Social Media Litigation Is on the Rise
August 6, 2015
When you think about social media and litigation, it might seem it would only come up during a civil, domestic, criminal mischief, or even a thievery suit. Businesses, however, rely on social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to advertise their services, connect with their clients, and increase their Web presence. It turns out that social media is also playing a bigger role not only for social cases, but for business ones as well. The X1 eDiscovery Law and Tech Blog posted about the “Gibson Dunn Report: Number of Cases Involving Social Media Evidence ‘Skyrocket’” and how social media litigation has increased in the first half of 2015.
The biggest issue the post discusses is the authenticity of the social media evidence. A person printing out a social media page or summarizing the content for court does not qualify as sufficient evidence. The big question right now is how to guarantee that social media passes an authenticity test and can withstand the court proceedings.
This is where eDiscovery software comes into play:
“These cases cited by Gibson Dunn illustrate why best practices software is needed to properly collect and preserve social media evidence. Ideally, a proponent of the evidence can rely on uncontroverted direct testimony from the creator of the web page in question. In many cases, such as in the Vayner case where incriminating social media evidence is at issue, that option is not available. In such situations, the testimony of the examiner who preserved the social media or other Internet evidence “in combination with circumstantial indicia of authenticity (such as the dates and web addresses), would support a finding” that the website documents are what the proponent asserts.”
The post then goes into a spiel about how the X1 Social Discovery software can make social media display all the “circumstantial indicia” or “additional confirming circumstances,” for solid evidence in court. What authenticates social media is the metadata and a MD5 checksum aka “hash value.” What really makes the information sink in is that Facebook apparently has every twenty unique metadata fields, which require eDiscovery software to determine authorship and the like. It is key to know that everything leaves a data trail on the Internet, but the average Google search is not going to dig it up.
Whitney Grace, August 6, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Instagram’s Search Feature Is A Vast Improvement
July 27, 2015
Instagram apparently knows more about your life than you or your friends. The new search overhaul comes with new features that reveal more information than you ever expected to get from Instagram. VentureBeat reviews the new search feature and explains how it works: “Hands-On: Instagram’s New Search And Explore Features Are A Massive Improvement.”
Many of the features are self-explanatory, but have improved interactivity and increased the amount of eye candy.
- Users can Explore Posts, which are random photos from all over Instagram and they can be viewed as a list or thumbnails.
- The Discover People feature suggests possible people for users to follow. According the article, it dives deep into your personal social network and suggests people you never thought Instagram knew about.
- Curated Collections offer content based off pre-selected categories that pull photos from users’ uploads.
Trending tags is another new feature:
“Trending Tags is Instagram’s attempt at gauging the platform’s pulse. If you’ve ever wondered what most people on Instagram are posting about, trending tags has the answer. These seemed very random and oddly insightful.”
Instagram is quickly becoming a more popular social media platform than Facebook and Twitter for some people. Its new search feature makes it more appealing to users and increases information discovery. Be sure that you will be spending hours on it.
Whitney Grace, July 27, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Data Companies Poised to Leverage Open Data
July 27, 2015
Support for open data, government datasets freely available to the public, has taken off in recent years; the federal government’s launch of Data.gov in 2009 is a prominent example. Naturally, some companies have sprung up to monetize this valuable resource. The New York Times reports, “Data Mining Start-Up Enigma to Expand Commercial Business.”
The article leads with a pro bono example of Enigma’s work: a project in New Orleans that uses that city’s open data to identify households most at risk for fire, so the city can give those folks free smoke detectors. The project illustrates the potential for good lurking in sets of open data. But make no mistake, the potential for profits is big, too. Reporter Steve Lohr explains:
“This new breed of open data companies represents the next step, pushing the applications into the commercial mainstream. Already, Enigma is working on projects with a handful of large corporations for analyzing business risks and fine-tuning supply chains — business that Enigma says generates millions of dollars in revenue.
“The four-year-old company has built up gradually, gathering and preparing thousands of government data sets to be searched, sifted and deployed in software applications. But Enigma is embarking on a sizable expansion, planning to nearly double its staff to 60 people by the end of the year. The growth will be fueled by a $28.2 million round of venture funding….
“The expansion will be mainly to pursue corporate business. Drew Conway, co-founder of DataKind, an organization that puts together volunteer teams of data scientists for humanitarian purposes, called Enigma ‘a first version of the potential commercialization of public data.’”
Other companies are getting into the game, too, leveraging open data in different ways. There’s Reonomy, which supplies research to the commercial real estate market. Seattle-based Socrata makes data-driven applications for government agencies. Information discovery company Dataminr uses open data in addition to Twitter’s stream to inform its clients’ decisions. Not surprisingly, Google is a contender with its Sidewalk Labs, which plumbs open data to improve city living through technology. Lohr insists, though, that Enigma is unique in the comprehensiveness of its data services. See the article for more on this innovative company.
Cynthia Murrell, July 27, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Publishers Out Of Sorts…Again
July 20, 2015
Here we go again, the same old panic song that has been sung around the digital landscape since the advent of portable devices: the publishing industry is losing money. The Guardian reports on how mobile devices are now hurting news outlets: “News Outlets Face Losing Control To Apple, Facebook, And Google.”
The news outlets are losing money as users move to mobile devices to access the news via Apple, Facebook, and Google. The article shares a bunch of statistics supporting this claim, which only backs up facts people already knew.
It does make a sound suggestion of traditional news outlets changing their business model by possibly teaming with the new ways people consume their news.
Here is a good rebuttal, however:
“ ‘Fragmentation of news provision, which weakens the bargaining power of journalism organisations, has coincided with a concentration of power in platforms,’ said Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center at Columbia university, in a lead commentary for the report.”
Seventy percent of mobile device users have a news app on their phone, but only a third of them use it at least once a week. Only diehard loyalists are returning to the traditional outlets and paying a subscription fee for the services. The rest of the time they turn to social media for their news.
This is not anything new. These outlets will adapt, because despite social media’s popularity there is still something to be said for a viable and trusted news outlet, that is, if you can trust the outlet.
Whitney Grace, July 20, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Quality Peer Reviews Are More Subjective Than Real Science
July 16, 2015
Peer reviewed journals are supposed to have an extra degree of authority, because a team of experts read and critiqued an academic work. Science 2.0 points out in the article, “Peer Review Is Subjective And The Quality Is Highly Variable” that peer-reviewed journals might not be worth their weight in opinions.
Peer reviews are supposed to be objective criticisms of work, but personal beliefs and political views are working their way into the process and have been for some time. It should not come as a surprise, when academia has been plagued by this problem for decades. It also has also been discussed, but peer review problems are brushed under the rug. In true academic fashion, someone is conducting a test to determine how reliable peer review comments are:
“A new paper on peer review discusses the weaknesses we all see – it is easy to hijack peer review when it is a volunteer effort that can drive out anyone who does not meet the political or cultural litmus test. Wikipedia is dominated by angry white men and climate science is dominated by different angry white men, but in both cases they were caught conspiring to block out anyone who dissented from their beliefs. Then there is the fluctuating nature of guidelines. Some peer review is lax if you are a member, like at the National Academy of Sciences, while the most prominent open access journal is really editorial review, where they check off four boxes and it may never go to peer review or require any data, especially if it matches the aesthetic self-identification of the editor or they don’t want to be yelled at on Twitter.”
The peer review problem is getting worse in the digital landscape. There are suggested solutions, such as banning all fees associated with academic journals and databases, homogenizing review criteria across fields, but the problems would be far from corrected. Reviewers are paid to review works, which likely involves kickbacks of some kind. Also trying to get different academic journals, much less different fields to standardize an issue will take a huge amount of effort and work, if they can come to any sort of agreement.
Fixing the review system will not be done quickly and anytime money is involved, the process is slowed even further. In short, academic journals are far from being objective, which is why it pays to do your own research and take everything with a grain of salt.
Whitney Grace, July 16, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Twitter Gets a Search Facelift
June 25, 2015
Twitter has been experimenting with improving its search results and according to TechCrunch the upgrade comes via a new search results interface: “Twitter’s New Search Results Interface Expands To All Users.” The new search results interface is the one of the largest updates Twitter has made in 2015. It is supposed to increase the ease with a cleaner look and better filtering options. Users will now be able to filter search results by live tweets, photos, videos, news, accounts, and more.
Twitter made the update to help people better understand how to use the message service and to take a more active approach to using it, rather than passively reading other peoples tweets. The update is specifically targeted at new Twitter users.
The tweaked search interface will return tweets related to the search phrase or keyword, but that does not mean that the most popular tweets are returned:
“In some cases, the top search result isn’t necessarily the one with the higher metrics associated with it – but one that better matches what Twitter believes to be the searcher’s “intent.” For example, a search for “Steve Jobs” first displays a heavily-retweeted article about the movie’s trailer, but a search for “Mad Men” instead first displays a more relevant tweet ahead of the heavily-favorited “Mad Men” mention by singer Lorde.”
The new interface proves to be simpler and better list trends, related users, and news. It does take a little while to finesse Twitter, which is a daunting task to new users. Twitter is not the most popular social network these day and it’s using these updates to increase its appeal.
Whitney Grace, June 25, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Search Improvements at Twitter
June 18, 2015
Search hasn’t exactly been Twitter’s strong point in the past. Now we learn that the site is rolling out its new and improved search functionality to all (logged-in) users in TechCrunch’s article, “Twitter’s New Search Results Interface Expands to All Web Users.” Reporter Sarah Parez tells us:
“Twitter is now rolling out a new search results interface to all logged-in users on the web, introducing a cleaner look-and-feel and more filtering options that let you sort results by top tweets, ‘live’ tweets, accounts, photos, videos, news and more. The rollout follows tests that began in April which then made the new interface available to a ‘small group’ of Twitter users the company had said at the time. The updated interface is one of the larger updates Twitter’s search engine has seen in recent months, and it’s meant to make the search interface itself easier to use in terms of switching between tweets, accounts, photos and videos.”
Twitter has been working on other features meant to make the site easier to use. For example, the revamped landing page will track news stories in specified categories. Users can also access the latest updates through the “instant timeline” or “while you were away” features. The article supplies a few search-interface before-and-after screenshots. Naturally, Twitter promises to continue improving the feature.
Cynthia Murrell, June 18, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Emojis Spur Ancient Language Practices
May 12, 2015
Emojis, different from their cousin emoticons, are a standard in Internet jargon and are still resisted by most who grew up in a world sans instant connection. Mike Isaac, who writes the New York Times Bits blog, tried his best to resist the urge to use a colon and parentheses to express his mood. Isaac’s post “The Rise Of Emoji On Instagram Is Causing Language Repercussions” discusses the rise of the emoji language.
Emojis are quickly replacing English abbreviations, such as LOL and TTYL. People are finding it easier to select a smiley face picture over having to type text. Isaac points to how social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat users are relying more on these pictograms for communication. Instagram’s Thomas Dimson mentioned we are watching the rise of a new language.
People string emojis together to form complete sentences and sentiments. Snapchat and Instagram rely on pictures as their main content, which in turn serves as communication.
“Instagram itself is a means of expression that does not require the use of words. The app’s meteoric rise has largely been attributed to the power of images, the ease that comes, for instance, in looking at a photo of a sunset rather than reading a description of one. Other companies, like Snapchat, have also risen to fame and popularity through the expressive power of images.”
Facebook and Twitter are pushing more images and videos on their own platforms. It is a rudimentary form of communication, but it harkens back to the days of cave paintings. People are drawn to images, because they are easy to interpret from their basic meaning and they do not have a language barrier. A picture of a dog is still the same in Spanish or English. The only problem from using emojis is actually understanding the meaning behind them. A smiley face is easy to interpret, but a dolphin, baseball glove, and maple leaf might need some words for clarification.
Isaac finishes that one of the reasons he resisted emojis so much was that it made him feel childish, so he reserved them for his close friends and family. The term “childish” is subjective, just like the meaning of emojis, so as they become more widely adopted it will become more accepted.
Whitney Grace, May 12, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Social Network Demographics by the Numbers
April 23, 2015
The amount of social networking Web sites and their purposes is as diverse as the human population. Arguably, if you were to use each of the most popular networks and try to keep on top of every piece of information that filters through the feed, one twenty-four hour day would not be enough.
With social media becoming more ingrained in daily life, it makes one wonder who is using what network and for what purpose. Business Insider discusses a recent BI Intelligence about social media demographics in the article: “Revealed: A Breakdown Of The Demographics For Each Of The Social Networks.” Here are some of the facts: Facebook is still mostly female and remains the top network. Twitter leans heavier on the male demographic, while YouTube reaches more adults in 18-34 demographic than cable TV. Instagram is considered the most important of teenage social networks, but Snapchat has the widest appeal amongst the younger crowd. This is the most important for professionals:
“LinkedIn is actually more popular than Twitter among U.S. adults. LinkedIn’s core demographic are those aged between 30 and 49, i.e. those in the prime of their career-rising years. Not surprisingly, LinkedIn also has a pronounced skew toward well-educated users.”
Facebook still reigns supreme and pictures are popular with the younger sect, while professionals all tend to co-mingle in their LinkedIn area. Surprising and not so revealing information, but still interesting for the data junkie. We wonder how social media will change in the coming year?
Whitney Grace, April 23, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
A Former Googler Reflects
April 10, 2015
After a year away from Google, blogger and former Googler Tim Bray (now at Amazon) reflects on what he does and does not miss about the company in his post, “Google + 1yr.” Anyone who follows his blog, ongoing, knows Bray has been outspoken about some of his problems with his former employer: First, he really dislikes “highly-overprivileged” Silicon Valley and its surrounds, where Google is based. Secondly, he found it unsettling to never communicate with the “actual customers paying the bills,” the advertisers.
What does Bray miss about Google? Their advanced bug tracking system tops the list, followed closely by the slick and efficient, highly collaborative internal apps deployment. He was also pretty keen on being paid partially in Google stock between 2010 and 2014. The food on campus is everything it’s cracked up to be, he admits, but as a remote worker, he rarely got to sample it.
It was a passage in Bray’s “neutral” section that most caught my eye, though. He writes:
“The number one popular gripe against Google is that they’re watching everything we do online and using it to monetize us. That one doesn’t bother me in the slightest. The services are free so someone’s gotta pay the rent, and that’s the advertisers.
“Are you worried about Google (or Facebook or Twitter or your telephone company or Microsoft or Amazon) misusing the data they collect? That’s perfectly reasonable. And it’s also a policy problem, nothing to do with technology; the solutions lie in the domains of politics and law.
“I’m actually pretty optimistic that existing legislation and common law might suffice to whack anyone who really went off the rails in this domain.
“Also, I have trouble getting exercised about it when we’re facing a wave of horrible, toxic, pervasive privacy attacks from abusive governments and actual criminals.”
Everything is relative, I suppose. Still, I think it understandable for non-insiders to remain a leery about these companies’ data habits. After all, the distinction between “abusive government” and businesses is not always so clear these days.
Cynthia Murrell, April 10, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
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