I have written on journalism and media trends eariler few years ago. So it is time for update. What is the state of journalism and news publishing in 2017? NiemanLab’s predictions for 2017 are a good place to start thinking about what lies ahead for journalism. There, Matt Waite puts us in our place straight away by telling us that the people running the media are the problem.
There has been changes on tech publishing. In January 2017 International Data Group, the owner of PCWorld magazine and market researcher IDC, on Thursday said it was being acquired by China Oceanwide Holdings Group and IDG Capital, the investment management firm run by IDG China executive Hugo Shong. In 2016 Arrow bought EE Times, EDN, TechOnline and lots more from UBM.
Here are some article links and information bits on journalist and media in 2017:
Soothsayers’ guides to journalism in 2017 article take a look at journalism predictions and the value of this year’s predictions.
What Journalism Needs To Do Post-Election article tells that faced with the growing recognition that the electorate was uniformed or, at minimum, deeply in the thrall of fake news, far too many journalists are responding not with calls for change but by digging in deeper to exactly the kinds of practices that got us here in the first place.
Fake News Is About to Get Even Scarier than You Ever Dreamed article says that what we saw in the 2016 election is nothing compared to what we need to prepare for in 2020 as incipient technologies appear likely to soon obliterate the line between real and fake.
Headlines matter article tells that in 2017, headlines will matter more than ever and journalists will need to wrest control of headline writing from social-optimization teams. People get their news from headlines now in a way they never did in the past.
Why new journalism grads are optimistic about 2017 article tells that since today’s college journalism students have been in school, the forecasts for their futures has been filled with words like “layoffs,” “cutbacks,” “buyouts” and “freelance.” Still many people are optimistic about the future because the main motivation for being a journalist is often “to make a difference.”
Updating social media account can be a serious job. Zuckerberg has 12+ Facebook employees helping him with posts and comments on his Facebook page and professional photographers to snap personal moments.
Wikipedia Is Being Ripped Apart By a Witch Hunt For Secretly Paid Editors article tells that with undisclosed paid editing on the rise, Wikipedians and the Wikimedia Foundation are working together to stop the practice without discouraging user participation. Paid editing is permissible under Wikimedia Foundation’s terms of use as long as they disclose these conflicts of interest on their user pages, but not all paid editors make these disclosures.
Big Internet giants are working on how to make content better for mobile devices. Instant Articles is a new way for any publisher to create fast, interactive articles on Facebook. Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is a project that it aims to accelerate content on mobile devices. Both of those systems have their advantages and problems.
Clearing Out the App Stores: Government Censorship Made Easier article tells that there’s a new form of digital censorship sweeping the globe, and it could be the start of something devastating. The centralization of the internet via app stores has made government censorship easier. If the app isn’t in a country’s app store, it effectively doesn’t exist. For more than a decade, we users of digital devices have actively championed an online infrastructure that now looks uniquely vulnerable to the sanctions of despots and others who seek to control information.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
How do you get review samples!? – Honest Answers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCSoJPRp_5w
SO MANY PEOPLE have asked this question in the past, so I finally decided to give my complete answer in our new segment, “Honest Answers!”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Josh Constine / TechCrunch:
Facebook says it will demote links in the News Feed to websites that illicitly scrape and republish content from other sources with little or no modification
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/16/facebook-demotes-scrapers/
Facebook is demoting trashy news publishers and other websites that illicitly scrape and republish content from other sources with little or no modification. Today it exclusively told TechCrunch that it will show links less prominently in the News Feed if they have a combination of this new signal about content authenticity along with either clickbait headlines orlanding pages overflowing with low-quality ads. The move comes after Facebook’s surveys and in-person interviews with discovered that users hate scraped content.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/16/facebook-demotes-scrapers/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kevin Roose / New York Times:
Twitter bans ~1,500 accounts, source says for spreading misleading election-related content; the “NPC” accounts were 4chan and Reddit users posing as activists
What Is NPC, the Pro-Trump Internet’s New Favorite Insult?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/politics/npc-twitter-ban.html
Twitter has barred hundreds of right-wing accounts for posing as soulless, “nonplayable” liberal activists.
Last week, a trolling campaign organized by right-wing internet users spilled over onto Twitter. The campaign, which was born in the fever swamps of 4chan and Reddit message boards, involved creating hundreds of fictional personas with gray cartoon avatars, known as NPCs. These accounts posed as liberal activists and were used to spread — among other things — false information about November’s midterm elections.
Over the weekend, Twitter responded by suspending about 1,500 accounts associated with the NPC trolling campaign. The accounts violated Twitter’s rules against “intentionally misleading election-related content,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bloomberg:
Twitter has published data sets of millions of tweets, images, videos, and thousands of accounts linked to Russia and Iran meddling for analysis by researchers — – Data includes images and videos from thousands of accounts — Tech firms remain under fire from lawmakers in EU, U.S.
Twitter Posts Millions of Tweets Linked to Russia, Iran Meddling
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-17/twitter-posts-millions-of-tweets-linked-to-russia-iran-meddling
Tomi Engdahl says:
Suzanne Vranica / Wall Street Journal:
Advertisers allege in suit that Facebook didn’t disclose key video metric error for over a year and that scale of miscalculation was far worse than understood — Facebook knew of problems with how it measured viewership of video ads for more than a year before it revealed them in 2016, according to a complaint filed by advertisers.
Advertisers Allege Facebook Failed to Disclose Key Metric Error for More Than a Year
https://www.wsj.com/articles/advertisers-allege-facebook-failed-to-disclose-key-metric-error-for-more-than-a-year-1539720524
Facebook knew of problems with how it measured viewership of video ads for more than a year before it revealed them in 2016, according to a complaint filed by advertisers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Supreme Court agrees to hear a case that could determine whether Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies can censor their users
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/16/supreme-court-case-could-decide-fb-twitter-power-to-regulate-speech.html
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could determine whether users can challenge social media companies on free speech grounds.
In particular, a broad ruling from the high court could open the country’s largest technology companies up to First Amendment lawsuits.
On its face, the case has nothing to do with social media at all. Rather, the facts of the case concern public access television, and two producers who claim they were punished for expressing their political views.
While the First Amendment is meant to protect citizens against government attempts to limit speech, there are certain situations in which private companies can be subject to First Amendment liability.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The uproar over Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance could mark the end of an era in Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley hoped the Khashoggi story would go away; instead, it may end an era
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/17/silicon-valley-hoped-the-khashoggi-story-would-go-away-instead-it-may-end-an-era/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
It’s amazing how quickly things can change. Exactly a week ago, we wondered if Saudi Arabia’s money might finally become radioactive in light of the disappearance of Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Yet the Khashoggi story has not faded away. In stark contrast, it just became so graphic that to ignore it is no longer an option.
SoftBank — the Japanese conglomerate that has been shoveling billions of Saudi dollars into tech and other companies — seems to be having second thoughts.
it may well be that a journalist who many in Silicon Valley had never heard of until two weeks ago causes its long economic boom to bust.
It may sound far-fetched; it isn’t. A huge percentage of the money flowing into Silicon Valley in recent years has come from the kingdom. That’s been just fine with founders and investors
Tomi Engdahl says:
Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:
A close look at the suit against Facebook on video metrics and a look back at many statements from publishers pivoting to video as Facebook touted the medium — “It will probably be all video.” — In June 2016, Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook’s VP for Europe, the Middle East and Africa …
Did Facebook’s faulty data push news publishers to make terrible decisions on video?
http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/10/did-facebooks-faulty-data-push-news-publishers-to-make-terrible-decisions-on-video/
“It will probably be all video.”
In June 2016, Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook’s VP for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, spent several minutes of a panel at a Fortune conference talking about how Facebook was witnessing video overtake text.
“We’re seeing a year-on-year decline on text,” Mendelsohn answered. “We’re seeing a massive increase, as I’ve said, on both pictures and video. So I think, yeah, if I was having a bet, I would say: Video, video, video.”
“Wow,” the moderator, Pattie Sellers, responded.
“The best way to tell stories, in this world where so much information is coming at us, actually is video,” Mendelsohn continued. “It commands so much more information in a much quicker period. So actually, the trend helps us to digest more of the information, in a quicker way.”
But even as Facebook executives were insisting publicly that video consumption was skyrocketing, it was becoming clear that some of the metrics the company had used to calculate time spent on videos were wrong. The Wall Street Journal reported in September 2016, three months after the Fortune panel, that Facebook had “vastly overestimated average viewing time for video ads on its platform for two years” by as much as “60 to 80 percent.”
A lawsuit filed by a group of small advertisers in California, however, argues that Facebook had known about the discrepancy for at least a year — and behaved fraudulently by failing to disclose it.
If that is true, it may have had enormous consequences — not just for advertisers deciding to shift resources from television to Facebook, but also for news organizations, which were grappling with how to allocate editorial staff and what kinds of content creation to prioritize. News publishers’ “pivot to video” was driven largely by a belief that if Facebook was seeing users, in massive numbers, shift to video from text, the trend must be real for news video too
Here are some of the most interesting parts of the court filings.
— The lawsuit alleges that “Facebook engineers knew for over a year” that the company’s metrics were “overstating the average time its users spent watching paid video advertisements,” and that “multiple advertisers had reported aberrant results caused by the miscalculation (such as 100% watch times for their video ads.”
— The Wall Street Journal had reported that viewership metrics were inflated by “60 to 80 percent,” figures that Facebook did not dispute.
— The suit alleges that there was a long lag between the time that the engineers realized the metrics were faulty and the time that Facebook corrected them, due to understaffing on the engineering team, and that
Even once Facebook decided to correct the false metrics, it chose not to do so immediately.
The surges in video viewership that we at Nieman Lab heard about in 2016 and 2017 didn’t seem to make intuitive sense in the context of news video. Who were all these people watching tons of video on Facebook when nobody we knew in real life, including ourselves, was actually watching video on Facebook?
Publishers’ “pivot to video” was driven largely by a belief that if Facebook was seeing users, in massive numbers, shift to video from text, the trend must be real.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Daniel Funke / Poynter:
Study: nearly 50% of US college students lack confidence recognizing fake news on social media; 36% say threat of misinformation made them trust all media less
Study: Fake news is making college students question all news
https://www.poynter.org/news/study-fake-news-making-college-students-question-all-news
It’s tough out there for college students these days — especially on their news feeds.
According to a new media consumption study, almost half of the nearly 6,000 American college students surveyed said they lacked confidence in discerning real from fake news on social media. And 36 percent of them said the threat of misinformation made them trust all media less.
“Our report suggests that in some ways, we have created for young people an extremely difficult environment of news. We need to figure out ways to guide them so they can navigate it,” said John Wihbey, a Northeastern University professor and one of the study’s co-authors, in a press release. “The rather contentious and poisonous public discourse around ‘fake news’ has substantially put young news consumers on guard about almost everything they see.”
Researchers found that students often cross-reference their news with several different sources because of the possibility of misinformation.
While that finding points to college students’ proclivity to confirm news and information before they share it, Wihbey said in the release that it’s also concerning for trust in the mainstream media.
“That’s a double-edged sword because on the one side, you’re arming young news consumers to be aware of the source of information,” he said. “On the other side, we don’t want to raise a generation not to believe in the power of well-reported, well-researched, well-sourced news.”
“Overall, young people’s ability to reason about the information on the internet can be summed up in one word: bleak,” the researchers wrote. “Our ‘digital natives’ may be able to flit between Facebook and Twitter while simultaneously uploading a selfie to Instagram and texting a friend. But when it comes to evaluating information that flows through social media channels, they are easily duped.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jamal Khashoggi / Washington Post:
Arab governments have been given free rein to silence the media, stifling the hope from the Arab Spring and depriving people of the ability to discuss issues — I received this column from Jamal Khashoggi’s translator and assistant the day after Jamal was reported missing in Istanbul.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/jamal-khashoggi-what-the-arab-world-needs-most-is-free-expression/2018/10/17/adfc8c44-d21d-11e8-8c22-fa2ef74bd6d6_story.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/jamal-khashoggi-what-the-arab-world-needs-most-is-free-expression/2018/10/17/adfc8c44-d21d-11e8-8c22-fa2ef74bd6d6_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ea1ac4f0821e
This is the last piece of his I will edit for The Post. This column perfectly captures his commitment and passion for freedom in the Arab world. A freedom he apparently gave his life for.
I was recently online looking at the 2018 “Freedom in the World” report published by Freedom House and came to a grave realization. There is only one country in the Arab world that has been classified as “free.” That nation is Tunisia. Jordan, Morocco and Kuwait come second, with a classification of “partly free.” The rest of the countries in the Arab world are classified as “not free.”
As a result, Arabs living in these countries are either uninformed or misinformed. They are unable to adequately address, much less publicly discuss, matters that affect the region and their day-to-day lives. A state-run narrative dominates the public psyche
The Arab world was ripe with hope during the spring of 2011. Journalists, academics and the general population were brimming with expectations of a bright and free Arab society within their respective countries. They expected to be emancipated from the hegemony of their governments and the consistent interventions and censorship of information. These expectations were quickly shattered
Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate.
these governments, whose very existence relies on the control of information, have aggressively blocked the Internet.
Arabs need to read in their own language so they can understand and discuss the various aspects and complications of democracy in the United States and the West.
The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New York Times:
Former FBI agent Terry Albury sentenced to 48 months after guilty plea for leaking documents linked to stories in The Intercept
Ex-Minneapolis F.B.I. Agent Is Sentenced to 4 Years in Leak Case
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/us/politics/terry-albury-fbi-sentencing.html
By the time Terry J. Albury arrived in Minneapolis in 2012, about 11 years after he went to work for the F.B.I., he had grown increasingly convinced that agents were abusing their powers and discriminating against racial and religious minorities as they hunted for potential terrorists.
he became disillusioned about “widespread racist and xenophobic sentiments” in the bureau and “discriminatory practices and policies he observed and implemented.”
In 2016, Mr. Albury began photographing secret documents that described F.B.I. powers to recruit potential informants and identify potential extremists. On Thursday, he was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty last year to unauthorized disclosures of national security secrets for sending several of the documents to The Intercept, which published the files with a series titled “The F.B.I.’s Secret Rules.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
EEVblog #751 – How To Debunk A Product (The Batteriser)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iEshd6izgk
Dave introduces his Product Baloney Detection Kit, and offers a step-by-step how-to tutorial guide to debunking wild marketing claims on tech products.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook launches ‘Hunt for False News’ debunk blog as fakery drops 50%
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/19/false-news-debunking/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
Facebook hopes detailing concrete examples of fake news it’s caught — or missed — could improve news literacy, or at least prove it’s attacking the misinformation problem. Today Facebook launched “The Hunt for False News,” in which it examines viral B.S., relays the decisions of its third-party fact-checkers and explains how the story was tracked down. The first edition reveals cases where false captions were put on old videos, people were wrongfully identified as perpetrators of crimes or real facts were massively exaggerated.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Washington Post:
DOJ charges Russian national involved in “Project Lakhta”, an alleged foreign influence operation to interfere in US midterms by pushing misinformation online
Justice Dept. charges Russian woman with interference in midterm elections
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/director-of-national-intelligence-warns-of-ongoing-campaigns-to-interfere-with-elections/2018/10/19/64973a7a-d3b4-11e8-b2d2-f397227b43f0_story.html
The Justice Department on Friday charged a Russian woman for her alleged role in a conspiracy to interfere with the 2018 U.S. election, marking the first criminal case prosecutors have brought against a foreign national for interfering in the upcoming midterms.
Prosecutors said she managed the finances of “Project Lakhta,” a foreign influence operation they said was designed “to sow discord in the U.S. political system” by pushing arguments and misinformation online about a host of divisive political issues, including immigration, the Confederate flag, gun control and the National Football League national-anthem protests.
In a statement, the ODNI said officials “do not have any evidence of a compromise or disruption of infrastructure that would enable adversaries to prevent voting, change vote counts or disrupt our ability to tally votes in the midterm elections.” But the statement noted: “We are concerned about ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
New York Times:
Social platforms are relying on journalists as unpaid content moderators to address misinformation on their sites, even with all the tools at their disposal
The Poison on Facebook and Twitter Is Still Spreading
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/opinion/facebook-twitter-journalism-misinformation.html
Social platforms have a responsibility to address misinformation as a systemic problem, instead of reacting to case after case.
A network of Facebook troll accounts operated by the Myanmar military parrots hateful rhetoric against Rohingya Muslims. Viral misinformation runs rampant on WhatsApp in Brazil, even as marketing firms there buy databases of phone numbers in order to spam voters with right-wing messaging. Homegrown campaigns spread partisan lies in the United States.
The public knows about each of these incitements because of reporting by news organizations. Social media misinformation is becoming a newsroom beat in and of itself, as journalists find themselves acting as unpaid content moderators for these platforms.
It’s not just reporters, either. Academic researchers and self-taught vigilantes alike scour through networks of misinformation on social media platforms, their findings prompting — or sometimes, failing to prompt — the takedown of propaganda.
The internet platforms will always make some mistakes, and it’s not fair to expect otherwise. And the task before Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and others is admittedly herculean. No one can screen everything in the fire hose of content produced by users. Even if a platform makes the right call on 99 percent of its content, the remaining 1 percent can still be millions upon millions of postings. The platforms are due some forgiveness in this respect.
It’s increasingly clear, however, that at this stage of the internet’s evolution, content moderation can no longer be reduced to individual postings viewed in isolation and out of context. The problem is systemic, currently manifested in the form of coordinated campaigns
Journalists are not in the business of resolving disputes for Facebook and Twitter. But disgruntled users might feel that they have a better chance of being listened to by a reporter than by someone who is actually paid to resolve user complaints.
Of course, it would be far worse if a company refused to patch a problem that journalists have uncovered. But at the same time, muckraking isn’t meant to fix the system one isolated instance at a time.
The companies have all the tools at their disposal and a profound responsibility to find exactly what journalists find — and yet, clearly, they don’t. The role that outsiders currently play, as consumer advocates and content screeners, can easily be filled in-house.
The reliance on journalists’ time is particularly paradoxical given the damage that the tech companies are doing to the media industry. Small changes to how Facebook organizes its News Feed can radically change a news organization’s bottom line — layoffs and hiring sprees are spurred on by the whims of the algorithm.
But throwing light on the coordinated misinformation campaigns flaring up all around us is a matter that is much bigger than the death of print — it’s essential to democracy. It can change the course of elections and genocides.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sam Levin / The Guardian:
As Facebook promotes its “war room” and efforts to fight interference, a study of disinformation on WhatsApp during Brazil’s election shows more could be done
Facebook has a fake news ‘war room’ – but is it really working?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/18/facebook-war-room-social-media-fake-news-politics
Corporation shows off room of engineers, data scientists and other experts but offers reporters few new specifics
Facebook is promoting a new “war room” as a part of its solution to election interference, unveiling a team of specialists working to stop the spread of misinformation and propaganda.
It’s unclear how well it’s working.
The Silicon Valley company, which has faced intensifying scrutiny over its role in amplifying malicious political content, opened its doors to reporters to tour a new workspace at its Menlo Park headquarters on Wednesday.
The stakes are high as the US approaches critical midterm elections in November and the 2020 presidential race.
Facebook’s plan to kill dangerous fake news is ambitious – and perhaps impossible
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/19/facebook-fake-news-violence-moderation-plan
New policy to tackle content that could fuel violence may be well-meaning, but the complexity of the task is mind-boggling
Even if Facebook cracks misinformation on its main platform, it has a trickier problem on its hands with WhatsApp
Tomi Engdahl says:
Christine Wang / CNBC:
Saudi Arabia confirms journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed, says his death followed a fight at consulate and 18 people have been detained
Saudi Arabia claims Khashoggi was killed in a fight, contrary to other accounts
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/19/saudi-arabia-admits-journalist-jamal-khashoggi-was-killed-after-a-fight-broke-out-in-consulate.html
Saudi Arabia says dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi died in a fight at its consulate in Istanbul, Turkey.
Its account contradicts its own earlier claim that Khashoggi left shortly after arriving the consulate.
Previous media reports, citing Turkish officials, said Khashoggi was tortured, killed and dismembered.
Missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi is dead, Saudi Arabia’s general prosecutor said early Saturday morning local time.
The government said that Khashoggi got into a fight with the people he met at the consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on Oct. 2. The kingdom alleged that Khashoggi died in that clash.
That explanation counters multiple reports of how Khashoggi died. Turkish officials told The New York Times that it has audio evidence which proves Khashoggi was tortured, killed and subsequently dismembered by a hit team of Saudi agents.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adam Satariano / New York Times:
UK parliament report: an unknown firm spent an estimated £250K+ in the past 10 months on Facebook ads pushing for a hard Brexit and reaching 10M to 11M people — LONDON — Prime Minister Theresa May has struggled to build support for her plan for Britain’s exit from the European Union.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/technology/facebook-brexit-ads.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
In State Tectonics, an explosive ending for the future of democracy
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/20/state-tectonics-review/?sr_share=facebook&utm_source=tcfbpage
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In State Tectonics, an explosive ending for the future of democracy
Danny Crichton
@dannycrichton / 13 hours ago
Blockchain Concept and City Network of Manhattan
An omnipotent data infrastructure and knowledge-sharing tech organization has spread across the planet. Global conspiracies to disseminate propaganda and rig elections are ever present. Algorithms determine what people see as objective truth, and terrorist organizations gird to bring down the monopoly on information.
Malka Older faces a problem few speculative science fiction authors face in their lifetimes: having their work become a blueprint for reality.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Free societies face emerging, existential threats from technology
It’s time for VCs to step up and address them
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/20/free-societies-face-existential-emerging-security-threats-from-technology/?sr_share=facebook&utm_source=tcfbpage
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Free societies face emerging, existential threats from technology
It’s time for VCs to step up and address them
Bilal Zuberi
@bznotes / 16 hours ago
Mark Zuckerberg – Capitol – TOPSHOT-US-INTERNET-FACEBOOK-DEMONSTRATION
Bilal Zuberi
Contributor
Bilal Zuberi is a partner at Lux Capital, and is on the boards of Evolv Technology, CyPhy Technologies, and Nozomi Networks, among others.
Silicon Valley is currently, and correctly, under fire for the failure of leading platforms such as Facebook, Google and Twitter to protect against the spread of disinformation, hate speech and efforts to disrupt our elections. I don’t know why these companies behaved as they did.
But whatever the reason – naiveté, excessive focus on near-term profits, or simply a lack of proper attention on mind-numbingly complex problems – it’s clear they have to do a better job of making sure technology makes our world safer, freer and more stable rather than the opposite.
But it’s not just these big companies that need to up their game. As venture capitalists, we need to do more
Tomi Engdahl says:
Khashoggi’s fate shows the flip side of the surveillance state
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/20/khashoggis-fate-shows-the-flip-side-of-the-surveillance-state/?sr_share=facebook&utm_source=tcfbpage
It’s been over five years since NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden lifted the lid on government mass surveillance programs, revealing, in unprecedented detail, quite how deep the rabbit hole goes thanks to the spread of commercial software and connectivity enabling a bottomless intelligence-gathering philosophy of ‘bag it all’.
Government spying practices are perhaps more scrutinized, as a result of awkward questions about out-of-date legal oversight regimes.
Increasingly powerful state surveillance is seemingly here to stay, with or without adequately robust oversight. And commercial use of strong encryption remains under attack from governments.
But there’s another end to the surveillance telescope.
Technology is a double-edged sword – which means it’s also capable of lifting the lid on the machinery of power-holding institutions like never before.”
We’re now seeing some of the impacts of this surveillance technology cutting both ways.
Witness, for example, how quickly the Kremlin’s official line on the Skripal poisonings unravelled.
Their investigation made use of a leaked database of Russian passport documents
Right now, we’re in the midst of another fast-unfolding example of surveillance apparatus and public data standing in the way of dubious state claims — in the case of the disappearance of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who went into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2
A marked element of the Khashoggi case has been the explicit descriptions of his fate leaked to journalists by Turkish government sources, who have said they have recordings of his interrogation, torture and killing inside the building — presumably via bugs either installed in the consulate itself or via intercepts placed on devices held by the individuals inside.
This surveillance material has reportedly been shared with US officials, where it must be shaping the geopolitical response
Attempts by the Saudis to construct a plausible narrative to explain what happened to Khashoggi when he stepped over its consulate threshold to pick up papers for his forthcoming wedding have failed in the face of all the contrary data.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Älä kerro koskaan mitään”, perhe vannotti – suomalaispojan uskomaton rakettilento oli suvun hävetty salaisuus vuosikymmenien ajan
https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-10465274
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://medium.com/@vervalkon/ketsuppikupin-arvoitus-a0531365366
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.codento.fi/2018/04/gdpr-ja-visualisoinnin-voima/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Twitter pulls down bot network that pushed pro-Saudi talking points about disappeared journalist
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/exclusive-twitter-pulls-down-bot-network-pushing-pro-saudi-talking-n921871
Twitter became aware of some of the bots on Thursday when NBC News presented the company with evidence of coordinated activity.
Twitter suspended a network of suspected Twitter bots on Thursday that pushed pro-Saudi Arabia talking points about the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the past week.
Twitter became aware of some of the bots on Thursday when NBC News presented the company with a spreadsheet of hundreds of accounts that tweeted and retweeted the same pro-Saudi government tweets at the same time.
The list was compiled by Josh Russell, an Indiana-based information technology professional who has previously identified foreign influence campaigns on Twitter and Reddit.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/linkkivero-ja-meemikielto-vaikuttavat-mediataloihin-luvassa-lisatuloja-tai-nakyvyyden-vaheneminen-6745769
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fake news ‘threat to democracy’ report gets back-burner response from UK gov’t
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/22/fake-news-threat-to-democracy-gets-back-burner-response-from-uk-govt/?sr_share=facebook&utm_source=tcfbpage
The UK government has rejected a parliamentary committee’s call for a levy on social media firms to fund digital literacy lessons to combat the impact of disinformation online.
report following a multi-month investigation into the impact of so-called ‘fake news’ on democratic processes.
Though it has suggested the terms ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ be used instead, to better pin down exact types of problematic inauthentic content — and on that at least the government agrees. But just not on very much else. At least not yet.
it urged the government to put forward proposals for an education levy on social media.
But in its response, released by the committee today, the government writes that it is “continuing to build the evidence base on a social media levy to inform our approach in this area”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
YouTube CEO says EU’s new copyright legislation threatens jobs, smaller creators
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/22/youtube-ceo-says-eus-new-copyright-legislation-threatens-jobs-smaller-creators/?utm_source=tcfbpage&sr_share=facebook
Tomi Engdahl says:
‘We will never allow a cover-up’: Turkey’s ruling party will soon reveal its evidence into Jamal Khashoggi’s death as Saudi Arabia finally admits journalist died ‘after a fight at its consulate’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6297679/Theresa-pressure-suspend-arms-sales-Saudi-Arabia.html
‘It’s not possible for the Saudi administration to wiggle itself out of this crime if it’s confirmed,’ Kurtulmus said
Saudi Arabia says self-exiled journalist, 59, died at its Istanbul consulate
Theresa May under pressure to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia
President Trump said explanation for Khashoggi’s killing is credible
that Turkey would share its evidence of Khashoggi’s killing with the world and that a ‘conclusive result’ of the investigation is close.
Saudi Arabia said on Saturday that Khashoggi had died in a fight inside its Istanbul consulate – Riyadh’s first acknowledgement of his death after two weeks of denials that it was involved in his disappearance.
‘We’ll find out what happened to the body before long,’ the official said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Saudi Arabia’s ‘Davos in the Desert’ website was hacked and defaced
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/22/saudi-future-investments-conference-site-hacked-defaced-jamal-khashoggi/?sr_share=facebook&utm_source=tcfbpage
The website of the Saudi government’s upcoming Future Investment Initiative conference was hacked and defaced with images of the murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Several reporters tweeted screenshots of the site after its defacement, purporting to show Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman — the kingdom’s de facto ruler — brandishing a sword. A portion of text on the site was replaced with an accusation the kingdom of “barbaric and inhuman action,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Intellectual Yet Idiot
https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577
What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.
But the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described members of the “intelligentsia” can’t find a coconut in Coconut Island, meaning they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence hence fall into circularities — but their main skill is capacity to pass exams written by people like them.
Indeed one can see that these academico-bureaucrats who feel entitled to run our lives aren’t even rigorous, whether in medical statistics or policymaking. They can’t tell science from scientism — in fact in their image-oriented minds scientism looks more scientific than real science.
The Intellectual Yet Idiot is a production of modernity hence has been accelerating since the mid twentieth century, to reach its local supremum today, along with the broad category of people without skin-in-the-game who have been invading many walks of life. Why? Simply, in most countries, the government’s role is between five and ten times what it was a century ago (expressed in percentage of GDP).
The IYI pathologizes others for doing things he doesn’t understand without ever realizing it is his understanding that may be limited. He thinks people should act according to their best interests and he knows their interests
The modern IYI has attended more than one TEDx talks in person or watched more than two TED talks on Youtube.
Typically, the IYI get the first order logic right, but not second-order (or higher) effects making him totally incompetent in complex domains. In the comfort of his suburban home with 2-car garage, he advocated the “removal” of Gadhafi because he was “a dictator”, not realizing that removals have consequences
The IYI has been wrong, historically, on Stalinism, Maoism, GMOs, Iraq, Libya, Syria, lobotomies, urban planning, low carbohydrate diets, gym machines, behaviorism, transfats, freudianism, portfolio theory, linear regression, Gaussianism, Salafism, dynamic stochastic equilibrium modeling, housing projects, selfish gene, election forecasting models, Bernie Madoff (pre-blowup) and p-values. But he is convinced that his current position is right.
he doesn’t know that there is no difference between “pseudointellectual” and “intellectual” in the absence of skin in the game; has mentioned quantum mechanics at least twice in the past five years in conversations that had nothing to do with physics.
He knows at any point in time what his words or actions are doing to his reputation.
IYIs fail to distinguish between the letter and the spirit of things. They are so blinded by verbalistic notions such as science, education, democracy, racism, equality, evidence, rationality and similar buzzwords that they can be easily taken for a ride.
IYIs can be feel satisfied giving their money to a group aimed at “saving the children” who will spend most of it making powerpoint presentation and organizing conferences on how to save the children and completely miss the inconsistency.
Likewise an IYI routinely fails to make a distinction between an institution (say formal university setting and credentialization) and what its true aim is (knowledge, rigor in reasoning)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Physicist found guilty of misconduct
https://www.nature.com/news/2002/020923/full/news020923-9.html
Bell Labs dismisses young nanotechnologist for falsifying data.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google tackles new ad fraud scheme
https://security.googleblog.com/2018/10/google-tackles-new-ad-fraud-scheme.html
Fighting invalid traffic is essential for the long-term sustainability of the digital advertising ecosystem. We have an extensive internal system to filter out invalid traffic – from simple filters to large-scale machine learning models – and we collaborate with advertisers, agencies, publishers, ad tech companies, research institutions, law enforcement and other third party organizations to identify potential threats. We take all reports of questionable activity seriously, and when we find invalid traffic, we act quickly to remove it from our systems.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Project Lakhta: Putin’s Chef spends $35M on social media influence
http://garwarner.blogspot.com/2018/10/project-lakhta-putins-chef-spends-35m.html
Project Lakhta is the name of a Russian project that was further documented by the Department of Justice last Friday in the form of sharing a Criminal Complaint against Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, said to be the accountant in charge of running a massive organization designed to inject distrust and division into the American elections and American society in general.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Linkkivero” ja “meemikielto” vaikuttavat mediataloihin – luvassa lisätuloja tai näkyvyyden väheneminen
https://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/linkkivero-ja-meemikielto-vaikuttavat-mediataloihin-luvassa-lisatuloja-tai-nakyvyyden-vaheneminen-6745769
Tomi Engdahl says:
FACEBOOK REVEALS ITS BIGGEST POLITICAL AD SPENDERS
https://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-shows-biggest-political-ad-spender/315373/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The ‘Saudi Affair’ in Istanbul Unveils Sunni vs Sunni Rivalry
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13176/turkey-khashoggi-affair
Turkey, pursuing its own Islamist agenda and trying to rival Saudi influence in the Sunni world, is just too happy to have discredited the Wahhabi royals.
Turkey’s message to the Western world was: See the difference between our peaceful Islamism and rogue-state Islamism? Stop discrediting us for our democratic deficit — also, presumably, for “only” imprisoning more than 100 journalists there.
Turkey, pursuing its own Islamist agenda and trying to rival Saudi influence in the Sunni world, is just too happy to have discredited the Wahhabi royals in the wake of the Jamal Khashoggi killing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/kaytatko-suomalaista-mainoksenestoa-voit-alistua-tietamattasi-poliittiseen-sensuuriin-6746157
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jack Nicas / New York Times:
A look at how Apple combines algorithms and roughly 30 journalists to curate Apple News, which is read regularly by 90M people, and its plans for the app
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/apple-news-humans-algorithms.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Georgina Ustik / The Next Web:
Profile of Jane Wong, an engineering student from Hong Kong who regularly uncovers scoops about Instagram, Google, and others, like Facebook’s dating feature — You see it all the time — Facebook’s latest feature leaks to the public, and everyone knows about it before Zuckerberg has said a word.
https://thenextweb.com/tnw-answers/2018/10/24/meet-the-23-year-old-engineering-detective-behind-the-biggest-leaks-in-tech/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Paresh Dave / Reuters:
Facebook says its AI tools helped moderators remove 8.7M user-posted images of child nudity during the last quarter
Facebook removes 8.7 million sexual photos of kids in last three months
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-child-safety/facebook-unveils-systems-for-catching-child-nudity-grooming-of-children-idUSKCN1MY1SE
Facebook Inc (FB.O) said on Wednesday that company moderators during the last quarter removed 8.7 million user images of child nudity with the help of previously undisclosed software that automatically flags such photos.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Saudis’ Image Makers: A Troll Army and a Twitter Insider
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/20/us/politics/saudi-image-campaign-twitter.html
Each morning, Jamal Khashoggi would check his phone to discover what fresh hell had been unleashed while he was sleeping.
He would see the work of an army of Twitter trolls, ordered to attack him and other influential Saudis who had criticized the kingdom’s leaders. He sometimes took the attacks personally, so friends made a point of calling frequently to check on his mental state.
“The mornings were the worst for him because he would wake up to the equivalent of sustained gunfire online,” said Maggie Mitchell Salem, a friend of Mr. Khashoggi’s for more than 15 years.
Mr. Khashoggi’s online attackers were part of a broad effort dictated by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his close advisers to silence critics both inside Saudi Arabia and abroad. Hundreds of people work at a so-called troll farm in Riyadh to smother the voices of dissidents like Mr. Khashoggi.
The killing by Saudi agents of Mr. Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, has focused the world’s attention on the kingdom’s intimidation campaign against influential voices raising questions about the darker side of the crown prince.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Defaming Prophet Muhammed not free expression: ECHR
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/defaming-prophet-muhammed-not-free-expression-echr/1292823
Such defamation could stir up prejudice and risk religious peace, says European Court of Human Rights
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook:
Facebook says it has removed 82 Pages, groups, and accounts for coordinated inauthentic behavior that originated in Iran and targeted people in the US and UK — Today we removed multiple Pages, groups and accounts that originated in Iran for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram.
Taking Down Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior from Iran
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/10/coordinated-inauthentic-behavior-takedown/
As soon as we detected this activity, the teams in our elections war room worked quickly to investigate and remove these bad actors. Finding and removing abuse is a constant challenge. Our adversaries are smart and well funded, and as we improve their tactics change.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Joseph Bernstein / BuzzFeed News:
Amazon canceled some ads on Bloomberg’s properties, sources say due to China spy chips story; sources: Apple did not invite Bloomberg to fall product event — Amazon pulled its fourth quarter advertisements on Bloomberg’s website, a move some within the media giant think is retribution …
Amazon Has Pulled Its Ads From Bloomberg Over China Hack Story
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/amazon-pulled-ads-bloomberg-over-china-hack-story
Sources say both Amazon and Apple are taking retributive measures against the outlet that alleged they were hacked by China.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Corin Faife / BREAKER:
Investigation: 12 of 22 contacted crypto news sites agreed, upon request, to publish paid content without marking it as sponsored; prices were $240 to $4,500
We Asked Crypto News Outlets If They’d Take Money to Cover a Project. More Than Half Said Yes
https://breakermag.com/we-asked-crypto-news-outlets-if-theyd-take-money-to-cover-a-project-more-than-half-said-yes/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Viisi syytä, miksi yritys tarvitsee vahvan oman median
https://ajankohtaista.otavamedia.fi/blogi/jokainen-yritys-tarvitsee-vahvan-oman-median
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bypass Paywalls
by Adam
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypasspaywalls/
The most comprehensive paywall bypasser on the internet. Bypass paywall (bypass wsj paywall) of many news sites (remove paywalls).
Bypass Paywalls for Firefox
https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox/blob/master/README.md