites that were impossible to go viral because virality didn’t exist. Oddly, some bright minds are going back to this method with txt.fyi, a platform where you can post anything you want without it going to search engines. This old-fashioned message board was examined in a recent Wired article, “This Stripped-Down Blogging Tool Exemplifies Antisocial Media.”
I wanted something where people could publish their thoughts without any false game of social manipulation, one-upmanship, and favor-trading,” he says. This is what I found so interesting about his creation. Its antivirality doesn’t necessarily prevent a post from becoming wildly popular. (A txt.fyi URL shared on, say, Facebook could perhaps go viral.) But its design favors messages to someone, not everyone.
[The inventor] discovered someone using txt.fyi to write letters to a deceased relative. It was touching and weirdly human, precisely the sort of unconventional expression we used to see a lot more of online. But today we sand down those rough edges, those barbaric yawps, in the quest for social spread. Even if you don’t want to share something, Medium or Tumblr or Snapchat tries to make you. They have the will to virality baked in.
This is a neat idea and might have a longer shelf life than you’d think. That’s because we are firm believers that every good idea on the internet gets retooled for awfulness. (Reddit, anyone?) This quasi-dark web blogging approach is almost certain to be used for nefarious purposes and will become a tool for hate speech and crime.
Patrick Roland, February 8, 2018
Facebook: Regulate It
January 26, 2018
I read “Facebook Is Addictive and Should Be Regulated Like a Cigarette Company: Salesforce CEO.” Yes, another call to regulate online services. I noted this statement in the authoritative USA Today “real” journalism type article:
“I think that you do it exactly the same way that you regulated the cigarette industry. Here’s a product: Cigarettes. They’re addictive. You know, they’re not good for you…There’s a lot of parallels,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told CBNC’s Squawk Alley.
I wonder if Salesforce has forgotten the advice it received from pundit Steve Gilmor about attention and the role it would play in boosting Salesforce’s customer activity?
Must be a different thing. Email, phone calls, and reports about “sales” calls. Different stuff with contacts, analyses, mechanisms for capturing data from multi-tenant systems, etc. Different, right?
Stephen E Arnold, January 26, 2018
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